There can’t have been too many smiles at Tesco’s head office this week, following Channel 4’s Dispatches programme on Monday.
But stepping aside from the heady politics, the enormous land bank which the UK’s leading multiple giant has apparently been building up, and the subject of supplier relationships which was not even mentioned, the programme for me extended another train of thought.
On the broader retail front, Dispatches talked of the drive that most retailers claim to be making, on the back of customer research, to source more local produce.
The concept of course is admirable, and - in support of Tesco - when the subject was briefly broached, the evidence put forward by a “shopping family” installed to hunt for locally-sourced product in Stratford-upon-Avon proved to be weak. The only local lines the busy housewife apparently could find were runner beans from Evesham and bagged salad, indicating the programme was probably made in the summer or very early autumn. Not surprisingly, there were no British apples when she looked!
It did, however, highlight the confusion around not just seasonality, but what should be defined as local. Beyond the use of the Little Red Tractor or the Union Jack some seasonal arrivals, like Kent apples, Lincs cauliflower, or Hampshire strawberries, are relatively easy to identify because of the propensity to now print growers’ names and locations on packs. This is even increasingly being supported by a picture to help to make it clearer - assuming the customer bothers to read the labelling.
But how far do local boundaries stretch? Waitrose seems to have taken one of the best options I have seen by quantifying such an identity as “regional” and backing suppliers with a special display. I believe that Asda does the same and there may be others that have not flown across my radar.
The key to the door of success, of course, is establishing an economic distribution flow, and being able to provide sufficient volume, as little if any discretion is left to the local store manager, or so I have gleaned. Self-help has, however, come from the development of food sub-brands by growers themselves, such as the Cornish initiative which embraces several horticultural crops, alongside other foodstuffs. Kent and Scotland too have shown signs of its own identity.
If regionality, however it is interpreted, continues to gain ground, I wonder how long it will be before retailers discover the advantage that might be gained by specifically featuring many of the mainly continental fruits and vegetables designated with special origin denomination by the EU.
The nearest that the UK comes to these is with the famous Jersey Royal potato, which has an excellent 100-plus year-old reputation to merit its own special displays. But why not others, from these islands or otherwise?
Based firmly on location I call to mind Golden Delicious from the Limousin, French rose garlic from the South West, Spanish Picota cherries and Brillante persimmons from a list that grows every year. The betting is odds on that the British consumer still has little idea that these other delicacies from outside our shores exist, and would be hard pressed to name any.
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