Episode 342: Chris Ennis of Ceres
Fascinated by the role urban farming plays in our modern society? In this episode, Fiona chats with Chris Ennis of CERES, about their inspiring story, their dedication to reconnecting us with nature, and their groundbreaking work in environmental education. Tune in!
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction
The challenge of businesses during COVID-19
History and Origin of CERES in Melbourne
Transition from community garden organizer to director
Importance of cohesive messaging within an organization
The evolution of environmental awareness from a niche to mainstream
Pioneering efforts in recycling and urban farming
Empowering young leaders in environmental initiatives
Shift towards sustainable packaging solutions
Educational programs and initiatives by CERES
Supporting local farmers and understanding the economic impact
CERES's initiative to employ refugees and asylum seekers
Conclusion
Get in touch with My Daily Business
Resources and Recommendations mentioned in this episode:
CERES is no stranger to the ups and downs and I think having others to share that journey with is. I was talking before about farmers, food hubs, and local food businesses who are hanging on right now. The way that people are getting through is by talking to each other and sharing that journey and knowing you're not the only one. And also when something comes up or when there's a way of getting through one of these challenges, sharing that and hearing the way that someone else has navigated it can be that little piece of inspiration.
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Hello and welcome to episode 342 of the My Daily Business Podcast Today. It is a small business interview and this one is going to inspire you and I'm sure invigorate you to do more with your business and see what is possible from whatever you have started there. It's a inspiring talk and I'm so excited about bringing it to you today.
Before I get stuck into that, I wanna acknowledge the traditional owners and custodians on the lands where I meet these people and record this podcast and that is the Wurrung and Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. And I pay my respects to their elders, past, and present, and acknowledge that sovereignty has never been ceded.
The other thing I wanted to mention on that note is that here in Australia, a lot is going on at the moment about the referendum and the voice. I just wanna say to anyone who's listening, who is First Nations that I'm sending you a gigantic hug. I cannot imagine what it must feel like to have the whole country talking about all sorts of things, many of whom are not First Nations people. I just wanted to remind you that there is a helpline available run for MOB by MOB called 13 Yarn. We'll link to that in the show notes, but just know that many people are thinking and sending their love to First Nations people at the moment in Australia.
The other thing I wanted to mention is that Marketing for your Small Business, we are updating it. We are changing some things and it is open for the course and coaching program that will start on the 10th of October. If you're interested in that and you wanna make sure that your marketing is strategic, not just scattergun, check it out at Marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. As I said, the course and coaching component of that, course is available anytime, but the coaching and course part will start on the 10th of October and run for nine weeks. Again, if you wanna check anything out, it's just at Marketingforyoursmallbusiness.com. All right, let's get into today's interview episode.
We get sent a lot of pitches for this podcast and I think a large part of that is due to the ranking of this podcast, but occasionally we get a pitch that is really great and also from a company that we love. And this is exactly what happened with today's podcast guest. My guest today is Chris Ennis, he's the director of Business Innovation at CERES. And for many people who have grown up in Melbourne or visited Melbourne, who have lived in Melbourne or have come from, you know, all over the world and wanted to look at incredible innovation in the sustainability and environmental space, they will be familiar with CERES. I first became familiar with CERES when I lived in Northgate. We had a first child. He was quite young and we would often go up there, particularly my husband would, because he worked part-time. And so many families have had that same experience.
CERES educates more than a hundred thousand children a year in terms of food and sustainability and earth and just getting people to fall in love with the earth again. But it's so much more than a place to bring your child or to hang out and be kind of a community hub in addition to its roots. Good pun there, Fiona. But in addition to its roots starting as an urban farm, it's now become an urban education centre and kind of this urban oasis, as Chris says, for social enterprises. He talks about how many social enterprises are being housed at CERES at the moment, and also how CERES has managed to extend their business, not just from this pub that a lot of people know if you live around or have visited that area in Melbourne, but also all over through their food business, through education, through all sorts of things that they do in corporate environments as well as school and education.
I wanted to know how they have done that. And also how do you keep the vision of CERES alive as a brand expands and grows, and how do you decide how to expand and grow and which social enterprises you should get behind? It’s such a fascinating chat and I just really, really enjoyed the time that I had with Chris Ennis from CERES. So here it is for anyone who has any kind of social enterprise ideas in their business or maybe wants to figure out how they can be more sustainable, even if they're a very small business, what impact can you have on the planet? Here it is my interview with the wonderful Chris Ennis, director of Business Innovation at CERES.
