“A love of organic is at the
heart of everything we do”
Abel & Cole is committed to food sourced from organic farms.
Ed Ayton from Abel & Cole’s Green Team explainsHow did it all start?
It was 30 years ago (aah, the 80s!)
that Keith Abel ditched law for veg
and never looked back. He started
with a bag of spuds, selling door to
door. Before long, a chap called
Bernard Gauvier, who we still work
with today, offered him some organic
potatoes. Organic spuds became
spuds and eggs, and then spuds, eggs
and vegetables, and so Abel & Cole’s
organic veg box was born.
What are the biggest changes that
have happened since then?
Going digital in the early 00s. We
went from going door to door to
selling online. It’s meant we can share
our love of organic food more easily.
What are you most passionate about?
We’d be remiss if we didn’t mention
what started it all – a love of organic.
It’s at the heart of everything we do.
We’re about food as it should be, free
from artificial fertilisers, herbicides
and GM feeds – food that meets UK
certified organic standards. Real
commitment is needed to go organic,
and you can taste the difference.
Tell us about the eco credentials
you’re most proud of.
We have a lot to be proud of! For
starters, the packaging innovations
we’ve made. We avoid it altogether
where possible, and invest a lot into
reusing, recycling and reducing what
we do use – we’ve calculated that our
fruit and veg deliveries use 71% less
plastic than the major supermarkets.
Instead of polystyrene boxes we use
wool to insulate the cold items in our
deliveries, and we’ve also developed
alternatives such as our compostable
carrot bags. If any of our customers
aren’t able to recycle or compost
something we’ve sent, we’ll pick it up
the next week and do it for them.
Celebrating seasonal food and
prioritising UK farmers reduces our
energy costs. Working closely with
our suppliers to plan their harvests
together, being flexible and seasonal
with what goes into our boxes, and
inspiring our customers with delicious
leftover recipes, are some of our
strategies for reducing food waste. In
our pursuit of offering the most
sustainable service we can,
everything is considered: even our
paper newsletters are FSC-certified,
carbon-balanced and printed using
vegetable ink.How do you keep ahead of the
competition?
By sticking to our values and always
asking what we can do better.
Through working directly with our
growers, makers and bakers, we can
continue to bring our customers newand exciting organic food. We can
offer technical and financial
assistance to support their innovation
(like unheated polytunnel growing, to
achieve what could be the first
commercial, organic sweet potato
crop in the UK), or help them through
their organic certification process.What’s next for the company?
Lettuce just look into our crystal ball...
We continue to innovate, whether
that’s developing our packaging,
being part of the Clean Van
Commitment (helping the UK put
more electric vans our roads) or
building on our work as a socially
responsible B Corp. We’ve never been
ones to rest on our laurels – it’s what’s
kept us going since the 80s!