Out & About January 2017

cooking

up a treat

Romilla Arber, founder of the Honesty Group, explains the philosophy behind her business. Starting this month, Romilla shares some of her favourite recipes from her book What’s for Dinner? Second helpings , for you to try at home.

Integrity, in being able to create a business that can pay its lowest paid staff above the minimum wage and not expect them to work all the hours. Integrity also in as much as respecting one’s suppliers and seeing them as an integral part of your business not a group of people or businesses to be manipulated and pressurised into charging less for their goods than they should charge. I have for many years been interested in the politics of food and am of the firm belief that in the majority of transactions it is the consumer who is valued least in the chain despite what is said to the contrary. Without wanting to state the obvious food is vitally important to the human race,

Crown and Garter and had a team of builders working on creating a relaxed, charming envi- ronment in which to enjoy food and drink. It had been a coaching inn since 1640 and had had little remedial structural work carried out on it for some years so you can imagine the state of the place once you started to delve below the surface. It needed plenty of work and when I say plenty I mean plenty, from the floorboards to the roof and pretty much everything in between. The place consists of a pub, restaurant and 10 hotel rooms. It is in an idyllic setting in Inkpen village and is easy to fall in love with. The menu When we first opened, the old skittle barn where the previous owners had lived, was turned into a bakery and a small coffee shop. The bakery quickly became too small once we started to supply some small local businesses with bread and cakes so we moved this part of the business to Greenham business park and extended the coffee shop. That coffee shop is now one of three that Honesty owns and runs, all in their local communities on small village high streets. It’s all a challenge and most of the time is an enjoyable challenge. It is not easy but then things worth working for rarely are. changes regularly to reflect the changing of the seasons and the food is simple, fresh and well cooked.

“ It’s all a challenge and most of the time it is an enjoyable challenge. ”

H onesty was an idea that had been floating around my head on and off for a while before I was actually brave enough to take the plunge. To create a food business in a world dominated by big business was a daunting prospect. I wanted to show that food can be supplied to the consumer with honesty and integrity. Honesty in so far as people have the right to know exactly what is in their food, how it is produced and where it comes from. You can’t expect people to make the right choices concerning the food they eat if they don’t know these simple things.

not only because it sustains us but also because

its consumption whether over or under can make us ill. It can for example affect the ability

of our offspring to get the most from their lives. It has an effect on the relationship we have with our planet and life on that planet and it provides many of us with a living. Running a food business brings all of these issues and many more into sharper focus. The cookery school was the first part of Honesty to get up and running. We wanted to create a great environment for learning about all things to do with food and drink, working with local tutors and doing some of the teaching myself has meant that we are able to keep the cost of the courses at an affordable level. At this stage we had already purchased The

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