Ellie Ward caught up with her to talk corporate clients, social enterprise in Birmingham and five year plans.

But what does Birmingham’s social enterprise offering look like?

Rosie Ginday (pictured below left), the founder of Birmingham-based social enterprise Miss Macaroon, takes time out of the kitchen to offer her perspective. She set up her catering business which sells premium and personalised macarons whilst simultaneously offering personal development and employability skills training to unemployed individuals in early 2011.

Ginday explains: “Our mission is to reduce youth unemployment through positive work experience programmes in a catering workspace so we can improve young people’s employability and personal development skills through the power of food.”

The ‘Macaroons That Make a Difference’ programme offered by Miss Macaroon is a four week pastry training course for long-term unemployed people between the ages of 18 and 35 in the Midlands. We have to look at the psychological barriers they are putting in their own way and try to break those down,” says Ginday.

This plan is also one of the ways Miss Macaroon is measuring its impact as a social enterprise, along with other success measures including; “self reporting, wellbeing sessions and the percentage of participants who go onto further training and employment”.

It’s the quality that counts; if the quality is poor people won’t buy from you.

Ginday initially trained as a high-end pastry chef at University College Birmingham and in Michelin starred restaurant Purnell’s in the city. “You don’t get that kind of openness in some industries but I think in the start-up community you do,” she says.

Among the support on offer in Birmingham that Ginday highlights is the Initiative for Social Entrepreneurs (iSE) organisation and the annual social enterprise city drive, which takes place to raise awareness about social enterprise.