Closely Intertwined with Nature
The artisan cheese and fine foods that we sell are handmade by passionate makers who remain hands-on during the process to ensure the quality of their food. Artisan cheese can vary in flavour from batch-to-batch - it depends on the season, the grass that the animals are eating, the condition of the soil and how the climate affects the cheese maturation. Never boring, over-processed or mass-produced, the artisan cheeses and fine foods that we sell are so closely intertwined with nature and the environment.
Actions Speak Louder than Words
Making a positive impact on people and our planet is fundamental to the sustainability of our business and has kept Paxton & Whitfield thriving in our third century of trading.
Actions speak louder than words, so we invite you to read this report of steps we have taken towards our people & planet sustainability over the last financial year. There are always more ways in which we can improve our impact and this will continue to be our focus. We welcome your feedback and suggestions to continually improve.
Financial year 2022-2023
Financial year 2021-2022
Financial year 2020-2021
Investing in people
We see all of our employees as custodians of the business. Without confident, motivated, performing teams, we cannot achieve a successful future. We are committed to creating a positive workplace culture where employees are provided opportunities and are professionally challenged within a supportive, caring environment.
Financial year 2022-2023
To further Paxton employees, many completed their Level One Academy of Cheese course, ensuring our staff are trained to the highest level in cheese.
Throughout the year, we hosted cheesemakers in our head office and shops for tours and tastings to strengthen supplier relations and to encourage staff from different areas of the business to talk to cheesemakers and learn more from them.
Continued to develop our team through judging artisan food awards. James, Hero & Tom judged at the British and World Cheese Awards.
Encouraged all of our staff to attend as many of our monthly online cheese tastings as they like for free. Staff members receive a free box of tasting cheese and biscuits for the session which they can take part in from the comfort of their own home with friends and family joining in too.
We are thrilled to have expanded and opened the new Canterbury shop, stocking local cheeses to Kent, ensuring we support local producers in our shops.
All members of the business, across our shops and our head office have visited our cheesemakers across the country to ensure close relationships with our cheesemakers and further develop our cheese knowledge to better inform our customers.
Our trade manager Fleur taught her first in-person Academy of Cheese level one course.
Excitingly, across the business, we reduced everyone’s contracted hours by 6% with no change in pay.
We were delighted at our Bourton HQ to host our first-ever work-experience student from the local Cotswold School.
Financial year 2021-2022
Continued to develop our team through judging artisan food awards. James, Dan and Hero judged at British and World Cheese Awards and Dan and Jazz judged at the Great Taste Awards for the first time.
Introduced monthly “Cheese Chats” around the dining table at our head office for all departments to taste cheese together with a different focus topic for each session.
Encouraged all of our staff to attend as many of our monthly online cheese tastings as they like for free. Staff members receive a free box of tasting cheese and biscuits for the session which they can take part in from the comfort of their own home with friends and family joining in too.
Throughout the year, we hosted cheesemakers in our head office and shops for tours and tastings to strengthen supplier relations and to encourage staff from different areas of the business to talk to cheesemakers and learn more from them.
Our Bath shop team spent a day with the makers of their most local cheese; Bath Soft. We encourage the sale of local cheeses from our shops wherever possible and local cheese is particularly popular with our Bath customers.
Began hosting Academy of Cheese Classes in person again and our Cheesemonger Simon taught his first in-person Academy of Cheese level one course.
Our Cheesemonger Simon Bell sat and passed his Academy of Cheese Level Two exam and we continued to sponsor more of our employees across all departments to sit the Academy of Cheese Level One course.
We were delighted to support our former London Cheesemonger Israel in his life move from London to the countryside and recruited him as supervisor at our Bourton on the Water Cheeserooms.
Financial year 2020-2021
We took the decision that all managers within Paxton & Whitfield would be offered free 'Academy of Cheese' training to at least level 1.
Our team members were all offered the chance to take part in our popular customer online cheese tasting sessions free of charge.
As part of our continued focus on promoting people up from within the business, we promoted Alex to our London Assistant Manager from his role as Merchandising Assistant and Flossie to our London Account Manager from her role as a cheesemonger.
Hero Hirsh, our head of retail submitted her Master of Cheese dissertation to the Academy of Cheese on the global environmental impact of cheese.
Our quality manager Jazz went to spend 2 days working with Tom Calver and his team at our pioneering environmental cheesemakers Westcombe Dairy to learn more about the regenerative farming 'Westcombe Project' and to get hands-on with making our batch of Duckett's Caerphilly.
We held a remote, company-wide team-building session to make Mozarella from our own kitchens! Using our Paxton & Whitfield cheesemaking kits to create our very own, individual cheese.
