Retailing the region

Waitrose in Abergavenny sells the town’s own St Illtyd cheese. Okehampton boasts Sam’s Cider, made a dozen or so miles away at Winkleigh. And Myers Plum Loaf, a favourite at the Waitrose Lincoln branch, is baked at Horncastle, just 20 miles to the east.

Local and regional food is core business for Waitrose, and the majority of its stores offer something unique to their patch. To qualify for ‘local’ status, a product must pass a strict distance test – it has to have been grown or made within a 30-mile radius of the branch in which it is being sold. The company also works with suppliers to decide the best delivery options, to ensure that these products don’t then get trucked around the country. Despite that tight definition, the supermarket sells more than 1,200 products that pass the ‘localness’ test.

“Historically Waitrose was a regional retailer, so we sourced all of our goods regionally,” says local and regional buyer Graham Cassie .“As we’ve expanded the business, we’ve taken on new suppliers from those areas.”

The experience seems to be paying off. Local and regional product sales last year were up by around 90% on the previous year.

To feed that appetite, Waitrose has a team of buyers working with local producer groups, like Tastes of Anglia and Taste of the West, to track down small businesses with interesting products to offer. It has also set up livestock producer groups, working directly with farmers to market their meat through Waitrose.

Most recently the sourcing team introduced just under 400 new local product lines from 55 new Scottish suppliers in preparation for the opening of two Scottish Waitrose branches. These were introduced after ‘Meet the Buyer’ days held in Edinburgh, where producers introduced their products and found out more about Waitrose.

And it has borrowed some of the elements of the farmers’ market experience, bringing customers into direct contact in-store with the people who grow their food. “Over the years a lot of consumers have become disconnected from the food they eat. They now want to get closer to it, to reconnect,” Cassie says. “Local and regional food is a good way to make that happen, especially if there’s also a chance to meet producers face to face.”

11 October 2007