P | P | P feat. Good: Stories in Food

We caught up with Florence Pardoe, founder of GOOD: Stories in Food, a Bristol-based company offering food tours and events that highlight ethical and sustainable practices.

In this article Florence shares the origin of GOOD, the early challenges she had to overcome and highlights the importance of accessibility, creativity, and partnerships to grow business and expand into new markets.

Can you please introduce yourself, what your business does, what stage you are at currently and what makes your business and offering unique?

I’m Florence, director/founder at GOOD: Stories in Food. We are a food experiences and communication enterprise that aims to captivate and inspire food enthusiasts by showcasing the stories of ethical and sustainable producers, restaurants, retailers and projects. Ultimately, we want to play our small part in driving positive change in our food system. 

We do this primarily through tours and events – for the public, for private groups and corporate teams. Our tours are fun, informal and informative. We work exclusively with independent local businesses and, whilst we ply our guests with delicious food and drink, we share the stories behind the businesses. Our main focus is on sustainability and ethics, such as a bakery that sources local wheat and mills it themselves, but we also work with a number of businesses that have historical roots in the city, like the 280 year old wine cellar hidden in central Bristol. 

We also produce film content for businesses and organisations driving positive change in food. We have produced a series for Birmingham City Council on their food work in the city, a series focusing on growing sites across Bristol and short form social media content for local hospitality businesses. Again, our focus is communicating the GOOD in these stories, rather than simply promoting a product or business.

This is what makes our offering unique – our commitment to the values that we believe to be essential to a sustainable food future and sharing these with our audience. We have found that our audience is not necessarily engaged with issues of sustainability. They come to us because they love food and drink. This puts us in a rare position to preach to the congregation and not the choir. I like to think of it as education by stealth!

I started GOOD in early 2023, so we are still in the relatively early days of growth, building our audience and reach, diversifying our offering and developing new products. At the moment, we are particularly focused on generating new corporate clients and tapping into the international tourism market.

Can you share the story behind the origin of your business and Service / Product?

My background is in science and environment. I wanted to work in wildlife conservation, and it was while working on the issue of palm oil that I started to become interested in how agriculture impacts the environment. The more I learnt about food systems, the more I recognised the potential power that food holds to drive positive change for planetary, community, economic and human health. I spent the last 10 years of my life working in food systems, from community projects, to education and engagement, to policy at local, national and international level.

Whilst I was working in my policy role, sat at a desk for eight hours a day, I developed severe chronic pain and was diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. I had to leave that job, however I was never happy sat behind a desk anyway. My real passion and skill set has always been in communication and education. 

GOOD was born from the combination of what I could physically manage and what I really wanted to do with my time. Whilst the work of GOOD is perhaps less high impact than working on government policy, what more fun way is there to share my passions than to take people out eating and drinking delicious things and telling them stories along the way!

Speaking of People, can you share some challenges you have faced, are facing or are anticipating around scaling and growing your team? Do you have any top tips you could share with those businesses faced with the same issues?

When I was thinking about starting the business, I was very fortunate to meet someone who told me about Access to Work. Because of my chronic health conditions, there is no way I could have managed the workload required to start and grow a business without support. Access to Work is a DWP initiative that provides support to people with health challenges that limit their ability to work. I received funding for a support worker who helps me with the heavy lifting for computer-based tasks. I’ve been hugely fortunate to find an absolute superstar who is highly talented at marketing and an absolute pleasure to work with. This support has been invaluable and I would not be where I am with the business now without it. 

It does not seem to be something that is widely known about and I would encourage anyone who has limiting health issues or disabilities to see whether this scheme could benefit them. 

Moving to Product, what has been your approach to understanding and implementing product market fit or sales cycles?

As a relatively new business we are still learning about our sales cycles and our market. When I was setting up the business I researched trends in UK tourism with a specific focus on food and sustainability. I also spoke with various existing organisations. Visit Bristol in particular have been an invaluable partner. We became a member early on and have benefited from their data, insights and experience, as well as their network.

Currently, most of our business is domestic and we have found that, surprisingly, July and August have been particularly quiet months for us. In these summer months we see high competition for alternative activities within the UK and lots of people are travelling abroad. We are currently working to tap into the international market through Overseas Travel Agencies and are listing on more platforms.

As we expand our corporate offering, I am using networking events, my existing networks and platforms such as LinkedIn to generate conversations and explore what appeals to corporate groups. We’re also exploring the market to see what else is on offer in this space.

And then Potential, can you share some challenges or barriers you had to overcome to create a Product / Service offering with potential?

One of our main challenges is reaching and engaging with a new audience. As a new business,  one has to be creative and persistent to establish a brand as reliable, respected and desirable.  

We know our products are excellent and have great potential, and receive nothing but positive feedback. Growing the public facing products has been relatively organic, particularly with partnerships such as Visit Bristol and Yuup. Tapping into the corporate market is more challenging. One utilises the usual avenues of mail outs, LinkedIn and cold calls, but as we all know these are not high return techniques! We are still experimenting with more creative ways to engage with this market, such as reaching out to the B-Corp community and finding like-minded and supportive people who want to share our work, such as ADLIB!

Investment can often be a challenge for start-ups & scaleups. Do you have any piece of wisdom you could share around best approach?

The nature of the work we do at GOOD requires very little investment. Beyond basic operational costs, our overheads are minimal and there is no equipment required to run a tour! 

Who knows what the future may hold? Perhaps in a few years time will be franchising GOOD to other cities and looking for scale up investment. But that is very much a bridge to be crossed!

The purpose of article series ‘Product | People | Potential’ is to feature and showcase the very best UK start-ups with grand potential, truly inspiring businesses that are shaking up their sector. We capture and share the stories behind the name. We collate authentic peer to peer real talk, while celebrating the growth and success thus far and gather a glimpse of what’s ahead.