Andrew Thornton

Andrew is an entrepreneur, a facilitator, and a retailer at heart. He believes that businesses with a meaningful purpose are more sustainable in the long term, fun places to work and can make a meaningful contribution to society. Having started off his career working on the retail side of Mars, he founded and ran the boutique retail consulting firm SRCG working globally with clients such as M&S, BP, Spar, Circle K, Unilever and PepsiCo. Seeking a better way to run a business and a move away from short term profits as the entire focus of a business, he founded Thornton’s Budgens (his award-winning North London Supermarket business) as a laboratory in which to figure out how to run a heartful business.

With the purpose ‘we are the community supermarket that really cares about people and planet’, he was a pioneer in sustainability in food retailing. Andrew now focuses his efforts on helping other leaders open their hearts, through his Heart in Business organisation, supporting businesses who want to make a difference in the world and deliver their purpose through the use of habits. Last year he published ‘Putting the Heart back into Business’ which he co-authors with his partner Eudora Pascall.

Andrew was a founder director of social enterprises The People’s Supermarket and Food from the Sky, is a non-executive director of COR Training in the US and of Natural Restoration Limited in the UK.