GCDA

Business Start-Up training from GCDA

garygcda — Fri, 05 Jan 2018 13:00:38 +0000

An excellent opportunity to pursue your business idea covering a variety of topics to develop skills and confidence and get you started.

You will learn about and complete feasibility studies and to test the market and your business idea,
how to test yourself and undertake a personal assessment
Understand which legal structure suits you and how to access different types of funding
how to create a budget, and manage your businesses finance
how to promote yourself including social media

Dates

Business Start-up training – Greenwich

24th January – 14th March 2018 (Wednesdays)

18th April – 23rd May 2018 (Wednesdays)

13th June – 18th July 2018 (Wednesdays)

To Book a place, please email Edina@gcda.org.uk or call Edina on 020 8269 4880

Trainer: Sergio Olivares

Sergio has a First Degree and Master in Economics.

Has worked in enterprise development for over 25 years and delivering training and development to a variety of individuals and groups and enabled the establishment of many successful enterprises in Greenwich and other South East London boroughs.

He has a comprehensive and balanced understanding of the different areas required for sustainability including human resource development, marketing, finance and the legal framework required by social enterprises.

Sergio has an ILM level 5 qualification in enterprise development and is in the process of qualifying as a community shares advisor

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Inspiring New Film On Worker Co-ops

garygcda — Mon, 13 Mar 2017 15:15:40 +0000

How can The Hive help your co‑op grow?

The subject of our film, Leeds Bread Co‑op, received support from The Hive, our business support programme in partnership with The Co‑operative Bank, to get help with its expansion plans at a critical stage of their business development.

Nearly half of the co‑ops The Hive works with are existing co-ops wanting to grow or strengthen. How can The Hive help YOUR co‑op? Click Here to find out

The video features Leeds Bread Co‑op. Brought to you by Co‑operatives UK in partnership with The Co‑operative Bank. Captured by Blake House Filmmakers Co‑operative, who also received support from The Hive.

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New Food Businesses in Greenwich

garygcda — Thu, 24 Nov 2016 13:21:21 +0000

We’re delighted to welcome several new exciting food businesses in Greenwich! Funded by the RBG Skills Team GCDA trained 20 new food businesses on a 10-week course that covered everything a budding new food entrepreneur would need to know in order to start trading. We met some great new people and the businesses are a fantastic mix ranging from homemade products such as dips and sauces, pop-up, and market stalls, and also those wanting to set up cafes as social enterprises.

Alia’s Wholesome Foods is making an Egyptian ‘ful’ dip from UK grown fava beans – look out for her in supermarkets next year! Jay Scott from Hey Sugar is producing an exciting range of refined sugar-free treats for the more health conscious. And for those with a love of all things hot and spicy, Anne Torrens of Food Tech Kitchen is making delicious hot and spicy sauces and marinades. Steph from Viva Cakes does incredible, free-from cakes, Kuki is going to be cooking up a South Africa storm with original flavours from her village in South Africa. And My Tang is selling the most incredible Vietnamese food.

We have Clive who is setting up a community bakery offering real bread at affordable prices and Everyll whose vegan inspired foods are some of the most delicious we’d tasted! And more good news for plant-based food lovers; Kris from the Honest Feeder sells his delicious salads from market stalls, as a result of coming on the training, is also holding a pop-up at Greenwich West next month. Gesmay has the most incredible idea working with bananas and has a recipe book coming out with over 50 banana recipes!

There are also some incredible social enterprises wanting to get off the ground including Listening ears who are hoping to set up a café for the community to meet in and eat health, African foods, and Renee who is setting up a café as a social enterprise to offer employment for vulnerable women who have experienced any kind of abuse, violence and sexual exploitation – including women fleeing domestic violence with the idea that the food is cooked by women from all over the world and from the UK.

And if you’re looking for someone to book for an event, then Foxy’s Woodfired Pizzas could be perfect. A wood-fired pizza van and delicious, authentic pizzas fresh to your plate.

Claire Pritchard, CEO of GCDA and trainer said “It has been an incredible 10 weeks and we have been blown away by the people we’ve met. They brought us delicious food every week, and have developed an incredible support group to help each other build their businesses. I am going to miss our Wednesday mornings!”

The course embeds health and sustainability and all the businesses had to show how their menus complied. As a result, we now have plenty of new sign-ups to the Good Food in Greenwich charter and couldn’t be happier!

Gesmay of Sharing Bananas, said “It was an amazing experience doing the training. Claire & Mel, of GCDA are excellent trainers, full of passion in inspiring people to run a successful food business. They didn’t leave any stone un-turned as every aspect was covered. I can’t thank them enough for taking me on this powerful journey.”

If you or someone you know wants to start a food business, then you can come on a one day course to get a taste of what it’s all about. These are running on the 18^th January (book here) and the 22^nd February (book here). And if you’re really serious, the 10 week course will be running again in April. Please contact Edina on 0208 2694880 or email edina@gcda.org.uk for more information.

