Our story
If you eat food, you should have a say in your own food system.
Harvestory began with a dissertation, a strong opinion about food literacy and a suspicion that the answer was not another farm somewhere else.
The founder
From financial services to a master's in agriculture.
Will began his career in financial services before turning towards what he actually cared about, which was people, nature and food. That took him to the Royal Agricultural University and a dissertation written in partnership with an urban farming business, during which he coined the term ESG Farm and set out the idea that became Harvestory.
The conclusion was uncomfortable and useful in equal measure. Growing more food in cities is a good thing. But the reason most people have lost touch with food is not supply. It is that the growing happens out of sight, so nobody ever sees it, learns from it or takes part in it.
Harvestory is the response to that. Put the growing where the people already are.
Food literacy is at an all time low, and in today's world mental wellbeing is a real psychological struggle. Harvestory is our response.William Matthews, Founder
What we are actually doing
Bringing food and nature back into the everyday spaces we live and work in.
Not to make a point about vertical farming, and not to sell a piece of equipment. To reconnect people with each other and with what they eat, and to lift how they feel while doing it.
The installation is only ever the excuse. What matters is that somebody stops, asks a question, cuts something, tastes it, and tells someone else about it.
What we believe
Four things we keep coming back to.
Harvest at the point of need
The shortest supply chain is no supply chain. Food cut where it is eaten, when it is wanted, in the quantity that is wanted.
The excuse, not the point
A growing system is a reason for people to stop and speak to each other. The produce is real and useful. The connection is the actual output.
Ownership beats dependency
A programme that only works while we are standing in the room is a failure. The aim is a space that runs itself, with us behind it.
Slow is fine
One installation, done properly, in a space where it gets used, beats five that nobody was ever introduced to. We would rather grow carefully.
Where this goes
A growing system in every building that feeds people.
Harvestory works across the United Kingdom. The ambition is straightforward to say and hard to do. Every building that feeds people, and every building where people spend their days, should be growing some of it in front of them.
Offices, hotels, hospitals, hospices, schools, care homes and the lobbies of the places people live. Millions of buildings, all of them buying in herbs that travelled for days to arrive tired. There is no good reason for that, and the technology to change it has been sitting in plain sight for years.
Behind the installations sits the less visible work. Written food safety, allergen, water management, cleaning, pest management and risk assessment procedures, a full document register, training sign off records and equipment logs. It is not the interesting part, and it is the part that lets a growing system live in a working kitchen, a school or a care setting.
Recognition
Recognised, and still early.
First Steps Entrepreneurship Prize, 2024. Highly Commended Award, 2025. Honorary staff member at Future Space, part of the Oxford Innovation ecosystem and affiliated with UWE Bristol.
Harvestory trades as ESG Farms Ltd, registered in England and Wales, company number 15878396.
In practice
Whatever you are going through, you are growing through.
Get in touch
Come and see one growing.
The quickest way to understand what this is, is to stand next to one. Get in touch and we will arrange it.