The recipe for a perfect village shop
'We are the heart of this community: the first port of call for neighbours in need of some milk or help in a medical emergency,' says Leslie Barry, who has co-owned and managed the Village Shop in Enham Alamein, Hampshire, for the past 20 years with her partner, Tim Francis. 'We're open from 7am to 7pm, seven days a week and will always make time for a chat because we know many of our elderly or disabled customers may not speak to anybody else all day.'
With rural pubs closing at record rates and funding being pulled from small libraries and youth centres, shops such as Barry's are becoming community lifelines.
Barry's 'Aladdin's cave' of a shop is one of the rural retail spots shortlisted for this year's Countryside Alliance Award for Best Village Shop. Nicknamed the 'Rural Oscars', the Countryside Alliance judging panel selected five regional winners – from the community-run Longborough Village Shop in the Cotswolds to Thomas Duffy & Sons in Killough, County Down – who left last Wednesday's award ceremony in London as ultimate champions. We asked them all for their top tips on how to run the perfect village shop.
Meet customer needs
In the 1920s, the Hampshire village of Enham Alamein was bought (and continues to be run by) a charitable trust for disabled soldiers returning from the First World War, and later taking in veterans of the Battle of El Alamein (hence the name) after the Second World War. These days, its population includes many disabled civilians, who had to contend with a badly stocked, run-down local shop until Barry, 65, and Francis, 64, took it over in 2005. Barry had previously run a successful manufacturing business, and Francis had quit his job as a long-distance lorry driver following a heart attack.
'The first thing we did was to make the shop wheelchair accessible,' says Barry. The couple removed the entire front of their shop to install a ramp. Then they invited the local resident with the largest wheelchair to help them establish a practical layout. Next, they asked their customers what was needed. 'Many of our customers have financial or practical challenges getting out of the village,' says Barry. 'So we wanted to offer fresh, healthy, interesting food choices for people.'
They began serving freshly made sandwiches and – for a while – Francis fried up fish and chips that customers could eat together in the shop's back room. 'We subsidised that for a while, but it became too expensive to run. Many people here are on low incomes and so – being on the main road to Andover – we rely on passing trade to boost profits.' Barry is proud to say they have successfully encouraged many people from Andover to use their 'friendly and efficient' Post Office counter.
Aware that many of her customers live alone and lack the facilities or capacity to prepare wholesome meals, Barry recently converted the back room into a freezer room and stocked it up with Cook 's ready meals for one. 'Those are much healthier than the processed options,' says Barry. 'So our customers can have a nice lamb tajine or coq au vin without any hassle.' Because some of the people in this village don't get to shop anywhere else, Barry also works hard to ensure cupboard staples are balanced by changing seasonal treats 'to keep things interesting'. 'We have fresh fish from the river Tess and fruit from the local farm – the strawberries just came in and they smell wonderful.'
The couple power the village defibrillator, and Francis has also just been awarded a Level Three First Aid Certificate. 'That was nine hours in a classroom, but it means he can be relied on in emergencies.'
Go the extra mile
'We're doing something to help out on a daily basis,' says Thomas Duffy of Thomas Duffy & Sons in Killough, County Down, who were crowned winners of the category on Wednesday night. 'There was a big storm here the other week, and we were out clearing roads, helping the local electricity company move the power cables.'
This family business – now selling everything from electrical appliances to the hot, freshly baked sausage rolls local children eat on their way to school – was started by Thomas's late father (also named Thomas Duffy) as a fruit and vegetable delivery service. It is now run by Thomas Jr and his two brothers, Brendan and Robert.
'We offer weekly deliveries of coal and firewood and daily deliveries of groceries and newspapers,' Duffy explains. 'This means we'll notice if somebody is unwell, or if a newspaper is still in the letterbox, we're able to alert the right people.'
One night, Duffy was locking up at 11pm when he took a call from an elderly customer down the street who'd suffered a fall. 'She thought there might be somebody at the shop to help, and she was right,' he says. He ended up 'tucking her into bed for the night' after making sure she was comfortable.
Each Christmas, the family sell locally sourced turkeys – raw or pre-roasted and sliced – to their customers. One year, Brendan gave his Christmas turkey away after receiving an SOS call from a distressed customer whose cats had attacked her roast as it was cooling on the kitchen counter.
'We also do a lot to raise money for local charities,' says Duffy. 'Last Halloween, I decorated the house we own opposite the shop as a haunted house to raise funds for a new defibrillator for the village. 'A shock for a shock' we called it.'
