Waitrose: Using science to sharpen sourcing priorities and action

Waitrose is the food retail business of the John Lewis Partnership, an employee-owned UK retailer. Its SBTN work focuses on Waitrose Own Brand products across complex global food supply chains.

Why SBTN?

For Waitrose, the goal of working with SBTN was not simply to understand where its impacts on nature occur, but to build a stronger evidence base for deciding where to act.

The food retailer operates across complex global supply chains where environmental pressures can directly affect sourcing, availability and supply security. While teams and suppliers already held considerable knowledge about many of those risks, that information often sat in different datasets and parts of the business.

As Ben Thomas, Senior Manager for Nature and Biodiversity at the John Lewis Partnership, explains:

“SBTN provides a framework for us to inform decision-making and advise internal teams around where we should focus our time, attention, and resources in order to drive the most positive impact possible.”

From assessment to action

Waitrose completed and publicly disclosed its validated science-based assessment and prioritization steps across land, freshwater and ocean for its own-brand products. It also participated in the SBTN Ocean pilot and publicly disclosed three validated seafood targets: two Avoid and Reduce Overexploitation targets and one Protect Structural Habitats target. Using SBTN’s Business Unit approach allowed the company to focus on a part of the business where it had greater supply-chain visibility and influence. More information about Watirose’s disclosed progress is available on the SBTN Target Tracker.

The process brought together data from across commodities and sourcing locations, while also strengthening engagement and partnerships with commercial teams and suppliers. In some cases, the SBTN assessment prompted suppliers to provide better primary data and surfaced practices — such as high levels of water reuse — that were not previously visible centrally.

A dedicated internal project lead worked closely with data analysts and specialist sourcing teams, with external support used selectively for freshwater and land analysis.

Value in practice

For Waitrose, one of the clearest benefits has been a stronger evidence base for internal decision-making.

In one example, Waitrose suspended mackerel sales after scientific evidence showed that the stock was under unsustainable pressure. While the decision involved a commercial trade-off, it demonstrated the importance of acting on the science and taking a long-term view of sustainability. The customer response to the suspension reinforced that its customers value transparency and that science-based decisions can help build trust while reducing longer-term risks to supply and the marine environment. 

More broadly, the analysis is helping Waitrose sharpen priorities, strengthen business cases and distinguish where interventions may need to focus on a specific supply chain versus broader landscape or catchment collaboration. It is also strengthening the basis for internal and supplier-facing conversations, while helping the business connect nature-related decisions with longer-term sourcing resilience, customer trust and responsible sourcing strategy. The findings could also support future nature-related reporting.

What they learned

The work has required significant investment in data, specialist expertise and internal capacity, and Waitrose is still early in translating the findings to inform wider business decision-making, reporting, and risk assessments. Its experience points to a few practical lessons for peers: give the process a clear internal owner, expect significant data work, bring commercial teams and suppliers into the process early, and do not assume every finding needs to be new to be useful. Sometimes confirming what the business already suspects — with stronger evidence and a more integrated view — is itself valuable.

Above all, Waitrose’s experience reinforces the importance of keeping action as the goal: using the analysis not simply to understand nature impacts, but to decide where the business and its suppliers can intervene most effectively.

Learn more:

• Find Waitrose’s targets, along with details about their materiality assessment and prioritization work on the SBTN Target Tracker.
• Learn more about SBTN Ocean targets 
• Find more case studies