The Ethos
Easton Chilli was founded with sustainability, ethical ideals, and circular economics at its heart:
- for each product sold we make a donation to charity – since November 2020, over £1787 has been donated to the Trussell Trust in support of UK food banks. From 2020 to 2023, £1 was donated per item. From 2024, 10% of profit per item will be donated.
- additionally, 1% of online sales made via Stripe is donated to the Stripe Climate fund to fund carbon removal intiatives
- each jar is packaged with just string and card, designed to be removed so you're more likely to reuse the jar
- reused or recyclable shipping materials only – no new plastic is sourced for this purpose
- merchandise is typically printed on-demand which reduces waste, using the most ethical materials suitable for the product.
- we are continuously looking for ways to improve our products, making them more sustainable by sourcing ingredients that are produced locally or at a fairer price. Services like CrowdFarming make this easy and possible for small businesses.
- operating with transparency as much as possible, being open to questions and comment and publishing financial information annually. View the latest report here: Year in Review 2022
The Story
Hey there! I'm Rikki, and I run Easton Chilli. I started making chilli jam in my small kitchen in Easton around 2017. I never found anything I liked in the shops, so I developed my own recipe and started gifting every Christmas. During the pandemic I was on furlough from my job as a web developer at a travel company, so I had a lot of time to watch Netflix and explore my passion for cooking. During lockdown 2 in November 2020 I ran out of Netflix and decided to start Easton Chilli and see where it went.
It's now 2023, and after two years of running Easton Chilli, I've made over 1600 jars of delicious chilli jam (about 340 litres!) across 12 different recipes, and I'm currently stocked in eight actual stores! Until now, Easton Chilli was a side-project, taking about one day a week of my time. I've now decided to take it full time and see what happens! We'll see what the rest of the year brings!
If you've got any questions or feedback - just send me a message. And I'll get back to you soon!
