FSR January 2023

BehindtheScenes BY ISABELLA SHERK

Snooze’sChangeMaker In the newly created director of impact role, Clint Hughey is driving the brand’s ESG goals.

AMID GROWTH, SNOOZE REMAINS COMMITTED TO ESG INITIATIVES.

WHEN CLINT HUGHEY returned to Snooze an .. Eatery in fall 2021, he had been away from the restaurant sec tor for nearly a decade. Although Hughey had spent years in foodservice, both as a general manager and a caterer, he’d pivoted to work at an organic produce distributor where he specialized in sus tainability reporting and analyst work. So when the opportunity arose to rejoin Snooze’s team in the newly created role of director of impact, Hughey made the leap; the position was the perfect combi nation of his past restaurant experience and his food system knowledge base. Snooze, a 54-unit breakfast chain based in Denver, endeavors to put its ESG (environmental, social, and gov ernance) strategy front and center in its business. Although Hughey’s tenure has not been long, he’s already helped the brand move forward in these goals by empowering on-the-ground team members to combat food waste, improve recycling practices, and move their own careers forward. As director of impact, what does your job entail? The role is definitely focused on ESG, but there are many elements to it. e position itself is a bit of a restructure. In previous versions, we had two indi vidual silos: one focused on community, and one focused on sustainability. As

“As Snooze evolved, leaders had the idea tomirror what we’re seeing in the world: a shift away from just ‘save the planet’ to looking at amore holistic viewof a people, planet, and profit mindset.”

Snooze evolved, leaders had the idea to mirror what we’re seeing in the world: a shift away from just ‘save the planet’ to looking at a more holistic view of a peo ple, planet, and profit mindset. e goal was to combine two of our core values— which are community and sustainabil ity—into this broader impact role. I joined the company inOctober 2021, and it has been really exciting to grow this position over the past year. We’re coming out of the pivots and changes we had to do during the pandemic to lay

this new framework of how Snooze is going to show up, both in the restaurant industry and outside as a leader and a pioneer in how businesses can actually still work within a capitalistic mindset, but be mindful of their impact socially and environmentally. Have you focused on anything in particular? One of the biggest focuses last year was rolling out what we call our Snooze ChangeMaker program, which is a grass

DAVE HAWKS

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JANUARY 2023