“Everything We Do Starts With You”

“Everything we do starts with you.”

If you know SORTEDfood, you’ll know that this has been our mantra since day one.

This incredible global community has been built on two major foundations – food and friendship. And it’s only grown this big and this strong because of you. Your knowledge, opinions and recommendations guide us to create the best content and products that we can, for all of us to enjoy and learn from.

As the community has grown, the breadth of knowledge and opinions around food has too, opening up all kinds of new information and viewpoints that we may never have considered. This has helped us become better individuals, able to create better content and more useful products for more people… and obviously the friendship aspect has always ensured that whatever we do remains fun and lighthearted.

Of course, it’s natural that we don’t always agree on everything – between the 4 of us onscreen, the 20 of us in the SORTEDfood team and within the wider community. There will always be differences of opinion based on our own knowledge and experiences. This is only a good thing. It opens up conversation, helps us look from different viewpoints, and forces us to question our opinions… and none of us should be afraid to change our opinions when presented with new information. But likewise, none of us should feel that someone else’s opinion is being forced upon us.

With such a large and diverse community, there will always be many different opinions on what we do at SORTEDfood – the places we visit, the way we cook, the food we eat, the products we review, the guests we have on the show… Now more than ever, the choices we all make are subject to higher levels of scrutiny – and that can be a good thing too, as long as we’re all prepared that we may reach different conclusions.

What I’m saying is that it’s ok that we don’t all agree all the time, in fact it’s healthy. But how we approach these conversations and disagreements matters.

In the last few years we’ve seen conversations around our content shift from lighthearted debates about how to make a ‘traditional’ lasagne, to people questioning whether the inclusion of a product/guest represents a potentially controversial political standpoint.

I know it’s easy for me to say that everything we do is done with the best of intentions – but it’s true. We do our research, make our decisions and start conversations around food without setting out to be controversial or spark serious debates. But, inevitably sometimes we stumble upon them. If we feel we’ve made a mistake in these situations, we’ll hold our hands up and do what we can to rectify it. After all, we don’t pretend to be perfect and are always looking to learn and grow.

But there are other times when we don’t necessarily agree with the feedback and decide it’s right for us to have strength in our convictions and carry on. In either instance, there will be people that agree and disagree with what happens and will voice their opinions to us and the rest of the community, all of which is perfectly justified.

All I ask is that if you disagree with us or other members of the community, let’s do it like friends – have a sensible, civil conversation and, if necessary, agree to disagree rather than try to force an opinion onto somebody else through aggression/abuse/insults/threats.

As friends, we pride ourselves on being able to chat about anything, and regardless of where we end up we know we can always go for a pint afterwards and carry on being mates. My hope is that this mindset can be extended to the SORTEDfood community as a whole – virtual beers for everyone! 

And if all else fails, just remember the simple four word phrase that equates to the golden rule of life – don’t be a d*ck.

As we’ve said before, food and friendship are the two things that have brought us all together – they are two of life’s great riches. Together, it is our job to make sure that everyone gets to enjoy them, equally.

So if you see someone behaving out of turn across our social channels, feel free to point them to this blog post and let them know what this community is really all about.

Sending big love as always,

Jamie and the SORTEDfood team x