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Beautiful Misfits

TKE: How food can build a better future with Rosie Brown, Cook co-founder

Beautiful Misfits

Mary Portas

Society & Culture, Business

4.5 • 834 Ratings

🗓️ 8 July 2021

⏱️ 35 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

The frozen food brand Cook is a true family business. Co-founder Edward Perry was inspired by his parents’ frozen cake company to set up Cook and then joined in the business by brother James and sister Rosie, who’s now co-CEO. An early B Corps, Cook has donated two million meals to children living in some of the most poverty-stricken areas of the world and gave away more than 200000 meals to the needy during Covid. Thanks to initiatives to employ ex-offenders, a profit share and the living wage, they’ve also consistently been voted one of the Sunday Times’ top 100 businesses. But the company has faced some tough times financially too and Rosie tells Mary about how vital it was to stick their core values during them. They also discuss how food has taken centre stage over the past year - from panic buying to eating at home again (and again) - and how the wider food industry has made some big steps in recent years with increased organic production and a focus on reducing waste and plastic, but there’s still a lot to be done.  Mary's new book, Rebuild: how to thrive in the new Kindness Economy is available to buy now. To get in touch with team Portas, email us at: [email protected] Subscribe to the Portas POV Newsletter for musings, provaction insights and inspiration. Want to keep up-to-date with all things Portas? Follow us here: Instagram ** Linkedin ** Twitter

Transcript

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0:00.0

Hello, I'm Mary Portas and this is The Kindness Economy, a podcast that looks at the new values driving the businesses of tomorrow.

0:09.4

People, planet and profit in that order. It's the future. Are you ready for better?

0:19.8

Welcome back to the kindness economy.

0:22.2

And if you've just joined us on this journey, let me give you a little update on what's

0:25.5

happened so far.

0:27.3

So I have been questioning for many, many years how we might be able to make work better.

0:33.8

Well, not just for individuals, but for us all.

0:36.7

How could companies give more than they take?

0:40.7

Create positive impact rather than negative.

0:44.8

And so, while I think it was at the staff of 2020,

0:48.0

I got up on a stage to deliver this in a TED talk,

0:51.9

and I called it the kindness economy.

0:55.2

Three months later, COVID hit.

0:58.2

And we all experienced this major shift.

1:02.2

The kindness economy was needed more than ever.

1:06.6

So my team at Porterton and I, we started to talk about how we could bring this idea to life and work with businesses who wanted to create change.

1:17.8

From that came the first series of this podcast and as we put together the guest list, I was so happy to realise there were far more similar-minded business people out there than

1:29.7

I'd previously thought.

1:31.7

There was hope.

1:32.7

So what's happened since then?

1:34.2

Well, there was a book deal from Penguin, nice one.

1:37.6

And because of that, I got to talk to even more people on the ground who were trying,

...

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