When Gemma Leslie started her food poster small business Food For Everyone, she had no idea it would become a business at all. The concept began during the depths of the Melbourne COVID lockdowns in 2020, when the former marketing manager had an idea to gather recipes from various cooks and chefs and illustrate them. Her plan was to turn the artwork into posters and donate the proceeds to meal relief charity FareShare Australia to help them get food to under-served communities who were isolating in their homes.

Tentatively, she posted about her idea on Instagram calling for pre-orders and was shocked when she ended up raising $33,000 in two weeks. “It was crazy. I realised suddenly I had to make this work,” says Gemma.

A big printer purchase from Officeworks (“I bought a really good one, I didn’t want to stuff around!”), a lucky find with an ethical paper tube supplier who had a policy of hiring and upskilling new migrants and many hours spent rolling posters at the kitchen table, and Gemma realised she had a hit business on her hands. 

More than three years later, Food For Everyone has two employees, its own studio space and has worked with 41 chefs and 20 artists. “We don’t donate 100 per cent of our profits any more, but we do donate 10 meals per poster to our charity partner Second Bite. We’ve now donated $163,500 in four years,” says Gemma. “I love that I’m giving back, but I also get to do art every day and work with cool chefs and other artists. It’s a bit of a dream.”

SEE ALSO: Small Business Success: UmamiPapi Founder’s Daily Routine

A series of images showing a day in the life of Food for Everyone founder Gemma Leslie. They show her in her studio with her artworks and art supplies.

A Day in the Life of Gemma Leslie

Starting the Morning Inspired

“I walk my son to school. It’s a 20-minute walk there and back, so I’ll listen to a business podcast on the way back and then in the car on the way to work. I like being inspired by many different sorts of businesses. It makes you want to go back to your own business and do better.”

Managing Admin in the AM

“Our days start at 8am and end at 4pm. I think that’s a better working day. We are a fairly unstructured business and I like to keep it that way. Our main team meeting happens on Monday mornings. We go over the financials and the week that was – ‘Why did this work?’, ‘Why did that not work?’. Then we talk about the things that must happen this week and the longer term projects. The team likes to see my work, so if I’m working on a painting I’ll print it out and put it on the pinboard.

“Then I usually spend the morning doing emails or anything that might be urgent. But I know if I haven’t started painting by 11am, then it’s not going to happen. So I try to get all the other stuff out of the way by 11 so I can do creative tasks. Because if I don’t do the creative stuff, the business is really boring.”

SEE ALSO: Small Business Tips: How to Prepare for Peak Season

Prioritising Self-Care at Lunchtime

“With a young child – he’s three – I don’t get any time to myself at home or at work. So my goal is to try to do Pilates twice a week. I go during the day, usually around 11am or 1pm, which is one of the benefits of working for yourself.”

Getting Creative with Clients in the Afternoon

“Often we’ll have offsite shoots. For example, a couple of months ago we were working with a bakery in Collingwood so we went there for a shoot and then visited the artist in their studio. If we’re leaving our workplace, it’s to visit the people who are doing our posters. All other business tends to be on Zoom.”

Gemma Leslie leans on a table in her workspace. The table is covered in stationery and packing supplies. In the background, there are more packing materials.


Tips for Small Business Success

Give Back Sustainably

“When we started, I was giving away 100 per cent of our profits. That wasn’t sustainable. Then we moved to 50 per cent. That also wasn’t sustainable. So now we give back a sustainable amount. I think all businesses should support their community in a way that works for them — which doesn't necessarily have to be by donating money. Sometimes donating your time with a day of volunteering can be a nice thing for you and your team to do.”

Embrace Automation

“I [used to type] 600 names and addresses onto labels for every postal run. Then I found an app that does it automatically, so now I can get that work done in a day rather than two weeks. We also send an automated email to our customers the day after they order thanking them. It’s written by me, but I don’t [have to] handwrite each one. We get so many replies from that email, thanking us for starting the business, or that they really like the art, or can’t wait to put it up in their house. The most beautiful emails come from that one bit of automation.”

Goal Setting is Important

“We have two categories for goals: financial and aspirational. The financial [goal] is what we need to make to pay employees and contractors, and the longer term goals are about where we want to be next year or in five years.

“The aspirational goals are things like who we want to work with. Some of the big names we ticked off this year were [chefs] Nigella Lawson and Rick Stein. They had been on my list for a while and I never thought we’d get there. We have this big pinboard with our goals on it to remind us of where we’re going. They’re all big goals but they’re all [achievable].”

 A series of images of Gemma Leslie packing poster orders for delivery using brown paper wrap and tubing, and a label maker to print postage labels.

Essentials for Running the Office

SEE ALSO: Small Business Success Stories With Blackwood Collective