You’ve probably heard the news by now: Costa has dropped plans to open a store in Totnes, a beacon of localism and the first Transition Town. I blogged about the decision to give Costa planning permission back in August... Read More
Someone sent me a link this week to an interview with Bill Grimsey, a retail boss of over 40 years’ experience and the former head of Focus/Wickes and the former chief executive of Iceland. The headline was Is it ‘too late’ for the High Street?.. Read More
I read a Huffington Post article recently suggesting that local food was now more important to consumers than organic food:.. Read More
I’ve just been working with Vicki Hewlett. She runs Silver Swan, which sells beef and lamb traditionally reared on the farm that she and her husband own just outside the Forest of Dean in Gloucestershire... Read More
The rising cost of food is getting more and more coverage. There is clear consensus that extreme weather as a result of climate change is going to have a significant impact on the price of the food we buy. Coupled with an increasing global population, there seems to be an acceptance that higher food prices […].. Read More
Walk down some high streets and it feels like there are coffee shops everywhere you look. It’s felt a bit like that in the media recently too... Read More
The Death of the High Street. We’ve all seen the news reports showing rows of boarded up shops. We’ve all heard of the attempts to stop it in the form of the Portas Review and the Portas Pilots. The received wisdom is that small independent local retailers can’t compete with the price, reach and convenience […].. Read More
Defra published its conclusions on its Green Food Project last week. The aims of the project were to “bring together Government, industry and environmental partners to reconcile how we will achieve our goals of improving the environment and increasing food production.” Or, as the Defra press release put it rather more glamorously, “A major study […].. Read More
You can’t have missed the Barclays Libor rate scandal in the past couple of weeks. What’s interesting is the effect it’s having on the decisions we make... Read More
That was the question discussed at the Food Security Debate hosted by the Federation of Small Businesses at last week’s Three Counties Show. I went along to find out the answers... Read More