social enterprise

On Tuesday after posting my last post I went the University of Leeds for a meeting and afterwards I went to the student union to visit its shop for a snack, I was pleasantly surprised the shop stocks mainly co-operative group products as well as high st brands and the union’s own food which is branded with a great tagline ‘not for profit – just for students’ not only acknowledging its status as a social enterprise but proudly extolling their mission in just 6 words, go on see if you can do it for your social enterprise – I must admit I am struggling a bit.

I had meetings in Sheffield this morning and afterwards I used the opportunity to visit the region’s only Waitrose Petrol Station in Sheffield City Centre and as Waitrose is part of the John Lewis Partnership which is a workers co-operative , I popped into Waitrose to do some shopping and must admit I haven’t been to Waitrose for about 10 years. It is a much higher end supermarket than I am used too and although they had a great range of fair-trade products, I did linger in the chocolate aisle a bit too long, and niche artisanal type products made by small local producers there were not many actual products made by social enterprises apart from Waitrose own products and some Traidcraft goods. Where were the ONE products or SUMA goods  inter-trading and growing the social enterprise supply chain is one of the main ways of growing the sector and something the 30 days challenge wants to focus on more closely. This was especially apt on the day I visited Waitrose as I had just met with the other stakeholders of Footsey – the social economy trade fair about how we get more large scale buyers whether public, private or social enterprise to Footsey.