Could a business model born in the pandemic be a panacea to hunger?
In the Covid-19 pandemic The Long Table became synonymous with feeding Gloucestershire’s hungry, but it also, just might've, discovered a model that solved the challenge - forever.
(This edition of The Raikes Journal is currently locked until we launch…)
Good morning everyone,
Welcome to the latest Raikes Journal, a newsletter for the county’s business community, its charities and our vital education and training sector.
You are reading this journal because of the generous support of our partners and those who support us by paying a subscription (£12 a month or £120 a year - £2.30 a week!! And our founding members who have pledged even more - see our subscription page to learn more). That membership fee will give them access to the main content on up to two extra newsletters a week - including this one - and access to any other paywalled story we do, including all Raikes rolling Top 100 Businesses in Gloucestershire reports - our series on the county’s biggest firms by turnover. They will also be able to comment on all our stories and have a direct email link to our news desk. Please do think about joining them and see your membership for what it is - an investment supporting a community interest company dedicated to serving and creating community in Gloucestershire.
* Everything you read on Raikes is made possible by the generous support of our partners (who we will be revealing over the coming weeks) our founding members and our paid-up subscribers. A massive ‘thank you’ to all our other subscribers too. The support of all of you is invaluable!
A little context on the main story…
Raikes started life as the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in the UK. We were supported by businesses to help champion and tell the stories of the embattled business sector in Gloucestershire, the county’s third sector and its vital education and training institutions. It was a dark time for many, but so much good also happened in the pandemic . In today’s story we take a look at an article we ran back then, at a group of peopel who became synonymous with supporting the most needy in the county. Although they did not stop their. The Long Table’s mission was about feeding and supporting those who could not easilly do so themselves. It is a number the nation continues to see grow and grow. The Long Table also fed out emergency services and front-line staff, teaming up with groups and individuals across Gloucestershire to achieve those ends. And along the way they appeared close to discovering a significant recipe - one which some dared imagine could do away with the need for anyone to be hungry in the county ever again. We revisit the article, and ask if the organisation is still running - and whether that goal remains a Holy Grail.
Your Raikes briefing notes
👩🏽🌾 Places are up for grabs to help 20 businesses in agricultural sector to develop and grow in Gloucestershire thanks to a new partnership between Hartpury University's Tech Box Park, Barclays Eagle Labs. The collaboration, funded by the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology, will give the lucky businesses free access to Tech Box memberships (valued at £2,500). The six-month programme of support will aim to boost ‘high-potential businesses’ across the region and develop Hartpury’s thriving agri-tech community. Regular events are organised by the Tech Box Park alongside the adjacent Agri-Tech Centre to help members connect and share ideas. The first event of 2024 is scheduled for 31 January, 8.30am - 10.30am.
🚗 You can’t miss its gleaming glass headquarters as you arrive in Cheltenham along the Golden Valley bypass, but you may have missed its uplifting results. We took a look at The Cotswold Motor Group as part of our focus on Gloucestershire’s Top 100 firms by turnover and thought the figures were well worth shouting about. Who wouldn’t be pleased with adding £30 million-plus to their turnover in a tough market?
💪🏽 Two Gloucestershire charities close to the hearts of young people and families and individuals with complex needs have come together to forge a new alliance. The incredible Young Gloucestershire, which helps support young people to achieve their goals, and Infobuzz, which offers offers therapeutic and practical support for families and young people with complex needs in a crisis, have joined forced. One message stood out for us: “We know the need still outweighs the resource we have available”.
🎓 Twenty years-plus has passed since Holly Gazzard was murdered by her jealous boyfriend in Gloucester and the story still resonates like it was yesterday. Until we change so many things the fear is it will keep repeating - for other women especially. Somehow her father, Nick Gazzard, and his family found strength to forge the Holly Gazzard Trust to help make that change. Its efforts continue and his effort was honoured by the University of Gloucestershire in a special ceremony at Cheltenham Racecourse.
Things to do this weekend
👩💼👩🏿💼👩🏼💼👩🏾💼 This will be the first Women in Business lunch of 2024 and is due to be staged at the Manor by the Lake, Cheltenham, on Thursday 25 January starting with teas and coffees at 11.45am. As usual, there will be an opportunity for networking, a talk from an inspirational businesswoman and a two-course lunch. New faces are always very welcome. The event’s ‘inspirational speaker’ will be Julie Kent MBE, who will be talking about ‘finding a positive from an enormous negative’. Due to take place from 11.45 to 2pm.
