The scene is set for the biggest national promotion of home-grown produce, with British Food Fortnight set to kick off this weekend and a growing number of businesses getting on board to make the most of their local and national offer.
This year, the celebration will run from tomorrow to October 5. Some 41,500 shops, pubs and restaurants have been invited to run promotions during the event and, for the first time, the public procurement sector will be flirting with activities and the department of health will promote its 5 A DAY Just Eat More (fruit & veg) message to schools throughout the fortnight.
The aim of the promotional fortnight is to create an environment in which the consumer will seek out home-grown produce, in order to achieve a win-win for growers and the rest of the supply chain.
These should be important dates in the fresh produce calendar and the industry is, once again, poised to make the most of the marketing and sales opportunities.
More than 1,000 independent retailers, 200 medium-sized retailers and five supermarkets run promotions during the event. Alexia Robinson, who came up with the idea for the fortnight and has co-ordinated it for seven years, is keen to stress that it has a strong commercial focus, with retailers that take part generating, on average, a 34 per cent sales boost and a 25 per cent increase in footfall.
“When I started British Food Fortnight, I asked retailers to take part, not for charitable reasons - I was not banging the farmers’ drum - but because they would increase sales by doing so,” she explains. “The event has proven this year on year. British food, properly promoted in store, sells - and it sells well.
“The aim when we started was simply to increase sales of home-grown produce by creating a commercially viable environment in which the consumer can actively look for and find British food.
“The event’s fan base multiplies every year, with more shops, pubs and restaurants running promotions and more schools using the celebrations as an opportunity to teach children about British produce.
“This is a very timely event because consumers are now actively looking for high-quality fresh produce with clearly defined traceability,” she continues. “British consumers want to buy British produce and, even now that the public is very aware of cutting their spending, the emphasis is still on value for money, not just on the cheapest food they can find.
“Fruit and vegetables are absolutely key to the event, not least because when shoppers are thinking about buying fresh, they are the first things they would think of. At the same time, the autumn marks a clear change in the seasons with a natural emphasis on the UK,” Robinson adds.
The wide-scale activities are co-ordinated on a modest budget of £150,000, raised through commercial sponsorship. A number of initiatives have been launched this year to help fly the flag for British produce in the next few weeks and beyond, centring on the British Food Fortnight website, which notched up 5.8 million hits last year.
An online service for consumers wanting to buy British will enable shoppers to see at the touch of a button which UK products are available, and where. The service allows consumers to search by product or retailer, to see which supermarkets are selling the most UK produce, and makes it easier for them to find it the next time they are shopping.
“We put this in place because it can be difficult to find British produce in supermarkets,” says Robinson. “Some labels are not easy to spot and it can be confusing, especially when there are seasonal changes. With this service, consumers can do a quick product search and compile a shopping list, so they can see immediately which supermarkets stock which UK products.”
Key information about buying British has been pulled together to provide retailers, caterers and consumers with everything they need to know, including which logos to look for and information about regional and seasonal varieties.
These initiatives will be backed by a short film explaining why it is best to buy UK food, seen through the eyes of children.
A proportion of the budget will fund a two-week set of activities in UK schools. Their involvement is set to step up this year, and participation has shown such strong growth that it can almost be considered as an event in itself. Nearly 35,000 schools have been invited to take part by bringing chefs into the classroom to teach children how to make meals from scratch. The activities will see a network of 9,000 chefs, set up three years ago, team up with retailers, which have been asked to donate food to schools for cooking lessons and to host school visits in order to teach children how to look beyond the sweetie shelves.
“We want to teach children how to cook using fresh, British ingredients,” says Robinson. “If we do not teach the next generation how to cook, there will not be a market for these ingredients in the future.”
British Food Fortnight has a widespread appeal, in tune with retail strategies and the rest of the food sector, as well as what is being taught in the classroom; but some sectors are better than others when it comes to making the most of it. “The small and medium-sized businesses have led the way with imaginative and effective sales promotions,” says Robinson. “The supermarkets have only just started to catch up, but they have some way to go to level with the independent sector. The event really does give small and medium-sized businesses the chance to shine, because they have recognised that stocking British food is a powerful way to differentiate themselves and connect to their local communities, especially coupled with the personal service.”
Budgens is sponsoring British Food Fortnight for the fifth consecutive year. Musgrave Retail Partners GB will be working together with its Budgens retail partners to bring British Food Fortnight to life in store. Budgens retailers will be teaming up with their local primary schools to invite the children to design a ‘Budgens cotton shopping bag for life’. The children will also be invited to enter a free-prize draw to win one of 20 Kenwood Chefs for their school.
Jemima Bird, marketing director at Musgrave Retail Partners GB, says: “The campaign mirrors everything that Budgens stands for - support for the British farmer and producers and support for the local community. It is a perfect synergy, since Budgens was one of the original retailers to support local sourcing.
“All Budgens stores are owned by independent retailers who are at the heart of their communities with unparalleled knowledge of local needs and regional trends. They are huge believers in local sourcing. Guy Warner at his Broadway store, for example, stocks products from more than 40 different local suppliers.
“Local sourcing supports local economies, it gives smaller suppliers a route to market, it touches a chord with customers and it gives Budgens’ retailers a point of difference,” she adds.