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Hello Chris! Welcome to the podcast.
Hi, Fiona! Great to be here. Thanks for having me on.
Oh, you're so welcome. I like to ask everyone, how are you feeling about life right now?
I am feeling like we are just after going on the Covid rollercoaster slightly coming back up again after being dumped down that big, big down. And yeah, we're putting all the pieces back together at the moment and finally like, we've got a little bit of stability.
Well, That's good to hear because it's been a very difficult ride for a lot of businesses, particularly here in Melbourne where we had super long and strict lockdowns. But particularly I would say for a business like yours, what we are about to talk about, you are in Melbourne and if people are in Melbourne, and particularly if they're north side in Melbourne, they will know all about CERES. But for those who don't have that privilege, can you tell us what CERES is when it was started and how you came to be involved in it?
CERES started 40 years ago when Brunswick East was at an old quarry site that was turned into a tip. Then the community got together and started rehabilitating that class and getting into an urban farm and an urban education centre for kids to do the things that they were learning in their classrooms hands-on. And over the years it's transformed into this sort of urban oasis, this city farm, social enterprise hub, sanctuary, particularly in Covid that educates several hundred thousand children on site or in their schools every year and is dedicated. Our mission sums it up. We wanna help people fall in love with the earth again. So yeah, that's a bit about CERES and we're about 250 people working there. Across 18 or 19 different social enterprises. So it's quite a big and diverse place.
Wow. And what is your role and how did you enter it?
I'm a director at CERES, and I entered it 20 years ago when someone invited me to come and take care of the community garden, which was, which was a beautiful, chaotic group that needed someone to organize her. And then a role came up. Someone on maternity leave who never came back and 20 years later I find myself looking after a group of social enterprises.
Wow. And so before we hit record, I was just saying I did a bit of a stalk about you and you've got a very applicable background and experience growing up to be able to do this job well. And so what was your upbringing like and why were you attracted to a company like CERES?
I come from a family of, on one side, my mom's family, the farmers, and on my dad's side, they owned a general store for several generations. This family of shopkeepers and farmers. I decided I'd do something completely different, studied communications and media and thought I'd get away from the farm. Somehow went full circle and found myself 10 years later doing both of those things, farming and running retail despite best intentions. Sometimes you just end up in the family business like it's your bait.
Yeah. You hear people all the time that are like, oh, my father and grandfather or farmers or doctors and then didn't wanna do it and they ended up back there. And so they must be really happy with what you're doing now and have been happy when you started it. And you said before you talked all about the mission and you were saying how many social enterprises? 19?
Yeah, there are 18 or 19. They're always splintering off and starting new ones. And that's one of the magical things about CERES is that it's a place that's full of experimentation and new things. People trying out new things, and it's this amazing social enterprise incubator where those things actually can think it up and you can find funds for it, CERES will help you make it happen. Hopefully, that social enterprise will become self-supporting and an example for other organizations to come and learn about.
Wow. And so with all of these different social enterprises and also with the CERES you've got from, at least our research, you had these four main big businesses as well. Is that right? Like the CERES farm and then you've got wood and getting your education home. It means a lot is going on. Yeah. And so how do you ensure this consistent appreciation and alignment to that mission across all of these different things?
It's very difficult. We have these times of expansion where new things will happen and multiple new enterprises will mushroom up, but we also have times where we consolidate and we come back and there were years when we would have horses running out of all different parts of CERES because people wanted to teach what they were doing.
And then the years will follow where those things will come under the one single umbrella that makes sense of like, oh, do all these courses, let's pull them together. Or we have enterprises that should work together, like our shop and our online grocery. And we pull those back together even though they've started in different spots and they go out on their own. And the same with the way that we understand these ourselves.
Our CEO, a couple of years ago, just went on a two-year mission to be able to bring everyone along at CERES to be able to get onto the same page in the business design process. We nailed down who we were what our goals were, and how we understood or talked about ourselves because there are so many different entries into CERES where someone might come in through education or someone might come in through our urban farm, or someone might be a customer at our food online grocery and have no idea that we're an actual physical place. It's really important for the 250 people who work at CERES to be able to understand ourselves as a coherent single organization. And that process that Cinnamon Evans, our CEO, led us on, gave us this framework to be able to talk about it. We put ourselves into sort of five groups, home, school, farm, market and store. And those groups created the framework for us to place all the different activities that we do.
