Identify Nature Dependencies Through Asset Geolocation
Grupo Restaurantero GiganteSummary
Map restaurant locations and screen surrounding ecosystems to help translate nature-related dependencies and risks into site-specific priorities and inform nature-related reporting.
Context
Grupo Restaurantero Gigante (GRG), the restaurant division of Grupo Gigante operates 256 restaurants in Mexico across a portfolio of brands that includes Toks, Shake Shack, Panda Express and El Farolito (1; 2). The company's geographically distributed footprint creates location-specific dependencies and potential impacts on nature, particularly related to water availability and ecosystems. The company's double materiality assessment confirmed the relevance of these issues: ecosystems and biodiversity were rated critical from a financial materiality perspective, driven by the risk that ecosystem degradation, water stress and land-use change could affect the availability, quality and stability of the inputs the company depends on. This reinforced the recognition that the company's operations and long-term value creation depend on healthy ecosystems and the natural capital that underpins its water and food supply. The company sought to better understand its nature-related dependencies and risks while responding to increasing sustainability reporting requirements. To strengthen nature-related decision-making of these issues at asset level, the company participated in the Nature Reporting Preparer Forum (NRPF) and applied the Taskforce on Nature-Related Financial Disclosures (TNFD) LEAP (Locate, Evaluate, Assess, Prepare) approach, including asset geolocation and nature-risk screening (1; 3). The findings were presented to the Board and informed the company's decision to become a TNFD adopter, publicly committing to publish TNFD-aligned disclosures for financial year 2027 (4).
Location of the initiative: Mexico
Solution
Water risks were already on the company's radar before joining the Nature Reporting Preparer Forum (NRPF). As part of Grupo Gigante's first IFRS S2 aligned disclosure, increased operating costs from rising water-stress was identified as a material climate-related risk, with the restaurant division as the most exposed business unit (5), more than 80% of the company's water consumption takes place in areas classified as having high or extremely high-water stress, like Mexico City, and the states of Mexico and Hidalgo.
Building on these findings, the company participated in the NRPF, a six-month long capability program from January to June 2026, and began applying the TNFD LEAP approach to its restaurant portfolio, starting with the Locate phase. The assessment combined restaurant-location data with biodiversity and water risk screening tools to build a location-based view of potential nature-related dependencies and risks.
Restaurants coordinates were screened using the Integrated Biodiversity Assessment Tool (IBAT) to examine their proximity to biodiversity-sensitive areas. The screening revealed that several restaurants are located near areas of high biodiversity importance. One example is a restaurant in Playa del Carmen, on Mexico's Caribbean coast, located 25 km away from a Key Biodiversity Area (KBA): Isla Cozumel, and in a region adjacent to the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef, the second largest barrier reef in the world (Map 1). This example also illustrates the link between water, ecosystems and the company's operations: as in the rest of the Yucatán Peninsula, which has virtually no surface rivers, the restaurant's water supply depends on a karst aquifer, an interconnected system of underground rivers that is highly vulnerable to overextraction and contamination and ultimately discharges into the coastal ecosystems the reef depends on (6).
The company used these examples to illustrate to the Board how location-level information can make nature-related dependencies and risks more tangible. These data helped to establish a clear link between the company's operations and nature-related dependencies, impacts, risks, and opportunities.
Figure 1: Example of company's restaurant location and its approximate proximity to the Mesoamerican Barrier Reef.
Impact
Sustainability Impact
Climate
Not applicable. The nature-risk screening did not directly target or measure greenhouse gas emissions. The company is separately evaluating energy-monitoring measures for restaurants, but no emissions impact from these measures has yet been quantified.
Nature
The assessment created a location-based view of ecosystem proximity and water exposure across a distributed restaurant portfolio. (1) The initiative improved visibility of nature-related dependencies and potential impacts by identifying operational assets located near sensitive ecosystems.
The screening did not itself produce a measured improvement in ecosystem conditions. Instead, it established a location-level baseline that the company is using to prioritize further assessment. The company already tracks the share of its water withdrawal from areas with high or extremely high-water stress, which exceeded 80% in 2025. The company plans to use this indicator to monitor its exposure over time. Ahead of its first TNFD-aligned disclosure in FY2027, the company will incorporate ecosystem and biodiversity risk into Grupo Gigante's corporate risk management process. As a longer-term next step, the company intends to extend the assessment to its value chain, locating the sourcing regions of its main ingredients and evaluating its dependencies and impacts on nature, starting with its food supply.
