Future of Retail in Charlbury

Sat 30 Jun 2007, 13:48

I think the Good Food Shop does a great job in catering for a diverse set of customers, from jam-tart munchers to the organic goat's milk crowd. The point about it is that you can get stuff there, on the doorstep, which you'd have to search long and hard for to get hereabouts. Village shops aren't decorations. Shopping in rural areas is not a spectator sport. You have to participate otherwise you can't moan about shops going under. And by participation I mean asking for things that maybe aren't there, or giving comments about that piece of cheese you tried or the new soup in stock. Retailers need to know what their customers want, so start saying what you like and don't like, and start trying things out. It's a two-way process.

The point about choice is an interesting one. Our parents' generation was used to seasonal food, not the ability to buy nectarines in midwinter, or asparagus for the other 48 weeks of the year. Supermarkets provide us with a huge range of choices, but in reality most of stick to the same 1% of what supermarkets have to offer, even if we kid ourselves it nice to have the choice but we don't use it. Often the idea of choice is really about shopping as leisure activity, which is easy on the eye but results but no purchases.

I have about 50 things I regularly buy on my shopping list over a month. I start off at the Good Food shop. Anything I can't get there I try to get at Slatters in Chadlington or Daylesford (for special occasions). Anything I can't get there comes from Ocado. Horrors! Yes, Ocado - Waitrose's online delivery service. But I do try hard not to get stuff from there that I can get from the GFS (eg fresh soup, organic chocolate, posh preserves and cereals, diet coke, crisps, cakes, italian bread and boutique cheese) or elsewhere locally. Raw fish. for example. If I were around during the day when the fish van comes, I would try it out but I'm not. And if I discover local shops do stuff I've previous got from Ocado, then I swop over to them. Just like I've recently bought a couple of things from Evenlode Books that would arrive more quickly than Amazon. Simple as that.