Oh, I find that fascinating. Years ago before I started my business, I was head of marketing for a major retailer here in Australia. And before that job, I was the brand content manager. And when I came on, one of my jobs was saying we have 660 staff in 108 stores in three countries who someone might come in and talk to them, they wanna be singing from the same hymn sheet as someone in head office or someone who's, you know, getting on to do a trade talk show. Like it's, everyone's gotta be singing the same thing. We can't have different messages going out all the time. But I also think that as a consultant going into companies, some of them have been in business for 44 years and they've never had that conversation. I think it's amazing to bring people together and be like, what are we all doing? And also that everyone gets a say in that, not just it's the executive team and then it just gets trickled down and they have to just accept it sort of thing.
We are probably the most diverse, widely spread organization. It's essential, it's essential that we do that exercise regularly and, and come back together. The bigger you get, the harder it gets.
It's really hard. And so from that, and sorry to labour on this point, but I think it's really important and especially, I know there's a lot of people that listen to this podcast who are growing their team and they're like, how do we get everyone to sort of be working towards the same goals and, and aware of even the goals? From a practical standpoint, what does it look like? Like as in, you know, do you come together and do workshops and then does it get fed out into like an intranet or some sort of newsletter or some sort of hub where the core information is of the brand? Like what does that look like for CERES?
I think it's something that you're not gonna do over six weeks. And for us, that was gonna be impossible. This process took two years and was broken down into small pieces of work where there would be different groups. It's really hard to get all team members together in one place. It's lots of different opportunities and ways to feed into the process, lots of invitations and a realistic timeline. Two years to pull us together. It gave us plenty of time and didn't end up as an over-rushed thing that was like taken away from the group and then finished by one person in a hurry. It had the luxury of time for many different points of view and many ways of gathering that type of point of view.
Whether it was workshops or online or feeding back one bit of content to another group and getting their reactions and then coming at it from another angle and being very patient. I think that was the key to knowing that this one's gonna take a long time and not being afraid of it being rough. And then working it over, polishing and you get to this final thing at the end. I think with the patience and you've been to so many of the workshops all inputted that. It had ownership in the end and it wasn't rushed and it wasn't sort of taken away. Time factor has done over time and many opportunities because sometimes you're on leave and sometimes you're not around, sometimes you are too busy.
But if you go to enough of these things, everyone feels the ownership and what was produced. I think the key also was it was a small booklet. Concise, and visually beautiful. That was easy to give to a stranger. And that has so many people have gone, this is fantastic. This is such a beautiful way to come to your organization and get to know this thing. Now I struggle to explain it in words and pass over this booklet. It gives you this visual and very concise understanding of what we're on about. And a whole number of levels. You are very proud of that.
Yeah. And I think that is a really hard thing. I always think of Oscar Wilde, he said once “I would've written a shorter letter, but I didn't have the time”. Because it is really hard to get things into a succinct format that is clear and easily understood. One of the things that CERES is an incredible leader in is environmental education and getting people to love the earth. And that's especially crucial in today's context. And even my son, one of my sons is at primary school, the knowledge that they're learning. We are out in North Warrandyte as well. It's very bushy. A lot of people have edible gardens, but it's very different to the things that I was taught in school in the eighties and nineties. And so how does one approach that environmental education and I guess how has that changed over the 40 years? Because 40 years ago it would've been very much seen as like, oh, that's a very lefty green thing.
CERES has played a role in taking it from that left-wing outsider sort of edge activity to something that we do without even thinking. 40 years ago CERES was starting to put up solar panels and that was just seen as such an out-there sort of alternative way of doing things. And now, we don't think twice about throwing solar panels on our roofs or water tanks or any number of environmental activities. Recycling started at CERES. We first operated the first herb-side recycling service in Melbourne.
Really? Wow.
All these things that were so fringed in CERES bravely jump into and teach gradually. That's our approach. We do it in such a low-tech and, and doable-at-home way that involves kids as leaders. That it becomes so, oh, I can do that.
