Just Change - Newsletter

This summer (what summer?) London Just Change volunteers Ed, Eva, Jack, Lara, Louise, Lucy, Rohan, Tricia and Zoe have been busy attending various events to sell tea and spread the word about Just Change! Early in June we ran a very successful stall at the Camden Green Fair and Bike Feast held in Regent’s Park right in the heart of London with around 30,000 attending. To cover the cost of having a stall we sold iced tea and fruit flavoured tea – people loved it! Over 100 cups sold in addition to the many packets of tea sold.
This formula has been repeated in subsequent events such as the first ever Greenwich Fair Trade market in July, the Greenfest in run by the eco café The Fold (who use our tea) and the Broadwater Farm Food Co-op Trial Day.

Food Project We shared a stall at The Bowes Community Action Street Party with the local Fair Trade group and Just Change tea was used by a “green” conference center, Green and Away, throughout their annual summer eco-conference and Ed attend the Urban Green Fair for Just Change at the end of August. In addition we have had talks with various people about ways forward and funding options. And probably more by the time you read this!
Networks have been developing in Brighton (South England) with Emmaus and other community groups in the area including a food-growing project have been developed. This is moving fast!

So… all developing well – the network is growing and most of all – we are selling tea and creating awareness. A big thanks to our band of loyal volunteers!

In September this year, Stan and Mari visited Brighton along with Louise and experienced firsthand how JC is growing in Brighton. Ross & Brian from Emmaus

The Steiner School has decided to make Just Change their Social Enterprise project as part of their Life Skills course. Hazel who teaches the course invited us to speak to Class 9 which will be taking up the project. It was great fun to meet with the students and see their enthusiam.
Emma Beer who works at the Belgrave Day Care Centre has been selling JC tea there. She ran a blind tasting session and nearly everyone picked JC as the better tea!! The Cowley Club is another place thats selling the tea and next time around we will probably set up a meeting with them and maybe arrange to give a talk at the Club.

And Emmaus - a world wide charity for homeless people - ran a trial and promotion of Just Change tea in the community café displaying our posters and leaflets following our presence at their Solidarity day in June. Madelin at the Emmaus Community Cafe told us they just decided to go straight ahead with JC tea and now that is the only tea being used at the cafe and it is doing well! Emmaus is clearly a community with whom we should build closer links.

We spent a day with the Whitehawk Community Food Project on their allotments. Everyone had cooked different things and it was pot luck. Our contribution was a vegetable curry by Louise, a peas pilau rice by Mari and her cousin Anne and chappatis by Stan! All of which were a big hit. Stan gave a talk on JC and felt quite at home – sitting in the open with everyone scattered around with children and pets all part of the event. It was exactly like a meeting in an adivasi village! Nathan of Marsh Farm who took a break from apple picking to join us in Brighton put up a table displaying our tea and some of the sample spices we had brought. We sold out!!
So a good foundation in Brighton has been obviously laid. The challenge is for us to build on it. top

The first ton of tea sent to Marsh Farm for distribution has been emptied out of the Marsh Farm warehouse! Though some stocks lie with various volunteers, most of it has been sold and the initial figures show that we have generated quite a bit of surplus. We are all set for the next consignment of tea from India. Nathan

Marsh Farm Outreach has just reinvented themseves as a Community Interest Company – Stan has been invited to be one of the non-executive directors. Now that they seem to be winning the battle to protect the Community Enterprise Centre which was under attack from vested interest wanting to pull it down, the MFO team are able to devote more time to something really close to their heart – the Organisation Workshop Programme . The OW is a programme that aims to set a number of social enterprises in Marsh Farm and Just Change is one of them. MFO have set themselves some ambitious targets. They are aware that most people including their funders would see these targets as being unrealistic. But here's what Glenn has to say about this:

“If this was a classic case of setting up new businesses they would be absolutely right to expect far lower forecasts than we have made. However, these new start ups are anything but a classic case because:
a) there are lots of potential 'customers in waiting' who already spend lots of money buying the goods and services we intend to provide - its just that they cant buy them on the estate at the moment. b) The majority of residents say they will use the services once they are set up (garage, tea, fast food etc) and c) the new enterprises will be right on the doorstep whereas existing outlets used by Farmers are at least 1/2 mile away - its honestly hard to imagine people driving past the Garage and MOT station where they know the people who work there to use another MOT station!

On the tea sales that we've projected... Please dont think that the tea sales we've (not) achieved to date can in any way be used as a guide for projecting future sales. Thats why we never mentioned the tonne thats already been sold in the biz plan. If the plan had to allow for sales as slow as that tonne, Marsh Farm would never Just Change anything! The truth is we have never put any effort whatsoever into selling the tea in Luton - other than putting it on the shelf in Nisa and Nathan visiting a few fair trade forums. The fact we have still sold a steady slow flow is encouraging in that it shows people keep it up once they start drinking it. This lack of push is obviously because we have had to focus our energies on saving the CERC and securing the OW - but its also because we are determined to launch JCMF as part of the OW rather than as a standalone enterprise because this strengthens its prospects of survival no end. The plan involves

a) kids on bikes delivering on Marsh Farm (great sales reps and people will like the idea)
b) excellent display stands which tell the story of JC for 30 Luton supermarkets
c) community to community links for national roll out using our template

We hope to start the OW in January and its at this point there will be a major push with full time effort on a daily basis. However, to test our marketing strategy up front I'll suggest to the team that now we've got the OW ready for appraisal we carry out an early push - to put our projections to the test. We'll do that by getting 2 kids with JC mountain bikes to deliver a couple of trial teabags to all of the houses in one street. Plan is to let them taste the tea before going back a couple of days later to ask if they would place orders for deliveries on Sundays.
So we DO - and always have had - a serious ambition to replace PG Tips as the most drunk tea on Marsh Farm within 2 years of starting an intense sales campaign, and we really believe it will work - once we've started it.”

We had tried two different routes of getting tea to our UK consumers. One was to send it as loose tea in sacks to our partners in Chesterfield - the Northern Tea Merchants. They would tea-bag and pack it and distribute it. We then experimented with tea bagging and packing in India and sending this direct – which was the one ton Marsh Farm received. After comparing both routes, we have decided to stick to the Northern Tea Merchants route. But everybody preferred the foil packing from India. So John Fishwick and others worked with Northern Tea Merchants to develop a new foil pack and label for the UK. This pack is a huge improvement on the one from India!

The bookshop is only a few minutes away from Kings Cross tube station - so very central - and they have been very supportive of us, so do please go there for your supplies. It is a very interesting bookshop too! So Londoners, let all your friends know. Getting there