Christmas Trading Hours, Remembrance & Food Glorious Food returns

Midcounties remembers – Lest we forget

With many Remembrance commemoration memorials taking place across all trading areas, we will be thinking of all the fallen heroes.

All stores that are open will be taking part in the two-minute silence at 11am on Remembrance Sunday, so I ask for all colleagues wherever you are, to join in this moment of reflection and ensure that it is marked appropriately. Supporting our soldiers, the Poppy Appeal is open, so as one of our charity partners I encourage donations towards this important cause.

A segment of history in how the Co-op was involved during the conflicts have a read of our story on Colleagues Connect which transcribes how a number of countries were supported at the time by our Oxford Co-operative Society with refuge, food supplies and a near-miss in Carterton. Displaying co-operation at its best, click here to read the incredible stories.

Home-Start Recovery Celebration

With many charities on the road to recovery after a turbulent 18 months, on Tuesday I attended the pandemic recovery celebration meeting at the charity, Home-Start, based in the Wyre Forest Regional Community in Worcestershire. The event was hosted to thank their volunteers and supporters who continued to help out in the most difficult of times.

A charity that I visited in 2019, Home-Start supports families with young children who are facing challenging conditions at home or are struggling to cope. It offers confidential support, friendship and practical help, a unique service delivered by trained and supported local volunteers.

During the event, there was also an Art Exhibition which was a collection of canvases that had been created by some of the Home-Start families. Each one represented what Home-Start means to them and I have asked if some of them could be displayed in our Franche Road Food store to showcase how the charity makes such a difference.

Having attended their AGM last year as well as handing out hampers in 2019, we will again be providing each Home-Start family with a Christmas hamper in the run-up to Christmas. It was great to be able to visit a fantastic charity who our members help support and understand how they really help out our communities in need.

COP26 comes to a close

With COP26 coming to a close today, a major part of the discussions has focused on how we can keep climate change within 1.5 degrees of heating, thus meaning that countries must commit to reducing world fossil fuel emissions to net-zero by 2050 to avoid catastrophic climate change. There’s been a range of positive commitments made and discussed to help achieve this throughout COP26 including tackling deforestation by restoring the world’s forests, investment in clean power and commitments to phase out coal power. Another key area is empowering the next generation by putting climate action at the heart of national curriculums. Take a look at this video from our partner school, Walsall Academy. Having worked with them for over 8 years to create the Green Pioneers Programme alongside The Outward Bound Trust, the students (including some of our Green Pioneers), give a stark reminder of how they feel climate change should be actioned. Click here to watch it.

Hopefully, many people have been inspired to make changes, and as a Society, we will continue to work with our colleagues and members to provide education and opportunities to take climate action. These will include volunteering through our regular community tidy ups and enable our members and colleagues to live socially responsible and low carbon lifestyles through our products and services, such as switching to green broadband through our Utilities business or recycling soft plastics through our Food Stores.

Food Glorious Food – Competition kicks off

Food provenance is an integral part of our Food chain, giving members and customers the chance to sample food directly from the farm to fork. It’s something that we offer directly through our Best of our Counties (BOOC) range in-store and as part of this, we are always on the lookout for new and innovative suppliers. The Food Glorious Food competition does exactly that. Having been a judge during the last edition in 2019, it supports local suppliers in the Cotswolds area and gives them the chance to be stocked in-store as part of our BOOC range. 

This week the competition kicked off at Over Barn in Highnam and featured an array of judges returning to the hot seats; former England rugby player and Celebrity Master Chef winner Phil Vickery MBE, farmer and TV presenter Adam Henson, 2019 competition winner and owner of Cinderhill Farm in Lydney, Deborah Flint and finally our very own Chief Food Retail Officer, Rupert Newman.

This year’s winner was revealed as ‘Wholly Gelato’ for its tasty choice of Italian-style gelato. Made from the milk of its very own herd of cows on Hobbs Dairy farm in Gloucestershire, the business was launched by Emily Hobbs as a way of diversifying and adding value to the milk that’s produced on the family-run farm in Elmore. A big well done on winning and we look forward to stocking their delicious range in-store very soon.

Members App continues to thrive

Every week since the member launch of the app, we have seen some incredible statistics and today I can announce we are at over 8,400 new members. This is a figure which has tripled since the launch and is down to all the hard work and dedication of our colleagues and support teams in making the process so easy. From the latest feedback, members are really interested in the offers highlighted, with a third who shopped in a Food store, benefitting from a future offer. To ensure we are listening to members, we recently ran a short survey on the app, where members have come back to us saying it’s easy to use and would like us to tailor offers to their shopping habits. This is a function that we hope to implement over time.

As for many of our colleague members, the feedback is just as positive, watch the short video from colleague Simon Thornley from Wem Food on how he has found the app here.

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