It's not a high-tech. I don't need a team of scientists and engineers to implement recycling plant a garden or get a water tank. Any number of activities that we go about. Our approach is hands-on, let the kids lead it. We train a lot of environmental leaders. We do things like it was revolutionary at the time, but we got kits to do energy and water audits on school, on their schools. From what they came up with, they would recommend insulation and raw water tanks or solar panels or leak fixing or draft stops and the savings from the electricity, the heating, and the water that has to be paid for, paid for all these activities and then some. And it was led by children.
And so this is the way that we create environmental leaders and, and, and it brings these environmental leaders, we've been doing this for years. These environmental leaders now are going to positions of authority and to companies where they become the leaders and they set the tone. And so it's a long game. We sow the seeds early when people, it's not fashionable, but later we see the results as those people go into positions where they have influence. And suddenly it becomes policy or it's something you do at home or it's just something Now it's just so every day, you know, think of kitchens, school gardens. They didn't exist. And CERES has been doing school kitchen gardening for decades.
Wow.
Yeah. That's the way we go about education.
This is fascinating. I just recently came back from the US and I was visiting family there. We have a lot of listeners in the US which is the second country outside of Australia. I'm not jumping in and saying everywhere in America was like this. I was in one place in North Carolina. I was shocked at the level of packaging on everything even polystyrene packaging, which we, I feel like Australia got rid of. I have not seen a polystyrene package. You know, you used to have it at Macca's and other places in the eighties, but I was shocked at like every single butter package and milk. There wasn't like, people didn't have just a carton of milk. They had all these little plastic, half, half plastic little things to put in their coffee.
Where does Australia fit in terms of, 'cause I didn't even realize. I mean, my husband is quite into recycling and he catches every little thing and composting and everything. But I wouldn't have thought of myself. That's my number one thing in life. But yet in America, I was shocked and thought, wow, Australia is doing a lot. Are we doing a lot? Or is that just, that was a foolish thing for me to think? Because I did think, wow, it's just so ingrained in me to recycle, to not use plastic. I would never be buying things that are in multiple packets of plastic things that you have to unwrap.
Yeah. We thought we were, and when we look at what's happened with Red Cycle, that soft plastics. I think that was a massive wake-up call. We all thought we were doing the right thing. We were collecting our stuff and taking it by the ton, just incredible amounts in warehouses sadly. And when we weren't as good as we thought we were.
I think one of the things that's coming around now, there was a recent report by the Marine Conservation Society and WWS and they're talking about not just the pollution impacts of plastics on animals, but also the greenhouse impacting us. The energy it takes and everything associated with plastics is a big greenhouse polluter. One of the things, they were talking about was actually to do something about it, to go beyond recycling and go, do we need it? How much plastic do we need? And it's one of those things that one of such food has been looking at us is we do a delivery service of groceries and how, and grocery delivery is very plastic and packaging here.
One of the things we do at CERES is try and demonstrate to other businesses that it's possible to be as sustainable as you can across all your activities and still make a profit. Packaging is one of the things we're demonstrating at every level. Getting rid of polystyrene coolers and using pulp when we pack our fruit into boxes instead of, the worst examples of this are some delivery, you know, meal kit services, individually wrapped carrots. Your produce people have plastic bags at home, people have glass containers at home. What we do is take the freshest produce, and put it into a box with as little packaging as possible. If we need to put beans in a paper bag, we will. And you can compost or put that into the paper recycling, but when you get your box home, you pack it into your veggie bags or your plastic, your recycled plastic bags or your glass containers and you know, and we don't have to have a new plastic bag every time we get a three zines or some beans or anything like that. What we wanna do is, like every piece of packaging we bring to you, you can send it back to us so we can reuse it many, many times.
We have a recovery rate, of something like 65%. All that packaging is reused. And at the end of its life, it's recycled. And so we think of every single thing from the ice pack to the, to the call alert, to the cardboard box and, and everything that holds, you know, produce. And we work with, there's lots of makers and grocery makers like Schultz milk who wanna do refillable glass bottles. And so we work with them and we take their glass bottles out and people are so happy to send them back. They're so happy that we stopped selling milk in one litre of plastic bottles because everyone wanted the glass bottles. We just weren't selling them. We are producers and makers and people who supply groceries do it. We find that the reusable refillable option is so embraced. It's a wonderful story and something that we really wanna demonstrate. And it's like all the things that we've done, slowly it becomes mainstream and people don't even think about it. They think, oh, that's weird. And then, you know, five years later everybody's doing that.
