I was in Morrison’s earlier this week and I found myself feeling somewhere between heartbroken and absolutely furious. Furious at the buying power of supermarkets who can force producers into such low prices that completely screw over both the producers and the small independents who don’t stand a chance at being able to compete with prices they can demand. 

They were selling cheeses cheaper than we could even buy them in for directly from the producers, granted, when we got some of the cheeses home to try them for the sake of my theory and to appease how angry I was, it became clear that every cheese we had chosen was under matured and/or was a poor example of how these cheeses should be. They were bland, and boring and felt like they had no soul to them, many of these cheeses if cared for and matured to the right age, are amazing spectacular wonders that I would say any day of the week are some of my favourite cheeses but these were the equivalent of hiring a V8 mustang and getting a 1L Micra instead. 

This is yet another way supermarkets and large companies screw over small independents in every single industry, public buy an item that seems cheap thinking they’ve got a bargain, and wondering why a similar item sometimes even labeled the same seems so expensive at local shops. The truth to this is twofold, firstly the products independents stock are always far superior products, they keep repeat customers by selling high-quality items and ensuring customer care. The second part to this answer is producers have to make the same item in larger quantities for supermarkets often having to use faster processes and sometimes with cheaper substitutes to keep to the production quotas they have been set all the while making much smaller profit margin. This seems like a great idea to start with as you have a huge quantity committed to be sold but I’ve spoken to so many producers over the years who have been left wondering why they agreed to the deal in the first place, once the sheer volume of the work and small profit margins start to drown them it often feels like a blessing and a curse.

Supermarkets/large companies now have their product at the low price they’ve bargained for and still manage to charge a higher % on top, far greater than the % independents can ask for, all the while managing to undercut the independents through their original low price demand for taking large quantities. On top of all this large companies rely on staff working for minimum wage and zero-hour contracts while independents try to look after their staff as people, so often paying staff more than they pay themselves. 

It's a truly broken system where we screw over those at the bottom and line the pockets of CEOs on six-figure salaries by shopping big instead of local, many small towns have now reached the tipping point where so many small independents have closed down through low footfall, rising costs of bills and lower sales over the past few years. The bigger picture to this change in the retail arena of independents vs big companies is what happens when those big companies start to see a downturn in their sales and decide that the small town branch is one to close. What happens in those towns that have had their independents driven out of business and then the big companies close too?  Jobs, money in the local economy, ability to shop for items locally, yet another empty shop on the high street, ghost towns of pound shops and charity shops? 

Local economies need to thrive as a collective with money going back into the local economy and local families to thrive as a town, as a destination and as a place people want to live and bring up families. One cannot survive without the other. 

I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it, use it or lose it, but unfortunately for many small towns and so many independents the idea of shopping local is now a long-forgotten dream as the independents are becoming fewer and fewer.