Happy New Year! Thank you so much to all of you who have shopped with us over the last year. With the New Year approaching, we wanted to share some of our highlights from 2024.

Our founder attended investiture for his MBE

Our founder, Phil Haughton, was recognised in the 2024 New Year Honours for his life’s work to create a better and fairer food system. In May, he attended a ceremony at Buckingham Palace to receive his MBE medal from Princess Anne for services to sustainable food initiatives and the community of Bristol.

Phil said: “The joy of the day was having the chance to meet so many people who had spent their lives doing amazing things. The couple who had devoted 30 years to foster caring, the husband and wife who had crowdfunded to build a Hindu temple in Oxford, or the brilliant woman who went into prisons to teach origami and use their work to raise money for prisoner rehabilitation. All these people and a hundred more were proud and passionate about their work and full of delight at receiving the honour.”

Read more about Phil’s journey here.

Supporting our communities

We have supported over 50 local organisations with donations or raffle prizes including Empire Fighting Chance, Coexist Community Kitchen, Zion Community Space and Age UK Bristol, just to name a few. And we’ve continued to donate veg boxes to Redcliffe Nursery School & Children’s Centre and Aid Box Community.

Our teams have been using their volunteer days to support causes close to them, including, breastfeeding peer support, community farms, community cafes and food banks, totaling over 60 hours.

Engaging with our community

This year marked an exciting milestone with the launch of our Community Card, and we couldn’t be more thrilled with your response. It’s been great to connect with more of our customers over this and we’re looking forward to launching more initiatives and rewards throughout 2025.

We’ve had an exciting year of welcoming you to our events. From a range of informative nutrition talks covering topics such as menopause, winter wellbeing, gut health and more, two buzzing Supper Clubs, delicious kimchi making, and creative workshops from floristry and pottery to chocolate making. It’s been great to meet so many of our customers, both old and new, at these events.

We’re looking forward to building on this in 2025 and sharing our progress throughout the year. Wishing you a very Happy New Year from the Better Food Team!