And isn't it weird that with the milk bottles, like that's how it used to come and now it's kind of come back? People used to get their milk delivered and have the milk bottles and leave them back out. And so we have a lot of people who listen to this podcast who are in the kind of furniture, homewares, ceramics, textiles kind of industry, a lot of interior designers who design pieces, all of that stuff comes in a lot of packaging a lot of the time. And I'll have homeware brands who will say, when I'm working with them, we are trying to reduce it, but it's really difficult. Or, with ceramics, for example, they have to be packaged so that they don't break. And I see that there's even, we were just moving house and we got a lot more, almost like a, I dunno what you'd call it, like a beehive paper that opens up so you don't have to use bubble wrap. And so where do people find out this, I mean, you are, you've been in that business for 20 years. You've, there's a lot of people that work there who are obsessed with this sort of stuff. But if you are a solo operator who's sending out homeware pieces and you're like, well I don't have the money to do things more environmentally, how do they even start?
So I was thinking about this the other day. We've got a page that lists all the packaging things that we do. And I was like, oh, that's a lot. There's a lot of things that we've brought in. But when I reflected on it and the online business fair food has only been traded for 13 years, it has roughly broken down to one thing a year we implemented. One new thing and that was it. And suddenly we had, there's a dozen. Oh wow. We're doing something. We never think that we're perfect. And there's always something that's like, oh, it's not quite right or, we'd love to do that better and we accept. It's like telling Siri a story, we accept that it's gonna take time and we don't beat ourselves up. Because you can only do what you can do. And if you do one thing a year in 10 years, that's 10 things. That's Fantastic.
Yeah. That's amazing. And then it takes the pressure off, oh my gosh, I have to change everything all at once. Everything rather than just one thing. Urban farming tends to be gaining a lot of popularity, and it has been for a long time. And I know we've got clients we work with who are landscape architects who are getting more and more people, even in smaller apartments that want an edible garden or that they wanna be able to utilize stuff. I know out here in North Warrandyte, every second house has chickens. There's a lot of stuff about living in from the land a little bit more. What are some of the success stories from CERES and, even if you've gone into workplaces or schools, maybe where it hasn't been a typical place where they'd have a farm?
I think rather than a place, I think the success story is in people's heads. If you think of CERES as an idea, that ripples out. That's our success. And we have so many organizations coming to us to be mentored or to embed themselves or to come and do a course to learn. How do we do this where we are? How can we take it home? Whether it's at a community centre or whether it's in a schoolyard, whether it's in someone's backyard or someone's apartment balcony. That is the success. There are things like the Complete Urban Farm Course, which is a sort of a 12-week course where you can learn everything from beekeeping to mushroom growing to composting and fruit trees and looking after chickens. And that has just been the most popular. Many people go. I can learn a few skills that set me on my path to being an urban farmer or someone who can just do a few things in my backyard or my school or my community group, then I'm away.
I just need a staff. I just need a few basic skills and that'll get me started. And that has spawned a book and we can't keep up with bookings every year. And we put on more of them. And it's just the most wonderful thing. And many, many versions might be a one-day course, or it might be a 12-week seeing that really, is completely life-changing. The success is the ideas that we're able to share, and we can do that at CERES. Our profound change was realizing that CERES wasn't just a location, it was the ideas. We've got teams of teachers that take them to schools. We have exchanges with indigenous communities and land with CERES pre-pandemic as we are working with communities in India and Southeast Asia. It's the ideas. And that's our success story about really being able to share those ideas and inspire people with those hands-on things that you can do.
Yeah. Wow. I've got all these mental notes. My husband wants to get us some bees, and I'm like, no. I'm allergic to bees, but I'm like, as long as they're way away. But yes, I got him to go and do your courses. And so I'm wondering, everyone's talking about the recession, the cost of living is skyrocketing. I have a good friend around the corner who has chickens. For the first time, I said to her, can you please bring some? Can you bring a dozen chicken eggs over because they are so expensive? Do you feel like you've seen more people or community groups reach out in the last couple of years? Or do you feel like there's not been a huge change or, you know, because I would imagine that more people are thinking, how can I start growing my stuff? I know we would love to get chickens now we eat so many eggs in our house. Do you think that people are shifting, or do you think it's just a societal shift that is happening and it just happens to be at the same time as the economy?