Champion local producers
'I haven't eaten processed food for many years, so I'm passionate about high-quality, fresh, locally sourced produce,' says Sue Snowden, who runs Orford Village Shop in Suffolk. 'We have 58 different suppliers who sell their produce through our shop. Everything from meat and cheese through to seasonal local vegetables. I'm sad the asparagus season has just ended, but excited that the bunched spinach has just come in. For people who've only eaten the limp spinach you get in plastic bags, it can be a revelation.'
Retiring at 60 after a long, successful career in education, which saw her awarded an MBE, Snowden didn't want to be 'the kind of person who moves out from London without contributing to the local community'.
She says that Orford is a village with a mixed demographic: ordinary working people living cheek by jowl with some 'very wealthy families who've had property here for generations and lots of holiday makers'. So the shop needs to stock all the basics – 'toilet rolls and dishwasher tablets which we buy in bulk from Costco' and 'things like crabbing lines for the children heading to the seaside. We stock cheap bacon too for them to use as bait.' But she's been delighted to see that visitors often – quite literally – fill their boots with the more unique items to be found in her 'tardis' of her shop. 'They often take home bottles of our lovely, local Shotley wines and Staverton fizz to the delicious venison and game pies which come frozen from 'Truly Traceable'.' She laughs. 'They say they can't get this quality in London, and they like to show their friends something special over the dinner table.'
Snowden admits: 'It does take me a lot of time to process orders and payments for so many suppliers. We also have to collect many of the products ourselves. But it's all worth it.'
Involve the community
'The whole village just came together in 2019 when we realised we might lose the shop,' says Debra Stones, the manager of the Longborough Village Shop in Gloucestershire. 'We had a meeting, launched a crowdfunder and raised £17,000 in three weeks,' she says. That injection of cash was needed to overhaul facilities and bring in fresh stock.
Unlike the other shortlisted shops, Longborough Village Shop is a not-for-profit community-run store, and its existence is only possible thanks to some locals with deep pockets and a keen bank of volunteers. 'We do have four part-time staff, paid above the living wage,' says Stones. 'But otherwise we have a rota of 15 regular volunteers alongside 15 more who offer their skills as required. So we have a plumber, an electrician, a carpenter, and a wonderful baker called Ann who has donated almost 300 cakes for us to serve in our cafe. We also have another wonderful woman who makes very creative window displays – we just did one celebrating seasonal produce with clay meats and knitted vegetables – all very Wallace & Gromit.'
A former childminder, Stones says that the various personalities involved with such a big number of volunteers has meant 'the community has learnt to operate like a large family. We have volunteers aged from their mid-teens to their mid-80s, and it has been a joy watching them all get to know each other and develop respect for each other's abilities.'
'We have three kids volunteering for their Duke of Edinburgh award at the moment. Those kids often come to us quite shy and introverted, unsure of how to talk to older people, and it's lovely to watch them blossom as they gain confidence. They all seem to end up enjoying themselves.'
Fulfilling its remit as a social hub, the Longborough Village Shop hosts a regular book club and a craft club in addition to other one-off events. 'We do seasonal things like wreath making at Christmas,' says Stones. A few years ago, the locals also 'got together and created our own gin and rum – selflessly, we all came in for tasting to create our own blends'.
Make eco-friendly easy
Like Longborough Village Shop, Carfrae Farm Shop in East Lothian 'isn't on the route to anywhere. In fact, people thought we were mad opening up,' says Trudi Cueto. 'But the flip side is that there is very little else in our area. It's a 15-minute drive to the nearest supermarket.' She says this means people really rely on them for staples like freshly baked bread and milk – which is sourced from a local dairy and dispensed from a machine for which customers can reuse their glass bottles. 'If the machine has run out, we will happily deliver within a five-mile radius. Even if it's just two litres of milk.' As several of their customers don't drive, staff get used to popping into their homes.
'We have some brilliant local suppliers come in for 'Meet the Farmer' days,' she says. The shop is currently planning an event at which customers can meet local beekeepers. 'We sell lots of local honey – in fact we struggle to keep up with demand.'
Cueto – who previously ran an arts organisation in Edinburgh before coming home to take over the family's mostly arable farm – says they can keep costs down and boost their environmental credentials by serving many products as refills. 'While many shops doing this insist you buy their containers, we have a box of recycled plastic containers donated by the community, and people can just take those and use them for free.'
She concludes: 'We are so well supported by our two local villages – one is one mile away and another is three miles away – that we're doing really well. We got all the older people from the villages together to hear their memories quite recently. It was very moving to hear people in their 80s recall walking up to our farm as kids to fetch milk. Now they're back using the machine. It has all come full circle.'
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