The Year of the Underdog

05 May 2016, 08:13 am
Speciality Bites by Paul Hargreaves

It looks like it’s becoming the year of the underdog in sport with virtual unknown, Danny Willett, winning the US Masters Golf and Leicester just clinching the Football Premier League with odds at the beginning of the season of 5000-1

Many are wishing they had a bet last August, but most are just glad that a team without huge spending power as beaten a load of teams that have spent more on one player than Leicester have on their entire squad. And that’s me included as a Manchester United fan.

The British psyche is well known as being in favour of the underdog, with huge crowds in all sporting arenas cheering a plucky Brit as she or she puts up a gallant effort in defeat. Just look at Wimbledon each year! There is an opportunity for us to turn this into trade for our retailers and producers. And this is where it gets slightly more serious. Moore Stephens (accountants) reported that 162 food manufacturers became insolvent last year – more than treble the 48 in 2010 and 11% more than a year ago. Some of this is due to their supplying supermarkets at silly margins, but some of these are within our own sector.

With supermarkets being slated in the news recently for creating brands with made-up farm names, it is time for products made on real farms and real farm retailers to make more noise. You see the supermarkets are creating products to create a false illusion of “smallness” as this is attractive to consumers, so the “real small guys” are even more attractive. Time to make more noise. Time for the genuine small people to shout about it and harness the buying power there is in the British public supporting the underdog.

Remember that as you hear countless hours of coverage about giant-killers, Leicester, over the next few days.

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