Many Budgens stores will also be offering samplings of local and regional specialities during the fortnight.
But this is not to say that the major multiples have not taken the campaign on board. In many ways, British Food Fortnight seeks to highlight what many retailers have been working on for some time.
Sarah Mackie, local category manager at Tesco, insists that the supermarket demonstrates a year-round commitment to local and regional produce. Tesco is striving to stock more local products than any other retailer and has put its eight regional buying offices at the centre of its pledge. The UK’s number-one retailer is aiming to sell £400m worth of local products this year, including fruit and vegetables, meat, dairy and drinks. This is expected to reach £1 billion by 2011.
Tesco has opened five local buying offices across England, in Plymouth, Peterborough, Horsham, York and Leicester, to supplement the regional offices in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.
The network of sourcing offices, each with a buyer and marketing manager, has created a regionally based, UK-wide structure to drive local sourcing initiatives. These offices have launched more than 1,000 new local product lines and found around 90 new suppliers, across the fresh produce, meat, dairy, bakery and drinks sectors, among others.
“We have been sourcing locally long before it became fashionable, because we recognised a long time ago that there are significant differences in the way people shop across the country,” says Mackie. “We have been listening to consumers and our sales figures back this up.
“It is fantastic that British Food Fortnight will promote home-grown produce, but for us it’s like British Food Fortnight every day,” she insists. “We always want to promote local and seasonal produce.”
Tesco has backed its local sourcing strategy by setting up a fund to waive costs for small suppliers, putting together a roadshow with regional food bodies and hosting more than 60 Meet the Farmer events across the UK.
The chain was first to market with English apples this season, when Discovery hit Kent stores last month, and it beat the rest when it introduced new-season Scottish shelled peas and stocked Scottish daffodils for the first time this year. Kent-grown Cox appeared in local stores on Monday and local Conference is expected next week.
“We make sure that we keep on top of what consumers want,” says Mackie. “We are constantly asking for feedback and making sure we are stocking the right local lines, and we can see what sells by looking at our figures.
“Some 84 per cent of our customers tell us they want to buy local produce and range is one of the most important factors when people go shopping.
“The local team is so keen and enthusiastic about local sourcing and we really want to make a difference to local growers and suppliers, and to local customers.”
Tesco is set to make the most of the Welsh arm of British Food Fortnight this year, with a number of samplings inside and outside stores, bilingual posters and visits from local growers and suppliers. These kinds of activities are mirrored across the country, on an ongoing basis. In fact, the retailer has just finished the biggest-ever promotion of Scottish produce, which featured a seasonal aisle filled with national products and a recipe card competition in 120 stores across the country.
Emily Shamma, head of sourcing at Tesco, says more customers want local food that is fresh and contributes to the local economy. “They want to help local farmers, save on food miles and know how the product has been produced,” she says. “They see ‘local’ as a badge of quality.
“Our aim is to stock more local lines than any other retailer.”
The concept of national and local produce as the preferred choice of UK consumers is expected to become a long-term trend that is connected to a number of related issues, such as freshness and food miles.
Richard Walters, head of food marketing at Bidwells Agribusiness, has tracked sourcing trends for some time. He provides business advice to farm operations of all sizes, as well as fresh produce suppliers and a cross-section of retailers, from independent farm shops to the major multiples.
“Almost everything we do has something to do with provenance as a theme, and more likely than not it is about local or regional food,” Walters explains. “For the last five years, we have been helping farms to diversify out of commodity production or to create their own brands. We have worked with packers so that they can organise themselves better and communicate a clearer message about the credentials of their growers, and we have helped the multiples put together provenance offers in store.”
The best way to make a success of this concept is to find a way to turn awareness-raising into sales, Walters says. “If you map the trend over the last five years, first you would have been able to find local produce more easily in farm shops in particular, and that sector is now booming,” he explains. “However, increasingly the supermarkets are responding, but they have a job on their hands to capture what consumers want.”
To approach retailers successfully, growers and suppliers are advised that they must have, first and foremost, a great product, as well as a clear idea of their credentials and a well-researched pitch that shows they know who their customer’s customers - the end consumers - are.
Walters holds up Green Fields farm shop in Telford, Shropshire, as a model example of how stores can make the most of the movement towards local produce, even at a time when consumers are conscious of cutting their spending. Owner Rob Ward has observed a shift away from people buying local new potatoes, while sales of local bulk potatoes doubled in comparison to the same period last year, signalling that while shopping patterns are changing, consumers are remaining loyal to their local offer.
“This is particularly interesting for three reasons,” says Walters. “First, even though we are in the credit crunch, people are still going to farm shops that provide great value. Second, where people are seeking out better-value alternatives they are still looking for the local variant to provide a sense of quality. Third, although local and regional food is often perceived as premium, this example shows that where you are able to provide great-quality local food at good values, there is a burgeoning number of customers willing to buy, who perhaps may have previously thought ‘local’ to be too expensive.”
Walters supports British Food Fortnight as a mechanism for boosting awareness and sales, but he warns that the local offer should be “underlined by quality” to make it work in the long term. “British Food Fortnight is a fantastic idea because it crosses the whole industry and it stimulates demand from consumers,” he says.
“The challenge for retailers and growers is to turn those trial purchases into regular shopping list items.”
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