Jake Whitman of Really Good Boxed Wine: Five Strategies Our Company Is Using To Tackle Climate Change & Become More Sustainable

Learn to love to learn: The ability to consciously learn is one of the wonders of humanity. As the world shifts and changes, we must help our kids embrace a learning mindset. This learning mindset leads to challenging assumptions, innovation, and progress, rather than just accepting that what was must be the same moving forward. This is going to be required if we are to correct the course on climate change.

As part of our series about how companies are becoming more sustainable, we had the pleasure of interviewing Jake Whitman.

Jake Whitman is the founder and CEO of Really Good Boxed Wine. Before launching Really Good Boxed Wine, he was a Brand Manager at Procter & Gamble and then ran Fintech marketing organizations at Intuit and SoFi. He has spent time as a teacher with Teach For America, founded a non-profit organization, and published a book, and now is an active Angel Investor with Queen City Angels, the leading Angel group in Cincinnati, OH.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Can you tell us a story about what brought you to this specific career path?

I started Really Good Boxed Wine purely as a consumer. In March of 2021, a year into COVID, my wife, brother, and I were sitting around drinking a bottle of rosé in the park. My wife and I had bought boxed wine a few times during the pandemic because we loved the sustainability benefits and liked having wine that wouldn’t go bad if we didn’t feel like drinking a whole bottle. But we were always really disappointed in the quality. So we started asking each other why really good boxed wine didn’t exist, which led me to go home and research it. And the more I read, the more I realized this was something the world needed. I knew it was more sustainable, but had no idea that SUCH a huge percentage of the carbon footprint in wine came from glass bottles; it’s a nasty hidden secret in the industry. And I was even more astonished to learn that there’s absolutely no reason amazing wine can’t be put in a box. If no one else was going to make it, I was going to do it, so I dove right in.

What is the mission of your company? What problems are you aiming to solve?

At Really Good Boxed Wine, we’re on a mission to significantly reduce the carbon footprint in the wine industry, democratize access to high-quality wine, and give people a better way to enjoy great wine on their own terms.

Studies show that up to 68% of the industry’s carbon footprint comes from the manufacturing and transportation of glass bottles, far and away the biggest culprit in the industry. While it’s possible to buy lower-quality wine in alternate formats, glass bottles are currently the only option for high-end wine. Our lightweight box and bag replace 4 bottles, 4 corks, 8 labels, and 4 foil caps, and the finished product weighs half as much. And the packaging has absolutely no impact on the quality of the wine.

According to the California Sustainable Winegrowing Alliance, just switching the packaging from glass bottles to boxed wine reduces the carbon footprint by 40%, not including the fossil fuels used to transport both empty and full bottles. And according to the New York Times, switching to wine in a box for the 97% of wines that are made to be consumed within a year would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 2 million tons. That’s the same as removing 400,000 cars from the road!

Can you tell our readers about the initiatives that you or your company are taking to address climate change or sustainability? Can you give an example for each?

Addressing climate change is literally built into our product. Every box of wine we sell reduces the carbon footprint of a $450 Billion global industry, and as more and more consumers become comfortable with the format, our impact only expands.

Specifically, Really Good Boxed Wine’s environmental impact comes through our packaging choices and our wine producer partnerships.

We use 100% recyclable cartons to packaging our wine that weigh 90% less and are made in California, meaning both packaging and transportation of that packaging is minimized. The food-grade, BPA-free bag is also recyclable, and customers can either recycle them themselves or mail their bags back to us to recycle for them.

We partner with sustainable and organic vineyard owners and winemakers for our wines. For example, our Cabernet Sauvignon is from a Certified Sustainable in Practice vineyard in Paso Robles, which maintains some of the world’s strictest standards for environmental protection. Our Pinot Noir Rosé, Pinot Noir Reserve, Red Blend, and Sauvignon Blanc all come from Certified Sustainable vineyards, with several of them practicing organic farming.

How would you articulate how a business can become more profitable by being more sustainable and more environmentally conscious? Can you share a story or example?

We have a perception in society that there’s a tradeoff between profitability and sustainability, or at least that the sustainable solution is the more expensive one. And that to maintain profitability when we offer sustainable options, we have to ask our customers to foot the bill.

Yet there are countless examples where the sustainable solution is actually the less expensive option, it just takes some creativity and a willingness to challenge the status quo to adopt it.

Boxed wine is a perfect example of this. Our packaging costs are a whopping 80–90% lower than the equivalent packaging required from glass bottles and corks, and we avoid all of the added costs needed to protect fragile glass in transportation. That’s an enormous savings that we can pass on to the consumer. Yet the carbon footprint of our packaging is 84% lower than the equivalent packaging for 4 bottles worth of wine, with our overall carbon footprint less than half that of bottles.

The youth-led climate strikes of September 2019 showed an impressive degree of activism and initiative by young people on behalf of climate change. This was great, and there is still plenty that needs to be done. In your opinion what are 5 things parents should do to inspire the next generation to become engaged in sustainability and the environmental movement? Please give a story or an example for each.

