Love Local with The List: Florilége

In the run up to Small Business Saturday, we are supporting local small businesses by sharing their stories with you.

Local entrepreneur Lila worked as a part-time assistant on the Waitrose deli counter while she was at college, and that's where her self-confessed cheese obsession started. With the support of family and friends, she launched Florilege earlier this year, giving her the opportunity to showcase her love of food aesthetics, flavours, art... and cheese, of course! 

Read Lila's story here...

"As a business we’re conscious of our plastic waste. All of our platters and pots are made from biodegradable palm leaf, and we use recyclable / reusable glass jars for chutney and honey... we grow our own edible flowers and herbs for garnish and are looking to grow more of our ingredients in the future!"

1.  How It All Began

Florilége officially launched just a few short months ago in September 2021, but it has been in the works for much longer! It’s something my family and friends have been encouraging me to do for a while. I love food preparation and enjoy making cheese and charcuterie platters, so it’s been very exciting to turn this into my business over the past few months.

I’ve lived in Guernsey my whole life! I’ve worked in food service and with cheese for a few years now, and speciality cheese is a big interest of mine. I love that there’s so much history and culture behind European cheeses.

I think I chose this area of business because I’m obsessed with food aesthetics and flavours and art - Florilége allows me to combine all of these things! I love old Renaissance era paintings of food, I find them so inspiring. I love that food can be beautiful and I’m passionate about gastronomy and my aim is to eventually expand Florilége fully into event catering.

2.  My Cheese Obsession

I worked at Waitrose part-time while I was at college and just happened to be put on the cheese and deli counter. It was a great experience, which I then went on to do full-time. That's where my interest in cheese started. I was doing cheese platters and tastings at work, and that is what inspired me to start my business.

3.  Highlights and Challenges Along The Way 

Although Florilége has only been operating for a few months, we’ve had the pleasure of creating platters for several business events, which has been really lovely. Receiving great feedback from clients is always the best part, and I’m excited for the future - I think the best is yet to come!

To be honest, I wasn’t expecting to receive as many orders as we have, so managing that was a challenge at first! I realised I don’t really know much about running a business, so it’s definitely a learning experience. Thankfully, it’s (mostly) gone smoothly so far!

4.  Celebrating Local Life 

I love to go out to eat! Guernsey has some great restaurants and I’ll take any excuse to dress up to go out. And being in Guernsey means we have access to the amazing local artisan products we include on our platters and in our boxes, such as local cheeses, chutneys, honey, produce, etc, which is wonderful.

The Clean Earth Trust is one of our favourite local charities, along with Plastic Free Guernsey. It’s wonderful to see environmental conservation charities here in Guernsey, I really admire the work they do. As a business we’re conscious of our plastic waste. All of our platters and pots are made from biodegradable palm leaf, and we use recyclable / reusable glass jars for chutney and honey instead of plastic. At the moment we grow our own edible flowers and herbs for garnish and are looking to grow more of our ingredients in the future.

5.  Discover Florilége For Yourself

6.  One More Thing...

Florilége is on hand to help elevate your Christmas celebrations with a fabulous range of gift boxes and platters to choose from this December. And they're operating a temporary delivery service on selected dates throughout the month so you can have your treats sent right to your door! Hurry though because they are booking up FAST.