We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Oliver English. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Oliver below.

Oliver, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

I grew up deeply involved in the restaurant business. My parents met at cooking school and I grew up in their first restaurants in Boston. Over the years I worked nearly every job in the restaurant business, from bar back and server to host and pizza chef. Eventually I studied hospitality in School and went on to design, develop and open restaurants throughout the world.

About 6 years ago I was living and working in a restaurant in Abu Dhabi. About halfway through my meal I looked down at all the food and thorough to myself, “where did all of this food come from?” I asked our chef to come out , and we had a long conversation about how the 10+ ingredients got to the restaurant from over 6 countries. We discussed how long ago the food might have been harvested, and all the boats, planes and trains it took to get to us.

I realized after this conversation that I had never really asked that question, or thought that food had a bigger connection to the world around us – in particular our health, environment and society. A few months later I was opening another restaurant in the Bahamas and Asked to see a local farmer, to get some local food for the restaurant.
By chance, I met a farmer named Sekai, who would totally transform the trajectory of my life. He had a love, passion and joy for food and farming that was inspiring and hopeful.

In that moment I realized that more people needed to meet farmers, and to understand the connection to where food came from. That day marked the beginning of our documentary, Feeding Tomorrow, and documentary about the future of food. That documentary would eventually grow into a full scale production company focusing on the future of food. In the past 6 years pour team has visited over 60 farms around the world sharing stories about the future of food.

What was an accidental encounter turned into a lifelong passion and mission to share inspiring stories about the future of food.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am the co-founder & CEO of Common Table Creative, a global production and hospitality company focusing on the Future of Food. In addition to creating documentaries, including our flagship film, Feeding Tomorrow, our team works with food companies, NGO’s and non profits all around the world to share hopeful stories about creating a healthier more sustainable world – with food at the center. This includes leading sustainability brands like Califia Farms, Allbirds, Pangaia, Imperfect Foods, The International Fund for Agricultural Development ( IFAD) Crop Trust

Our team is incredibly proud of the small and medium sustainable farmers we have featured and highlighted over the years. We have hi-lighted farmers throughout the United states, and in India, Germany, Colombia and the Bahamas. Working with these farmers to showcase their passion and knowledge has been a huge hilights.

In addition to sharing stories about sustainability, as part of the Impact Campaign for pour documentary, we built a regenerative school farm at the Will Rogers Middle school in Santa Monic, Ca. The school hired a farming instructor, and now every kid whop goes to that school has one or two classes outside – learning about where food comes from, how it gores any why it matters.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

Growing up, and for most of my life, I was pretty sure I was going to work in my family restaurant business, and eventually take it over from my parents. I studied restaurants and hospitality at the Cornell Hotel School, worked for some of the best chefs around the world. I honestly never thought I would be doing anything else.

That all changed when I was 26. I kept meeting with different sustainable farmers, and then other experts working on the future of food – from climate scientists, to nutritionist and educators. I felt an increasingly deep connection to these ideas of sustainability, and realized myself and by brother. (Simon) who created the documentary with me, were well positioned to share these unique stories.

Honestly, I didn’t know exactly where I was going, but I felt called to move in a new direction. I took a massive reduction in salary ( and for the next few years_ packed up our apartment in the East Village and moved out to Los Angeles to pursue the dream. We have have an award winning documentary and continue to run our production business.

I think the lesson here is – you don’t have to have all the answers. You just need to start headed in a direction. If you feel called, just start. Don’t think about it too much, Trust. Trust that you will figure it out and make it happen!

Alright – let’s talk about marketing or sales – do you have any fun stories about a risk you’ve taken or something else exciting on the sales and marketing side?

When we first moved out to LA, we hosted farm – to – table community dinners. Drawing on my experience running pop up dinners in the restaurant business, we brought together artists, musicians and entrepreneurs to share in a local meal. These dinners were a way to gather the community and share stories about sustainability.

They became so popular that we started getting hired by sustainable food and beverage companies. The challenge was that no-one wanted to pay for the full dinner, so we had to charge ticket prices. There is a trade of between charging a full amount, and getting the people you wan to show up.

So we ended up throwing one of our best dinners but lost 1K on the whole thing. Considering how much time, energy and passion we put into it, that was terrible, especially as we were incredibly broke. My co-founders and I were super upset. The dinner was great, our partners were happy, and everyone had a great time. But we were losing % and not happy about.

It turns out that one of the partners we had for the dinner – Imperfect Foods (previously imperfect produce) needed some new videos. They had loved the dinner we had thrown, and felt deeply aligned with our values as a company. In the next week they hired our company to produce some big videos for them – which in those days was more $ then we had even made on a video.

Lesson – take the long term perspective and focus on how you make people feel. Build relationships. That company came back to us many times to work together.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.commontablecreative.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/oliver_english/?hl=en. ( @Oliver_English
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/oliverenglish/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fJq09Y0yI34
• Other: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VRiCnMqP0w www.olivertenglish.com