Consumers searching for healthy food from trusted sources have fuelled the UK organic market’s biggest boom in two decades, according to vegetable box seller Riverford.

The delivery business, which sells meat, cheese, cookbooks and recipe boxes alongside vegetables, recorded a 6% increase in sales to £117m in the year to May 2025, as the UK organic food and drink market grew by almost 9% in that year, according to new figures from the Soil Association. The strong growth, significantly outpacing the wider food market, helped the employee-owned business give a £1.1m bonus to workers.

Rob Haward, the chief executive of the Devon-based company which delivers about 70,000 boxes a week, said the company had gained new customers and existing clients had spent more. “We haven’t seen the market grow as much as this for 20 years,” he said.

Haward said the rapid market growth in 2024 had continued last year amid greater awareness of healthy diets and “increased concerns about where you can go to get food you can trust”. It represents a bounceback for the sector, which has had a difficult period since the credit crunch and slowed during the pandemic.

Riverford’s sales of organic meat were particularly strong, accounting for a tenth of sales, as shoppers sought out a trusted source of higher welfare meat.

However, its operating profits slid back to £3.4m from £4.7m a year before. Haward said the company had absorbed some rising costs rather than passing them on to its customers.

Prices rose 3% in its financial year as Riverford and its suppliers battled higher wages, energy costs and pressure on operations from Brexit-linked paperwork on imports from its farms in France and Spain.

Haward said growth had dipped last summer, after its financial year end, during the long spell of hot weather but rebounded over Christmas and into the new year.

He expects sales to continue to rise as the wider organic food market continues to grow – just 2% of UK food sales are organic – well behind other European markets including Denmark and Germany. “We have got a bit of ground to make up,” he said.

“As we move into 2026, trading conditions remain challenging,” Haward said. “But we continue to see that customers care deeply about where their food comes from, how it’s produced and who benefits.”

He said inflation continued to affect suppliers amid higher fuel, labour and packaging costs. He welcomed the relaunch of the government-backed sustainable farming incentive (SFI) in June but warned there could be a “gap in supply” because uncertainty over support had held back expansion of organic farming to meet rising demand.

“The real challenge for farmers is uncertainty,” he said. “The sooner the government can get [the SFI] back and clear and stable for as long as possible then farmers know exactly where they stand.”

Riverford started growing vegetables for supermarkets in 1986, and its founder, Guy Singh-Watson, began making home deliveries to about 30 friends seven years later. He sold nearly three-quarters of the company to employees in 2018, and offloaded his final 20% stake in 2024 for £8.5m.

The company has about 1,000 staff, each of whom receive an equal amount of annual profit share, are paid at least the independently verified living wage and participate in the running of the business. The previous financial year, they received a slightly larger £1.3m payout.

The group is investing in reducing its carbon impact with 70% of its vans now electric, and two electric HGVs now in the fleet.

Riverford is involved in nature recovery projects including planting woodland and wood-pasture at its own Wash Farm and neighbouring supplier farms, integrating tree planting with livestock grazing.