For the best local produce in your area visit the Times
Real Food Directory
Supermarkets are the goliaths of groceries. And the debate about their effect
on quality of life, communities, economy, choices and health is
reaching fever pitch. The Competition Commission will provisionally report
later this month on the impact that the big four’s combined power is having.
Between them, Asda, Morrison, Tesco and Sainsbury’s have twice as many
stores as they did in 2000 and account for three quarters of our grocery
shopping.
They’ve squeezed out small shops and left many survivors struggling. When
small shops close, part of a neighbourhood’s culture and community spirit
dies with them. According to Sustain, the campaign for better food and
farming, greater social and economic wellbeing, a quarter of what’s spent in
a local shop goes straight back into the community, whereas only £1 for
every £20 handed over at a supermarket checkout remains in the local
economy.
But a campaign is growing to redress the balance. Take Newham, in East London,
one of the most ethnically diverse places in the country, but classed as a
“food desert” because of the dearth of affordable and accessible shops. The
award-winning Community Food Enterprise, a registered charity based in the
borough, takes fresh fruit and vegetables – including breadfruit and yams,
which the supermarkets rarely stock – to those who can’t reach the big
stores. It sells to parents collecting children from schools and from a
mobile shop to the elderly.
Community-owned shops, often in rural areas, provide a similar service as hub
of a village and somewhere to buy fresh local food. Sulgrave in
Northamptonshire, a county where it is feared an estimated 80 per cent of
the remaining village shops could close in three to five years, lost its
shop in 2002. Now the not-for-profit village store is open 60 hours a week,
selling everything from baked beans to focaccia, farmhouse cheeses to purple
sprouting broccoli.
“We want to show that making the 20-mile round trip to the supermarket is a
wasted journey,” says Robin Prior, the treasurer of Sulgrave village shop.
“Our ethos is to promote better eating with fresh ingredients.” So,
recognising the role that they can play providing communities with healthy,
local food by connecting producers with consumers, the Big Lottery Fund has
given £10 million for the Making Local Food Work (MLFW) programme to invest
in 650 community enterprises, such as shops and farmers’ markets across
England.
“Do we want our food culture entirely shaped by supermarkets?” asks Graeme
Willis, the rural policy campaigner for the Campaign to Protect Rural
England, one of the organisations involved in MLFW. Supermarkets appear to
offer everything, but they still aren’t always the most wholesome places in
which to buy food. Local shops can offer good, fresh and, especially, local
food, and be the heart and soul of healthy communities.
THE VILLAGE SHOP
Talaton, Devon
Since volunteers reopened the shop in the east Devon village of Talaton 14
years ago, interest in local food has flourished. “There was a time when the
carrots would shrivel up, but over the years habits have changed,” says
Patricia Lenehan, a committee member and the de facto manager.
The shop, staffed by volunteers, is so successful that two years ago it
expanded into new premises. “We decided that we didn’t need another brand of
instant coffee, but we wanted to have more local suppliers,” says Lenehan.
Now, alongside the chutneys, jams, cakes and meringues that are homemade in
the village are local meat, bread, beer and cider, honey, eggs, organic
salad bags, potatoes and onions direct from the farm. “It would knock the
socks off anything you’d get in Tesco,” says Lenehan. The shop sells local
Four Elms apple juice for £1.99 a bottle, which goes for more in Waitrose,
she boasts.
Holidaymakers renting cottages in the village are greeted with a homemade cake
from the shop, and can be provided with a box of groceries, including local
milk, bacon and sausages. Lenehan says: “It’s so much less stressful than
going to the supermaket.”
SHAH’S GENERAL STORES
Horden, Co Durham
Fresh fruit and veg were thin on the ground in Horden, a former pit village in
Co Durham. But, for the past four months, Shah’s customers have been greeted
with a display of apples, bananas and grapes, tomatoes, potatoes, onions and
carrots. Ziggy Shah, the part-time shopkeeper, is working with Donna
Thompson, the health development specialist for Co Durham and Darlington
Primary Care Trust, to increase access to healthy food and hopes the
initiative will make a real difference to eating habits. The PCT provides
weekly changing recipe sheets, and Shah’s stocks all the ingredients, fresh,
tinned and frozen. So, for chilli con carne, for example, local people can
buy sweetcorn, tomatoes, kidney beans, onions, peppers, mushrooms and
garlic.
