CHONGQING, China — Iconic coffee brand Zoo Group won praise today for its new commitment to source only cage-free eggs and egg ingredients for all of its stores in China by 2025. The Group operates over 100 of its Zoo Coffee cafes across China, in addition to restaurant brands Zoo Kitchen, Foxy Cake and Zoo Steak, and is now expanding across Europe and Asia.
Since its establishment, Zoo Group has been continuously seeking out environmentally friendly and sustainable sources of protein that are also considerate of animal welfare standards. Now the brand has announced it will switch to using only cage-free eggs and egg ingredients in its supply chain for all of its stores in China by 2025.
“We hope that through using cafés as a medium, we can promote the concept of environmental and animal protection to our consumers in China,” said Li Jing, founder of Zoo Group.
“The commitment to using cage-free eggs is one of the steps we are taking to realize this vision, and we will be using China as a starting point before gradually implementing this policy in other countries,” added Jing.
“We applaud Zoo Group for the wonderful commitment to use only cage-free eggs. This is beneficial not only for animal welfare and environmental sustainability concerns, but also shows dedication to a high quality of service, food safety and responsibility to the company’s consumers,” said Mutzu Huang, Project Manager at Lever China, which worked with Zoo Group on its commitment.
Over the past two years coffee chains including Dunkin Donuts, Costa Coffee, Tim Hortons, Caribou Coffee, Krispy Kreme, Au Bon Pain and Peet’s have set timelines for removing caged eggs from their worldwide supply chains, including in China. In the past two weeks prominent chains Caffe Nero and illy made similar announcements. Restaurant chains such as KFC, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, Baskin Robbins, Tim Hortons, Sonic, Popeye’s, Papa John’s and Arby’s have made similar pledges.
