OUR STORY AND WHY 2023 REALLY MATTERS
We’ve been in the trenches with our food industry clients for the last 20 years — before most people were even talking about climate impact.
We’ve gone from just the Kate and Mandy double act winging it in a tiny portacabin in a car park, to a team of utterly brilliant strategists and an ever-growing network of expert voices from the world of activism, academia, and industry.
Veris was born out of pure passion and at a time when our biggest job was convincing the food industry that climate was an issue that needed attention beyond the environmental manager (sometimes just the health & safety manager).
This is the bit where people usually talk about how fast they grew and how effortless it was… because their concept was so spot on. That’s absolutely not our story and it still isn’t.
Convincing distracted C-Suites, who don’t know which impending disaster is more urgent, is never easy. Pushing genuine change through massive organisations is messy and emotive. And working for a cause that feels so big and urgent, can at times be mentally and emotionally draining.
Our story is more about grit and unfailing belief in our mission.
Today we’re a team of 16 humans (+3 dogs) in much nicer offices. We work with the absolute best of the best, and they choose us because we’re not corporate or boring. I’d like to think our energy and optimism are totally contagious and they sum up the Veris culture.
We’ve consciously built a highly flexible network of talents, skills, experiences and viewpoints, rather than a set of fixed departments, because we want to stay agile, to bring together different shapes of team around client challenges and to ensure the culture stays open to different ways of doing things and different sources of ideas and information.
There are lots of new faces on the block, but we’re pretty confident that we’re different. We aren’t a shiny new department or a specialist bolt-on. We are industry die-hards and the fact we’re wildly independent, means we get to preserve that difference.
We answer only to our clients and our consciences, not shareholders or holding companies. That gives us the freedom to do only the work that creates impact, with client collaborators who share our mission.
We’re so proud of the work we do today and the clients we do it with. We’ve won awards and have some great client testimonials, but the thing we’re most proud of is the launch of The Future Food Movement (FFM). We launched it in 2022, as a resource for the whole food & drinks industry. It was a massive stretch (and risk) for us and a total labour of love. FFM sits at the frontline of climate debate for the food industry and is dedicated to upskilling, empowering and genuinely changing the game within brave organisations who want to do better.
We have full belief that the food industry can become a positive ally to a planet that’s on fire and we are here to get our hands dirty with you.
For our business, this is the year where we go full-throttle.
With fewer than seven years left before irreversible damage, this has to be the year where we all do better.
It is hard, but it matters.
Are you with us? Are you #MissionAligned?
Kate
Founder, Veris Strategies & Future Food Movement.