A Little goed Goes a Long Way to #doDifferent
We all feel it: that quiet unease when we fill our shopping trolleys and wonder if our rand is doing any real good in the world. We want to live well - eat well, feel well - but we also want those choices to matter beyond our own kitchens. What if the bottle of olive oil on your shelf was quietly uplifting a rural child's future in the Western Cape?
Enter goed™ - a proudly South African brand rooted in the Swartland, just outside Cape Town. The name means ‘good’ in Afrikaans, and that is exactly what this brand is in the business of doing. But goed™ is so much more than a label on a bottle. It is a movement, a legacy, and a lifeline for communities that have long been overlooked.
Based on Welbeloon Farm in Malmesbury, goed™ passionately crafts award-winning, nutrition-focused, and health-driven products - sustainably sourced and purposeful, with heart and soul poured into every bottle.
Their product range includes:
🫒 Extra Virgin Olive Oil - Cold-pressed from olives grown on Goedgedacht Farm's 14,000-tree olive plantation, this award-winning oil is rich, flavourful, and entirely locally produced.
🌿 Infused Dressings - Unique flavour combinations like cranberry-infused dressing that transform any salad or stir-fry. Customers love that there is nothing else quite like them on South African retail shelves.
🫙 Olives & Olive Paste - Home-grown, bottled locally, and bursting with the kind of quality that keeps customers coming back.
💚 Immune Support Beverages - Developed by a top South African biochemist, these functional powdered beverages are packed with high-quality plant-based botanicals and vitamins. Good for your body; good for your community.
- Michelle Sellmeyer, goed™ customer
Here is the beautiful truth behind every goed™ purchase: what is on your table directly helps uplift the communities behind the product. goed™ is the commercial arm of the Goedgedacht Trust - a non-profit organisation established in 1993 in the Swartland region of the Western Cape. The Trust's mission has always been to break the cycle of generational poverty gripping farm-working communities through education, opportunity, and care.
The Trust's flagship initiative - the Path onto Prosperity (POP) Programme - supports children and young adults from birth right through to age 22. The programme operates across eight POP Youth Centres in the Western Cape, offering children safe spaces to play sport, do homework, eat nutritious meals, and develop the skills and confidence they need to thrive.
The results speak for themselves. Elrico Jooste, now an assistant manager at the POP centre in Riebeek Kasteel, started attending the centre at age 13. "I learned how to be a leader. I can communicate with people now - before I had no self-confidence and could not speak to people." That is the goed™ effect.
Through educational programmes, employment opportunities, nutrition support, social worker visits to farms, and community events like choir competitions and sports days, goed™ and the Goedgedacht Trust foster a sense of pride and collective identity in communities that have historically been marginalised.
The Trust also runs a Care for the Planet programme, committed to growing food sovereignty in the Swartland region. Using biodynamic and permaculture approaches, they support rural communities in becoming self-sustaining - teaching people to grow their own food and care for the earth that feeds them.
At the heart of goed™ is a deeply personal story. Founders Annie and Peter Templeton poured their lifelong commitment to community upliftment into every aspect of what goed™ stands for. Through their products, their legacy lives on - empowering countless lives through compassion, opportunity, and an unwavering tradition of kindness and empathy.
The olive groves at Goedgedacht Farm are themselves a symbol of this legacy. With 14,000 trees - some of which can live for thousands of years - they represent peace, productive unity, and a sustainable impact that will outlast any one generation. The farm even has an Olive Peace Grove where anyone - including late Nobel Prize winner Archbishop Desmond Tutu - can dedicate a tree, contributing permanently to the POP programme. Every tree produces oil year after year, turning a single act of generosity into a perpetual gift to the community.
In 2024, the farm celebrated a record-breaking harvest - 150 tonnes of olives yielding 27,000 litres of cold-pressed extra-virgin olive oil, their highest average yield ever. A team of 90 seasonal workers completed the harvest, creating local jobs in an area with nearly 50% unemployment. That is the goed™ promise: that the good in every bottle keeps multiplying.
By choosing goed™ for your kitchen - whether it is the extra virgin olive oil, the cranberry infused dressing, or the immune support beverages - you are directly supporting their incredible work. You are keeping a child fed, a young person in school, and a community moving forward.
Together, let us fill our tables with good food - and fill our communities with good futures. Because a little goed™ really does go a long way.
