The Better Food Company: Ethical Store Hosts Vegan vs Farmer Grudge Match
by Sami Grover, Carrboro, NC, USA on 06. 7.07
TreeHugger readers are no strangers to stories about organic stores and supermarkets. We’ve heard about Eden Teva, the largest natural food store in the Middle East. We’ve read about the local vs. organic debate at Whole Foods. We’ve even read about Wal Mart’s efforts to go organic, and their apparent abandonment of this approach a year later. With so many organic and natural food stores out there, we’ll probably never get round to reporting on all of them.
The Better Food Company, in Bristol, UK [this TreeHugger’s former hometown], caught our attention however, and not just for their impressive stock of organic, local and natural foods, and for their aggressive policy on food miles (they avoid air freighted food wherever possible). The company is also extremely active in education and outreach on food issues, and their events go well beyond the usual PR fluff. A recent talk about fish farming, for example, sounds more like an intellectual eco-grudge match than the usual foodie lecture. On the bill were presentations from Tony Free, owner of the Purely Organic Trout Company, and Tony Wardle, Director of vegan organization Viva:
“To farm fish organically or to not farm fish organically...that is the question. One side believes it's much better than the alternative of non-organic farmed fish, while the other believes that farming fish is completely unnatural and cruel, and depriving them of their natural instincts. You decide. Expect passion. Expect heated debate. Expect great coffee.”
Owned and managed by Phil Haughton (brother of eco-chef Barny Haughton who we interviewed here), it certainly seems like the Better Food Company is living up to it’s name, not only in bringing better food to our tables, but also in bringing a better understanding of food to our consciousness.
Thirsty for more? Check out these related articles:
- Ring in the New Year with Organic Wine, Spirits or Beer
- Chewing Gum Goes Organic and Biodegradable
- Sterling College Bakes Organic Pies to Feed Community
- Top 10 Sites for Do It Yourself Projects
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My Vision for how our supermarkets can be if we demand it.
I am Phil Haughton the new MD for Sainsbury’s and I was taken on to develop the company’s vision for a new world of retailing.
I have done this with wide consultation at all levels.
Over the next ten years the Sainsbury brand is going to be completely transformed.
The thousands of workers and millions of customers are going to BE the revolution.
A personal letter has been sent to each shareholder and the stakeholders in those shares.
I will be writing to all our customers and indeed the letter will soon become so well known that hardly a single person in the UK will not have read it.
It is no longer possible to think that business as usual has a future.
We have all got it very wrong. Be it farming, food, clothes, oil, furniture, houses or appliances,
CHEAP is actually very expensive for our planet, to our farmers, and to many millions of people around the planet thanklessly producing rubbish to fill the ever more hungry void in our souls.
It has never worked.
If we want to do anything about the planet and our survival we need two things
Courage and vision.
And once you have these you can achieve just about anything.
I am helping to take Sainsbury’s forward in a way not yet imagined and yet in a few short years it will be the most popular shopping experience in the last 100 years.
If you ask anyone in the world if they want life to be better for all , they will say yes.
Sainsbury’s is going to make life taste better in a new way.
HOW.
1/ The most important first step is to share our vision.
To break down the corporate structure and move to one of local hubs with one shared vision.
To put people and community before profit.
To let customers know that it is policy to replace the “can have anything anytime marketing”.
with “Everything we sell is nourishing the planet and you are our partners”.
Life tastes better when you are responsible for the food you eat.
2/ Put fresh local food at the top of the agenda in every store. Each of these will be run by a small team of local people who have a share in some of the producer’s farms.
The shares will be bought for them by Sainsbury’s and the money will be used by the producers to convert their farms to sustainable production.
Within 10 years all produce in our store will be organic.
3/ To inform Sainsbury’s shareholders that the new contract with them is for all profit made from company shares must be reinvested in local community based businesses in their area.
4/ As part of our understanding of what makes a better world each store will put 20% of its profits back in to their community for education and training for life, with an emphases to support the young people who are our future.
5/ Over a period of ten years to withdraw all corporate grocery brands and replace them with products from small firms from all over the world.
Bring back the colour, flare, and vitality to our foods.
Be they spices from a family firm in India or great lamb from the fields within 20 miles of the store.
Regional identity, low food miles and sustainable production will now be the key to product acceptance in our stores.
6/ The most profound change of all will be when you walk in our stores
Each store manger will have an open office near the entrance because they will know that the more they talk to their customers about what they want and the more they inform them of how that translates into responsibility as a vital partner in the food chain the better the store will do.
Once past this office you will be greeted with isles full of local and regional foods as well as a market place of local and regional producers with rotating specials areas reserved for international producers and their products, building trading links community to community around the globe.
All products imported will be checked to ensure they serve their home region and don’t simply exploit cheap labour or damage indigenous agriculture.
7/ The company is turning itself on its head. From the top down, will become from the bottom up.
Those at the top will be their to
Safeguard the integrity of the company,
Support store management policy to truly serve the community its business depends on.
To provide open honest audit of performance not just financial but also how the local flora and fauna has improved, how farm and customer links are improving,
How much reduction there has been in visits to GP’s.
How crime has reduced and families measure of security has risen.
In order to do this well we have asked the Soil Association as experienced guardians of organic integrity to advise us.
Our mission goes way beyond organic food, because organic is not sustainable unless it is part of a whole approach to life on earth.
SO the money.
How will we perform against all our competitors?
If money be the only measure not well at all.
But after 3 years the board and managers are convinced that the teething will be largely over and with published figures of all the other performance elements as mentioned we will be seen as a huge success and our competitors will be rushing to emulate this.
To take this post I was offered a salary of 300k plus car and bonuses.
I have accepted 55,000 of this and have no interest in a fat car to sit in. I now live in cycling distance to my office, My local Sainsbury’s is only a half mile detour on my way home.
All the rest of the board, senior managers, and all our store managers have taken part in a week long residential where all the above was hashed out and have been asked to embrace the new company ethos. We had a 15% drop out rate but the rest are on board and say they have never felt so energised about work and that a lot of the undercurrent sense of insecurity in their lives has largely vanished .
The customer focus groups were very sceptical until they realised we were very serious and wanted them to be partners in shaping a new future, and are now pushing the first steps to implementing the plan.
I give you a vision which is beginning to take shape and Sainsbury’s are proud to be at the forefront of real change for the good of all.
Is this real? Phil Haughton is MD of the Better Food Company not Sainsbury's.
My Vision for how our supermarkets can be if we demand it.
I am Phil Haughton the new MD for Sainsbury’s and I was taken on to develop the company’s vision for a new world of retailing.