One of my great disappointments of the last 3 years has been the great success of a certain fruit drink.

I could see straight away that ‘Rainy Miserable’ should really be it’s name as essentially it was a carton full of slightly diluted orange squash, sugar and other nasties.

How long can good marketing hide product quality? One would expect other competing drinks companies to produce a better product and market it accordingly. But no, sugar is cheap, and they all produce similar ‘kids go loopy’ drinks. A friend of mine told me recently that her little boy starts barking when she gives him one of these drinks.

I give my son pure apple juice, mixed with water, costing 63p/ltr (31p diluted) much cheaper than any of the nasties. For further info on this have a look at the Food Commission report in the news section.

news

With our biggest supermarket Tesco announcing record profits (up a whopping 17%) and Wal-Mart, owners of Asda (the second biggest), investing heavily in the UK, it’s easy to wonder if fresh local food will get squeezed out in the quest for mega-corp dominance 226 but there are signs of hope.

Tesco of course made its name by combining price and quality, whilst Wal-Mart is happy to focus simply on price. Both are notorious for squeezing margins and expecting consistency from their suppliers, and as such look to be ‘off-limits’ to local food producers.

But what about the others?
HEB, a retailer based in Texas and Mexico, looked to be doomed when Wal-Mart moved onto its patch. Instead it offered an alternative, still offering low prices but also an idea called ‘Central Market’ part of the store offering fresh and prepared foods with chefs demonstrating how to prepare the food and promoting ideas of taste and goodness.

Is there a lesson here for some of our supermarkets? Bargains yes, but something else too? Imagine somewhere we could go everyday of the week for fresh food, not just when the Farmers’ Markets in town. Somewhere where we might find the unexpected. Somewhere where we could meet the people who produce our food and get advice on how to prepare it.

A pipe dream? Well the supermarkets know they should be doing what their customers want, and those outside the Big Two know they can’t compete head-on. We know there is a demand for local food and need to persuade supermarkets that their customers want what we can supply; good food from local farms.

To help us persuade your local supermarket please register here