Farm Shop & Deli Show

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

• Becoming a B Corp
• Top trend predictions for Christmas 2021
• Self-sacrifice: The importance of building a leadership legacy centred on others
• Undercover Boss
• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

This is where I am at present, and, whilst this is a relatively small show, it was a busy enough first day, and as the show is positioned alongside the Convenience Show some enquiries for petrol stations who are adding on delicatessens and farm shops to petrol retailing!

Interesting!  I did a talk yesterday on Independents vs Supermarkets: The Future of Retail. The timing for a subject like this couldn’t be better as we are at what, I think, could be a very significant time for independent retailers for two reasons:
1)    Never has the public’s view of the supermarkets been so low – and there is a tremendous opportunity here to stress the quality and provenance of our products which will drive more people through our doors
2)    The supermarkets have pretty much reached saturation with the large stores and now new stores built are simply taking money off each other.  Their next assault is on the High Street – or local shops if you will – and if we are not ready for this we may be in danger.

On that last point, the area I came most close to ranting and raving yesterday was when I was talking about promotions within independent retail.  We really need to get better at this.  Every month we run around 12 promotions, and I know for a fact that very few retailers pass these on.  We are missing a huge opportunity here, and consumers if they don’t see that they can get added value from us may vote with their feet and go elsewhere.  They need to see that we are not only about quality but offer them something to help them buy the quality as well.  I reckon less than 20% of independent retailers are currently regularly running a promotion programme.

I will get off my soapbox and onto other matters!  It has been most bizarre this week to hear my children coming home from school and talking about Maggie Thatcher who hasn’t really been mentioned at meal tables for 20 years or more.  Also bizarre that her death has created such a furore? Where have these people been for the past several decades?  Some of what Thatcher did any Prime Minister operating at that time would simply have had to do if we were going to have any sort of economy at all. In terms of what may be her lasting legacy – the rise of individualism and degradation of community – we don’t know whether this may have happened anyway or not.  Working for a local charity in inner-city London for a decade straight after the Thatcher years, her policies for those areas weren’t ones that seem to have benefitted areas like that – to say the least!