Improving Livelihoods

The Waitrose Foundation was established in 2005 to help improve the livelihoods of, and create better opportunities for, the people and communities who grow, pick and pack our fresh produce. Since its inception, the Foundation has invested more than £22 million into more than 2,000 community projects.

Download the 2023/24 Waitrose Foundation Annual Report.

Operating across ten countries in Africa and Central America, a percentage of the sale of Foundation products goes back into the country of origin. This contribution is co-funded with our dedicated suppliers. 

Throughout 2024, we generated £2.5m through the sale of Foundation products, reached over 76,000 farmers and workers and delivered 296 projects to create better livelihoods. These included the expansion of our microloans programme in East Africa – primarily used to fund school fees – as well as income diversification projects and the ongoing school farm competition in Ghana to inspire youth in agricultural careers.

Customers can support Waitrose Foundation projects by purchasing any Waitrose Foundation product, identified in store or online by the dedicated logo. 

Where a product bears the Waitrose Foundation label, 2% of the retail sale price of that product is channelled through our implementing partners to invest in community development projects supporting workers on the farms we source these products from.

In 2024/25 the Foundation investment* that was accrued for the Foundation and given to implementation partners was split as follows:

Waitrose Foundation South Africa: £1,191,703 (52%)

Farm Africa: £722,717 (32%)

Blue Skies Foundation: £87,000 (4%)

Self Help Africa: £107,725 (5%)

Fruktus Foundation: £27,080 (1%)

World Wide Fund for Nature (UK): £157,724 (7%)

Find out more about the Waitrose Foundation.   

^{* ‘Foundation investment’ is the accrued finances from sales in the 2023/24 financial year for Implementation Partner country and farm level programmes plus additional Global Strategic Fund payments made to the partner that year. For clarity, accrued finances are not sent to the partner until the end of the financial year, whilst global fund payments are paid throughout the year.}

We’re proud to be working in Partnership for a happier world by creating a more sustainable future. By putting the voices of workers at the heart of our programmes, we aim to support the creation of better jobs for the people who make, pick and pack our products or provide our services by improving working conditions and job satisfaction. As an employee-owned business, we’re driven by our principles of democracy, and we want to encourage and enable our suppliers to adopt similar principles within their own organisations. 

We initiated our Better Jobs survey with UK own-brand suppliers in 2019, against a backdrop of increasing skills shortages within the manufacturing sector and enhanced legislation regarding employment and modern slavery. 

The survey was an opportunity to experiment and collaborate with suppliers in a new way in order to drive sustainable and long-lasting change. Rather than carry out a social audit, suppliers completed a management questionnaire and invited their workforce to complete a worker survey, all based on a framework developed through a consultative process with experts from The Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Institute of Employment Studies and the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

The Better Jobs framework explores seven areas of employment and the experience of being at work, covering the topics of voice, growth, reward, security, job design, respect and health and wellbeing. We want the people who make our products and provide our services to: 

•      Be empowered to voice their opinions, ideas and concerns (voice);     
•      Have the opportunity to progress (growth);     
•      Be appropriately rewarded through pay, benefits and recognition (reward);     
•      Have security within their role (security);
•      Feel a sense of autonomy within their role (job design);     
•      Feel respected by others (respect);     
•      Feel well and safe (health and wellbeing).     

We expanded the survey to include supplier sites from China in 2020 and India and South Africa in 2022. Through an online portal, suppliers who completed the survey could see how their results compared to their peers and access guidance documents and dedicated resources to support any action plans they chose to develop. 

Since the earlier rounds of surveys, insights were used to develop livelihood improvement projects. For example, in China, where our 2021/22 survey results indicated that workers were struggling to cope with the pressures of work and home life, we set out to support the workforce to increase their resilience levels. Successes in this programme have included the implementation of family-friendly policies and subsidies to support workers. 

For more information about our work to create better jobs in our supply chains, see our Human Rights Report and Modern Slavery Statement.

• 2022/23 Progress Report
• 2020/21 Better Jobs Report
• 2019/20 Better Jobs Report

Fairtrade operates in some of the world’s most challenging supply chains, where incomes for farmers and workers are often low and working conditions difficult. 

The Partnership believes farmers and workers in supply chains deserve to earn a fair price for their work and benefit from good working conditions. Fairtrade certification supports this ambition by encouraging better production methods, enabling democratic participation and ensuring fair pricing and improved working conditions alongside additional community investment through the Fairtrade Minimum Price and the Fairtrade Premium. Producer networks also directly participate in the research, consultation and decision-making processes of the Fairtrade standards, which includes governing minimum prices and premiums for each commodity.

Waitrose was one of the first supermarkets to stock Fairtrade products and now offers the largest range of Fairtrade own-label products of any High Street supermarket in the UK. All our Waitrose own-label bananas, coffee, tea, sugar and cocoa in confectionery is Fairtrade. Many of these best-loved categories are produced by smallholders or small-scale farmers. Smallholders are often particularly vulnerable to market price fluctuations (that can fall below the cost of production and the level needed to provide a decent livelihood) and, increasingly, to the impacts of climate change. As such, they need support to ensure the resilience of their businesses in the future.

As part of certification, farmers in the Fairtrade system develop skills to better manage their crops, increase output and enhance their business. On top of this, we support additional work with Fairtrade International to address the challenges faced by smallholders.

Find out more about Waitrose’s relationship with Fairtrade International.

Waitrose Own-Brand Tea
Since 2017, all Waitrose own-label black tea has been sourced on Fairtrade terms, and we’re committed to increasing the transparency of our tea supply chains. We recognise the specific challenges within the tea industry and continue to work in partnership with our supplier and Fairtrade to do what we can to support improving the livelihoods of workers. We believe that the Fairtrade Minimum Price and additional Fairtrade Premium are important parts of improving conditions and standards within the tea industry.         

More information on Fairtrade’s work in tea can be found on their website. 

A full list of our sourcing countries can be found on our tea sourcing list.