The everyday turn in entrepreneurship scholarship positions entrepreneurship as a social technology capable of driving regional change in turbulent times. We argue that the resilience of everyday entrepreneurs requires a reframing of firm growth. We explore this from the perspective of everyday artisan food entrepreneurs at farmers’ markets. Farmers’ markets as sites of grassroots resistance and alternative value creation within a global food system provide rich empirical insights. Employing Bourdieu’s multi‑level framework, a Field Level analysis was conducted drawing on documentary analysis, 10 key informant interviews, observations and informal conversations with eighty‑eight artisan food entrepreneurs across twenty‑five Irish farmers’ markets. At the Firm Level, eight embedded case studies were examined in detail. The entrepreneurs’ reflexive focus on value revealed the centrality of embodied cultural capital as both individual resource and collective asset. Leveraging this capital manifested in alternative growth conceptualizations: community building, resilience and autonomy. Thus, reframing success around social value rather than scale. This study contributes a novel perspective on firm growth and highlights embodied cultural capital as vital to everyday artisan food entrepreneurs whom we position as custodians of local food systems. Our research has implications for everyday and artisan entrepreneurship and policy implications for regional development.

Full article available on Taylor & Francis website: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08985626.2026.2622327