Clarifying the pathway to impact in an impact-led wholesale business
Summary
Cotswold Fayre is a responsible business and a leader in the B Corp movement. The leadership wanted to be clearer about the change the business exists to create in the food system and how its commercial model contributes to that change. This project developed a Theory of Change that made the impact pathway explicit and helped embed it into strategy, decision-making and reporting across the business.
The challenge: moving beyond operational strength to shaping the food system
Cotswold Fayre is a long-established wholesale distributor of fine food, with a strong commitment to ethical practice and a leading voice in the B Corp movement. The business already had a strong record of operational impact. Responsible sourcing, environmental improvements, community engagement and employee wellbeing were embedded in practice and reflected in its impact reporting.
Beyond sustainable operations, the leadership wanted to be clearer on the problems in the food system the business seeks to address, and how its commercial model contributes to solving them.
The objective was to make that impact logic explicit — so that leaders could be clearer about what drives impact, embed it more deliberately into systems and decisions, and communicate more coherently.
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The process: making the impact logic explicit
I led a structured Theory of Change process to make the business’s impact logic explicit and to sharpen practical focus on what drives impact in everyday decisions. The aim was to clarify the pathway and identify the critical drivers so they could be embedded into strategy, systems and commercial choices.
I began with one-to-one conversations with the leadership team. I listened to how they understood impact, what they believed mattered, and where they experienced tensions or trade-offs.
These conversations gave me a grounded understanding of the business, revealing where understanding was strong, where assumptions differed, and where greater clarity was needed. They also allowed me to synthesise issues in advance and bring them into to team workshop in a way that supported open discussion.
By the time we met as a group, I had developed a draft articulation of Cotswold Fayre’s impact pathway, which could be presented for clarification and refinement. This meant the senior management team could focus their time on strengthening and exploring the model, rather than building it from scratch.
For the leadership team, the time commitment was contained and purposeful: an initial 45-minute conversation, a three-hour workshop, and a 90-minute session within their functional area. The CEO and Impact Director attended throughout, ensuring continuity and ownership.
What changed
The most important change was clarity and repositioning impact at the centre of senior leadership responsibility.
The leadership team now has a shared articulation of the change Cotswold Fayre seeks to contribute to: a food system where sustainable and ethical businesses flourish. This clarified how the wholesale model supports the success of values-aligned suppliers and retailers and how commercial growth increases the business’s ability to influence the wider market.
Making the pathway explicit also sharpened understanding of priorities and trade-offs. The team became clearer about which parts of the business matter most for achieving change, and how different functions contribute to the same overall ambition. Impact is now part of coordinated commercial decision-making across the business, rather than something considered separately through reporting.
The Theory of Change provides a shared framework for senior management discussions and a stronger foundation for impact reporting. It allows the business to move beyond describing responsible practice to explaining how its model contributes to change in the food system.
The value of the work lies in this alignment. A clearer model strengthens decision-making, internal coherence and external credibility, and supports Cotswold Fayre to grow commercially while staying disciplined about the impact it seeks to create.