Enhancing Sustainability with the Triple-Layered Business Model Canvas: Insights from the Fruit and Vegetable Industry in Spain

Developing more sustainable business models (BMs) has become increasingly crucial for the survival of agri-food industries as environmental and social pressures are escalating, and the fruit and vegetable (F&V) industry is no exception to this pattern. However, sustainable business modelling is still poorly understood despite its importance to managers, scientists, and policymakers confronting the complexities of business environment changes. The purpose of this research was to explore new approaches for the transition toward more sustainable BMs in the Spanish F&V industry. We used the Triple Layered Business Model Canvas (TLBMC) methodological framework and data gathered from different sources to elucidate how sustainability concerns are integrated in BMs for F&V in a way that can deliver value on a triple bottom line of economic profit, environmental protection, and social fairness. The study focuses first on the F&V sector as a whole and then on a selected Spanish F&V company taken as functional units of analysis, respectively. Results indicate that, overall, sustainability goals can be represented appropriately within the TLBMC framework both at sector and company level, allowing guidance of the creative process of communicating and implementing business model (BM) improvements. This is despite the challenges encountered in terms of complexity of the F&V industry and the limited data for several areas, especially in the environmental and social layers. The sectoral perspective helps to portray the whole picture of the impacts associated with sustainable F&V production and marketing, which is a prior step that supports companies to embed sustainability concerns in their business system. New BMs can be generated by innovating strategically in a series of domains to improve F&V value propositions in terms of sustainability targets.