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Welcome to the second Making Local Food Work quarterly newsletter.
We’re fast approaching the end of the programme’s first year and by now we’ve really built up momentum, as you’ll see from the articles below. You can follow the hyperlinks in each article to find more information on our website about the projects featured.
The new website was launched at the beginning of July and is packed full of information about our different projects. Each project will update its own pages, so keep checking for the latest updates on how things are going. We’d really appreciate your comments and opinions about the website, so please email us if you have anything to say.
Food Co-ops Survey
The Food Co-ops and Buying Groups project carried out a survey of food co-operatives and found some interesting facts about the current situation. The results showed that 81% of the food co-ops surveyed had been set up in the last four years, and 88% said the main reason they set the co-op up was to improve health. Most food co-ops have quite small numbers of customers, with 56% serving 20 people or fewer a week, and 47% of customers spending less than £5 each. 46% of the food co-ops who replied sell their produce via a bag scheme and 81% of the food coops said that they had recruited their volunteers via word of mouth.
Find out about our work with food co-ops here.
Checking Out Portishead Farmers
The Co-operative Farmers’ Markets project recently carried out a Retail HealthCheck on Portishead farmers’ market in North Somerset, which is the project’s pilot area.
The Farmers’ Market project within the Making Local Food Work programme is supporting the development of collaborative groups running farmers’ markets throughout England. In North Somerset one of the first activities of the programme was to carry out detailed research at one of the markets in the group.
The Retail HealthCheck, developed by project partners FARMA (The National Farmers’ Retail and Markets Association), records a snap shot of the market by gathering customer views and other data.
Armed with results from the research the Making Local Food Work team will help inform the business plan for developing the group of farmers’ markets in North Somerset.
Information collected at the Portishead market has already helped to guide decisions on the best location for the market as well as suggesting improvements for the future.
For further information, please visit the project’s web pages.
Look for Local Food
The Community Shops and Local Food project, working to help community and village shops sell more locally produced food and drink, is entering the important 1-year pilot stage in October 2008. Much of the work so far has been in establishing the resources, process and those people and shops involved in the pilot stage of the work. Because the scheme is producing materials to be used across the Country and is aiming to be recognised by consumers, it has been given its own identity with a scheme title, Look for Local Food, and an identifier that will denote local products.
After making visits to various shops in potential locations in England, 12 community-owned, plus 2 commercially owned village shops have agreed to be involved in this first stage. These shops are in 4 regions of England - the North West, East Midlands, South West and South East.
A small number of Advisers are in place to support these shops with implementing the 'Look for Local Food' toolkit, which contains guidance on finding local producers, point of sale materials, promotion and marketing advice and ideas. The role of the Advisers will be very important in helping to establish and develop local relationships, especially with shops and producers. There will be significant monitoring and gathering of sales data by the shops themselves over the pilot year. This will be very valuable and will help us to measure the effectiveness of the toolkit and of selling local foods, and make any adjustments that are felt to be needed.
It is hoped that at least 200 shops will sign up to receive support from the scheme over the following 2 years, and plans, processes and information for that rollout, as well as recruitment of further Advisers, will begin in earnest once the piloting is safely underway.
Go to the website for more detail about this project.
The Plunkett Foundation, in partnership with River Cottage, has produced a guide to opening your own local food shop. Visit the online Resources area to download a copy.
Would you like to join Plunkett’s consultancy team?
The Enterprise Support team is looking for expert social enterprise and co-operative business advisers who can provide high quality services to local food enterprises across England.
Managed by The Plunkett Foundation and Co-operatives UK, the Enterprise Support theme wishes to recruit 20 advisers who have knowledge of local food issues, understand Plunkett’s agenda, focus, reach and potential, and can see the value in working with Plunkett both now and in the future.
For details on how to apply, visit our jobs page.
We are always interested in hearing your ideas and feedback about our communications and about our projects, so please feel free to email us with your views.
Best wishes
The Editor
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