It was interesting because in Covid we supply people and deliver, and you have retail with a lot of local food and that just went through the roof. And now our online business tripled overnight. And as people embrace local food, they also embrace gardening.
Our plant nursery, which specializes in edibles was just, day after day, stripped as people embrace planting at home. With the cost of living, there's been that impetus again to take care of yourself and or supplement your shopping with things that you've grown yourself as well as this. There's an overwhelming desire and it comes across through all of CERES activities about people wanting to connect with the sea and people wanting to connect with nature, the seasons and growing food or keeping animals is one of the most powerful ways that you can do that. And that's what CERES offers in pretty much every aspect of what we do. We've helped people embrace that.
The sad part is for the local food that we support. We support about 200 different farmers, groceries, small G Makers CERES. And we've seen this at other local food hubs and farmers markets has been through Covid. They were embraced to the point of almost stretch, to breaking point. Then the cost of living has meant that those enterprises and those local food hubs and those farmer's markets, people that sort of have sadly felt the cost of living and had have gone to other places. They're the small farmers and those farmer's markets and the food hubs are doing it tough right now.
I guess on that point then, people are listening who are small business owners, are there places where they can connect to get their fruit boxes? Or a lot of kitchens in these places will have things, or if they're doing their next event, is that something they could go to CERES to find a bunch of people near them that do this?
Absolutely. CERES Fair Food, which is, you can find online, services a lot of businesses in and around Melbourne. It's where we do online fruit and all the kitchen things that businesses love. We've noticed a lot of businesses want people back, so they want tasty. It's beyond just milk and tea and things like that. People want quality, healthy snacks, healthy fruit, beautiful bread, heat heat-served meals so that the people feel like going back to the office and they feel like they're being valued for coming back to the office.
Yeah, and looked after.
It's become really important. Yes. What offices buy these days has gone a long way past milk, tea, you know, a can of coffee and a selection.
I also had a look and saw that in some of your businesses, you mentioned social enterprises. There's the employment of refugees and asylum seekers. And that is another thing. It came up recently. We had Jane Marks from the Beautiful Bunch on, and they do flower delivery and, and they predominantly work with women from refugee backgrounds. And she was saying it isn't necessarily easy, but it's not as hard as people think to find people to employ that are refugees and asylum seekers. There are lots of different government agencies and different places you can go and say, Hey, I've got a warehouse, or Hey, I'd love to employ some people. How do people do that? Like, if I'm listening and I'm thinking, I've got a furniture business in Clifton Hill, we've got a little place where we like to pack orders, I would love to, next time I'm employing people, look for somebody who maybe has just come to Australia or is looking for a job like this or even more skilled jobs I'm talking about as well. Where do people find that?
If you wanna engage with the asylum seeker community, a great place to start is the Asylum Seeker Resource Center. They've got an employment service that's been fantastic for us. The Refugee Council of Australia has a listing of community groups right across the country who work doing all kinds of services. And once you find yourself in that world and you are talking to somebody who works in the refugee area, then you are, you're in, you're away. You only need one or two contacts before you're sort of directed to the right place. The local employment services specialise in finding employment for refugees and asylum seekers. In the beginning, I guess 13 years ago or more we thought it was quite special, but it's just employment. More often than not, you're finding people who are highly resourceful, who are very resilient and you have all kinds of skills that you never expected. Plus usually often amazing food, which has been one of the bonuses of having. We had 25 different nationalities working at Fair Food. And I tell you the shared lunches are just worth going workflow alone.
Yes. And so you mentioned before the, the workshops and the trading programs. Are there kind of mentoring programs that if somebody wanted to get their business to be a bit more sustainable or to utilize, you know, less waste projects with the food? Are there mentoring programs that they can do with CERES or someone who's there long-term or is it do a workshop and then come back to do another workshop?
There are all kinds of ways to access CERES and it might be an organization that comes on a tour or does a workshop. We have a consulting service if you wanna get serious. With some organizations, we might have formal or informal mentoring depending on the relationship. There are many ways you can come and volunteer at CERES and get an insight and a view of the place. It'll be far different from coming and as a customer or a workshop with this one. So there are lots of different ways to come and engage with us or find that information. It could be long-term, it could be brief.
