The plastic-free grocery delivery service, Zero, is preparing for its launch in Los Angeles on February 10th, following an initial period of operation within the San Francisco Bay Area. Zero collaborates directly with suppliers to offer food and household essentials in reusable jars, boxes, and other environmentally friendly packaging options, with next-day delivery available.

Zero partners with both well-known brands such as Sightglass Coffee, Annie’s, and Newman’s Own, alongside newer, sustainability-focused companies like Planet FWD, which was established by Zume co-founder Julia Collins.

Customers can become Zero members for $25 monthly, granting them access to reduced pricing on groceries and complimentary deliveries. Alternatively, Zero is accessible without a subscription; however, individual item prices are slightly higher, and a delivery fee of $7.99 applies.

Personal experience with Zero has been generally positive. The variety of food available is quite good, though locating specific items, such as tortilla chips and mandarin oranges, proved difficult. Conversely, Zero does carry my preferred brand of chocolate, Tony’s Chocolonely.

According to Zero’s founder and CEO, Zuleyka Strasner, the store currently offers a selection of just over 1,100 different products.

This figure is influenced by the extensive work required to verify that food manufacturers adhere to Zero’s internal packaging standards. As an example, Strasner explained that Zero has worked with butchers to ensure chicken is packaged in compostable paper, then sealed in a compostable, resealable bag. She emphasized that this process demands significant time, effort, resources, and technological innovation.

While Zero permits the use of plastic at certain stages of the supply chain, it guarantees that plastic is not delivered to consumers. Continuing with the chicken example, the product begins at the farm and then proceeds to one of Zero’s butcher partners before reaching a facility for packaging and processing.

“Therefore, farms and those initial transportation phases often involve plastic,” Strasner stated. “As our company expands, we are increasingly involved in modifying more processes and eliminating more plastic from our new suppliers’ manufacturing operations. It’s a continuous process for each farm, starting with delivering a plastic-free product to the customer and then progressively reducing plastic usage further upstream.”

Although complete plastic-free operations from all partners would be ideal, Strasner highlighted the importance of making it straightforward for farms, suppliers, and other stakeholders to participate, “instead of imposing strict rules that require complete plastic elimination from the moment the chicken is processed until it reaches the customer.”

“Such an approach would not foster the industry-wide transformation we are striving to achieve.”

The concept for Zero began to develop for Strasner during her honeymoon on the Corn Islands in Nicaragua. During her travels, she was struck by the amount of single-use plastic accumulating on the shoreline, she shared with TechCrunch. Simultaneously, she observed the growing zero-waste and anti-plastic movements and began to consider the implications of adopting a plastic-free lifestyle. This exploration led her to contemplate the complexities of the supply chain and food packaging practices within the country.

Leveraging her expertise in technology, she started to explore how technology could address the issue of plastic waste, “a problem that must be resolved within the next seven to ten years,” she asserted. “The timeframe is genuinely limited, and that is the mission I committed to undertaking.”

Zero initiated testing in 2018 and officially launched in November 2019. The majority of Zero’s clientele are members, and the company currently serves “many, many thousands of customers,” according to Strasner.

To date, Zero has secured $4.7 million in funding from investors including Precursor Ventures, Backstage Capital, 1984, and others.

“Our goal is to become, and we will become, the leading sustainability platform in the nation,” Strasner declared. “Meaning, for any product or service you require – food, home goods, or otherwise, and certainly plastic-free, but also generally sustainable – you will turn to us. Zero represents a movement that extends beyond just food.”