As I walk down a packed Portobello Market in the sunshine, or The Lane as the old-school fruit traders call it, it seems a million miles away from the old and dark early morning wholesale visits I’ve made in the past. And of course, it should be different. This is where the money is, where the final purchase is made with the end customer and where the whole process of the fresh produce supply chain is given purpose and makes sense.
But as I chat to the fruit and vegetable street traders, amid the “pound a bowl” chants and the inquisitive public, it becomes clear that some wholesalers could do with taking a leaf out of the street traders’ book when it comes to their relationship with street retail -estimated at around 10 per cent of their income. Street markets are in demand, in and out of London as St James’s Wholesale Market in Bradford will bear testament. And what’s more, unlike a lot of other customers, they can offer all-important cash in hand to credit-control tight wholesalers.
The general feeling on The Lane is that tradition is tradition and if you want to get up early and buy from the wholesalers, you have to do it their way and play their game. “You have to get on with them to negotiate the price,” says Maureen Peck, who runs Quality Fruit And Veg along with her sister, Josie Corney. “The prices are really high at the moment and they have been all summer. Aubergines have been a ridiculous price, but I always manage to get them down a bit. They don’t explain to us why the price is high, so what do we say to our customers?”
New kid on The Lane, Braden Daley, set up a new stall on the street four weeks ago after he and his business partner had been on a waiting list for two years. As a newcomer, I wondered how he had been accepted at the wholesale market, knowing from experience that outsiders can be made to feel somewhat intimidated by the old boy culture in some markets.
A John Lewis marketing department employee in the week, Daley admitted going back time after time and this had taken guts. “The first time we went they weren’t interested in us; we were too young and new for them to take us seriously,” he says. “But after three or four visits, they knew we were here to stay and were pleased that we were young and so interested in being street traders. They gained confidence in us and us in them. The traders on Portobello Market have been here for years and the wholesalers are used to them, but now we stick with the wholesalers who welcome us, sometimes even if there’s a better price elsewhere on the market.”
Most of the street traders use New Covent Garden Market (NCGM) and Western International for their wholesale needs and it’s well understood that if you want to play with the wholesalers, you do so by their rules. But is this tradition for tradition’s sake alienating custom? And wouldn’t an improved transfer of knowledge both from wholesaler to street trader and vice versa improve the overall experience for your average punter on the street market? Surely young traders should be nurtured when it comes to walking the wholesale market, because who knows how important their businesses will end up in the future?
The people at the National Association of British Market Authorities (NABMA) are well aware of the situation and chairman Graham Wilson says it is the wholesale arena’s job to raise awareness of the industry. He is adamant that relations between wholesalers and street traders have improved in the last 10 years and is keen to set up what he describes as a “strategic common agenda”. So enthusiastic is he that NABMA has approached the government for support and funding to “bring the two elements together”, involving some kind of hub distribution set up. However, it seems the government does not quite share this enthusiasm as yet. “It is clear that there is a requirement for wholesalers to raise street traders’ awareness of product and what they can offer,” says Wilson. “Wholesale markets should be prominent and ensure they are welcoming to retailers and offer information. We have quite a job to do.”
Wilson is keen for street markets to thrive as, apart from other things, they bring a sense of community. And enjoying many a street market in full swing myself, I’d have to agree. It’s an experience no supermarket can beat. Though on first impressions Portobello Market is not your average street market, with thousands of tourists passing through each day of its Thursday to Saturday trading and a set of notoriously affluent residents on its doorstep, it comes up against the same issues as most fruit and vegetable street markets in the UK today. Much like street markets up and down the country, Portobello Market’s competition lives and breathes alongside it.
This is one point on which the wholesalers and street traders agree and it’s something we hear time and again: the supermarkets have done their best to put them out of business. But surely, it’s not enough to lament over family heritage and past glories? “You have to change with the times,” Jackie, one of the more talkative traders told me while she served customers new and old. “You can’t get this kind of interaction in a supermarket. Though you do get some people who want a geography lesson, then don’t end up buying anything.” Jackie stopped to shout at an old lady fingering all the peppers and slipping a couple extra into the bowl she was going to purchase. “Can see what you’re doing,” she called over, merrily.
Ironically, Jackie’s stall faces a Tesco Metro, literally sharing the pavement with the supermarket giant. I ask her if her customers come to her and then decide to go into the supermarket. She pulls a face at me. “Generally, people shop in the market first and then go into the supermarket,” she answers. “The young ones eventually realise that it’s smarter to shop on the street market for value, as you can get variety and fruit and vegetables that taste of something.” At that moment, a woman asks her to pick out 10 of the best peaches for her -something that wouldn’t happen just another four feet away in Tesco Metro’s aisles, and proves her point nicely.
