Welcoming Food Glorious Food Winners into Stores

Food Glorious Food Product Launch

Last week I attended the Food Glorious Food product launch event at the Bourton-on-the-Water Food Store. Having had the chance to meet our competition winner Deborah Flint from Cinderhill Farm and four of the finalists, this was their chance to see their products put onto our store shelves and available to the public. As a reminder, Deborah Flint was the overall winner in March, producing the delicious Cinderhill Farm sausage roll, which is available in a range of different flavours but we also had a diverse range of other suppliers on show:

• Just Whole Foods - Producing 100% organic vegan plant based sunflower mince,

• Cotswold Hare – Creating healthy, fresh ready meals from the Cotswold area

• The Cheltenham Wine Company – Wine Ice Cream in two delicious flavours

• Coppernose Jerky – All natural and healthy Beef Jerky

Our Finalists at the Bourton-on-the-water Food Glorious Food launch

You may or may not have heard but I encountered a slightly stolen sausage roll in March at the Food Glorious Food auditions. I was sampling a sausage roll during the Food Glorious Food audition, which I unwillingly left unattended and when I returned to finish it off, Phil Vickery (former England rugby player & Celebrity Masterchef winner) had already helped himself! So, during the event on Friday as a wonderful surprise, Deborah kindly made an extra-large sausage roll to compensate – it was clearly unexpected but equally tasty!

The extra-large sausage roll baked by our Food Glorious Food winner Deborah Flint!

I would like to thank all the people involved in the competition this year, including all the finalists and various start-ups who spent the time to apply and attend the auditions. I look forward to meeting the new wave of entrepreneurs later this year!

As part of the event, we also launched a new recycling bin in the Bourton-on-the-Water Food Store for customers to place their plastic packaging waste. Here I met with a member, Richard, who was using the plastics recycling bin during his weekly shop at the store. As a Society, we are working hard to remove single-use plastics and packaging, as are many people and organisations across the world, and this is another positive step in the right direction to achieving that goal.

Richard, one of our members in the Bourton-on-the-Water Food Store, disposing of his weekly shop plastics

Co-op Fortnight Begins

Co-op Fortnight is in its first week, and I encourage you all to take part and show your acts of co-operation. Whether that is donating to a Foodbank, or taking part in a community clean-up, your act of co-operation is what makes Co-op Fortnight. Here at Midcounties, we have already supported an event in Oxford which took place on Wednesday with initial feedback being very positive. At the event, we welcomed the City Council’s Co-operative champion Cllr Richard Howlett, Jo White from Co-op Futures and the Society’s Pete Westall, Chief Values Officer – who spoke on the history in the city going back to the 1870’s and how the Midcounties are involved within the Oxford region.

Last week as a Society and to kick off Co-op Fortnight, we were at the annual Community Energy Conference at Sheffield Hallam University sponsored by Co-op Energy. It was a great day in which 200 people were in attendance and showcased what is happening within the sector. This included an insight from our very own Mark Billsborough, Head of Hedging and Renewables on the newly launched Community Power Tariff. The event also outlined how we have increased the number of community energy partnerships from 5 in 2013 to an outstanding 79 today, this has been achieved through power purchase agreements with Co-op Energy.  As the Fortnight continues don’t forget there are also a fair few other events going on including our free Community Concert in Walsall on 2^nd July and a member event in Swindon today, if you would like to book onto any of these please see here or share your acts of co-operation using the hashtag #CoopFortnight & #Midcounties on social media.

Alistair Rowland – appointed as Chairman for the Association of British Travel Agents (ABTA)

I am pleased to announce that our own Alistair Rowland, Chief Retail Officer Specialist Business, is officially the new ATBA Chairman. This appointment shows the respect the industry has for the Co-op Travel brand and recognises the progress Midcounties have achieved in building one of the UK’s largest Agency Groups since 2011. ABTA and our business have many similarities, both leading on service, quality and sustainability with members and consumers at their heart. Alistair said: “I am proud to be able to lead ABTA as its new Chairman whilst driving the Specialist Businesses in our Co-op through the next stages of growth and success.”

Disability Confident Employer

A key theme of our Co-operative Difference is Diversity, and we have working groups in place for each strand of our Diversity Strategy. One of these strands is Disability and our working group have been busy addressing potential barriers and raising awareness. You may have already noticed the increased number of disabled parking spaces at our Offices in Warwick and Walsall, and now the group have been successful in gaining recognition through a Government registered scheme.

The scheme is called ‘Disability Confident’ and it has three levels; Disability Confident Committed, Disability Confident Employer and Disability Confident Leader. The scheme supports employers like us to make the most of the talents disabled people can bring to our workplace. I am pleased to announce that the Society has now achieved level 2; Disability Confident Employer, which illustrates our commitment to Diversity and Inclusion. In the long term, we now look forward to achieving level 3, which is all about being a champion in our local and business communities; something that combines our commitments to both Diversity and Regional Communities. If you would like to learn more about our Diversity Steering Groups, or if you would like to get involved, please contact our Society Engagement Manager, Rebekah Brain here.

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