Behind the Scenes With the Team That Guides Our Industry-Leading Product Standards

When something seems obvious to you, you don’t always stop to think: Does everyone else know about this, too? 

While we’ve shared a bit about our ingredient standards before, we realized our members might not know about all of the people and the countless hours that go into maintaining our quality standards, the highest in the industry. The real story? It takes a group of experts and a company-wide obsession with quality to get us to our selection of the very best products that we trust, and know our members will trust — and love — too. 

The Experts Leading the Charge 

To hear more about how we solidified our sky-high standards, we talked to three leaders in Merchandising at Thrive Market: Jason Bidart, VP of Food Merchandising, Christine McNerney, VP of Merch Ops and Home, Health, and Beauty, and Carla Hechler, VP of Food Safety and Quality Assurance (FSQA). 

Each has a team dedicated to their area of focus; Bidart’s is “a group of passionate ‘foodies’ composed of Category Managers and Product Innovators that create and maintain a catalog of food products following the highest standards in the industry,” McNerney’s home, health, and beauty group “upholds the unique quality and ingredient criteria” across categories ranging from skincare to baby formula to pet food, and Hechler’s FSQA squad vets the safety and accuracy of every ingredient label, claim, and certification you see on our site.  

To explain what has guided our approach to curation through nearly a decade of work, we broke it down into five standards that define what it means to be Thrive Market Approved: Trusted Ingredients, Ethical Sourcing, Planet Positive, On a Mission, and Tasted & Tested. In practice, that means our teams review the ins and outs of every single item before we’ll put it on our virtual shelves, ensuring it meets the Thrive Market bar. 

#1 Trusted Ingredients: What Goes In & What’s Left Out 

Reviewing ingredient lists for more than 5,000 products spanning food, cleaning, personal care, and supplements is no small feat — but that’s exactly what we do before we accept an item. 

Since our founding in 2014, we’ve been committed to 100% non-GMO products (those made without genetically modified organisms), and as Bidart says, “a way we make this easier is by prioritizing organic, which is inherently non-GMO.” Organic products are grown with farming practices that enhance soil quality, promote biodiversity, avoid synthetic fertilizers, and conserve clean water, making them better for the planet and the people who grow them. 

Safety is also key when it comes to wholesome products, and sometimes the ingredients we restrict are just as important as the ones we seek out. “In some cases, it’s what [members] won’t see that shows we have curated products that meet our standards,” Hechler says. “We started with a fairly small list of unacceptable ingredients. This has now evolved into much more robust standards that have come about from reviewing hundreds of ingredients, but also by conducting further research into identifying additional ingredient restrictions to ensure products are formulated for safety of both our members and the environment, including restrictions on ingredient concentration and sourcing requirements.” Today, our list of restricted ingredients surpasses 1,000 and includes artificial flavors, high-fructose corn syrup, synthetic nitrates, nitrites, sweeteners, and colors, antibiotics and growth hormones, and parabens — and the list keeps growing as we continue to learn more. 

Try these expert-picked products made with trusted ingredients: 

Thrive Market Organic Classic Marinara Sauce

Woodstock Organic Whole Strawberries

MaryRuth’s Kids Organic Multivitamin Gummies

Dr. Bronner’s Organic Peppermint Toothpaste

ACURE Brightening Facial Scrub

#2 Ethical Sourcing: How It’s Made

Ethically sourced products are made by companies that follow honest business practices, where workers are paid and treated fairly and perform their jobs in a safe workplace. Ethical sourcing is especially important for products that come from high-risk supply chains, like cacao for chocolate or coconuts for coconut oil or coconut milk.

In addition to our own ethically sourced products in Thrive Market brands, we seek out brand partners and new products that follow ethical practices. According to Hechler, what sets Thrive Market’s standards apart is that “we dive very deeply into the sourcing and the impact of the products on both the environment and the safety. We don’t just permit our vendors to state that the product meets a specific standard, they are required to provide supporting documentation, which is thoroughly reviewed.” McNerney adds that we “ask the questions on sourcing that others do not,” committing to a higher level of trust when it comes to our selection. 

