Fairtrade Fortnight First Week & #FeedMeTruth Childcare Campaign

Fairtrade Fortnight First Week

I am pleased to report that we have had a great start to Fairtrade Fortnight, promoting our ‘#1Change, Choose Fairtrade' campaign and competition across our food stores and on social media. So far over 75 people have pledged to make #1Change and we have had good engagement on Twitter and Facebook. The Phone Co-op have been busy promoting the new Fairphone 3 and our offices, partner schools, nurseries and Regional Community charity partners have all joined in with the celebrations. There was a good piece in Co-operative News about our campaign - to read it click here.

Next week we’ve got lots more activities planned, including a special visit on 6^th March from Leocadie, a cocoa farmer who lives on the Ivory Coast in West Africa. Leocadie will be visiting North Walsall Primary Academy, our Waterfront office and Food Store in Walsall, to talk to people about Fairtrade. I’ve made my #1Change and filled out the pledge form so from now on I will be buying Fairtrade wine.

As it’s a Leap Year you can use your extra day on 29^th February to make your 1Change! What will be your #1Change? Please share in the comments below.

Chef Partnership Day & #FeedMeTruth

Co-op Childcare are thrilled to be working towards becoming the first childcare provider to have their menus accredited by our friends at ‘Happerley’ who promote transparency and provenance in food. It supports their Healthy Living & Wellbeing Programme, which teaches children about where food comes from through a variety of fun and educational activities.

Chef Partnership Day with Adam Henson 

Last week, Co-op Childcare took all of their nursery chefs out to attend their very first ‘Chef Partnership Day’. The chefs were introduced to their new food supplier, Creed, who they are working with on the menus.  Creed talked about their partnership with Saffron, an online nutritional software solution. Saffron is essentially an online cookbook which allows our Chefs to plan their menus according to nutrient content. The day ended with a  visit to the Happerley Farm where they met celebrity farmer Adam Henson and founder of Happerley, Matthew Rymer.

Adam is fronting the #FeedMeTruth campaign, a national project to enable every nursery and school across the UK to know where the food on their plate is from. They have started a petition in support of the campaign. Please help us by adding your name to it – it's very easy to do and takes less than a minute, click here.

Demonstrations to chefs from a supplier

Co-operative Retail Conference

On Saturday Melody Aguero,  our Head of Brand Strategy and Insights, will be talking at the prestigious Co-operative Retail Conference in Cheshire about how we have made our membership offer more relevant and rewarding by including member’s views in decision making across the business. We have done this through introducing a range of exciting innovations throughout our stores based on member insights.

In 2016 Melody’s team launched Talk to Us which has already provided us with over 117,000 responses and has helped us to improve the customer experience.  Since its launch we have seen a notable 20% increase in our Customer Satisfaction score and we have now rolled this out to all of our other businesses with the exception of Funeral.

We have also launched our first ever research platform, Your Co-op Voice, which allows us to consult with members on decisions, however big or small. Since its launch 18 months ago we have sent out over 90 surveys and received over 36,000 responses from how to improve our menus in nurseries to brand feedback and making membership more meaningful.

These insights have helped to define our membership and Co-operative Social Responsibility (CSR) strategies, ensuring that the Society remains relevant and rewarding to all our members. I will also be attending the Co-op Retail conference this weekend and will be reporting back on how it all went, in next week’s blog.

Coronavirus (Covid19)

And finally, I am sure colleagues have been concerned by the escalating situation and the spread of Coronavirus (Covid19). We will have updated advice on Colleague Connect today which is consistent with the information being provided by the UK Government and we will continue to do this.

You would expect us to do this as a responsible employer, but I would like to further reassure you that as business leaders, the senior team have been working on our contingency and continuity plans for some time. At the start of the year, we updated the overall Society top risks schedule to include ‘Global events’, with a particular emphasis on an epidemic/pandemic. This prompted each of our trading businesses to review provisions and in light of the recent information, we have worked up more detailed action plans across the groups. Whilst we will look at ways to minimise business disruption, the safety and welfare of our customers and you, our colleagues, will always be at the forefront of our plans. Please refer back to Colleague Connect for more updates.