Many Food Retailers in the UK in the past few years have increased their British produce range and marketed the fact very aggressively to win loyalty of customers. The benefits flouted are many, the principle ones being cutting food carbon emissions and lending a helping hand to the local farming industry.
Retailers have formed buying teams focussed on developing new relationships with local producers, tweaked their distribution systems and invested in new packaging.
Sourcing local is slowly taking some mainstream focus as Retailers realise that Price is not the only factor customers look at, even in times of today’s strained budgets. Mike Coupe, Sainsbury’s commercial director makes this point in a recent article on Retail Week: What price is right?
I have dabbled into buying British occasionally, especially when I have noticed the packaging while sifting through the aisles. Recently, I got hold of a copy of the book ‘The Savvy Shopper’ by Rose Prince which is an inspiring text of understanding what we buy in the supermarkets and points to where we can buy local produce.
I decided, upon reading the book, to make a concerted effort on my next visit to the supermarket to try and buy British exclusively. The headline is, it is not easy to buy British! My shopping time increased 4-5 times and in the end my basket comprised hardly 10% of British produce. The experience was frustrating. I wondered why supermarkets don’t have a dedicated aisle for British produce making it easy for customers to buy them. The answer is very simple:
The heart of the problem is that the range is far from sufficient with only a few lines having British produce and even in the lines that carry British produce there is in almost all cases only one option of the British produce with some meat and dairy being the exception. I spent a very long time in the supermarket sifting through the packaging to try and identify British produce. The simple truth is there isn’t enough British produce to fill an aisle!
Tesco tries to explain its local sourcing strategy through a FAQ. Many of the local produce find its way into the Organic or the Finest range. Isn’t one of the point of sourcing local is to reduce price because of the reduce cost of transportation and storage? Why are customers expected to pay more for buying local and thus pose a disincentive?
A thought that comes to mind is that cannot we grow more in the UK and the argument against it is that isn’t it more costly to grow produce in the UK because of higher labour costs, leaving out the right climate required – which can be tackled through the use of technology and greenhouses.
A similar argument is made quite often in the context of Apple, why can’t Apple bring back the manufacturing of its products back to the USA. Surely, American customers would be ready to pay a slight additional premium to offset the higher manufacturing costs as long as it develops jobs and supports the economic environment? An article in The New York Times titled How the U.S. Lost Out on iPhone Work answers this beautifully. The issue is a combination of scale and demographics required to carry out the task. The U.S. does not have the flexibility and scale that is required to bring back manufacturing and the cost of manufacturing is only a part of the problem.
The same can be generalised to why isn’t it possible to grow more British produce in the UK and hence why the disparity in the British offers in the Supermarkets.
The Supermarkets continue their march towards sustainable and local sourcing and we are getting more British sourced produce in the stores. However, the journey is long and will only take one to certain extent in reaching the final destination.