Reflections from the Better Food Traders core team on how the network is run and how it will evolve in the coming year.Â
Since 2020, Better Food Traders has grown as an increasingly diverse network of food enterprises across the UK.Â
What started as an informal network of a few veg schemes has evolved to include shops, wholesalers, bakeries, fishmongers, markets and online retailers. Each one is different, with different governance structures, locations and histories. There are co-operatives, community interest companies, charities, limited companies and sole traders; some are start-ups and some have been running since the 1970s; some are volunteer-run and some have teams of hundreds of staff. There are businesses with multiple city sites, and rural enterprises serving a small number of local people.Â
Across all these differences, every trader has been united by a commitment to the 6 Better Food Traders standards:
As the core team that coordinates this network, our mission is to support these traders, influence the wider system they operate in and stimulate demand, so that locally rooted social enterprises who sell UK-grown, planet-friendly produce can flourish.Â
After a period of growth and with a new team in place, myself included (hi!), we are learning a lot about how we do this and what we need to do differently.Â
Where we are now
In 2024, Better Food Traders became independent from its host Growing Communities and became a separate non-profit Community Interest Company. As the core team running Better Food Traders, we’ve come to see our job as three-fold:
- Member building | Supporting individual enterprises to thrive through training, peer support, collective learning, connection and networking, and solidarity amongst members.
- Market building | Influencing government policies that shape the food sector, conducting research, and building demand through coordinated marketing and campaigning to grow the sector.
- Movement building | Facilitating and convening across the UK, helping to grow the movement of people who are committed to better food trading.
After 18 months, we’ve decided to make some changes. We’re introducing 2 new more affordable membership fee tiers and laying out our commitment to widening participation in the BFT network. Here’s where we’re at.
Why a membership network?Â
Many of the people who run the kinds of enterprises we support are isolated, time-poor and experience regular stress. Being a BFT member means participating in a collective effort to learn together, support each other and raise the profile of the alternative and sustainable food retail sector with customers, policy-makers and food producers.
There are a lot of membership organisations in our sector, and we’re grateful to the leadership of those such as Landworkers Alliance, Co-operatives UK, workers.coop, Pasture for Life and CSA Network for inspiring our thinking. Many Better Food Traders members will and should be members of multiple networks, including them! As Sam Pressler said on the launch of the Connective Tissue membership:Â
“We don’t just need one community. We need lots of overlapping webs of association. If you think back on the civic life of old… we had several overlapping webs of membership — religious institutions, associational life, unions, political parties, neighbourhoods, families, and more. Part of the challenge today is that many people either have no webs of association or they maybe have one, and the consequences of losing that one are much higher because you have nothing else to fall back on.”
We collect membership fees, because we know that membership organisations that are paid for by ordinary people have an important role to play in creating societal change and building collective voice. As ActBuildChange said in Collecting Our Dues:
“We believe solely chasing funder grant systems or contracts will not get us where we need to get to… We want to encourage people’s organisations to think about how they organise their money and the stake that ordinary people get to play in the work that affects their lives. We believe that to organise our own money is not just for cashflow… It creates new opportunities to create a culture and infrastructure that can lead to winning transformative change owned by the people who have the biggest stake in its future.”
Their research reminds us of the role of membership organisations in affecting social change; they demonstrate how charity model and relying on grant funding means our organising becomes less transformative and more focused on achieving outputs for funders, rather than goals for members. It makes planning for long term, lasting change difficult; and it limits our ability to have important conversations about what it truly takes to achieve meaningful change.Â
If we want a thriving alternative food retail sector to support UK farmers, increase access to planet-friendly food, and create great places to live and work, we need our members to have these conversations and own the agenda.
With common benefit amongst members at the heart of spending decisions, membership fees helps pay for things like:Â
- Contributing to the hiring of expert trainers
- Paying members to lead peer-learning sessions
- Creating shared resources, such as biannual business benchmarkingÂ
- Bringing members together in-person
Beyond this, fees enable this network to be bigger than the sum of its parts. They demonstrate the commitment of many individual enterprises and make the collective voice of our network stronger. This is a vital part of being able to influence the wider system around individual enterprises, to increase support from policy makers and to stimulate demand so that we see change in how food is produced, sold and consumed.Â
How will we strengthen this network?
Currently, there are 5 main ways that members have a say in what Better Food Traders is and how it works for them:
- Attend the Annual Gathering
- Contribute to the annual Member Survey
- Directly communicate your ideas and feedback with the core team
- Engage with the Advisory Board, which includes BFT members
- Express your ideas and needs via the Members Group
If you are a member, you are encouraged to get involved and shape this network as you see fit!
Beyond this, we want to increase transparency and strengthen members’ ability to influence decisions. Next year, we will introduce new ways for members to have their say about the training we deliver, the research we do, the campaigns we run and the policies we advocate for. We’ll explore new tools for collaborating and supporting each other, and embed new ways for members to shape Better Food Traders’ activities (with the option to be as involved as much or as little as you’d like).
How will we grow this network?
The work that our members do is for a better planet. It is also, crucially, about good work, joy, health and wellbeing. It’s about community power, assets and solidarity. It’s about placemaking and regeneration that is genuinely led by the people that live there. And it’s about democracy.
The diversity of enterprises that make up the Better Food Traders network make it strong. However, from the staff that run these enterprises, to the communities they serve, it is people that power this movement. To ensure this network is truly representative of the rich and dynamic range of cultures, financial capacity, class, race, gender and abilities that make up the UK, we have a lot more work to do.Â
This work is political. We need to be steadfast in our commitment to social and economic justice. We need to better understand the barriers to participating in this network, including our standards, programming, communications and organisational policies. We will be doing this learning over the next year and beyond. One tangible change we can make now is lowering the barriers to entry. So, we’ve changed our membership costs.Â
How will we deepen our understanding of the network?
With an evolving membership of new kinds of traders, we have a lot of perspectives to understand and support. Beyond understanding the barriers to participating in Better Food Traders network, we’re going to be getting to know our members, their strengths and experiences, so that all members find the support they need to succeed.Â
What next?
For the Better Food Traders staff team:
- Develop our learning programming to ensure its clear, coherent, consistent and accessible for all members
- Redesign our peer-support spaces to prioritise collective learning, action and solidarity
- Explore new tools for members to remotely collaborate, network, make collective decisions and learn from each other
- Build understanding of the specific needs and experiences of each segment of the BFT membership
- Develop dedicated offers for new kinds of Better Food Traders, starting with markets
We’re excited to work with you, traders, food systems workers and food lovers, to grow this vibrant and vital movement of better food traders!
If you have thoughts, feedback or ideas for how this network should keep evolving, get in touch.