Esther Morrison, business information officer

Are you a high street business looking for some support after the challenges of the past couple of years? Or maybe you’ve just started out on the high street? Are you looking for someone with expertise in food & hospitality to help you out?

Meet Esther, one of our team of High Street specialists. She’s regularly out and about in her patches- Kelham Island, Parsons Cross, Crosspool, Spital Hill, Burngreave, Firth Park and Crystal Peaks.

Esther gets how hard it can be to run a business at the best of times- she’s a single parent and female entrepreneur and knows how difficult it is to prioritise and organise when you have so many responsibilities. She’s been supporting business owners over the past two years to navigate what she calls ‘the fog of uncertainty’. With Esther, there’s no such thing as a silly question. 

Her approach to business support is collaboration. She’ll start with an informal meeting to get to know you, understand why you started your business and what sort of help you feel you need.  Together, you then create a bite-sized action plan to tackle the areas that will help to keep your business viable and growing. That could be business appearance, marketing, supply chains, events or a need to adapt.

Esther’s a foodie a heart and has a wealth of knowledge in this area. She began her placemaking journey in Stockport, creating an award-winning monthly street food and music event to tackle the general perception that Stockport wasn’t an attractive or safe place to spend your time. She also helped to set up a vintage market and was a food trader at the very first Teenage Market where she helped understand what kind of businesses support young entrepreneurs needed.

She’s the perfect starting point for new food and hospitality businesses but has the experience to support any high street business looking to improve performance or reach out to new customers. Recently, she’s worked with lots of food businesses to help them understand how to apply and keep their food hygiene certificates (especially business owners who have moved to Sheffield from outside the UK).

Like all our advisors, she’s helpfully connected into colleagues at the council to assist with things like licensing or street cleaning. But most of all she’s easy to talk to and can help you start to figure out what support you need.