🏆🎉 Cirencester Chamber of Trade is due to launch its 2024 business awards on Thursday 25 January from 6pm to 8pm at the Royal Agricultural University. The chamber will be joined by some of its event’s sponsors as well as previous winners. If you want to get to know who’s who in the Cotswolds and make connections, this is as good a place as any. Categories, deadlines and details about the awards presentation evening itself will all be revealed.
🚜 We mentioned Hartputy University and Hartpury College's Tech Box Park business accelerator community above. This is your chance to take a closer look with a relaxed morning's networking with innovative SME's. If you’re an agri-tech business or looking to the land-based sector as a new market, then this event is for you. You’ll meet Hartpury's Digital Innovation Farm team to better understand how you can be supported with your product development and validation, testing and trialling, find out more about our membership and sponsorship packages and tour the Digital Innovation Farm. Due to take place on Wednesday 31 January 2024 from 8.30am to 10.30am.
Could a business model born in the pandemic be a panacea to hunger?
By Andrew Merrell
When the Covid-19 pandemic struck and brought before all our eyes the amount of people in the county who needed to be fed and cared for, and how we could all join them so easily, one group stood out.
If you spoke to the scores of small charities and groups which worked (and are still working) tirelessly to feed the needy, vulnerable, self-isolating, isolated, homeless and front-line staff through the pandemic The Long Table was already legend.
The previously near-unknown group of individuals, a fledgling business-come-charity, became the catalyst for the Gloucestershire-wide response, joining up efforts already underway, encouraging participation and making things happen.
It culminated in a mammoth mission that became known as Feeding the 5,000, and it left some wondering it is had not discovered a Holy Grail – how to feed those of us who fall hungry and needy, forever.
Story continues below for paid-for subscribers….
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Biblical references were not hard to spot around the group, and that was partly because of close affiliations to the Diocese of Gloucester – a connection it described at the time as ‘invaluable’.
The then Bishop Rachel Treweek’s blessing was credited with opening doors, giving confidence and making connections through which The Long Table’s energy spread.
And as its army grew those at the heart of the group began to see possibilities for a system that could mean no one ever needs to go hungry again in the county.
“It does look like it really could be possible to develop a sustainable food business, based on what has been happening, which could ensure no one has to go without good food again,” said Tom Herbert, who although having a profile comparable with a young Jamie Oliver just a few years ago has worked hard to disappear into roots community work ever since – but never far from food.
Nevertheless Herbert referred to the idea – that no one need go without food again - as a potential ‘Chapter Five’ on The Long Table’s journey, a chapter yet to be written.
The Long Table is a group Herbert helped set up two years prior to the peak of the pandemic, fronting it when necessary, yet otherwise keeping himself in the kitchen – his domain.
It was hard for him or any of The Long Table’s team to escape the Kitchen in the first eight weeks of the pandemic. They made 30,000 meals.
From hospital consultants and nurses who were delivered The Long Table’s free meals to self-isolating customers with means who paid the £25 for seven meals price tag, to those who paid only what they could give and those who had no money, its dynamic can-do approach inspired.
Many other groups have sprang up to doing their bit and together with existing support charities plugged into the network – and although The Long Table was adept at publicising its services, it made no attempt to take credit or trade on Herbert’s profile to market their tribe.
It was looking a gift horse in the mouth from a business's perspective, but its honest approach has gone on to pay dividends as life found a new normal and it found a new purpose post-pandemic.
At its height contributors to the county-wide push it fronted included the Royal Agricultural University in Cirencester and its head of catering and retail Ryan Hanson and his team, Roots Café and Community in Kingsholm, Gloucester, the CCP charity in Cheltenham – whose day job is doing just this - and Stroud Brewery.
“From one pot of food cooked here we have fed staff at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital, nurses and consultants and also the residents of the homeless hotel in Gloucester,” said Herbert, speaking to Raikes back in 2020 and sounding both amazed and thrilled by what he was part of.
“Young Gloucestershire has been having 600 meals a week from us for young people who are carers. Then there are those people who can afford £25 for seven meals.”
As they went about their business some – a consultant at GRH is one example Herbert cited - picked up the phone and said ‘look, I can afford to pay you for this food, and I will’.
All that helped reinforce their model – a ‘pay as you feel concept’ - and as they looked at the finances they began to see that there might just be a viable way of providing the service longer term.
It would be a way in which those who can afford to pay do so, others pay what they can afford and those who cannot afford anything still get fed and when the maths is done the company breaks even.
Foodbanks were vital to the county at the time and remain so, but so do restrictions on how many times users can access them. The Long Table was beginning to glimpse a model beyond anything tried before that would work with and around existing services to cover everyone.