“Everyone knows they should be eating their five portions of fruit and veg a
day, and we want to raise awareness here. Now the fruit is there for them if
they want it,” says Shah, a part-time journalism student and a boxing coach.
Some of his customers who previously bought a sugar-filled protein or power
drink after training at the nearby boxing and aerobics gyms have switched to
bananas. He says that tastings in the store, at the end of the school day,
to promote fruit and vegetables, have gone really well. “There were children
who’d never had strawberries and older people, who said, ‘what’s a mango?’ ”
On their way to school children can pick up apples instead of crisps. On
Sunday mornings there is a run on cauliflowers, turnips and carrots for
lunch.
Shah admits that the family business can’t compete with supermarkets on price,
and he acknowledges that “there is more profit to be made on fatty foods”,
but he has the satisfaction of knowing that he is helping his customers to
eat better. “I’d like to say that we are part of a healthy community.”
BUDGENS
Newent, Forest of Dean, Gloucestershire
“If I need something I can ring the farmer and get it delivered,” says Rachel
Millard. That is not a typical supermarket manager talking. But then
Budgens, in Newent, is not a typical supermarket. Since Mark Richardson took
over the store two years ago – Budgens branches are independently owned – he
has added 26 local suppliers. Apples, for example, come from a farm three
miles away. “I sell more of those apples than any others.” Other fresh,
local produce includes free-range eggs, laid a couple of miles away, organic
cheesecakes and yoghurts, and organic bread baked in Newent. The Forest of
Dean branch of Budgens was the first shop to stock an award-winning Single
Gloucester cheese.
Farmers and local producers visit the store for talks and tastings with
customers. “A dozen farmers have a viable business from the store,”
Richardson says. “I don’t ask for cheaper prices. These are premium,
handmade, quality products, I won’t devalue them. There is an
antisupermarket feeling among farmers round here, but they don’t consider me
a supermarket. I am an independent community retailer.”
And, as Community Retailer of the Year, an award-winning one. Children from
the town’s junior schools are given tours of the store, and Rob Rees, the
Cotswold chef and former Michelin award-winning Gloucestershire
restaurateur, has given cookery demonstrations in the car park. The shop
also sponsors the village bus.
“I try to add value back into the town,” says Richardson of the
community-minded supermarket.
CRUMBS OF SUSSEX
Washington Village, West Sussex
“Supermarkets have created fear among those thinking of starting a food
business,” says Simon Croft. However, they didn’t scare him and his business
partner James Meldrum. But the pair knew when they opened the Crumbs shop
that they had to do something different. So, with greengrocers dying out,
the Crumbs fresh, local-produce store is doing what few independent shops do
well.
As Croft says: “If a greengrocer is no better than, say, what’s in Somerfield,
it will go out of business.” He adds: “People are after more than just food,
and supermarkets are so anonymous. As well as friendly service and a good
environment, we act as a bridge between customers – who love the chat – and
producers who surround the area. Supermarkets only pay lip-service to local
produce.”
Crumbs won’t sell imported produce if it can be grown locally, and none of the
farms that Crumbs buys from is more than 22 miles away. However, Croft says:
“We’re not purist, we’re pragmatic. People like bananas, mangoes, lemons and
limes. But we really shout about what is local.” That includes fresh pasta,
meat, cheeses, jams and honey, Sussex Gold rapeseed oil, locally smoked
trout, bunched carrots, butternut squash, celeriac, celery and, until last
month, fennel, English-grown figs, and a dozen varieties of English apples
and pears for £1 a kilo. Their magnificent cauliflowers are cheaper than the
equivalent at Sainsbury’s.
“We want to give people a chance to change some of their shopping, offering a
convenient alternative for really top-class produce. And the money shoppers
spend goes back to the growers,” Croft says.
To find an organic box scheme in your area use the Times
Organic Box Finder
