Empowering a rural hospitality business with full fibre broadband

Background: Opened Easter 2023 by old schoolfriends Toby Baggott and Sam Lawson-King, Roots + Seeds offers visitors an opportunity to engage with the environment and the community while enjoying a wonderful culinary experience into the bargain! Nestled on the edge of the country estate, Toby and Sam’s ambition is to reintroduce a working kitchen garden back into the heart of Cirencester Park.

Size: Roots + Seeds Kitchen Garden employs 14 full and part-time staff 

Their story

“I’m not sure what we would have done without Gigaclear!”

So says Toby Baggott, co-founder of Roots + Seeds Kitchen Garden in Cirencester.

Together with his former schoolfriend Sam Lawson-King, they launched their exciting start-up in a spanking new building nestled in the grounds of the majestic Bathurst Estate in Easter 2023.

Toby said: “One of the challenges of running a business in a rural location, particularly a hospitality business like ours is that these days, if you haven’t got access to fast and reliable broadband, it’s almost impossible to trade.”

First and foremost, staff needed to be able to take card payments at the till as well as via handheld contactless card readers. However, for Toby, equally important was the ability to be able to offer a ‘guest WiFi’ to customers.

Toby said: “On a Saturday afternoon half of our guests will have their phones out so it’s a real plus to be able to offer them fast and reliable broadband. During the week, we’re already finding that we are attracting businesspeople who want the ability to stay connected while enjoying what we have to offer. We’ve had no complaints so far so it must be good.

“We even have people coming here to do some work, maybe because our broadband’s better! That’s fine by us as we have plenty of room.”

Toby said there was a certain nervousness at first because they couldn’t shop around. There was no other full fibre broadband provider, so they had no option other than to rely on Gigaclear to provide the quality of service they needed.

“We needn’t have worried,” said Toby.

“When you are the only game in town, as Gigaclear is, it’s important that you are reliable and provide a good service and fortunately Gigaclear has nailed it!

Roots + Seeds can be found at www.rootsandseeds.co.uk