This question was posed to me in response to my last blog when I asked you all for some food for thought on what to write about next. By the way, I had some great replies—lots of ammo for future editions.
But this one really struck a chord. It wasn’t a blunt question as that—it was a lovely, genuine enquiry from someone who wanted to know what a farm shop should be all about. I actually read it on a bus full of farm shop owners from up and down the country, just outside Birmingham, heading to another farm shop. I took a merry brigade of our farm shop team—Claire, Lucy, Kim, and myself—up to Birmingham for the annual Farm Retail Conference. It’s hosted in a different location around the UK every year, and it’s a rare chance for all of us to get together to discuss the challenges and opportunities of our industry, as well as to speak to people who are in the same boat as us.
The theme this year was all about standing out more than ever. As farm retailers, how are we going to deal with the onslaught of turnover taxes—the hundreds of thousands of pounds we pay every year without even turning a penny of profit? How do we navigate wage pressures that favour the big corporations with robotics and AI, rather than small and medium-sized local companies that employ millions of local people?
The truth is, the current economic landscape isn’t designed to help businesses like ours, and there isn’t much we can do about it.
Apart from selling the real deal!
If we’re not careful, this manufactured landscape will wipe out the small businesses that deliver real value to people. The ones that favour a conversation and a catch-up over the counter, rather than punching numbers into a vending machine. The ones that work hand in hand with local farmers and growers through the seasons, sharing their stories and giving them a fair platform to sell their wares.
Instead, we see big corporations letting spreadsheets decide where in the world it’s cheapest to buy their beef this week, and punishing UK farmers if they haven’t produced exactly the right amount of product—as if it comes off a conveyor belt.
Yes, our way is a bit more expensive—so we need to do our bit to sell the real deal by highlighting the hidden costs. It’s easy to look at a packet of bright, unnaturally red beef on a supermarket shelf and think it’s the better deal, without considering what’s behind that price. In contrast, the beautifully deep red, dry-aged beef at your local butchers tells a different story—one of quality, craft, and time well spent.
It’s the difference between mass-produced, quickly processed meat and beef that’s been carefully aged to develop flavour and tenderness. What you don’t see in that comparison are the real costs—the support of local farmers and food producers, the local jobs sustained by those businesses, and the connection you feel to your food and the people who serve it. All these things add value, even if they don’t come with a cut-price label.
We returned home down the M5 last week with a much clearer focus on what we need to do. It’s true that many independents and farm shops sell similar items these days, but each should have its own Unique Selling Point. It’s up to us to shout from the rooftops about our USP to make sure we stand out. It’s painful to think about how many local businesses we might lose over the coming months and years. But if we get caught not standing for our values of craft, stewardship, and community, we will quickly lose our way.
And there are far bigger, meaner enterprises out there that would love to compete with us on price and convenience—as we all know where that road leads.
Our focus this year is to make more of a point of what makes us the real deal. The grass-fed beef we produce, the organic veggies from Kate’s market garden, our homemade produce that you can’t buy anywhere else, our commitment to sustainability, and the connection we provide for our wonderful community and customers.
If we can keep that at the heart of what we do, then I reckon we’ve got a fighting chance of weathering the storm.
All the best,
Tom