The Community Spirit
The Need
The Community Spirit is a new vodka brand committed to making a positive impact on the people working in the hospitality industry. Working in hospitality is difficult work and The Community Spirit uses direct activism to push the industry to pay employees a living wage. Most spirits companies gain shelf space by meeting with the bar manager and providing samples. The Community Spirit takes a different approach, hosting financial literacy workshops at restaurants and bars for the benefit of the employees, thereby providing a tangible and meaningful benefit. This approach sets them apart and they wanted to obtain B Corp certification to validate their commitments.
The Work
The Community Spirit is a start-up brand. We helped them obtain Pending B Corp status and then worked toward full certification. We quantified the impact of their advocacy and community giving, expanded their employee handbook, and create practices to measure the impact of their workshops. To accelerate the verification process we uploaded the majority of the documentation that B Lab needed to complete the verification, which shortened the wait in the queue and the overall time from submission to certification.
The Impact
In February 2023, The Community Spirit became a Certified B Corporation. For a company focused on building community, joining the B Corp community is a significant milestone for the company. With our support for using surveys to assess the value of their workshops, The Community Spirit is now able to adjust the focus of those workshops to increase their value for their audience. They are also adjusting how they track their giving and community engagement to better communicate their impacts, and to fully demonstrate their company mission.
