Sustainability is a word that gets tossed around plenty when discussing the planet. It is also — like many important things IRL (in real life) — not visually glamorous. At Sweet Pea Plant-Based Kitchen, for instance, it’s often a delivered pallet of organic goods, containers of prep ingredients in a walk-in cooler and buckets of compostable scrap. Despite these less-than-instagrammable moments, chef Ryan Jennings, co-founder of Sweet Pea, holds his work in high regard. These are the pillars that help the company create delicious, highly nutritious whole food, plant-based (WFPB) meals.

I shadowed Jennings as he crafted a recipe — a Dandan noodle bowl that I tasted and will never forget — and discussed the company’s approach to remaining sustainable environmentally, while simultaneously keeping the lights on and creating a large, lasting impact at scale.

“Meet people where they are,” he said, adding that advice goes beyond diet and health. “That (approach) includes talking to people who you don’t agree with, talking to people in other businesses and industries.”

Behind the line
Sweet Pea Plant-Based Kitchen, which is now headquartered at 777 Culver Rd., was founded in 2019 after Jennings’s co-founder Mike Linehan was inspired to change his own lifestyle by taking on and benefiting from whole food, plant-based nutrition. Since then, the two have teamed up to spread the information of the benefits of WFPB nutrition, make it attainable, convenient and — of course — delicious.

Sustainability efforts
A major goal for Sweet Pea is to mirror the sustainable lifestyle they help cultivate for their clients in their own business practices. The company sources 60% of its ingredients from local farms, has an in-house compostable packaging machine and is partnered with a delivery service that plans to move to an all-electric fleet within the next year.

Paying it forward
Sweet Pea’s position and experience has positioned it as a resource for other small businesses, most notably through the company’s affiliation with Grow NY — a food and agriculture competition through which Sweet Pea was an awarded finalist. Jennings credits Grow NY for helping propel the business and creating their current initiative of co-manufacturing, which helps bridge the gap between small startups and large-scale production. Sweet Pea is able to guide businesses — including those in vastly different industries — to make more environmentally friendly choices, such as composting waste and utilizing sustainable packaging.

Upward and onward
The incremental growth of Sweet Pea has proven sustainable, and they expect to add a Syracuse location, expanding the reach of their plant-based meals. They have also extended into multiple co-manufacturing partnerships — most recently, adding both TiA Coffee based in Honeoye Falls and Spotted Duck Creamery of the Finger Lakes region to the mix. This rapid growth has also allowed the company to continue cultivating their relationship with Foodlink, with whom they have an externship program that includes a full training-to-hiring pipeline for new chefs. 

This article appears in Dec 1-31, 2024.