Club Soda is now a B Corp

We are chuffed to announce that Club Soda is now a Certified B Corporation, or a B Corp. This article explains what that means – both for us, and for you.

Business for good

Let’s start from the beginning. Old finance textbooks will tell you that the purpose of a company is to make money for its owners. But more modern thinking has concluded that profit isn’t the only thing a company should care about. From profit being the bottom line, therefore, people now talk about “the triple bottom line”. What that means is that a good company should think about three things at once: Profit, People, and the Planet.

Club Soda has always wanted to do good in the world. We have long committed to being a responsible business. Our main purpose is to contribute to a world in which people drink mindfully and live well. But along that, we act with honesty and fairness, treat everyone with dignity, and protect our environment.

It’s all fine to talk about responsibility, but how do you demonstrate it? Luckily there is a common metric to measure how well you are doing as a business. Starting in the US and now operating globally, B Lab is a nonprofit network that assesses companies and gives out B Corp certifications.

What is a B Corp and how do you become one?

A B Corporation or a B Corp is a company that has gone through an independent impact assessment. It has demonstrated that it meets a set of criteria. The impact assessment is a long questionnaire, asking for all kinds of details about all aspects of a business taking part.

There are five main areas you must answer in detail in your B Corp assessment. The first is all about the governance of the company. A key requirement is that the company’s aims are legally set to include not just profit, but wider benefits to society. To meet this demand, Club Soda updated its articles of association.These are the formal document that sets the goals for the company and its directors.

The other four topics covered in the assessment look at how a business and its operations impact the environment, the wider community, and the company’s workers and customers. You need a minimum of 80 points to become certified. Club Soda got a final score of 92.7 out of a maximum of 200. We are pleased with our score. But we also recognise that we can do even better at our next B Corp assessment in a couple of year’s time.

You can see our complete B Corp profile here. And you can listen to some other B Corps on our podcast.