Swindon & Wiltshire News
About Business Biscuit
Business Biscuit gives Swindon, Wiltshire, Bath & Bristol and Berkshire businesses bite-sized bits of news, brilliant with a coffee break.
Peter Davison, a journalist and public relations consultant, launched Business Biscuit in 2013 to serve the businesses of Swindon and Wiltshire.
It began life as Chamber News, a newsletter about Marlborough Chamber of Commerce. Pete was paid with free membership to the town’s chamber (he later became its president for five years).
In 2021 Business Biscuit went through a website design and expanded to Bristol (Pete’s home town), Bath and Berkshire.
About Business Biscuit’s founding editor, Peter Davison
Peter Davison, editor of Business Biscuit
Finishing an esteemed NCTJ course in Cardiff, in 1992 Pete began his journalism career at the Marlborough Times, a historic title with a 150 year history.
At the Marlborough Times, Pete won runner-up Weekly Journalist of the Year in the SW BT Press Awards and broke local stories to the nationals. Soon Pete was promoted to news editor of the Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard, a stable of broadsheet titles based in Cirencester. The Standard covered a sizeable patch from North Wiltshire to the Cotswolds.
At age 27, he became the youngest newspaper editor in the UK.
Under Pete’s editorship the Standard won the 2004 Newspaper Society’s runner-up Weekly Newspaper of the Year. The newspaper was listed in ABC’s top 20 fasted-growing weekly paid-for by circulation and transitioned from broadsheet to a more popular tabloid size. He oversaw the first website for the paper, launched the glossy magazine Cotswold Essence, and supported the careers of many talented journalists.
But, with news migrating to the internet and an emerging social media, he saw challenges ahead. How could newspapers remain a trusted source of information? How could they sustain their revenue against an expanding pool of marketing platforms?
Pete left the paper in 2005 and teamed up with his wife in her company, Secret Agent Marketing, becoming a news creator: a PR consultant for regional businesses.
But he couldn’t leave journalism behind. As well as Chamber News, in 2011 he co-founded Marlborough News Online, a hyper local new site. And in 2019 he became deputy editor of the print and online title Business & Innovation Magazine for the South West and West Midlands.
9,000 stories
In the last decade or so, Business Biscuit has almost 9,000 stories, the most coverage of Swindon and Wiltshire business news by volume of stories of any business publication. Today its ambition is to be Bristol, Bath and Berkshire’s go-to business news site.
Business Biscuit has supported many charitable efforts, organisations, festivals and events. The website has loyal advertisers, clients for years, and Pete is recognised on the business network.
On LinkedIn, Pete is a worldwide top one per cent poster with thousands of followers and connections.
Pete is serious about the Business Biscuit weekly enews digest published every week. As one reader said, ‘I know it’s Friday when Business Biscuit arrives in my inbox’.
About Business Biscuit’s strategic director, Louisa Davison
Louisa Davison came up with the name.
They were tempted by the Google-friendly but generic ‘Wiltshire Business News’. Thankfully Pete and Louisa chose a memorable, fun and original name which reflected Pete’s accessible style.
‘Biscuit’ appealed to Pete’s penchant for alliterate headlines and Louisa’s liking of limericks. It suggests a ‘bite-sized’ approach to news – light on its feet, ‘breaking’ the news, and easily digestible in a tea break.
A ‘business biscuit’ can have serious content like the regional economy, the latest innovative start-up or advice on business accounts. But it also liked human-interest articles such as charity work, promotions and lifetime achievements. (The challenge for Louisa was correctly spelling both words of the title each time! Bus-i-ness Bis-cu-it dot com!)
Most importantly the URL was available because the US-based domain dealers eat ‘cookies’ not ‘biscuits’.
Louisa’s background
Louisa came to Business Biscuit after a degree in humanities, secondary school teaching (RE) and PR and marketing management. She worked for Cheltenham’s international festivals, a regional theatre and arts centre, was a marketing consultant for dance agencies, art galleries, and music venues.
She hosted rock nights in a theatre and filled it with teenagers, introduced a money-back guarantee for live performance, and managed TV coverage for the installation of a 20 foot bronze Damien Hurst sculpture on the balcony of the Royal West of England Academy (RWA) in Bristol.
In 2012 Louisa founded Festival Chronicle with professional writers commenting on arts festivals before becoming Business Biscuit’s ‘LazyLulu’ culture editor persona.
Louisa worked with MPs and policy makers through Citizens’ Climate Lobby, co-managing the UK branch, and writes strange fiction and poetry.
Pete is the talented writer with a nose for stories and the face of Business Biscuit. Louisa drives the innovation, business, ambitions and sales goals (and can be a GDPR/SEO geek).
About Business Biscuit values
Trustworthy journalism is at the heart of Business Biscuit. Reliable sources, a lively style and breaking news are our trade tools.
The internet is quicker than print used to be – and much more competitive. It’s easy for quality journalism to be forgotten in the race for visitor numbers.
Puns are great but not click-bait. We don’t run ‘exposés’ or bad news for the sake of it – long-term it’s bad for our brand.
Stories of businesses doing good things attract visitors.
Our advertisers
We love our advertisers, but 30 years in the business tells us that a compelling story well told is the best promotion. We don’t do copy-and-paste – if you’ve read the exact story on another site you can bet they copied Business Biscuit.
On Business Biscuit there’s no ads about bananas and digestion, or a gunky inner ear, or older workers going nuts for a pension scheme. We know and trust all our advertisers who work within and serve the regional economy, like us.
And our ‘traditional’ image adverts are invisible to browser ad blockers – which means all our readers see them.
We love business biscuits, but we don’t love internet cookies. We reject hundreds of advertising partners who use cookies to track IP addresses and computer mouse movements, and who rely on ‘legitimate interest’ to comply with UK GDPR law, bypassing permission.
Here, your data won’t go off to support bad political actors or be sold overseas.
On Business Biscuit you own your privacy.
About your privacy
Anonymous data for bread-and-butter stats makes sense.
Valuing conversations with people may keep us ahead of future privacy legislation.
In 2023 Google Analytics faced court rulings (including the European Parliament website) in Austria, France, Italy and Sweden which meant ‘Universal’ Analytics morphed into GA4.
Whilst Business Biscuit uses GA4 and Mailchimp email cookie tracking (read more here), no information passes to third parties. And, to the best of our knowledge and ability, you can still opt out of everything.
Thank you for reading.