This is where the issue of education comes up again; education of the street traders regarding the products and where they come from and therefore passing that knowledge to the end consumer, and the education of the 20- and 30-somethings to shop in a street market effectively.
I’ve heard many throughout the supply chain slate the “pound a bowl” offer that has grown to be commonplace on street markets. Most of the wholesalers on St James’s Wholesale Market in Bradford see it as an excuse to get rid of unwanted or below average stock. “It gives the fruit industry a bad name,” one complained. “It allows the quality to drop.”
That point of view makes sense, but Jackie made me see things a little differently. “We’re cheap and cheerful here and it’s all about getting things fresh at a bargain price,” she tells me. “A pound a bowl gives the average youngster that doesn’t price things by the lb or kilo a sense of value. They can see how much they get for their money much better than a sign giving a price per kilo. Not that I’d ever work with kilos.”
Peck, a few stalls up Portobello Road, seems to agree. “Young people don’t know how to use the street market to their advantage,” she argues. “The rich people around here come once for the novelty and then they’re the ones trying to get us thrown off the pitch because we’re ‘too noisy’. People have been trading fruit and vegetables here for decades - long before all the posh people moved in.”
It’s a sentiment that is echoed through NCGM, with the Local Food Project: London & South East’s Ruth Holbrook on the case. Both Holbrook and NCGM’s business development manager Zeenat Anjari have been involved with promotional activity on Portobello Market in a very hands-on way.
“For the first of our taste festivals on the market to celebrate apples, Ruth and Zeenat turned up with bushels of apples from NCGM,” Kensington and Chelsea Borough Council’s Mark Atkinson enthusiastically recalls when I popped in for chat at his office, ideally situated at the top of Portobello Road. “The street traders, for whatever reason, didn’t seem to take to the idea of promoting the British apple season and although the event ran over the Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, it was only when Ruth and Zeenat turned up on the Friday and showed them how it was done that it really hit off with them handing out tasters. A lot of people were saying that the apples tasted the way they did when they were younger and that they had tried hard to get hold of a particular variety but couldn’t. As representatives of NCGM, Ruth and Zeenat could give members of the public the feedback required.”
Atkinson, markets development officer for Portobello and Golborne Road markets, is firmly behind the eat local, buy seasonally drive and has been holding events quarterly on both markets to drum up support. Other than including the business development managers, to what extent does this involve the wholesale markets?
“We make sure that we are promoting what the traders can get from the wholesalers,” he explains. “We get the information through the street traders though.”
I am reminded of Wilson’s comment that the relationship between wholesale and street traders has come a long way in the last decade, as Atkinson continues to tell me that only that morning he has been given a tour of East London’s New Spitalfields Market by business development manager Tim Williams and that new links have been made that will help Portobello Markets seasonal events.
“There are some constraints,” Atkinson admits. “And the impression I get is that the business that street traders bring wholesale markets is declining. A lot of our traders are very pessimistic on that aspect. But we also suffer because we can’t trade on a Sunday and the fact that the street traders are at the wholesale markets at 3am or 4am and so they want to pack up their own stalls by 4pm, but of course society has changed in the way that most people are at work all day and they want to pick something up at 6pm on their way home. There are opportunities to look at and we need to look at how street markets and wholesale markets are run in general.”
And as Anjari points out, reiterating the views I gathered on the street market, there is a generation that doesn’t know how to use a market. “These skills aren’t just for your holidays in some Mediterranean village,” she tells me. “These are skills you can use every day, but people are not used to that level of human interaction. The public needs to learn to love their market trader.”
“Attitudes can be old fashioned and there is now a generation that has grown up shopping at a supermarket and they are almost afraid to interact,” agrees Holbrook. “They don’t want to ask ‘how much?’; they’re unfamiliar with kilos and lbs as measurements. Mind you, traders throughout the markets can be brash - that’s a problem.
“Chefs going out to street markets and touching and feeling the products for TV programmes has helped drum up support. NCGM is mostly orientated to caterers, but a lot of work is done with street traders. People feel more connected with their food if they buy from a market; it’s the exchange of knowledge,” adds Holbrook, who is on first name terms with many of the street traders on Portobello Market herself.
So should the buyers’ walk be any different from walking down a street market? Jackie throws some light on the subject. “You get your posh customers and your not-so-posh customers, but either way you help them get what they want,” she tells me. “People always come back when they realise we offer the best experience and value for money.” I thank her for her time and buy five Spanish peaches for a pound. “That one’s good to eat now,” she tells me, referring to the peach she’s placed at the top of the brown paper bag, “but keep the rest in the bag and they’ll ripen quicker, my darling.” I walk away; another satisfied customer.
No comments yet