“If we work this out, there is enough food to go around. We currently throw away a third of our food here in the UK,” said Herbert, whose enthusiasm reflected his passion for the power of food.
“We can see positive social change happening through and with food.”
But could it really be achieved?
So many mini-revolutions had happened in such a short space of time through the pandemic, so many barriers fell, it was difficult not to believe it was possible; but long term?
“That,” said Mr Herbert, sounding robustly positive, excited by the idea, but acknowledging it remained an unknown “is what we are calling the fifth chapter.”
It was all a long way from Herbert’s first forays into the spotlight.
Back in the mid-noughties, together with his brother, Henry, the pair put the family business, Hobbs House Bakey, in lights with awards-a-plenty and television series - The Fabulous Baker Brothers.
Books followed. The pair’s fame spread abroad too. And then quiet. Well, relatively.
For Tom Herbert – a man destined to continue to help shape the fortunes of a successful family business with his brother – this ‘quiet’ was him deciding his future lay elsewhere, away from an income fanned by a media profile, away from a secure job, away from a desk.
For a man whose entire life had revolved around family, food and the aforementioned bakery business it was a momentous and brave decision.
There was no carefully thought out plan – it was more a leap of faith – with Herbert crediting his wife, Anna, with allowing him to not just make the move (and who, joking aside, he cannot hide his eternal gratitude to) but who made sure he landed gently.
Anna, it should be said, was managing director of the family bakery before and through the pandemic, as well as shouldering the not insignificant responsibilities of also being a working mother.
When Herbert tells you she agreed to his change of course only when he promised her his as-yet-unknown new venture would be apparent within three months – and that quickly became a year and more – you see why he also felt an itsy-bitsy bit guilty.
But it is a journey that tookt him on a challenging adventure, with highs such as writing a book (although one wonders how he managed to sit still long enough), to studying baking abroad.
And then came driving a van for a Five Valleys charity as he explored business ideas.
What formed out of the collection of new experiences he was tasting was the idea of a charity – food-based, of course – which would help teach people to cook, cater for and serve people.
By his own admission, his own school career had been far from glorious. But his time at catering college learning, and drawing on what he already knew about baking from working in his family business, was his inspiration. And then came a meeting with Will Mansell of The Grace Network.
And so it was that in an old furniture storage warehouse in Brimscombe in the Five Valleys he and a small group of like-minded individuals began to stage a pop-up restaurant, and The Long Table was born.
“Eighty people came! From the great and the good to waifs and strays,” said Herbert, sounding astonished still.
It instantly reinforced to them that they could be on to something and they began to develop the business idea; how they could cook, prepare and deliver meals, train, mentor and launch full-time. It was all systems go.
“And then the pandemic came,” he said.
What could have been a calamity became an opportunity to embrace what many did at the time – something the media made sound like an exercise carried out with considerable grace, by calling it ‘pivoting’ – but in reality was much more like a stress test of the like never experienced before. But all the pieces were in place - they just needed to work out what to use them for.
“We were ready for ready meals. We could cook the food and we had everything to make a delivery service work. We had managed to grow,” said Mr Herbert, explaining how it quickly dawned on them they could help to feed those in need as the pandemic hit.
The crisis has already closed food clubs like the successful Severn View Food Project – which ran dining clubs for the elderly across the Cotswolds. Something needed to be done.
“We put a post out (on Facebook) in mid-March, just before the restaurants were shut, saying what we could do. When we checked in the morning nearly 30,000 people had looked at it.”
If he and his colleagues needed a sign The Long Table’s new purpose had shown itself and the organisation looking at closure before it had even really got started quickly morphed into what has now made its name.
Guest chefs have joined forces with the group and the food has won plaudits by all who have tried it. Even the non-vegetarians.
As for Chapter Five?
“We have learned so much in the last few weeks. Not all of it has worked. The building we have been operating out of is about to be renovated. So, like Cortez (a reference to Hernán Cortés), our boats are burned. We can’t go back.
“We would love to start what we did in Brimscombe, try to get three or four community kitchens started and if that went well, who knows?”
* This article first ran on Raikes in the summer of 2020. The redevelopment of Brimscombe Port is now well documented elsewhere, and The Long Table did indeed move on. But it not only continues to survive, it is thriving as a community interest company ‘working to change the world through food’ on new premises at Brimscombe Mill (opposite Canal Trust bookshop, GL5 2QN). And long may that be the case. Look out for our follow-up feature coming soon.
* Everything you read on Raikes is made possible by the generous support of our partners (who we will be revealing over the coming weeks) our founding members and our paid-up subscribers. A massive ‘thank you’ to all our other subscribers too. The support of all of you is invaluable!
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