Mars Announces Partnership with Unreasonable Group

The Mars Snacking Division and Unreasonable Group today announced the beginning of a three-year partnership: Unreasonable Food. Unreasonable Food seeks to become the world's premier global initiative focused on supporting rapid growth companies positioned to re-define our food systems — ensuring a more regenerative, inclusive, and equitable future of food.

This partnership will support the Mars Net Zero Roadmap and Mars Snacking's sustainability journey, while also delivering a more agile and forward-looking snacking business for Mars.

"Mars has the experience, the energy, and the footprint to shape the food future. Doing nothing is not an option," said Amanda Davies, global vice president of R&D, Sustainability, and Commercial at Mars Snacking.

The Mars Unreasonable Food partnership will focus on four distinct pillars: Shaping the Future of Food, Improving Farmer Livelihood, Transforming Food Supply Chains, and Reimagining Sustainable Packaging. These four focus areas are designed to identify, and then accelerate, the areas Mars believes can make a meaningful and differentiated impact given the company's global business footprint and operations. 

Each year, Unreasonable will scour the globe through their network of hundreds of investment funds and pipeline partners to identify, privately invite, and ultimately unite growth-stage entrepreneurs best positioned to profitably solve sustainability challenges. Selection of these ventures will be a mutual decision between Unreasonable Group's team and the Mars Snacking team. Over the course of the three-year partnership, Unreasonable Food will be laser-focused on building a portfolio of approximately 40 solutions uniquely situated to future-proof and solve Mars Snacking's key sustainability challenges.

The first cohort of select ventures and prestigious mentors will be announced later this spring. These visionaries in the food supply chain will join Mars Snacking's first Unreasonable Food program for an intimate week-long gathering to align growth-stage founders with a collaborative advantage that includes mentorship from the Mars Snacking global leadership team alongside of some of the most renowned Unreasonable Mentors.

"As one of the world's largest food companies with some of the world's most admired brands, Mars Snacking, in partnership with Unreasonable and the entrepreneurs we support together, is uniquely positioned to put that statistic where it belongs — in a museum. We cannot imagine a more compelling partner to set a new standard for sustainability in our food systems than Mars," said Daniel Epstein, CEO at Unreasonable Group.

Mars recently unveiled the Mars Net Zero Roadmap to accelerate action toward achieving Net Zero emissions. The plan includes a new target to cut carbon in half by 2030 across its full value chain, which translates into cutting carbon by 15 million metric tons — the equivalent to taking nearly 3 million cars off American roads and highways.