Do you work with businesses outside of Australia? Because I'm guessing, like getting back to the Earth. The whole Earth can participate.
I think CERES consulting members have travelled to China, India and Indonesia. We've been and delivered whether it's consulting, teaching or implementing projects around the world.
Who has helped you? You mentioned the CEO, but is there anyone else who's helped you or any particular books that I've just started reading, which I think is from the 1970s Small Is Beautiful? For some reason, it had never come across my mind and I'd never read anything. And then I listened to somebody recently talk about it. And that's a phenomenal book given how long ago it was written in terms of business and sustainability and wastage and your footprint on the planet, are there things or people or books that have helped you in your journey?
I think, you know, those books from the food movement from Michael Poland.
Are there any documentaries or even coming back to mentors? Is there anybody that's helped you in your life in this industry?
In 2017, I got a Westpac Social Change fellowship and it let me go and visit my heroes at a couple of large ethical groceries in the UK and Denmark. I was going to visit my heroes and people who had been doing this for 10 or 20 years before I started. It was just the most wonderful thing to be able to sit down with them, and share their journey and hear how they'd gotten over the common problems that we all face and just feel, I guess the possibility by visiting the place that they created, the culture that they'd made and be able to bring that back. I think charged my mind up for, you know, the, for the last five years I've been slowly composting those lessons and, and you know, and making things that I've seen try to bring them to life. That was incredible. Then on top of that, I think the people that I was doing that social change fellowship with were incredible influences and they were doing their things in their organizations or Australia. The things I learned from them, you know, it's often the bravery of others and seeing someone, you know, leap gives you the courage to go, oh, you did that. You didn't crash and burn and you weren't no shamed by your peers. I can do that too. And being with a group of people who were, who were brave and innovative provided a lot of inspiration for me. I feel like doing that program was an incredible gift.
I didn't even realize that Westpac did that. What if people are listening and they are very keen to support CERES? You've mentioned a few different ways about, you've mentioned volunteering. I know when I used to work in corporate, they had like two or three days where people could choose where to volunteer and you'd get paid for that day. How can people best connect, especially small business owners and a lot of them will have, five or fewer staff?
If you're a food, sustainable food business, CERES Fair Food. We buy from 200 different small grocery makers and all kinds of environmental businesses. We love to engage with and support those kinds of peer businesses. You can come and do any number of our workshops or buy from our nursery. We run a timber business now that supports small farm agro foresters and urban tree salvages. If you're building a house or making furniture, you can support us by buying that timber. We have workshop spaces, seven or eight Ks from the CBD and in this beautiful green sanctuary, which is the exact opposite of most workplaces. We have a huge number of organizations and enterprises come and do their day. Their offsites, their planning days, and the most relaxing, catered-for environment that is accessible to where a lot of people are working in the downtown area.
I had no idea about that, honestly, because I run workshops with certain strategy clients twice a year. Every six months we have a set get-together, and I'm always looking at co-working spaces. It's very hard to find parking. They're not ideal. I'm gonna look that up. And can I ask, what would you say to somebody who's listening to this? Because you mentioned at the very start, that CERES is just kind of coming out of the fog of the horror, the rollercoaster that has been covid. What would you say to someone who's listening, who's trying their best to create this social enterprise and it just feels so hard and too hard? And how do they keep going? Because I'm imagining that you must have been in that position a few times over 20 years.
CERES is no stranger to the ups and downs and I think having others to share that journey with. I was talking before about farmers, food hubs, and local food businesses who are hanging on right now. The way that people are getting through is by talking to each other and sharing that journey and knowing you're not the only one. Also when something comes up or when there's a way of getting through one of these challenges, sharing that and hearing the way that someone else has navigated it can be that little piece of inspiration. That's the way we get through. Because there are lots of us at CERES, we also do that for each other. Often one business is doing okay, well the other one isn't thriving for any number of reasons. Having those friends to be able to draw on, I think is the most important thing.
And finally, what are you most proud of from your journey with CERES for over 20 years?
Well, I recently looked back and I think at Fair Food. We were doing accounts on the number of people who had been through. There were something like 250 people who had worked there over the 13 years reflecting all the other businesses. It was that we'd employed green jobs, circular economy, jobs, which taught people new and provided people with a good living. I was proud of that impact and being able to create that livelihood work for that many people. I was very proud. And to do that in a culture where, oh, a lot of people have stayed for many years. But yeah, I'd say that's, that's the proudest thing. And I think it's one of them the most joyful things you can do is give somebody a job.
