Looking to the Future of Zero Waste Grocery Shopping with Nude Foods Market
Packaging waste from the grocery store can feel inescapable, but it doesn’t have to. To reduce waste and reuse as much as possible, grocery store Nude Foods, with locations in Boulder and Denver, has come up with an innovative and convenient way to reduce packaging waste.
Nude Foods’ Waste-Free Packaging Approach
Innovative reusable packaging models have popped up in stores across the country. In Boulder and Denver, Nude Foods, included on the Eco-Cycle/City of Boulder Reuse Hub Map, offers an alternative to the single-use packaging that we have become accustomed to. While other refill and bulk grocery stores often require the customer to bring their own refillable containers, Nude Foods has a different approach.
How It Works
Customers purchase their food, beverages, produce, and meals in reusable, returnable glass jars. After use, the customer returns them to the store, where they are washed, sanitized, refilled with Nude Foods’ products, and placed on the shelves again. Then, the process repeats. Instead of being a disposable product that customers are paying for and then throwing away after one use, packaging becomes a service.
The Inspiration Behind Nude Foods
To learn more about what makes Nude Foods’ model unique, we sat down with Verity Noble, the cofounder of Nude Foods. Noble, with a background in entrepreneurship, social impact, and an overall distaste for waste, opened Nude Foods in Boulder six years ago with her cofounders to realize a different vision for Zero Waste shopping:
“We have refill, if people want to refill. But it is a completely new model, which is ‘prefilled.’ This is just like any other grocery store. The only difference is instead of putting your packaging into the [bin] when you’re done with it, you bring it back to us. And we deal with everything else. There’s nothing else [a customer has] to do.”
The nature of Nude Foods’ packaging model has fostered a highly enthusiastic customer base, with customers volunteering when needed and even becoming investors in the business. According to Noble, this sense of community was cultivated around customers’ shared desire to become plastic-free. After developing a strong customer base at their first location in Boulder, Nude Foods sought to expand and reach a broader audience.
The Nude Foods Denver location opened two years ago with the same model as their first store in Boulder. In June 2026, Noble and her cofounders, Rachel Irons and Matt Arnold, opened an additional “satellite store” in North Boulder inside of Moxie Bread Co. Providing reusable packaging in existing grocery stores may be a promising model for Nude Foods and similar Zero Waste grocers because “it’s lower risk, there are customers already being driven in there, [and] there’s already the infrastructure.” These co-located stores also reflect a broader strategy: making Zero Waste shopping as convenient as possible by offering it where people already shop:
“We are looking into [satellite stores] as a possible stepping stone in between opening bigger stores to make us more available. Convenience really wins. The more areas we can be [that are] convenient to people, the better.”
Bringing the Nude Foods Model to More Communities
In the future, Nude Foods has goals to expand even further by opening two or three more satellite stores and eventually moving their Boulder flagship store to a more prominent location.
Learn more about Nude Foods and other reuse businesses in our region by exploring Eco-Cycle and City of Boulder’s Reuse Hub Map, and stay tuned for more spotlights on businesses in the new Reuse Hub Business Network!
