Waitrose uses its specialist knowledge to ensure that we are providing the right kind of support and identifying any issues that might arise. Our buying adviser of fresh produce in the Channel Islands, Gary Grace, who has been in the grocery trade for nearly 40 years, supports all the local branches and island producers to build these relationships.
With more than 27 years experience working in retail and buying produce for Waitrose in the UK, he works closely with local producers of poultry, fish, dairy and vegetables to help grow their businesses. It was Gary who identified the potential with Woodside Farms and who started to build on this to ensure that our customers can buy fresh local produce.
Gary’s role is hands-on and every day he is dealing with a vast array of different producers and allocating support to best manage these relationships. The level of support that Waitrose can give to local producers is assessed to meet a diverse set of needs and situations - we are very keen to support local food production and we want to give local producers the opportunity to sell their products to our customers.
In the last 12 months the range of locally-sourced products has grown and visiting branches and talking to the fruit and vegetable specialists is a key part of Gary’s role. Keeping them up-to-date on what is happening with crops helps them with ordering and understanding what is available within the local market. We have arranged field visits with our fresh food specialists where they visit the producers and farmers and get first-hand knowledge of the local products they sell. They are always enthusiastic to meet the farmers and to get to see the product in situ, whether growing in the fields or under glass in Jersey or Guernsey, which can be in the local branches within days.
It’s down to Gary’s hard work that Waitrose has increased the number of local suppliers who have a presence in store. Whether it’s discussing when seasonal products will be available, everything from fish to flowers or looking at the quality of produce and guaranteeing it reaches Waitrose’s standards, we ensure that we take the journey with our local producers and provide an invaluable resource.
While we see the benefits to the island and our brand we are, more importantly, aware that local produce is what our
customers want. Across our three branches in Jersey our strong and growing customer base wants good quality local products and it is our duty to meet this expectation.
A problem we have encountered is that so many potential local suppliers are very small cottage industries. However, if any one of them is interested in talking to us we will jump on the opportunity to start a relationship. The fit might not be right at that specific time but it is always rewarding to meet local suppliers and open up a dialogue to take full advantage of future opportunities for collaboration.
Certainly small producers require a different approach. We have a team in place, led by Gary Grace, to have these conversations with local organisations, review how we can help them and build a framework to inform how we can work with them. These meetings could lead to us buying their product at specific times of the year, if it is seasonal, or suggesting that they should team up with other farmers and sell their produce jointly rather than individually and identifying who would be most appropriate to do this with. This could save the supplier time and cut down
on delivery and administrative costs. We actively encourage local organisations to identify themselves to us to begin this conversation.
Inevitably, home-grown Jersey produce tends to be more expensive than the same item grown in the UK due to economies of scale. Whenever we can, we choose the Jersey produce over the imported produce. Our prime responsibility is to ensure that we have stocks of what our customers want to buy.
As a company we are keen supporters of both Genuine Jersey and the ‘Keep Jersey Farming’ campaign as this supports our retail focus.
We take our obligation to train our Partners very seriously and we arrange visits to our local producers so that they can meet them, get to know their products and understand the passion with which those products have been created.
We hope that they will then be able to pass on that knowledge and enthusiasm for local produce grown in the right way to our customers. Fostering an understanding and passion for local produce among our Partners that can then be communicated to our customers is the key, for us, to foster a vibrant local food and farming sector.
A Healthy Society
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