Posts by andy

There are many reasons why you choose your first bank. For some it was their parents who opened their account for them. For others it was the bank offering the best student bribe benefit. While for others it was just the convenience of which bank was located in their High Street. For me choosing a bank was a no-brainer. I come from a  “Co-op” family (pronounced “kworp” in the part of Manchester I am from). My great uncle was the Chief Executive of the Cooperative Wholesale Society - the Tescos of the 1950s when he was in charge. My grandpa was the chief actuary at the Co-operative Insurance Society in the 1970s. My brother-in-law still works for the Coop Bank today.

My mum was so brand loyal to The Coop that we even had to go to the Coop dentist which was appropriately on the corner of Redfern St in the centre of Manchester. Never did find out whether she got dividend on our treatment or not. In the early part of the 20th Century the Coop really could look after every aspect of your life. From baby food sold in the Coop supermarkets through to the funeral service which the Coop still dominates today. So in this context I opened a Coop bank account in 1986. I have laterally switched to their “fun” online brand Smile because I never need to go to a branch. But I have stayed loyal to the bank. And that loyalty isn’t much to do with heritage. It is down to the fact that they have taken ethics to their very core.

In 1989 they announced their ethical policy and overnight placed themselves in a different league to the other high street banks. The Coop Bank has conducted several stakeholder reports or social audits that look at the views of all of the Bank’s stakeholders. The report is independently audited and you can see clear action plans for how they are going to do more on each of the areas of concern. Even the CIS skyscraper in the centre of Manchester (where my Grandpa proudly had an office on the 19th floor) now has a giant solar panel down the whole of its south facing lift shaft. When you enter the reception you can see a giant display of how much energy is being generated.

And yet can I really say I love a bank after all the banking turmoil of the last 2 years? Well you probably won’t be surprised to learn that Coop Bank didn’t dash for the cash in the sub-prime market. In fact in March 2009 it actually posted a tidy profit for last year – rather in stark contrast to all the “state owned” banks who have fallen from grace.

I have no intention of moving my bank accounts and have already convinced 2 of my kids to bank with Coop. Perhaps it has always been in my DNA to bank with the Coop but they keep giving new ethical reasons to stay.

So Easter gets ever closer – just 10 days left in the Ethical Superstore diet (regular readers will recall I have been challenged to only eat food and drink that can be purchased from ESS for the whole of lent).

I guess the biggest change for me is that I have ended up cooking virtually all of my meals for the last few weeks. Helen (my long suffering wife and fellow blogger) has put up with cooking me a vegetarian option for years, but the idea of then having to cook my option separately using Ethical Superstore ingredients was a step too far! So most evenings I’ve come home and cooked a meal for myself. Previously, this would have been getting a veggie ready meal out of the freezer, popping in the microwave and 4 minutes later sitting down to a portion of vegetable (plus salt, sugar and fat) goodness. For the last five weeks I’ve been looking at a pile of ingredients and waiting for inspiration.

I suspect this will be the biggest change when this little project comes to an end. Ready meals just don’t do it for me having now cooked for myself for the last 5 weeks. Even with my cooking and slap-dash approach to quantities, the taste and the freshness is way better than the average pack of freezer fodder.

So what have been my highlights?

Read the rest of 10 Days to Go! »

So just 2 weeks to go until Easter and the “eat only stuff I can buy at EthicalSuperestore.com” has been going pretty well. I am now a total convert to having a vegetable box delivered every week. I love the serendipity of opening the box to see what we are going to be eating this week – healthy soups, stir frys and casseroles are now the order of the day.

However, my unblemished record has been a bit tarnished in the last 10 days. Ethical Superstore was nominated in the Emerging Retailer category at the Retail Week Awards. I had to go down for the plush event with 2000 guests in my bow tie and dress suit. Having paid £400 (how can that be justified???) I decided I’d better eat the food and as far as I know the Grosvenor House hotel doesn’t buy its food from us. The event was pretty good fun – Jimmy Carr was very entertaining . . .

Read the rest of Two Weeks to Go »

Sometime in late March 1999 Waitrose received its first delivery of Geobars and my favourite snackbar was born. Of course, I’m a little bit biased as I was part of the launch team that created the product while I was working for Traidcraft. It was also bit tricky to see it on the shelf as Traidcraft was in Gateshead and the nearest Waitrose back then was in Newark – 160 miles away.

The team at Traidcraft – myself, Joe Osman (now a director at Traidcraft) and Stuart Palmer (now managing a hospital in Malawi) – were given just 10 weeks to create a product, design and produce packaging and get it manufactured and delivered to Waitrose. The original favourite name was going to be “Zanzibar” – taking the best fair trade ingredients from Africa and making a classic snackbar product. However, the fairtrade honey from Tanzania had dried up at the time and so Chilean honey was used instead. Zanzibar no longer seemed appropriate and so the Geobar was born.

Apparently 90% of all product launches fail – so the fact it still graces the shelves of supermarkets up and down the land is testament to the great ingredients and tasty recipe. As well as being the first snackbar to carry the Fairtrade Mark, it was also the first Traidcraft product to carry the mark. Until that point

Read the rest of Traidcraft Geobar is 10 years old »

So we are now in week 3 of Lent and still the Ethical Superstore diet is going pretty well (in summary, for six weeks I’m only going to eat what we sell in the Ethical Superstore range).

At first my biggest problem was giving up milk in tea and coffee. I really didn’t like the taste without milk and the various substitutes work well for most things apart from in tea and coffee. However, I think I’ve become acclimatised to no milk in my hot drinks now – in fact I accidentally put it in my tea on Tuesday morning and couldn’t understand why my tea tasted so horrible. Maybe black tea and coffee will be a change for life….