One way to verify that a product meets a certain standard is through a third-party certification. We prioritize seals like Fair Trade, which means a product is made through practices that back price guarantees, provide premiums to support community development and environmentally friendly farming practices, and never employ child labor. In the beauty world, Leaping Bunny certification ensures that products are never tested on animals at any stage of a product’s development. And for humanely raised proteins, we seek out products with stamps of approval from organizations like Global Animal Partnership (G.A.P.) for meat and poultry and Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) for sustainably caught seafood.   

Try these expert-picked, ethically sourced products:  

Thrive Market Regeneratively Grown Organic Coconut Milk 

Thrive Market Grass-Fed Organic Beef Top Sirloin Steaks

Thrive Market Spice Jars

Babo Botanicals Sensitive Baby Fragrance Free Shampoo & Wash 

Alaffia Everyday Coconut Fair Trade Face Cleanser

#3 Planet Positive: Our Environmental Impact 

A product’s impact on our planet can be just as important as its impact on your health. As the leading online-only retailer of regenerative products, we seek out products grown with farming practices that minimize greenhouse gases, enrich soil, and promote biodiversity. From ancient grains to olive oil, we’re proud to carry more than 400 regenerative products at Thrive Market, and we’re always working to add more. 

Our commitment to sustainability extends beyond the products we carry and into the practices our company follows. All three Thrive Market warehouses are TRUE Certified for Zero Waste, meaning we recycle, compost, or reuse at least 90% of materials that enter our doors. To send members’ orders, we use sustainable packaging (like 100% recyclable boxes, down to the tape) and carbon-neutral, ground shipping only. If you see any plastic packaging from Thrive Market brands or plastic shipping materials in your order, it’s Plastic Neutral Certified with rePurpose Global, meaning we measure how much plastic we create and recover that same amount of plastic from nature. 

Try these expert-picked, planet-positive products: 

SIMPLi Regenerative Organic Tri-Color Quinoa

Philosopher Foods Sprouted Almond Butter, Naked Creamy

f.a.e. by Thrive Market Instant Refresh Face Wipes

Everyone Hand Soap, Meyer Lemon & Mandarin

Weleda Skin Food Original Ultra-Rich Cream

#4 On a Mission: Contributing to the Greater Good

Since our founding in 2014, we’ve been driven by our mission to make healthy and sustainable living easy and affordable for everyone. Not only does our mission guide the top-quality products we carry based on those values, but it also drives the sustainability and food equality causes we stand for. 

We know our mission isn’t only about us, and to make a real change in the grocery industry toward democratizing healthy living, it will take the work of many. We look for mission-driven partners dedicated to the same healthy future we’re striving for, whether that’s ALOHA’s work supporting local farms in Hawaii or Humble’s low-waste personal care products that come in plastic-free, biodegradable packaging.  

Try these expert-picked products on a mission:  

Thrive Market Organic Rolled Oats

ALOHA Special Edition Protein Bar, Pa’akai

Seven Sundays Oat Protein Cereal, Super Fruity

Humble Deodorant, Moroccan Rose

Ursa Major Golden Hour Recovery Cream

GOODONYA Hydrate Electrolyte & Mineral Powder

#5 Tasted & Tested: Making Sure “We Love It!”  

A product might be the most naturally made, ethically produced, and sustainable option we can find, but if our team doesn’t love it, we won’t carry it — simple as that. As Bidart explains, the Thrive Market difference is “our attention to the smallest details and the work we put into rigorously vetting products.” That means Thrive Market Product Innovators and Category Managers vet every item before we carry it, making sure it’s an absolute must-have for our members. 

Try these expert-tasted and -tested products: 

Thrive Market Gluten-Free Banana Muffin & Bread Mix

Soom Dark Chocolate Sea Salt Tahini

Rosey by Thrive Market All-Purpose Cleaner, Fresh Lemon 

Mad Hippie Vitamin C Serum 

Beekeeper’s Naturals Propolis Immune Support Throat Spray 

What’s Next for Thrive Market’s Standards

The reality of our standards is that the work never ends. There’s always a new ingredient to research and a new product to vet. To maintain the highest standards in the industry, McNerney explains that “we treat our standards as something that is constantly evolving, and look at them consistently. No set it and forget it!” 

Hechler adds that our process “will continue to evolve as we are continuously monitoring industry and scientific research on ingredient safety” and that we will “continue to seek out supply partners who align with our mission and standards and are not just content to meet them, but evolve them.”