Tag Archives: employee ownership

Employee ownership has given us the opportunity to do lots of things at Grapevine we might not have otherwise. It’s also opened a door to fun ideas. Tonight was the latest, holding this year’s Co-owner Meeting at our local cinema, which has just had a beautiful refit. As well as taking over a cinema screen,ContinueContinue reading “Co-owners Annual Meeting at Vue”

A month ago today I was sat on a stage in Telford, sharing EO stories alongside Hayley Russel, Stephen Spence and our host Arabella Lewis-Smith. The first day of the eoa conference had been a whirlwind, I was still trying to process everything that happened, particularly the unexpected, while attempting to say something coherent andContinueContinue reading “eoa Conference panel”

Thank you to Andy Farquharson, and Keely Lead from the eoa, for inviting me to be a guest on an episode of the Alternative Exit podcast, recorded live on the show floor at the era Annual Conference last week.The episode is now live via your podcast provider of choice, or you can watch it onContinueContinue reading “Alternative Exit podcast”

Today is my 10th anniversary aboard the good ship Grapevine. Time is sailing by, but it actually does feel like it’s been 10 years when I think back to 2015 now (something big happened in the middle that I’ll refrain from reminding you of by naming it).A decade ago I worked at Bournemouth University, runningContinueContinue reading “Celebrating 10 years with Grapevine”

Last Friday was EO Day 2025, a celebration of employee ownership businesses and the business model itself. It serves as a reminder of everything that’s great about this adventure that a snowballing number of companies and organisations are on in the UK and around the world. We were fortunate to begin the festivities a weekContinueContinue reading “A very EO fortnight”

Thank you to the team at Why Small Business Matters and Northumbria University for having me and guest host Rachel Clarke on the latest episode of their podcast to talk about employee ownership. I share the Grapevine journey to EO, adventures we’ve had in our two years since our transition, inspiration we’ve taken from Salad,ContinueContinue reading “Why Small Business Matters podcast”

Yesterday my colleague Daisy and I spoke to the Dorset Chamber Future Leaders group about employee ownership as an emerging industry trend, how we’ve embraced it at Grapevine since 2023 and some of the other initiatives we’re supporting to explore what ‘good’ business means in our changing world. Image credit: Dominic Arthurs For us, andContinueContinue reading “Future Leaders guest talk”

This week our business partner Gamma, presented Grapevine with the award for ‘Marketing Team of the Year’! As a small business, our marketing budgets are limited. In recent years we have adopted a more relationship building based approach to our marketing and communications activity that leverages our most important asset as an employee owned business,ContinueContinue reading “Marketing team of the year”

Today marks two years since Grapevine transitioned to an Employee Ownership Trust. We celebrated last Thursday, with our annual ‘Co-owners’ meeting, looking back on our last financial year and sharing plans for 2025, followed by drinks and pizza from Da Mario.In addition to the experience in-house as an employee owned business, a big part ofContinueContinue reading “2nd anniversary of employee ownership”

Thank you to Rachel Clarke and Martyn Polkinghorne for inviting me to join a session with the ‘Help to Grow’ management course cohort and talk about my personal experiences with developing, vision, values and company culture at Grapevine.I had to share this great quote from Javier Bajer at the EOA Annual Conference which has beenContinueContinue reading “Help to Grow guest talk”

Back from a few days in surprisingly sunny Telford at the EOA Employee Ownership Annual Conference. My head is full of thoughts from everything I heard and saw across the event. Thoughts on what more we can be doing in our business, on the importance of the community and collaboration for EO businesses, on theContinueContinue reading “EOA 2024 Conference”