Find your Way to Flourish

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

• Becoming a B Corp
• Top trend predictions for Christmas 2021
• Self-sacrifice: The importance of building a leadership legacy centred on others
• Undercover Boss
• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

This week we launch the name and brand of our new Foodhall & Kitchen, Flourish.

You may have seen artist’s impressions of the finished building last year and a few people asked then why we weren’t calling this new business a ‘farm shop’. Well it is a shop (and restaurant) on the site of old farm buildings, but we are not using produce from that redundant farm within the business, although, of course, we will be using the produce from several other local farms. To my mind, calling a business a ‘farm shop’ when it isn’t using the produce from the farm it is sited on lacks integrity and so we are not doing that.

So, why ‘Flourish’? Well, like any business, we wanted a name and logo that had within its essence a taste of our purpose. This business, like its parent company, Cotswold Fayre, will have at its heart a desire to grow the people who work with us as well as nourishing the planet as we bring delight to our customers. For far too long, businesses have taken from people, both their own and those within their supply chain, rather than giving to them. They have also taken from our beautiful planet as if it were their right to do so. Businesses have treated both their people as resources from which they can extract as much as possible. Indeed our people departments are called ‘Human Resources’. How mad is that? Our people are not resources, they are sentient human beings with emotions and needs. How dare we call them resources!

It’s the same with the planet, we are at the edge of a climate disaster, largely due to businesses extracting at will from the natural resources of the earth and burning fossil fuels as if it didn’t have any impact on the generations to come or the health of the people who live on the planet now. Terrible though the pandemic is for the human cost, air pollution has caused more than six times as many deaths within the last year as Coronavirus.

It is time for business to change – and quickly. Businesses that put people and the planet before profits are really now the only sustainable option and will draw customers away from other less sustainable businesses. Not only that, but businesses that are actively doing good for the environment and their local communities will bring the best people in to work for them too, so ensuring they are even better in the future. 

How is your business set up to do good for people and planet in 2021? Each year are your people happier and more fulfilled than they were at the beginning of the year? As a business, are you leaving the planet in better shape than it was when you started the year? That’s our aim, both at Cotswold Fayre, the wholesaler, and at our new food hall & kitchen. We think we have chosen a good name.

Find your way to Flourish in 2021.