Social
The findings of the nature-related risk screening directly informed the company's community engagement. In 2026, the company provided financial support to a non-governmental organization working to conserve ecosystems in the area surrounding its Playa del Carmen restaurant, the location identified in the screening as being near two Key Biodiversity Areas and fully dependent on groundwater from the region's karst aquifer. The contribution was a direct response to this finding: by supporting conservation of the ecosystems that sustain the aquifer, the company is contributing to the long-term health of the water resource its operations rely on.
Benefits
The initiative created several business benefits:
Improved understanding of nature-related dependencies, biodiversity considerations, and water-related risks across the company's operations.
Facilitated cross-functional engagement by providing concrete, geographically specific examples of nature-related risks.
Increased awareness of how biodiversity and water-related issues may affect the company's operations and long-term resilience, helping embed nature-related considerations into internal decision-making.
Established an internal operational push to improve practices, including launching an energy and water efficiency program and advancing the company's waste management program.
Provided location-based data and evidence helping to demonstrate the link between the company's operations and nature. The findings informed internal discussions and contributed to the company's decision to prepare TNFD-aligned disclosures for financial year 2027.
Costs
The initiative required internal staff time for data collection, analysis, stakeholder engagement and reporting activities. Additional costs included external consultancy support for the double materiality assessment and nature-related reporting preparation.
The company also invested in software and data-management capabilities to support environmental performance monitoring and alignment with TNFD-related disclosures.
The assessment informed subsequent sustainability initiatives, including work on decarbonization, water stewardship and resource-efficiency measures. Although these initiatives are expected to support long-term operational improvements, they require upfront investment and ongoing management resources.
Implementation
Typical Business Profile
This approach is most relevant to restaurant, hospitality, retail and food-service companies with distributed physical assets, or organizations beginning a TNFD or nature-risk assessment and operating in water-stressed or biodiversity-sensitive locations.
Approach
Water-risk screening: The company geolocated its restaurants and screened them against WRI Aqueduct, building an internal map that overlays all four brands on water-stress layers.
Double materiality assessment: The company assessed 24 sustainability topics from both an impact and a financial perspective. Water management was rated critical in both dimensions, and ecosystems and biodiversity was rated critical from a financial perspective.
Capability building through the NRPF: The company joined the Nature Reporting Preparer Forum to learn and apply the TNFD LEAP approach, starting with the Locate phase.
Biodiversity screening: The coordinates of 256 restaurants were screened with IBAT to identify locations near biodiversity-sensitive areas, such as Key Biodiversity Areas.
Translation into concrete examples: The company combined water and biodiversity results to identify illustrative sites, such as the Playa del Carmen restaurant, which sits near two KBAs and depends entirely on groundwater.
Board presentation: The findings were presented to the Board, which supported preparing TNFD-aligned disclosures.
Follow-up actions: The company registered as a TNFD Adopter in October 2026 and provided financial support to a conservation NGO in the Playa del Carmen area.
Next steps: Ecosystem and biodiversity risk will be incorporated into Grupo Gigante's corporate risk management before the first TNFD-aligned disclosure in 2028. The assessment will later be extended to the value chain.
Stakeholders
Project lead: The sustainability team defined the assessment scope, coordinated data collection, reviewed the screening results and prepared the findings for internal discussion.
Internal stakeholders: Representatives from Finance, Accounting, Maintenance, Energy, Procurement and Operations forming the company's sustainability committee reviewed the findings in relation to their areas of responsibility and proposed relevant follow-up actions. The Board reviewed the strategic implications, approved and supported the company's TNFD adoption for financial year 2027.
External support: An external consultancy team supported the double-materiality assessment, The company retained responsibility for validating the data and making business decisions.
Key Parameters To Consider
Nature assessment tools require accurate geolocation data.
Data quality and data governance are critical success factors.
Companies with decentralized assets may require substantial coordination effort.
Sensitive ecological and asset-location data may require access controls.
Implementation And Operations Tips
Start with a complete, quality-checked asset register before adding environmental layers.
Use a small number of verified site examples to build internal understanding, while avoiding claims based only on screening.
Record assumptions and confidence levels so results can be repeated and audited.
Link each priority location to an owner and follow-up action to move from reporting to management.