Now that’s miles better

Mar 14 2008 by Jane Hall, The Journal

Buying quality, fresh, seasonal regional foods has just become easier with the launch of a new deliver-to-your-door grocery service that aims to give the supermarkets a run for their money. Jane Hall reports.

NO-ONE can argue that supermarkets are convenient: all our grocery needs under one roof.

From perfect vegetables to exotic fruits, speciality breads and cakes, dairy products, pre-packed meats and fish, frozen foods and aisles of wine and beer, there is nothing our friendly, local supermarket can’t offer the sophisticated consumer.

Except little apart from its location is likely to be ‘local.’ What did you have for lunch last Sunday? Chicken? Chances are it came from Thailand, a 10,691-mile journey by container ship. Your carrots probably started their life 1,000 miles away in Spain, your French beans in Zambia, 4,912 miles away, your potatoes in Egypt, a 2,290-mile hike by plane from the North East, and your mangetout 5,130 miles away in Zimbabwe. Only the sprouts were likely to have come from Britain, but even they will probably have made a 200-mile trip from the farm to your plate. That’s a grand total of 24,223 miles – just 678 miles short of the circumference of the earth.

For every £1 of household expenditure around 49p is spent in supermarkets. It’s no wonder our high streets are dying and our artisan food and drink producers are struggling to make a living.

Yet evidence shows many people would prefer to support their local growers, retailers and producers – if buying the goods could be made easier.

For just as no-one could argue against the efficiency and embarrassment of choice offered by the monolithic supermarkets that have sprung up on the outskirts of every town and city across the UK, so no-one would disagree that buying locally produced, reared or grown food is not as easy as it might be, with goods often scattered across a wide area or only available through selected retailers or farmers’ markets.

All that is about to change, though. Food Local Food is the brainchild of Northumberland mother of two Alison Taylor. For the first time she has brought together more than 80 of the region’s food and drink producers to offer consumers the largest range of quality, fresh and seasonal produce in one location.

The 39-year-old has persuaded the likes of Newcastle’s Big Lamp Brewery, Blagdon Home Farm and Farm Shop, Wooler-based Doddington Dairy, Northumberland Estates Game, The Coquet Whisky Company, Tritlington Fresh Produce and the County Durham-based Redemption Food Company, which specialises in handmade soups, to rally round to offer a weekly grocery list to rival any supermarket – with the added attraction that everything is local.

Food Local Food is not a stand alone shop, however. To make it even easier for consumers to buy into what Alison hopes will become a regional food revolution, you order either online, by phone or via a catalogue from a choice of more than 1,500 products taking in everything from organic milk and cream to lamb, fish and game, rape seed oil, free range eggs, handmade cakes, authentic Oriental pastes and powders, high class confectionery, cheeses, breads, jams and sandwich fillings.

Then for a small charge, your order is delivered to your door.

Ninety five per cent of everything being offered comes from between the Scottish Border and North Yorkshire.

The only concessions Alison has made to her local mantra is for goods she genuinely can’t source from this region, such as store cupboard staples like tinned tomatoes, which are coming from Yorkshire-based Suma wholefoods, and organic and Fairtrade spices from Steenbergs of Ripon, whose founders are originally from Northumberland.

It has taken Alison seven months to set up Food Local Food – no mean feat when you consider she has a home in Bedlington to run and a job as a consultant working in the voluntary sector, to hold down.

But her belief in her idea is such that she and husband Paul, 42, have put in £25,000 of their own money. “If Food Local Food goes under then we go under. We would lose everything,” Alison states.. “That is how committed I am. But I believe in Food Local Food 100% and am certain it is what people want.

“Never before has so much been brought together in this way from specialist shops and local producers. I’m not saying don’t go to the supermarket, but for the first time we are saying to the people of Northumberland and Tyneside, you have a choice. We are offering the best prices for these type of foods that you will find anywhere.

“We believe that consumers want that quality at the best prices we can provide. Therefore we have decided to take on the supermarkets in a small way, bringing all this good food and drink into one place.

“I am passionate about buying local food and about supporting local companies who are often small without all the resources to market or reach a wider audience, but have the most fantastic range and quality of foods and drinks available. I was simply frustrated that it could not all be found in one place in a more affordable way.”

So with an entrepreneurial spirit, the support of more than 80 suppliers and James Cookson of Meldon Park near Morpeth, who has long championed local produce on behalf of his tenants, and Nick Craig of Tritlington Fresh Produce, two food health and safety experts and a lot of hard work, Food Local Food is now a reality.

With The Journal Taste North East England Campaign focusing people’s attention on the plethora of quality foods and drink on offer across the region, Alison believes there will never be a better time to set out her stall.

Initially orders will be delivered on a Saturday within a 20-mile radius of Morpeth. A network of collection points extending across Northumberland and County Durham will ensure produce quickly and efficiently gets from the supplier to the Food Local Food warehouse at Tritlington.

Alison says: “Producers go to a set point and we do a pick-up and at the same time we will deliver other goods for them. We are hoping to keep a full van and stop suppliers wasting fuel and space. All the producers have been happy to work together. It has been fantastic.

“In the early days they are allowing me to order one jar of jam or one set of burgers if that’s what we need to get Food Local Food going.”

Alison’s interest in local food came about through her 15-year-old son Jamie, who has learning disabilities. She also has a seven-year-old daughter, Shannon. “We manage Jamie’s condition through diet, so I have long been passionate about local produce and being able to trace it,” she explains.

But it wasn’t until she was drafted in by James Cookson to help put together a bid for the new regional North East England Food and Drink Group – won by rival Northumbria Larder in association with North East Chamber of Commerce and Improve, the food and drink-making sector skills council – that she came up with her idea combining convenience and local food delivered to the door.

“We came second in the bidding process, but out of that came a number of commercial ideas, of which Food Local Food was the strongest. I believe the barrier for local food is that people believe it to be too expensive and that it can’t be got in one place.

“None of the delicatessens and farm shops are carrying the range we have. Their strength is in the other products they have. But we are keen to promote these places and we hope we will bring them new customers. Any advertising we will be doing will be free. We want to make local produce as easily available as possible.

“We are retailing at everybody’s own retail prices – or at a slight mark-up. But it shouldn’t be more expensive to buy through us. Through our website there will be consumer choice and I’m hoping that the suppliers will respond accordingly, so prices may come down if they start competing against each other.

“If the consumer side takes off then we want to move into the food service sector. Half of our suppliers are capable of supplying hotels and restaurants, so places in Northumberland will have no excuse not to buy local. We can supply them and we are going to have a sustained attack on restaurants and hotels to take local.”

Alison describes Food Local Food as a “celebration of choice, quality and taste.”

“I believe this is a win-win situation. The consumer gets the pick of local produce available in one place, the producers and retailers get new customers and I get to do something I really believe in.”

Call 08450 948 587 or go to www.foodlocalfood.com to find out more or to order.

Never before has so much been brought together in this way from specialist shops and local producers.