Fresh produce will be at the heart of a revolutionary new local sourcing policy across supermarket group Haldanes’ 23 stores.
The chain’s Carterton store in Oxfordshire is the first to benefit from the Refreshingly Local rebranding initiative, which supplements fresh produce supplies delivered by Nisa with deliveries from Bristol Fruit Sales’ network of regional producers and soft fruit from Oxfordshire grower Millets Farm.
Trading director Colin Farquhar told freshinfo: “This is not just a gimmick. We are using every possible avenue and sourcing local fresh produce by finding local producers to bring their products directly into the store wherever we can.
“At Carterton we are offering locally grown beetroot, brassicas and potatoes as well as Millets Farm soft fruit. We are going across each store and spending up to two months re-sourcing products, getting growers into the stores, running sampling days. It is possible to have supplies picked on day one and into store on day two, or even on day one.”
And Farquhar said that they can be extremely competitive on price with major multiples, offering promotions at the height of a product’s season, drawing in not just ABC1-profile customers, but those across the socio-economic spectrum.
The retail group conducts extensive customer-listening exercises to identify those products which customers want to buy.
“We are generating some sense of local community feeling - a lot of our customers work in the places we are sourcing from,” said Farquhar.
“We did think at some stores it might be a problem to source Refreshingly Local, but we have looked across all our stores and even in the most remote locations there are local supplies we can source. The growers are only too happy to be involved. This is a win-win situation.”
Haldanes owner and chairman Arthur Harris said the chain is in negotiations to add further stores to its portfolio, which would be run under the same “family shop ethos”.
The company claims to offer 200 promotions that match the bigger multiples.
