In exciting news last week I learned that the Northern Valleys Locavore Store had been selected as one of 30 West Australian finalists in the prestigious 2023 Telstra Best of Business Awards program!

 It has been a rigorous judging process requiring extensive documentation of contributions and outcomes of the business as well as future strategies and philosophies, some of which had to be presented in a live video format!

We also had to demonstrate the impact we had in our chosen category – Promoting Sustainability – and had to show that we were reducing our environmental impact by driving sustainable change within our industry for a cleaner and healthier planet.

Since reducing the carbon footprint of our food is our primary focus, this was the easiest part!  We know that reducing the distance the food travels saves an enormous amount of fuel, energy and wages. All the other things we care about at the store such as reducing plastic use, conserving energy use and eliminating food waste also contributed to us meeting the sustainability criteria.

The Telstra awards program has been running for more that 25 years and consists of 4 stages – all requiring an in-depth look at how the business operates in terms of strategy and vision, customers and marketing, systems, people and culture, innovation and technology, social responsibility and financial acumen – and whatever happens next it has been a very valuable process! I’m not generally one to go for awards, but I have to say the way this one has been designed makes it an excellent learning experience.

I do want to take this opportunity to sincerely thank all the producers who have come on board at the store – they are crucial to our success and without them we would be nothing! I really appreciate many of them have taken a risk and changed the way they operate to work with our system – which has been very brave and forward-thinking of them. They are all small businesses too, and change, though inevitable, is not always easy. Of course I’d like to thank all of the wonderful Locavore Store team too – they are a fantastic bunch and we really do have fun working together and I feel very proud of what we’ve achieved.

We will join the other West Australian finalists – approximately 5 for each of the 6 categories – Accelerating Women, Championing Health, Embracing Innovation, Indigenous Excellence, Outstanding Growth and Promoting Sustainability at a black tie dinner at Crown on 14 February 2023 to find out the state winners – I’ll keep you posted!