JetBlue’s 'BlueBud' Business Mentoring Program

One airline is looking to inject some innovation and excitement into their food!

When you think of airline foods, you may not be thinking, healthy, sustainable or innovative…but JetBlue is looking to change that with their new mentoring program, ‘BlueBud’.

Sophia Mendelsohn Head of Sustainability, JetBlue Airways We started Bluebud because we remember what it was like to be a small company. JetBlue truly still does have a startup feel and as such we have a reputation for wanting to help startups grow, particularly in the food industry and our onboard product. 

What we saw was that these small companies were coming to us with these phenomenal products we would love to serve to our customers but there was a disconnect between what it takes to sell to your local health food store or even Whole Foods, than what it takes to serve an airline with almost 90 plus locations all across the country. Getting food onto an airplane via an airport is just a fundamentally different process than what a supplier would have to do to get into a supermarket. That being said the same people who are shopping in a supermarket are the same people who are on a airplane and that lifestyle that focus on what you're spending  your money on and what you're putting into your body that is continuous from the supermarket to the airplane so what we want to do is make sure the customers never feel a glitch in their lifestyle choices. 

JetBlue thinks it's important to mentor small food companies because quite frequently they can be the vanguard of change. They can signal to us what customers may want.  It's a mentoring program for food companies that have an eye on sustainability 

A lot of that story is detailed on JetBlue,com/green/food. We've worked with multiple companies over the years who represent these values big and small, a focus on what's nutritious and really having a fundamentally catered or concierge program where there's a variety.  It's really considered a program 24/7, morning noon and night, different types of customers.  The tagline for JetBlues sustainability program is, down to earth, even in the air. and that's very appropriate here because what we're trying to do is to take the choices that people are accustomed to getting in the supermarket  bringing them from the earth with all that consideration for the environment in the creation of the product at putting it in the airplane..