Fresh fruit and vegetables featured prominently in the six-hour debate on improving the lot of independent retailers that took place at the Association of Convenience Stores’ (ACS) annual summit last week. However, there was not one single mention of how this sector could compete on price with the multiples, or withstand their massive media campaigns.

With independent retailers facing increasing pressure on the high street, the event attracted a record attendance, and proved that independents are still full of fight and can benefit from several ideas that were up the speakers’ sleeves.

Credibly, this was backed by plenty of evidence showing that many small retailers in outer city suburbs, and particularly in the countryside, are still confidently fulfilling a valuable role.

No one would disagree that, apart from the necessity of bright, well-displayed fitments, an added strength of small retailers is their ability to form a vital part of the local community, as well as supply its grocery needs.

To paraphrase one of the clarion calls from the platform, amidst claims that shoppers preferred to meet “real people” when making their purchases: “It’s not who you are - it’s what you do!”

However, to my mind, the rub is that the term convenience means different things to different people.

In general, fresh fruit and vegetables, apart from being basic foodstuffs, have always been a crowd puller if handled well. But it is an area from which even the best non-specialist traders have been known to shy away.

The reasons for this, in many senses, are sound. There is usually not enough floor space for anything nearing a full range, wholesale packs are too large to handle and there is a fear over the cost of wastage, even if retailers are serviced by a caring distributor. So customers end up driving to the supermarket for their fruit and veg needs.

If proof of this were needed, one only has to remember the dramatic change that has overcome specialist greengrocers, who prided themselves on their knowledge, their ability to buy well on a daily early morning trip to the market, and who also preferred to be called fruiterers.

In the 1960s, before the multiples really took a stab at the fruit and veg sector, there were an estimated 35,000-plus greengrocery outlets. Now I am told there are probably fewer than 4,000 in the entire country.

They too once had their own highly active trade association, the Retail Fruit Trade Federation, which provided similar services to the ACS - both political and general. It distributed point-of-sale material and even tried, admittedly unsuccessfully, to encourage a form of collective buying for its members in various wholesale markets, to strengthen their hand.

I would certainly accept that the die is not cast when it comes to the ACS itself recommending that its members should take a hard look at selling local produce, including fruit and veg, be it only on a seasonal basis. And some may already be doing so.

But history has shown, and I am sure the participants at last week’s conference would still agree, that this is far more difficult than might be first imagined.