Serving Sustainability: How to Tell Your Eco-Story with Impact

It takes more than just a good meal to get today’s consumers through the door. 

An increasingly diverse matrix of factors is influencing restaurant-going behavior, from inflationary pressures to viral food trends. While economic factors may be the most urgent focus for restaurant operators, broader social issues also affect people’s relationships with expenses like dining out. Consumers are making more intentional, value-informed choices, and even if they’re feeling the pinch of higher prices, they aren’t compromising their principles. 

In its new VisualGPS report Sustainability at the Crossroads, Getty Images found that 86 percent of global consumers believe businesses should use their resources to improve the environment, and 82 percent expect them to have clear ESG guidelines and practices that show their commitment. For restaurants, these values directly impact the health of their business, as 72 percent of diners say they would pay more for a restaurant that prioritizes sustainability. 

Promoting a restaurant’s eco-friendly practices seems like an obvious tactic to draw customers, but it’s complicated. Sustainability is a polarizing issue right now, as many businesses are under pressure to pull back on environmental initiatives, while others face accusations of "greenwashing" for not living up to their sustainability promises. 

Like a good dish, sustainability storytelling requires real ingredients and careful preparation. To maintain customers’ trust, restaurants should proceed with realism, truthfulness, and transparency, using authentic images and messaging to craft narratives that resonate. 

Honesty Is the New Green

The National Restaurant Association named sustainability the top trend for restaurants in 2025. However, today’s consumers are wary of “green” labels: as the Getty Images report found, 76 percent of global consumers see them as little more than a marketing ploy. 

This is simply one facet of a larger trust gap between brands and consumers. According to PwC, 90 percent of business executives believe consumers trust their companies, but only 30 percent actually do. That said, consumers do trust the brands they’re loyal to, but loyalty takes time and strategic effort to build. And while food & beverage and hospitality rank among the world’s most trusted industries, trust is an easy thing to break in a world where consumers are inundated with misinformation at scale.

Authenticity is the antidote. Consumers don’t want exaggerated, overly optimistic representations of sustainability topics – nor do they want brands to hide them away. Instead, they want businesses to be transparent about their efforts and how they connect to a larger sustainability vision. This strategy, which some call “quiet sustainability,” fills the gulf between greenwashing and equally disingenuous greenhushing, taking the emphasis off of philosophy and placing it on impact.

Seeing Is Believing 

Visuals have an outsized impact on how customers perceive a restaurant: everything from the ambience, to the menu, to the visual language of the website and advertisements can influence customers’ decision to dine there. Compelling, authentic visuals build trust, and trust amounts to loyalty. 

Marketing visuals related to sustainability should be more than symbolic: they should be grounded, human, and real. This might look like: 

• Showing how current employees are involved in sustainability initiatives, whether through food waste reduction, sustainable cooking techniques, working with local suppliers, or even volunteering with a local environmental organization. 
• Highlighting vendors and partners with environmental commitments and eco-friendly practices. 
• Capitalizing on the link between food and community. Food is a powerful social center; hospitality marketing that draws connections between menu offerings, sustainability and the community can spark feelings of belonging. 

Restaurants can showcase their sustainability progress through a mix of owned content – such as photos from a trip to a local farm to source produce, or a custom photoshoot of a sustainable dining experience – and stock visuals that authentically reflect the mission. 

Moreover, the rise of digital menus and online ordering gives restaurants more opportunities to showcase their sustainability efforts visually, such as through high-quality feature images of plant-based or ethically-sourced menu items. Seventy eight percent of food service operators say they plan to recommend sustainable foods to their customers in the next year, and high-quality visuals are an effective way to make that recommendation. 

Restaurants should also look to video for opportunities to tell their sustainability story. Video offers the space for more depth and context, and certain stylistic choices can evoke a sense of intimacy, inviting consumers to join in the sustainability journey. It’s no surprise, then, that 91 percent of consumers say video influences their trust in a brand. 

Avoiding Sustainability Stereotypes

Marketing around issues as important as the environment should reflect the world we’re in today. However, sustainability is frequently misconstrued with affluence, especially in marketing visuals, where caring for the environment is too often depicted as an activity for upper-class people, rather than a mission everyone can be a part of. A more grounded, inclusive approach will land better with today’s socially conscious consumers and naturally align with the UN’s Sustainability Development Goal 10: reduced inequality.

Video also helps to make sustainability storytelling more inclusive and transparent. With video, restaurants can show sustainability efforts with greater transparency and detail; they can also offer a platform to elevate new and underrepresented voices, helping to create a holistic, authentic portrait of a mission in progress. 

This presents an opportunity to add a rarely seen dimension to restaurant videos: gender and racial diversity among back-of-house employees. A VisualGPS survey shows that 88 percent of US consumers believe it is critical for food & beverage companies to take good care of their employees. Despite this empathy, Getty Images found that only eight percent of popular videos chosen by these companies feature food-service workers at all; when they do, they tend to be white men in fine dining scenarios. Highlighting the crucial role of women and people of color in the space should be part of brands’ sustainability goals, considering the global importance of battling inequity in this industry.

Quiet Sustainability, Loud Results

Restaurants shouldn’t view sustainability storytelling as a one-time campaign. Instead, consumers want to see sustainability embedded in their brand and operations for the long term. Promoting environmental responsibility across the business in ways that are accessible and achievable creates the foundation for a truly sustainable restaurant – one that consumers can feel good about going to.

Top photo: ArtMarie/Getty Images