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Business
The pound in your pocket is more powerful than you think.
Supporting a local food economy that thrives and keeps money in our towns.
The Business plate is about using how we shop, eat and spend to strengthen the local food economy.
It is not about sponsorship or asking others for help.
It is about connection and the everyday choices that, made collectively, keep money in the places that grow it.
WhY Business matters
Food jobs matter. Local growers, market traders, and small food businesses need customers more than they need campaigns. When we spend locally, we build the conditions for more local growing, more local employment, and a high street worth having.
Incredible Edible groups help connect people with real, local food, and have an important role to play in inspiring a different way of spending money.
The sticky money economy is a simple idea: money spent with local food businesses tends to stay local, circulate, and multiply. Money spent elsewhere tends not to come back.
The business plate is about tipping that balance, one purchase at a time.
What Business action looks like
The business plate is less about grand gestures and more about being inventive with the spending that’s already happening. Here are some of the ways groups put it into practice:
Spend local first
Before heading to the supermarket, try the local market. A small shift in where people spend makes a real difference to small traders with small margins. Make it a habit, and encourage others to do the same.
Run a ‘buy local’ day
Organise a monthly buy-something-local day in your community. In summer, pair it with a picnic. Create a reason for people to seek out local food and celebrate what’s on their doorstep.
Start an ‘Every Something Matters’ campaign
Pick one locally-produced item (eggs, onions, pies) and create a simple map showing where people can buy it locally. Share it, invite others to add to it, and watch the list grow. It turns an ordinary purchase into a community act.
Give local traders a voice
Get blackboards made with your group name on and give them to local traders to write up what they have on offer that week. Blackboards are the propaganda gardens of the market stall – visible, inviting, and impossible to scroll past.
Create a green route
Work with a group member who has design skills to produce a simple route map linking your edible spaces with local cafes, shops, and markets. Give visitors and locals alike a reason to explore and spend locally.
Shout about it
Promote local producers and markets on social media. Tweet your purchases. Create a hashtag. Small businesses have small marketing budgets – your voice is one of the most useful things you can offer them.
Supporting local creates a ripple effect. It keeps small businesses like mine thriving, keeps carbon emissions down, strengthens our communities, and helps more people access fresh, locally grown food.
Amy
Nell's Urban Greens
Business stories
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How to get started
Ready to spin the business plate? The Toolshed has practical guides and tips from groups across the network on building a local food economy in your community.
Organising
How businesses can get involved with local food
Organising
How to engage with local businesses
find a group
There are Incredible Edible groups supporting local food economies all over the UK. Find one close to you and see what’s already growing.
start a group
If there isn’t a group near you, you can start one. It doesn’t take much – just a few people, somewhere to grow, and the willingness to begin.