If people are listening, thinking, I'd like to get in contact with you personally, or if they are thinking, okay, I wanna go and check out all of these things that CERES have? We'll link to everything in the show notes, but how do they best connect with you and with CERES?
We're ceres.org.au and I'm chris@ceres.org au if you'd love to be in contact with me.
Awesome. Well, thank you so much for your time, Chris. And I know you've got so many things that you're doing at the moment, so I appreciate the time you've given us.
Oh, thanks so much for having me on.
Bye.
See ya.
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Oh my goodness. What a lovely conversation. And for me personally, having lived so close to CERES and gone there several times, it's just wonderful to hear how that business and the whole brand is growing and the different diversification that they've had over the years and where they started from and that vision that they started with has maintained itself. I would love to know what you took away from this episode. You can always get in touch with us at hello@mydailybusiness.com, or you can send a DM at mydailybusiness_ on Instagram or just at mydailybusiness on TikTok. But I'm going to point out two things that stood out to me. I mean, there were so many in that chat. Honestly, I have to thank Chris again for just giving up his time and sharing so openly about the challenges and wins that CERES has had over the years.
The first thing I think that spoke to me, particularly because I've worked in so many businesses where potentially it hasn't been done as well, is the idea of really sharing that vision and knowing that it's not something you can just quickly figure out in an afternoon as to how we are gonna do that. He talked about the fact that it took two years to get everyone clear on what are we doing, get on the same page, how we communicate this to other people who work with us, our suppliers, our customers, our audiences, our different segments, internal, and external. And I think that's a really good lesson that things don't just instantly happen and that you've gotta put the effort in and that the business has to want to do that. I loved when he talked about how that has happened at CERES, what they did from a practical standpoint, and also to keep that philosophy and that ethos going no matter what they are creating. I thought that was just brilliant.
The second thing that Chris talked about was just really caring for others and bringing them in on your journey, whether that is looking to hire from refugee and asylum seeker kind of groups and getting in touch with these places and looking at what you can do to help suppliers. He talked about the farmers and people that have kind of done it pretty tough lately and how they can bring them in. If you're a business that I don't know, gets fruit for your kitchen, you know, really thinking about where are you getting that fruit from and how can you, you know, really help another small business owner. Whenever I talk about my book Passion, Purpose, Profit, I will often suggest going and buying it from another small business owner. You're not only going to help your own business by going through that book, but you're also helping by purchasing from another small business owner, from a bookshop a little gift store or a little homeware shop that sells the books.
And so Chris talked about that in so many instances of how they work with others to bring that idea to life through their relationships with those partners, their employees, all of it. It just feels so authentic. And I feel like that is what sometimes is missing. When people create a brand and have this vision and they have their values and beliefs and they're kind of externally aligned to those values and beliefs like on social media and through their marketing channels, it looks like, oh yes, that's what they're doing. But internally they're also not necessarily aligning as much internally through their onboarding of staff or the way they treat their staff or the things that they're bringing into the company to be aligned to those values. And I think Chris and Sir and everything they're doing, it's so obvious that they are completely in alignment internally and externally through what the business is doing and the actions it's taking and everything that it does with the values that it purports to believe in.
I just love that chat with Chris. There were so many other things. I mean, there's so much that he talked about, like even when he mentioned the guy who wraps or that there are companies out there that are wrapping single carrots. I mean, that just seems so ludicrous. It was particularly in this day and age. And yet lots of businesses will have things that they're doing where it's like, oh, do we have to be doing it like that? Just 'cause we've always done it like that? Do we have to be doing it like that? Where could we be looking at our waste management or the things that we are doing for the environment? How could we fix things in our own business? Often it's not as hard as we think that it is. So again, I just wanna thank Chris, and if you're interested in seeing what CERES does, you can check them out at CERES.org au.
You can check out what they're doing in education, and maybe get the next team-bonding experience from CERES if you're here in Melbourne. They talked about the coworking space and places that you can hire. I mean, there's so much that is going on. I know that I'm gonna go over there and check it out. So thank you again, Chris, for coming on. We'll link to everything like that in the show notes, which you'll be able to find for this particular episode over at my daily business.com/podcast/ 342. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you next time. Bye.
