If you're a California-headquartered restaurant group doing over $1B in annual revenue, SB 253 disclosures start in 2026 — here's what to do this year.
Book a 15-min compliance intro call →The Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act mandates disclosure across three emissions scopes. For restaurant groups, one of them dominates everything else.
Emissions from sources your company owns or controls directly. For restaurants, this is mostly kitchen equipment, on-site refrigeration, and any owned fleet vehicles.
Indirect emissions from the electricity, steam, heating, and cooling your locations consume. Tracked from utility bills across every restaurant.
Upstream emissions from every ingredient, packaging item, and consumable your suppliers deliver. This is the dominant footprint for restaurant groups by a wide margin.
ForkTrace automates this entire category end-to-end from supplier invoices you already receive.
SB 253 enforcement is phased. The work you do this year determines how 2026 goes.
Build your Scope 1, Scope 2, and Scope 3 Category 1 inventory. Reasonable-assurance frameworks aligned with the GHG Protocol are recommended for credibility.
Limited assurance is required for Scope 1 and Scope 2. Limited assurance for Scope 3 is phased in beginning 2027 — but the data still has to be filed.
Four concrete deliverables from your first invoice upload.
ForkTrace parses supplier invoices, maps every line item to a GHG-Protocol emission factor, and assigns A–E carbon labels per dish. Your Scope 3 baseline is live within days, not months.
Upload utility bills and fuel receipts; we normalise kWh/therms/litres to a single ledger across every location. Limited-assurance-ready in 2026.
Standardised reports aligned with CARB's SB 253 format — ready for limited assurance in 2026 and reasonable assurance by 2027.
Every kg CO₂e is traceable back to the invoice line item and the emission factor source. That's the audit story reviewers will ask for.
All four deliverables route to one dashboard your sustainability lead — and your assurance provider — can use.