Better Place Forests Case Study: Procurement & Expansion

Building the Infrastructure Behind a First-of-Its-Kind Memorial Forest Brand

A Partnership with ACV Consulting | 2021–2023

Published: October 16th, 2026.

Better Place Forests partnered with ACV Consulting for Vendor Sourcing & Procurement Management to support its national expansion. From 2021 through 2023, ACV coordinated vendors, procurement, and multi-site project operations while helping maintain a consistent brand experience across the company's growing memorial forest portfolio.

The Opportunity

Better Place Forests had a singular vision: transform how people think about death by creating conservation memorial forests - permanent, meaningful alternatives to traditional burial, where a person's memory is preserved in a living tree. The brand was gaining traction, the mission was resonant, and early forest locations were proving the model.

But the ambitions were expanding faster than the operational capacity to support them.

In 2021, with plans to grow from a single operating forest to twelve locations across the country within twelve months, Better Place Forests needed more than enthusiasm. They needed the project management infrastructure, vendor sourcing & procurement management expertise, and operational systems to turn a vision into a functioning multi-site operation - on time, on brand, and without the operational failures that typically accompany rapid scaling.

Twelve locations in twelve months is not a sequencing challenge. It is an infrastructure challenge - one that requires systems, sourcing relationships, and a project management function capable of executing simultaneously across geographies.

ACV Consulting was brought in to provide exactly that - serving as the operational backbone of the Open House initiative that would bring each new forest location to life.

The Engagement: Vendor Sourcing & Procurement Management

Beginning in 2021 and continuing through 2023, ACV Consulting embedded with Better Place Forests as an extension of their real estate and development team, working directly under Christopher Peak in his role as Vice President of Real Estate and Development.

Vendor Sourcing & Procurement Coordination

The scope of work was intensive and hands-on. ACV provided direct sourcing management for the Bill of Materials governing each forest location's Open House infrastructure - the on-site components, installation materials, and branded physical experience elements required to open a forest to families. This meant managing vendor relationships, coordinating multi-vendor procurement across parallel timelines, and ensuring each location received the right materials in the right sequence to meet its opening schedule.

Multi-Site Project Management

Project management oversight spanned the full portfolio of active forest locations, which grew rapidly through the engagement period. At peak scope, ACV was managing procurement and coordination across forests in:

• St. Croix Valley, Minnesota
  
  
• Flagstaff, Arizona
  
  
• Litchfield Hills, Connecticut
  
  
• Berkshires, Massachusetts
  
  
• Santa Cruz, California
  
  
• Rock River, Illinois
  
  
• Mariposa (Yosemite region), California
  
  
• Pollock Pines, California
  
  
• Strawberry Peaks, California

Each location presented its own logistical complexity - different regional vendors, different site conditions, and a brand experience that needed to remain consistent and considered regardless of geography. ACV's role was to manage that complexity so the internal team could focus on the mission.

Brand Development & Experience Consistency

The engagement also included brand development work, helping Better Place Forests articulate and extend their brand into the physical environments and visitor experiences that defined each forest's presence. As new locations opened, maintaining brand coherence across a growing portfolio required active stewardship - ensuring that what made the first forest meaningful and distinctive carried through to every site that followed.

The Results

Over the course of the engagement, ACV Consulting helped Better Place Forests execute one of the more ambitious scaling initiatives in the company's history. Key outcomes included:

• Successful Open House execution across nine forest locations in the 2021 engagement year — providing the operational framework that supported rapid multi-site expansion.
  
  
• Vendor sourcing & Procurement Management: Coordination across a nationally distributed vendor network, ensuring each forest location was properly resourced and on-brand for opening.
  
  
• Project management infrastructure that gave the Better Place Forests team the operational confidence to commit to an aggressive expansion timeline and execute against it.
  
  
• Brand development support that helped maintain consistency and quality of experience as Better Place Forests expanded beyond its initial location toward a twelve-forest national operation.
  
  
• Ongoing engagement through 2023 with expanding scope reflecting the trust built through the initial work and the complexity of sustained multi-site management.
  
  

The work was not glamorous. It was the kind of behind-the-scenes operational discipline that lets a brand focused on meaning stay focused on meaning - rather than on sourcing delays or vendor coordination gaps.

Key Insight

Mission-driven brands attract outsized loyalty. But that loyalty creates its own pressure: customers, partners, and the public hold mission-driven brands to a higher standard. When the experience falls short of the story, the gap is more visible and more damaging than it would be for a conventional brand.

Better Place Forests was building something genuinely new - a category that did not exist before and a model of remembrance that required families to trust the brand with some of the most meaningful moments of their lives. Delivering on that promise consistently, across twelve locations in twelve months, required every element of the physical environment to be right.

What ACV provided was the operational discipline to close the gap between a compelling brand vision and a real-world visitor experience. That kind of project management and procurement infrastructure is rarely celebrated. But without it, the best-intended brands find themselves apologizing to families instead of honoring them.

When the work matters this much, the operations have to match the mission.

ACV Consulting | Leadership. Innovation. Purpose.