Model empathy and consciousness: One of the critical reasons combating climate change is so important is so we leave the world in a better place for generations to come. We have a deep responsibility to our children and their children’s children, but the effects are not always felt at the moment. Prioritizing the right climate decisions requires a sense of empathy and consciousness that the behaviors we’re making today have long-term implications. That sense of empathy cannot be expected to exist only regarding sustainability — we need to teach our children to be empathetic to others in all aspects of their lives. That’s how we help build a mindset that leads to positive actions as they grow into leaders in society.

Encourage travel and adventure: We want our kids to develop an understanding that the world is bigger than them, and interacting with people and cultures around the world is one of the best ways to broaden our perspectives. Unfortunately, many families do not have the financial capabilities for global travel, but there are still great ways to be immersed in these kinds of experiences. Enrolling their kids in programs or on sports teams with people of different cultures and backgrounds, driving to a nearby national park for a weekend, getting a global pen pal, and spending a day in a museum are all fantastic ways to help kids experience the beautiful diversity of the world.

Be thoughtful about consumption: Our world is becoming more and more reliant on fossil fuels, single-use plastics, and global supply chains that reduce costs financially, but increase them environmentally. Yet, never in history have there been more options to supplement those purchases with environmentally friendly options. While it’s impossible to cut out fossil fuels entirely from our consumption, choosing more sustainable alternatives when they are available will show our children these options exist.

Teach integrity: Prioritizing integrity in all facets of our life underscores acting in a responsible and conscientious manner. This of course includes the environment. Unless integrity is at the core of a person’s being, it can be tempting to make decisions that win in the short term, but at an enormous cost to other people or society at large.

Learn to love to learn: The ability to consciously learn is one of the wonders of humanity. As the world shifts and changes, we must help our kids embrace a learning mindset. This learning mindset leads to challenging assumptions, innovation, and progress, rather than just accepting that what was must be the same moving forward. This is going to be required if we are to correct the course on climate change.

What are your “5 Things I Wish Someone Told Me Before I Started” and why?

• From the very very beginning, find ways to weave your values into the company. Not only will it make the brand feel more authentic to your customers, it will ensure your company has a positive impact in the world in a way you deeply care about.
• Enjoy the ride: both the good times and the tough times. Even during the tough times, you get to spend your time building something in a way few other people get to do in their lives.
• Yes, you have absolute control over your time, but that often means that you don’t get to do things your friends with a normal job can do. And that’s OK.
• There are lots and lots of great ideas out there for how to build your business. It’s impossible to do all of them all at once, so choosing where to spend your incredibly valuable time and resources is the most important part of the job.
• No matter how amazing the product, getting people to buy it is hard.

None of us are able to achieve success without some help along the way. Is there a particular person who you are grateful towards who helped get you to where you are? Can you share a story about that?

Oh where to begin? I could list dozens of people for this.

Lauren Stafford Webb in particular comes to mind. She hired me at Intuit and I worked for her for a couple years, and then she left to be the CMO at SoFi. She then hired me at SoFi just a couple months later to run product marketing for one of SoFi’s products.

Relatively soon after I joined, I made the decision that I wanted to go off on my own. Rather than resenting that decision, Lauren (along with Dave Brenner, my direct manager) supported me wholeheartedly in the decision. They agreed to let me scale back on my time working on SoFi so I could develop my idea better. And then when COVID hit, Lauren stuck her neck out for me to create a unique arrangement with HR that allowed me to keep building while I stayed employed at SoFi.

Having that space to develop an idea while staying employed by such a supportive team is why Really Good Boxed Wine exists. It gave me the time to explore different ideas, try a couple things that never came to fruition, and run ideas by them as business leaders I deeply respect. And when it came time for me to fully move on, Lauren, Dave, and the SoFi team wished me all the best and have been cheering me on from the sidelines since.

You are a person of great influence and doing some great things for the world! If you could inspire a movement that would bring the greatest amount of good to the greatest amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

The eradication of malaria and other mosquito-based diseases, and bringing clean drinking water across the globe are probably the two greatest actions at the lowest cost that we can take as society to save the most amount of people. I’ve always been incredibly inspired by the missions of the Gates Foundation, United to Beat Malaria, and the many, many other organizations out there distributing millions of nets and digging wells to provide clean drinking water.

As an example, there’s a company in Cincinnati called Ripple started by 4 Xavier undergrad students. They sell high quality water bottles and use the proceeds to build wells in African villages. They’ve figured out how to effectively dig these wells at a tiny fraction of the cost of other more established NGOs and have undoubtedly saved hundreds or thousands of lives since they started. THAT is inspiring work and innovation.

Do you have a favorite life lesson quote? Can you tell us how that was relevant to you in your own life?

“Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.” — William James. This was my senior quote for my high school yearbook, and I’ve tried to live up to this in everything I do throughout my life.

What is the best way for our readers to continue to follow your work online?

Lots of ways! Follow Really Good Boxed Wine on social media (@reallygoodboxedwine), join our mailing list at www.reallygoodboxedwine.com, connect with me on LinkedIn, or even email me at jwhitman24@gmail.com. I will respond!

This was so inspiring. Thank you so much for joining us!