Bread making continues to be the high point using the Doves Farm bread kit. Experimented with adding a little sugar and vegetable fat (around a teaspoon of each) and ended up with a bigger loaf and a more even “rise”.  There is a chocolate cake in the range too – so I think I’ll make that my treat this weekend.

I guess that the biggest challenge of eating only from the Ethical Superstore range for anyone with a  busy life, is the lack of ready meals. The Just Wholefoods range comes close and has allowed me to make meals with cous cous and biriyani without too much effort. The veggie bangers are lovely too. Also at £1.35 for  a pack that serves two people – they are good value too.

However, the only reason why the challenge can work at all is the fantastic

Read the rest of A Change for Life? »

I'm so optimistic that when I tilt my head I can see the shape of a jelly bear in this kiwi

So week one of my ESS challenge is successfully completed. For those of you who missed my first blog, I am trying to only eat and drink things that you can buy from the Ethical Superstore for the whole of Lent. My only relaxation is drinking water from the tap.

After 7 days things are going pretty well. I’ve lost a couple of pounds in weight and I’m eating much more healthily (well apart from the Divine Strawberry truffles which have gone past their best before date – lovely!).

Breakfast has been either homemade bread using the Dove’s Farm bread kit (cooked in my breadmaker – just add a cup of water and turn on) or Rude Health’s Morning Glory porridge. The latter was a little bit of  a shock – I thought it was just porridge. Turned out to be a mixture of seeds and grain plus porridge oats. A little bit of an acquired taste but I’m happy to say I have now acquired it; even when made with just water rather than milk.

Lunch has been soup, soup and more soup. Tried most of the Seeds of Change range and today began working through the Suma Soups starting with the Thick Vegetable. All very tasty.
The main meal has been tricky although the organic vegetable box has generally come up trumps. Vegetables used in casserole, stir fry and pasta have all worked well with the awesome Harrissa sauce working a treat to give even the most mundane looking plateful a zing of flavour.

Read the rest of One week gone and I’m still optimistic »

Will Cadbury's soon become Fairtrade like these chocolate chunks?

Rumours reach EthicalSuperstore HQ that Cadbury’s is set to announce that it is go fairtrade on all of its Dairy Milk range of products. This is the highest profile brand yet to go fairtrade.

When Cadbury’s bought Green and Blacks, we decided to hold fire on delisting them for a change corporate ownership while we decided whether Cadbury’s would negatively impact on G&B or whether it would be a postive impact on the whole company. (Green and Blacks the acceptable face of Cadburys?) It now looks like the positive approach to sustainable trade has had an impact on the whole Cadbury group.

So is this good news? I think on balance it is. Awareness of fairtrade will leap again as more people become exposed to what it is about through a product they are already buying. It also removes the age old quibble - “the fairtrade version doesn’t taste like my brand”. Now your brand is fairtrade so it really is a no effort switch. The volume of fairtrade cocoa will soar with direct benefits accruing for the producers.

Read the rest of Cadbury’s Dairy Milk to go Fairtrade »

Lunch on Day Two

If you’re a regular reader of this blog, you will probably be currently thinking that the whole organisation has gone “Fairtrade Fortnight” and “giving things up for lent” mad.  You shouldn’t be surprised though - Ethical Superstore is largely staffed by optimists.  We don’t look at global poverty and climate change and shrug our shoulders. We believe that we can make a difference to these things even through something as mundane as the type of coffee you drink. So when Lent comes around many people in the team have decided to do things to make their lifestyle or the world a better place.

So in that context my decision for lent doesn’t feel quite so stupid – I’ve decided to only eat things I can buy from the Ethical Superstore range for lent. When someone first said it couldn’t be done, it seemed easy – I reeled off a long list of all the things we sell. However, as I begin my Lenten pledge it’s the things we don’t sell that seem more problematic – no milk, no margarine, no butter, no bread, no eggs. This is going to be an interesting six weeks.

So the rules I have set are quite simple, apart from water (and by the way we do sell water too!) everything I consume over the coming weeks will have all of the ingredients derived from the Ethical Superstore range of food products. Yesterday was day 1.

Read the rest of I’m not mad, just optimistic… »

All of us here at Ethicalsuperstore.com want to extend a heartfelt thank you to all who bought from us, all who told a friend about us, and all who gave us feedback about our service – the excellent bits and not so excellent.  We are a team of people who are always ready to serve you.  Without you there would be no us, and our 2009 pledge has at it’s core one key purpose – to  provide you the best possible service the UK (and for the matter the world) has to offer.

As we sat down to write our pledge for 2009 we intuitively knew that we needed to hear from you.  You are our best gauge for what matters most.

Throughout the year many of you gave us feedback on our service - please keep it coming.  Right now you have the chance to further influence the service we offer to all our customers.  It doesn’t matter if you tell us over the phone, send comments through the post or write on our blog.

Whatever your preferred method of communication, we’d love to hear from you.  Really truly this isn’t just marketing speak.  Talk to us please.

Read the rest of Our 2009 Pledge To You »

People flee from violence in the Congo

During its years as Zaire and more recently as Congo, the people of this huge Central Africa republic have battled against many different types of adversity – everything from civil war to the eruption of Mount Nyiragongo that sent hot lava running through the streets of Goma. However, the new clashes between warring factions – once again on the streets of Goma – have led to thousands of people being displaced into temporary camps. Food is short. Water is contaminated. And there is the lurking nightmare that this might slip into a genocide reminiscent of horror that occurred just across the border in Rwanda during 1994.

While the international community decides whether it has the guts to intervene and prevent further violence and bloodshed, the aid agencies are rapidly deploying programmes of aid. To help fund those initiatives the Disaster Emergencies Committee (DEC) has launched a co-ordinated campaign to raise the much needed funds. For more information see our main story.