Katie Herring of Cultivate looks at how to make local veg a viable business

LAST week Cultivate held our 2016 AGM which was my first as a Cultivate employee and member. Although I wasn’t present for the 2015 period of the business I know that it was a year that really was make or break. In the words of our chairman "we started the year with a wonderful, vibrant, productive community food enterprise, but one that we knew would ultimately run out of money".

Cultivate began 2015 with three arms to the business: the farm, the Cultivate stops and a new online shop. But it had yet to find a local food model that was sustainable. Following some fundraising, Cultivate embarked on a major business development programme which lead to the hibernation of the online shop and contributed to the decision to leave the farm.

The team completely restructured and focused on how to grow the amount of local food consumed in order to support and create a better market for the local producers. This resulted in lots of incremental changes to Cultivate's retail practice and its first major campaign was launched to celebrate harvest. Sales across that period were higher than ever before and meant that Cultivate ended the year with a tentative hope that we had found a way to make local food work.

I joined the team right after this point and we have been working hard to continue the successes of the end of 2015. And I’m pleased to say, after a few more incremental changes (including redecorating the VegVan and redefining our brand) that in the first five months of 2016 we have sold as much local, ethical and delicious produce as Cultivate did in the first ten months of 2015. Importantly we’re now turning a very small, but very important, profit.

What became apparent, as I sat at our AGM listening to the past year’s events and hearing the comments from our members, is that none of this would have been possible without their support and the support of customers, friends and suppliers. So I'd really like to take this opportunity to say a huge thank you to all those people who we just wouldn’t have Cultivate without.