Supporting Local Retail
GCDA have been supporting local retail projects for many years, establishing food co-ops, supporting community cafes and supporting existing businesses.
Local shops are very important centres for communities not just for food access, but centres for community cohesion and supporting local economies.
GCDA is delivering projects that hope to improve the security of local shops through 2 routes:
Feasibility Studies and Community Needs Assessments
These can support businesses to re-connect with their local communities understanding potential new areas of business an provide a vehicle for communication to support the value of local shops.
- Ask those who have made request to carry out audit, questionnaire and recruit volunteers.
- Site visit by GCFC staff, risk assessment, site, electricity, security access etc
- Logistics of day, time etc negotiated
- Volunteer training by GCFC staff
- Launch date & promotion agreed
- SLA agreement with community venue
- Business plan developed for satellite stall, with target sales and customer numbers
Buy Well
This is a new project (Summer 2010) from the CDA that is working to improve access to fresh, affordable and sustainable fruit and vegetables in low-income areas of London through a scheme that supports local convenience stores.
The CDA will be supporting stores to make changes to help them sell more fresh fruit and vegetables. Support includes:
- individual store development plan
- business support
- fresh produce training
- Change4Life marketing materials
- Links to local wholesalers
- launch events
- increasing community links
The project is based on a number of similar projects; The Buywell Retail Project which ran as a pilot in Tower Hamlets during 2009. 15 stores were supported and on average fruit and vegetable sales increased by 60% across the fifteen stores. The customer evaluation showed that people were eating more fruit and vegetables after the changes; just over half (54%) of those surveyed said that they now eat fruit and vegetables daily after the changes, compared to just under a third (31%) before.www.sustainweb.org/buywell/
The project is modelled on the Healthy Eating Campaign launched in Scotland in 2003, and then the Change for Life programme launched a retail support project. It began as a pilot in the North East of England with 12 stores. By March 2010, 160 stores in four regions were retailing fresh fruit and vegetables using the popular Change4Life brand. By March 2011, Change4Life convenience stores will be active in every region of the country.
Evaluation of the stores participating in the programme shows an increase in sales of fruit and vegetables of up to 50% in some stores. Participating stores have also seen total sales rising across the board by an average of 10.6% and the percentage of customer saying the store was a good place to shop overall rising from 43 to 54%.
The project run by GCDA and supported by NHS Greenwich. Greenwich Community Food Co-op are able to supply the fruit and vegetables.
