Local Food Worth £5.7 Billion, Says MP

Following his visit to Leicestershire to visit local producers and promote the value of locally-produced food within the UK, Food Minister George Eustice tells Speciality Food the part that independent retailers are playing, and how they can make the most of the boom in consumer demand.

“The locally-produced food sector is valuable and it’s growing. The market research company Mintel have done some research into the subject, which put estimated sales of locally-sourced foods at around £5.7 billion. They’re also forecasting that it would rise by around 14 per cent in the next few years. If you look at the past decade, there’s been a huge resurgence of interest in farm shops and farmers markets thanks to their focus on locally-produced food. My brother runs a farm shop business, and has seen a huge rise in interest and turnover in the past eight to ten years.

“There are a number of factors that are driving this resurgence, but most of all there’s a much larger interest in food provenance. People want to know where their food comes from. There’s a real premium on being able to visit a farm and see where the meat they’re buying was reared, and people have more confidence in a food when they can see where it was produced. The other interesting thing is to see how major retailers and supermarkets have responded – at the end of last year I attended an event that Tesco hosted to showcase local suppliers. These ranged from an ice cream producer who supplied just one store to cheese producers who supplied a dozen or more stores. They were very keen to showcase the speciality, locally-sourced food that they had, as they can see that it’s good for their own brand to be supporting local producers.

“It’s a trend that’s been driven by farm shops and a consumer interest in provenance, but it’s interesting to see the major retailers jump on the bandwagon as they can spot that trend. Independent food retailers are pushing at an open door in the sense that there’s a growing interest in locally-produced food, and the ones that do well tend to focus on the right brand and focus for them that can showcase local food. There are a lot of small retailers who have become very successful very quickly, and it’s really down to them getting the branding and product offering right. Different businesses will do it in different ways, and those that remain loyal to their brand values of locally-sourced, locally-produced foods and try not to deviate from that will be the ones that are best able to make the most of this consumer trend.”