Code of Ethics

1. Why this exists

Most small businesses don't bother writing one of these. We do, because it works. A code on the wall makes the difficult decisions easier when they arrive — you've already had the discussion in calmer weather. This is ours. It applies to everyone who works at, with, or for The Sourdough Hub.

2. Honesty in everything we say

We will not say anything in our marketing, our website, our packaging, or our personal communications about the company that we do not believe to be true. If a claim cannot be supported with evidence, it does not appear on our site. We will not:

• Inflate review numbers or order volumes.
• Imply endorsements, awards, or press coverage we have not actually received.
• Use the word "organic" without certification, the word "artisan" loosely, or the word "sustainable" without specifics.
• Use stock photographs that misrepresent our actual product or process.
• Run urgency tactics in checkout that aren't true (fake countdowns, fake low-stock alerts, fake "someone else just bought this" notifications).

Where we make a mistake — and we will — we correct it visibly and quickly.

3. Quality of what we sell

We sell what we would buy ourselves and give to people we love. Concretely:

• We do not pad the kit with components that look attractive in a photograph but don't help the customer bake. Each item earns its place by being useful.
• We do not knowingly ship products we wouldn't accept for ourselves.
• If a product fails to meet our standard at any point in the chain, we replace or refund. The customer's experience is the only test that matters.

4. Care for our customers

We will:

• Reply to every customer message personally, within one working day where possible.
• Treat customer data with the respect we would want for our own.
• Honour our 30-day guarantee without scripts, without scripts about scripts, and without making the customer prove anything.
• Tell customers the truth when something has gone wrong, including the cause and what we will do about it.

We will not:

• Make returning a kit harder than ordering one.
• Use dark patterns to capture marketing consent.
• Sell or share customer data with third parties for marketing purposes.
• Run advertising campaigns that target people during periods of vulnerability or stress.

5. Care for the people who work with us

Our standards for ourselves and for our team are set out in our EDI Policy and Modern Slavery Statement. The principles are: pay above the Real Living Wage; permanent contracts as the default; flexibility offered as a starting position; safety and dignity for everyone.

6. Care for our suppliers

We pay our suppliers on time. We are willing to pay more for craft. We do not extract last-minute concessions because we know we can. We will not engage suppliers we suspect of using forced or unfree labour, of underpaying staff below legal minimums, or of using materials whose origin they cannot or will not explain.

Where we discover a problem at a supplier, we raise it directly first. We give them a real chance to fix it. If they will not, we move on, and we explain why.

7. Care for the natural world

We are a small business and our footprint is correspondingly small, but "small" is not an excuse for "any". We will:

• Use only fibre-based, recycled, recyclable or compostable packaging in the kit.
• Source ingredients from UK growers and millers wherever it is feasible to do so.
• Refuse single-use plastics anywhere in our process where we can reasonably avoid them.
• Choose our delivery couriers in part on their environmental record.
• Disclose, transparently, anywhere we fail this standard. We have not yet succeeded in eliminating plastic from our cool-safe liner, for example, and we will say so until we do.

8. Conflicts of interest

If a member of the team has a personal financial interest in a supplier, partner, journalist, or contractor we are working with, that interest must be declared at the time the relationship begins. Decisions are then made by someone without the conflict.

Personal gifts from suppliers above token value are returned or, where impractical, donated.

9. Bribery and corruption

We do not offer, accept, or solicit bribes in any form. This is not a difficult one for us — we have never been asked — but we record it clearly so that we are alert if we ever are. We comply with the Bribery Act 2010.

10. The press, the journal, and the things we publish

The way we handle editorial content is set out in our Editorial Policy. The short version: we don't publish what we don't believe; we disclose any commercial relationship behind a piece of content; and we treat the recipes and guidance on our journal as a public good rather than a marketing channel.

11. Speaking up

If you work with us, supply us, or buy from us, and you see something that doesn't square with this code, please tell us. The fastest route is an email to Clara Ashworth at hello@thesourdoughhub.co.uk. We will read it, take it seriously, and respond. We will not retaliate against anyone who raises a concern in good faith.

12. Review

This code is reviewed each January. The most recent review date is shown at the top. Material changes are noted in our annual update.