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Croydon Food Businesses Training Begins!

garygcda — Wed, 20 Jan 2016 12:34:58 +0000

GCDA is delighted to have been awarded the contract to deliver training to budding food businesses in Croydon. As part of the Food Flagship Programme, Croydon Council has commissioned us to run an 8 week training course for 11 passionate food entrepreneurs. The course will cover all the fundamental elements of starting and running a food business including how to do feasibility studies, ensuring robust financial planning, how to source, manage production and deal with the many logistics of running a food business, and how to brand and market the business.

However, what makes this course unique form other food business start-up training courses is the emphasis on healthy and sustainable food. As people become more aware of the content of their food and where it comes from, they are looking for new and exciting food businesses to buy from. We embed the principles of healthy and sustainable food within the training ensuring all businesses know how to maximise these themes in order to maximise profit. This could be basing meals more on plant sources and using less meat, or making sure all fish is from a sustainable source, and all veg is seasonal.

Once trained they will be able to access a start-up grant to help them on their way to trading successfully and we will be supporting them all the way.

Here’s what one of the participants said:

“I am really excited about this training and am already thinking of meals and menus in my head. I look forward to pooling our collective resources and skills and am keen to learn from your experience in the catering industry.”

If you’re not based in Croydon and would like to access food business support, don’t despair! GCDA runs a 1 day Food Business Start-up course in Greenwich every 2 months. Please see the training pages for more information.

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Good Food in Greenwich is 1 year old!

garygcda — Thu, 29 Oct 2015 14:10:04 +0000

It’s been a busy year at Good Food in Greenwich since our inaugural Steering Group meeting in October 2014. Building on our recognition as a Sustainable Food City, we initially formed a secretariat group to build some of the structures and ideas, and then invited organisations and businesses to sit on the steering group where the name Good Food in Greenwich was agreed. We also developed a Good Food Charter for individuals and businesses to sign up to to make a pledge to do something towards Goof Food. We have developed this website where we regularly update stories and news to keep people abreast of what’s going on in the network. We have held 3 big events including a winter Launch in December last year, a Food Growing Conference in June, and a large public event in July in Woolwich, and we have attended many more. We’ve been busy on social media with very active Twitter and Facebook accounts and have sent out 4 newsletters. This is all fantastic public facing work and we’ve engaged with hundreds if not thousands over the year this way.

However, the Steering Group and sub groups have also been beavering away working on the Action Plans that show the progression of work and plans for the future. We have achieved a huge amount through these groups and you can see some of the highlights below:

Greenwich to feature in the new Good Food for London Poverty Report and have been commended for the work we are doing
Mulgrave fruit & veg stall supplying easy, affordable access to families in the area
Thanks to our partnership with Fareshare, Rhodes Bakery now deliver all their surplus bread (over 40kg) to them
A project between Trust Thamesmead and Waste Services, RBG has piloted separating food waste in a block of flats – a notoriously difficult thing to achieve
Woolwich Common Community Centre is soon to be Fareshare Hub operating to distribute food to community groups and projects
Greenwich University pledged zero waste to landfill and have succeeded in this – see their sustainable food policy here
We have launched a Gleaning Project to help use ripe fruit falling from trees and Waste Services are supporting this project too
Healthier Catering Commitments has gone from strength to strength working with takeaways to make their offer healthier, and will now include tips on waste and other Good FiG priorities
GSPlus, the school meal provider has re-branded as Incito & employed a community chef
They have also been awarded Silver Food for Life, with Gold in 2 schools, and have also received Compassion in World Farming Awards for RBG for Good Egg, Good Chicken & Good Dairy. They are the only London borough with 3 awards!
GCDA has delivered 6 Food Business Training days to over 60 businesses & individuals
Greenwich University host Sustainable Fortnight offering free sustainable cooking sessions
GCDA’s Made in Greenwich Project works with people in recovery to produce healthy home-made meals and will now be a Fareshare Community Food Member, using food surplus
Growing Conference held at Woodlands Farm showcasing local & national projects and work began on a food growing strategy
GCDA launched ‘How to set up a Food Growing Project’ training – the first day was held in September and attended by 13 people including schools & community groups
Foraging walks with Charlton Athletic Community Trust have been trialled and will run this November during Foraging Fortnight

And these are just some of the amazing things that have been going on. We have partnered with over 60 businesses and organisations, recruited a volunteer, co-ordinated 4 steering group meetings and 16 sub group meetings to move the action forward, and so much more! We are so delighted with the work we’ve achieved, which couldn’t have happened without the support from and action of some amazing partners, particularly Royal Borough Greenwich who had the vision to fund this work in the borough, and the people of Greenwich. However, there’s still much more to be done, so join us to help make Greenwich a fairer, healthier and more sustainable borough.

If you’d like to get involved, please email goodfig@gcda.org.uk and come along to our steering group this Tuesday 13th from 10am – 12pm at Fareshare. Drop us a line if you’d like to come along.

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