Fruit Works is a worker co-operative based in Leeds.

Their vision is for a world where everyone can grow, pick and eat their own fruit.

So they grow and sell fruit trees, design and plan orchards, prune established trees and run training, mainly working with local councils, schools and community groups, and selling to individuals.

The organisation has 3 full-time members of staff, 1 part-time and a Countryside Worker apprentice who they share with another local outdoor social enterprise

Founder, Gini Morandi said, ‘fruit growing is a really easy and accessible way to get into food growing for anyone who’s never done it before. The process of growing fruit isn’t as involved as growing vegetables for example, so it can be a nice introduction.’

Being a worker co-operative, where everyone has an equal and democratic say in running the business made sense to founders, Gini and Alan, right from the start. Gini had a master’s degree in urban eco-systems and community-led food production, and Alan, known as ‘Alan Apple’, had a background in tree planting, and fruit growing, and he lives in a housing co-operative. Together they wanted to do something meaningful that connected people and helped them connect with nature and where their food comes from.

Over the last five years they’ve built good relationships with Bradford and Leeds Councils, have had funding from The Forestry Commission and worked with national charity, Trees for Cities. Initially, Gini was eligible for help and start-up training through the Princes’ Trust.

At the moment, their main customer is themselves, supplying trees for their community and school tree planting projects but they’re working on growing the wholesale side of their business in order to subsidise their social aims, including training. Their vision is to have a self-sustaining model, where they grow all their own trees, use them in their projects, and then train people up to do all of that for themselves. At the moment, they’re about halfway there.

Gini said ‘we grow about 1000 trees a year, and keep each tree for one to two years, but we’re only on about a fifth of an acre. Ideally, we’d like about an acre which would allow us to grow a lot more trees and grow them on for a bit longer so that they can get to a decent size.’

That’s where we came in. Business For Good West Yorkshire provides tailored business support to help people start or grow a purpose-driven, community business in West Yorkshire that works for people, places and planet.

Through our programme, Fruit Works were able to benefit from:

• 1-1 business support from Rachel, our Specialist Enterprise Coach based in Leeds
• Support to apply for our Growth & Resilience Grant scheme, which they were successful in
• A Growth & Resilience Grant which funded access further development support, time with a professional grower and accountancy support
• A place on our fully-funded Growth and Resilience Programme with the School for Social Enterpreneurs

What difference did it make?

Fruit Works have made huge progress towards their goals and our programme has supported them to:

• Create 1 new job
• Introduce advanced and accurate spreadsheets for record keeping, stock keeping and tracking orders
• Create marketing and communications strategies including marketing to existing customers who may not know about the whole range of their services
• Add new features onto their website to categories shop items and make it more user-friendly
• Build their knowledge of how to run a successful social enterprise
• Monitor profitability easily and budget forecast

We look forward to seeing what Fruit Works do next, they’re a brilliant addition to the community of co-ops here in West Yorkshire.

Find them over at: www.fruitworks.org.uk

Gini’s Top Tips

• • Keep things small – try not to grow too quickly and just focus on doing one or two things well
  • Make sure you have a strong support network and good contacts within your industry
  • Keep your outgoings and overheads as low as possible to start with and have some savings and options for paid work to subsidise you while you’re getting started