Wow, what a year it’s been!

It’s been a crazy year for us, and even that doesn’t do it justice, it’s been literally non-stop, both good and bad, with high times and low.

But we’re incredibly grateful to still be here after a year, having grown so much in such a short space of time. What started out as a bit of side hustle to fund our nomadic lifestyle very quickly turned into something much greater. From selling a little bit of Chaga here and there on eBay to where we are now in a year, its hard to imagine where we could be by next year!

We set out with KindRoots with a few aims, both short term and long term, I dont want to be too repetitive, so you can read more about those on our vision page. But in short our aims are:

Helping to combat the food security crisis. We believe eating good, healthy food shouldn’t be relegated to those who can afford it.
Protecting and repairing the environment. Using sustainable and ethical practices, with a deep respect for nature.
Creating community and holding space. We believe many social issues can be fixed if we just had stronger communities.
Advocating for and proving that there are better ways to live, more in-line with the natural world and everything in it.

In our first year we’ve done more of those things than we ever thought would be possible, while also managing to develop the business side way beyond where we thought we would be. Here’s just a few examples of what we’ve managed to achieve:

We’ve provided space for 40+ independent small businesses to trade completely for free over our events, no pitch fees, no tax on income, nothing. Just an open space for local traders to meet local customers.

We’ve contributed over £15000 to local economies. Where we can’t forage or grow what we need, we always try to source locally and ethically first and foremost. This money has gone to small scale farms, butchers, grocers, community spaces, home-growers, charities, tradesmen, retailers, breweries, and so many more. We have also used our platform to advertise these businesses free of charge.

We’ve fed hundreds of people high quality, low cost food at our events. One of our idealistic goals is to be able to feed people better, for less than the price of poison ahem I mean, junk food.
This is done by foraging or trading for as many of the ingredients as we can, while keeping our own overheads as low as possible, doing as much of the work as we can by hand to reduce cost. And thus far, we’re happy to report that we’ve managed to maintain that promise!

A bit of a side challenge to ourselves, but one we’ve never really talked about, is the traceability of all the ingredients in our products. We get a lot of pride from being able to say we know exactly where over 99% of all our ingredients come from, and we know most of the people who supply/make them personally.
Getting that last 1% is tough, but bear with us, we’re still working on it!

On top of all that, the business side of things which funds our charitable side, has been coming on leaps and bounds. The website is slowly picking up pace, we’re out doing markets pretty much every weekend at this point, with some big events coming up in the next few weeks. It’s fair to say that its still not where it needs to be for all that we want to do, almost everything we make through the business, and what we make personally outside the business is getting poured back into it.

That said, we have reached a pretty big milestone that many businesses never get to, in that KindRoots is actually self supporting. It earns enough to cover all of its costs, which is a great stage to be at the end of year one. We are still funding the development ourselves, and working all hours possible to push it forward, but it is without a doubt moving forward.

So whats coming next?

Well I mentioned a couple of big events coming up, the first one, we will be at Stone Food & Drink Festival on the 8th, 9th & 10th May at Westbridge Park. This should be a great event and we’re currently running around like blue arsed flies foraging and making new stuff, it’ll definitely be worth a look if you’re in the area!

Shortly after that we have The Bushcraft Show on the 22nd - 25th May. This one is hugely popular, even Ray Mears is there!
Safe to say were incredibly excited for this one, we get to camp out with a ton of likeminded people talking about nature and foraging, loads of talks, shows and exhibits. Oh and we’ll be selling stuff too!
This will be the debut of the Kindroots Mushroom Coffee & Herbal Tea Cart!
(More catchy name in progress lol)
Unfortunately the caravan cafe isn’t likely to be completed this year, just due to lack of time and funds, so we’ve improvised and decided to go with a much cheaper and easier coffee cart in the meantime. We will be selling fresh medicinal mushroom coffees, delicious herbal teas and refreshing foraged cordials, alongside our usual stall of weird and wonderful goodies!
Just one more announcement in this space, we’ve recently joined forces with a local coffee roaster Lizard Lane! We met Tim and his family at an event we attended, loved their coffee, and got talking, and now we’re proud to be using their coffee in all our products, including the new coffee cart. Its organic, sourced from local cooperatives across the world supporting the actual workers, and its reasonably priced, what more can you ask for from your coffee?
They also have their own distillery, making gin, vodka & rum, so keep an eye out for some foraged collaborations in the coming months, we can’t wait to get this underway!

Next on the list of things we want to achieve this year is expanding our product range, with a focus on foraged food, including starting to grow our own mushrooms. We’ve already made a start on some of this, expect to see more syrups, salts, vinegars and other goodies in the coming weeks and months!
On the mushroom front we are developing the garden, albeit slowly, to include a mushroom log area so we can grow our own as nature intended, and so we can be as sustainable as possible.

We are still looking at the event space aswell, we have a few ideas on this front. Our market events in Yorkshire were a huge success, and we would like to continue that in Stafford but the market scene here is already quite saturated, so while we do still plan on holding our own markets, we want to do it in a way that stands out from the rest.
That means taking the time to research and make contacts to make sure we get it right, learning from our mistakes in the past, and developing what worked. We have some pretty solid ideas on what we want to do, and when we pull it off it’ll be worth it. But for now we need to make contacts around the Staffordshire area who would be interested in hosting us.
So this is a call-out to any land owners in the Stafford area, if you have land that you would be interested in renting out for an event, especially forest land, please get in touch and lets talk!

The other avenue we’re looking to pursue this year is to start offering foraging courses. Yes, finally, after been asked so many times, we are looking at doing this!
We’re not sure what format this will take just yet, although we’re pretty sure it’ll consist of some foraging, some making and some eating, but we’re open to ideas. Again, this will take a little time to get the right permissions in the right areas, and with the right facilities nearby, but rest assured we’re working on it, and hopefully you’ll be able to experience a KindRoots foraging course before the season ends!
If this is something that interests you please drop us an email at hello@kindrootscollective.com and we’ll put you on the messaging list.

I think that probably about sums up what we’ve got planned for this year, but who knows what opportunities may present themselves!

If you want to come and see us you can check out our events page to see where we will be, this is regularly updated so keep an eye on it!

You can check out our socials for more regular updates on what we’re upto here:
Facebook
Instagram

Thanks to everyone who has supported us over the past year, customers, traders, friends, family and everyone we’ve met a long the way. You’re all amazing!

Much Love,

Ben & Kay

P.S. Here’s a few behind-the-scenes pics from the past year!