A Letter from Andre: A Good Place.
In one of my all-time favourite TV shows, "The Good Place", moral philosopher Chidi Anagonye regularly laments over making the right decision. Issues are complex, and rarely black and white, and we watch as the stress of making the right moral and ethical choice wears him down again and again.
In the show, which is almost entirely set in the afterlife, humans are awarded points for good deeds, and negative points for bad ones. At the end of their lives, the points are tallied up, which decides if you go up to heaven or down to hell. Sounds simple right?
Later in the show we discover that the complexities of modern life are so extreme that it is almost impossible to do a purely good deed. Almost every decision we make has an unintended negative impact. For example in the show, Chidi agonises over his choice of milk. Should he choose dairy milk which has issues of increased greenhouse gas emissions? Or an alternative like almond milk which has been criticised for being incredibly water intensive whilst being grown primarily in drought-prone regions?
I think about this a lot when it comes to running Open House. As well as being A Good Place, I want us to be A Good Business. I want to have a net positive impact on the world. And just like in the show, this simple wish can actually be incredibly difficult to achieve.
What is A Good Business? What is Good Business? For us it's all about making intentional choices. Choices that allow us to stay true to our values of Nourishing Community and Soul. All whilst doing our best for our team, our teachers, our suppliers, and our community of friends and customers.
Like Chidi, we agonise over wanting to make the right decision, all whilst knowing that sometimes there is no "right", and all we can do is to stay true to ourselves and be intentional about our choices.
Unlike Chidi, we also have to consider the issue of staying financially sustainable. And although profit does not feature on our list of goals, being financially responsible and sustainable I believe is an element of being A Good Business.
Being financially sustainable is becoming harder and harder, not just for ourselves, but for all of the small business owners in our community. There are cost increases that have been forced upon all of us, as well as increases that we have decided to take on ourselves. This has resulted in us having a look at our prices, and needing to make the decision to raise some of them (as well as reducing others).
Here's some of the inner workings that have led us to feel this way.
You may all be aware that minimum wages are increasing nationally from April. We've always believed that our team should be paid well, and intentionally have always paid more than the minimum wage, and never discriminated based on age. We've continued to choose this approach by deciding (effective from January 1st this year) to adopt the UK living wage for all our staff, which is 10% over the minimum wage for our staff 21 and over, 46% higher for those aged 18-20, and a whopping 97% more for our staff under 18.
There's a corresponding increase in the National Insurance rate from April, along with a drop in the threshold for employer contributions. Overall good for the country perhaps, but also a bit of a double whammy for small businesses like us as costs of employing a team go up significantly.
We're losing almost half of our business rates relief from April, which is dropping from 75% down to 40%. I don't want to sound ungrateful as any type of relief is a help, but having to account for a 35% increase in our rates does feel harsh at times.
We've made deliberate moves to ensuring that our supplies and produce come from organic, sustainable and local sources because we believe it really matters. Over the past year we've made significant gains in this area. As examples, all our bacon and ham now comes from Moss Valley Fine Meats, our smoked salmon from Severn & Wye Smokery, and all our organic fresh fruit and veg from Organic North Wholesale. You can see more about our suppliers here. As of last week we can now say that the vast majority of our food and drink comes from sources we can be proud of. Yes, it costs us more, but we think it's worth it for the good that it does us as individuals, as community, and as a planetary whole.
In our efforts to be A Good Place, we are continuously trying our best to be good to our people, our community and our planet. And at the same time we have to weigh this up against keeping our prices fair for our customers.
In this complex world we live in, finding the best possible path whilst forgiving ourselves for not being perfect is a constant challenge. I'm confident and proud of the decisions we've made as a team, and am eternally grateful for all the support we've received from our friends, community and customers.
As Chidi would say:
"I argue that we choose to be good because of our bonds with other people and our innate desire to treat them with dignity. Simply put, we are not in this alone."
