Happerley on Tour & Food Glorious Food returns

Happerley England Tour

On Thursday evening I had the pleasure of speaking at the start of the 'Happerley England tour'. Over 100 people attended the launch at Primrose Farm near Banbury. The tour is designed to raise the profile of food provenance and promote the new Happerley Gold Standard (to qualify for it food producers must be able to name the farmers and growers of all their core ingredients).

In my speech I said as a business owned by our members, trust and transparency is vital, so we need to be as open as possible about where our food comes from. Too many consumers have become blasé about buying food and their decisions are based solely on price, packaging and promotions. Happerley are seeking to change that by giving consumers more information about where their food comes from which is why we are happy to support them.

The launch was also addressed by Adam Henson, a Cotswold farmer and TV presenter, who said that food provenance was the way forward for farming and Matthew Rymer, the founder of Happerley, who spoke passionately about their work with children's menus in our nurseries. Among those attending, I was pleased to see in the barn a number of Best of Our Counties suppliers including Brightwell Vineyard, Adlington Special Reserve and Hook Norton Brewery.

Over the coming weeks, the Happerley tour will visit every region in England. For more information click here.

Food Glorious Food launch

I am looking forward to attending the launch of our second Food Glorious Food competition on Tuesday evening next week at Cotswold Distillery. Following the success of last year’s competition which saw Cinderhill Farm in the Forest of Dean being crowned our winner in Gloucestershire, we are launching a second competition to search for the Cotswold’s next big food and drink innovator and creator. The competition will be open to local food and drink innovators until 31st January 2020. I look forward to sharing more information on the competition and launch event in next week’s blog.

Celebrity Charity Football Match

With the new football season starting, the Society is again proud to host its annual Celebrity Charity Football Match. This will be held on 29th September at Rushall Olympic Football Club in Walsall.  It’s a great family day out and I hope you will cheer on our Midcounties team from the terraces. They will again be playing the ‘JET2 TV Allstars’ team with ‘star players’ from Coronation Street, Emmerdale and Hollyoaks. 

Last year we lost 2-1 so with Kevin Brown managing the team this year I would expect his significant knowledge of football and tactical genius to guarantee the right result. The event raises money for lots of really good causes who are also our charity partners including White House Cancer Support, Just Straight Talk, Alz Café, The MASE Group and Codsall Village Hall. So please come along and support our team. Ticket prices are: adult £8, children £5, a family of 4 £20 and children under 3 go FREE.

To find out more about the match and how book tickets, please click here.

Brexit

As part of our ongoing contingency planning for Brexit, a weekly meeting is held by the Executive and the Head of Audit and Risk. These discussions and any subsequent actions are scenario planning to ensure minimal disruption to business for our customers and colleagues. We have now set up a separate page on CC which will have future updates on the discussions - you can see it by clicking here. 

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