Recently, many firms have been focusing on sustainable manufacturing. The manager has to understand the social requirement of concern for environmental protection. This study develops a model to enhance the understanding of how market orientation, quality management, and innovativeness assist Thailand's food industry in attaining its optimal green performance, and to assess the mediating effect of quality management and innovativeness on market orientation and green performance. A questionnaire was developed and employed to gather data from 178 managers in the food industry. Data analysis is performed using the structural equation modelling approach. The results indicate that market orientation, quality management, and innovativeness positively and significantly affect green performance, both directly and indirectly. Moreover, quality management and innovativeness have a partial mediator effect on market orientation and green performance. This finding illustrates that Thailand's food industry could achieve green performance by developing market‐driven, quality management capacity and innovation development. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment