Time to Make a Convenience of Local Produce

How often would you expect to go into your local convenience store and find whole sections not only devoted to promoting local food and drink, but also flagging them up in such a way that they cannot be missed?

That was the story this week as Julian Holliss opened the first Love the Flavour franchise at his Dartmouth filling station and Spar shop. A bold marketing decision perhaps, but for Mr Holliss and his family it was a natural evolution of ethical, local trading relationships that they had followed for decades.

"It really started when my father David took potatoes from local farmers who bought from us, so we bought from them," he said. "We never made a strategic decision to stock local produce, it just developed a momentum of its own."

As a member of Food and Drink Devon, the food group newly formed by the merger of the South Hams Food and Drink Association and the South Devon and Dartmoor Food Group, he values the quality of the produce he sells and forming ethical partnerships with his suppliers, in a deal that works for both parties.

Since the Western Morning News launched its "buy local" campaign in 2001, interest in buying, cooking and eating local food and drink has grown exponentially. More than 70 per cent of us would like to buy it easily and as part of our weekly shop.

Until recently, local food appeared to be limited to the well- off, and those with the time to visit farm shops, farmers’ markets and independent high street butchers, fishmongers, greengrocers and delicatessens. But over the last few years there has been a subtle and gradual change.

Supermarkets have jumped on the buy-local bandwagon – Tesco being one of those shouting loudest about its new local sourcing philosophy that has led to dozens of Westcountry products appearing in regional, and some national, stores. Convenience stores too have recognised that they can stock a few local food and drink products, giving many small producers reliable, year-round business.

So what is new about Love the Flavour? A lot as it happens. As shoppers at the Townstal filling station are finding, the hundred- plus clearly branded lines from more than 20 Devon food and drink businesses are easier to find in a one-hit, convenience shopping format. Turn up for your fuel and fill your shopping basket at the same time.

It also shows that local produce can be affordable at all levels and the way that the Hollisses have laid out the shop fits the foods with modern lifestyles. So on entering the store, you find quality local produce sitting alongside the standard Spar branded products and all the other food you would expect to find in any convenience store.

At the front is "food to go", which includes pasties, pies, sandwiches and crisps – all from Devon, all clearly branded. Further back is the "food for later" area, stocking fresh meat, cheese, drinks, dairy produce, ready- made soups and sauces – all ingredients to take home for lunch or supper.

The significance of this new initiative is that it is taking a well-established brand – developed by the South Hams Food and Drink Association five years ago – to its next stage and at the same time bringing economic benefits to both producers and the local economy.

"It is a bold experiment bringing together more than 20 different businesses under one roof," said Gabriel David, managing director of Luscombe Organic Drinks, and a vice chairman of Food and Drink Devon. He explains that this is a pilot for a franchise model that the food group hopes to roll out across the county during the next 12 months.

Another benefit of this brand, which has strict criteria each business has to meet, is that it raises the profile of locally produced food and drink to consumers, chefs, cafe owners and tourism businesses.

For the Hollis family, it was also a commercial decision to fight off the explosion of supermarkets that have appeared, or are on the horizon, in the Devon town, which already has a Somerfield, Marks and Spencer "Simply Food" store and Aldi, with a Sainsbury’s due to open soon.

"The Love the Flavour shop will give customers excellence and convenience in choice now that the new big boys on the block are here in Dartmouth," Mr Hollis said.

"To survive, businesses have to do what they do well and we are putting our many years of commercial and retail experience into making the "pilot" franchise a success so that Food and Drink Devon can roll the model out elsewhere."

Although similar approaches to promoting local food and drink have appeared in the last few years, none has the power or impact of this new project. Cornwall has the Taste Cornwall shop, but this is a single outlet, and Purely Cornish, which has made a virtue out of giving Cornish food and drink precedence over anything else. Somerset has the Levels and Best initiative, which has succeeded in bringing together dozens of food and drink businesses from the 114 parishes that qualify as the Somerset Levels and Moors, but this is not county-wide.

The Love the Flavour concept, in the convenience store, open-all hours format, is surely a model that others will follow. It will boost the local economy and help more shoppers to find local food and drink with ease.

For the independent sector, this concept will give businesses an extra commercial dimension at a time when the focus on food shortages, food miles and carbon footprints is making the virtues of buying local food locally even more apparent.

(c) 2008 Western Morning News, The Plymouth (UK). Provided by ProQuest Information and Learning. All rights Reserved.