Welsh Valleys
Here is a chapter from my book. It’s from the early part of my social enterprise career when I was setting up Nova Wholefoods Co-operative, a vegetarian wholesale food business based in Bristol, which is still going strong over 40 years later as Essential Trading Co-operative.
The 1980s were tough times for South Wales. Margaret Thatcher had recently become prime minister and, although it was not until 1984 that the miners went on strike, miners were being made redundant and pits were starting to be closed. This accelerated throughout the 1980s, putting thousands of miners out of work, typically for the first time in generations of their family.
We had customers at Nova who ran established wholefoods shops in the main cities of Newport, Cardiff and Swansea as well as some of the larger towns in South Wales. Then one day an enterprising recently redundant miner called us.
“Are you the company that sells cheap food?”
“Yes,” I said, and started to explain what we did.
He quickly interrupted me. “I’ve heard that it’s cheaper to feed a family if we stop eating meat, is that right?”
“Yes, it is,” I said, intrigued.
“I’m thinking of setting up a shop to sell vegetarian food, so can you come and tell me how to do this?”
“Of course,” I said and arranged to go the next Tuesday.
After my regular Tuesday deliveries in Newport, Cwmbran, Pontypool and Cardiff, I headed up the Valleys. This miner had been given his redundancy notice the week before and there were rumours that the pit would soon be closed.
I was there for a couple of hours. The family had eaten meat and two veg for dinner most evenings their entire lives. They had never set up or run a business. We talked about vegetarian food, we discussed the financial dynamics of a small shop and they were open about their family finances. These days I would have created a spreadsheet, but this was the 1980s so we worked out a financial plan for their shop on the back of an actual envelope.
The redundancy payment he was to receive was small, but it was enough for them to look after the family for six months as well as pay a deposit and three months’ rent on a small shop premises they had found in the town. I helped them work out what their initial stock would be and what it would cost. They couldn’t afford it.
I took a gamble and hoped that Paul would be OK with it. He was. We would loan them the initial stock and they could pay us off each month over a year. I promised to support them with recipe suggestions to share with their customers.
They agreed and a month later we made our first delivery to their shop, which was beautifully shelved out with a fresh coat of paint. They had decorated it all themselves. It was a great moment.
The shop did well but it was only the beginning. Word got around and one by one mining towns saw a wholefood shop open, all by miners’ families who were being made redundant and all supplied by us. We often took calls asking for recipes because they had been asked by their customers, most of whom were new to vegetarian cooking.
By the time I left Nova we had many customers in the Welsh Valleys, and a truck load of deliveries went there every Tuesday. They were the customers who proved to be most loyal to us when the inevitable competition arrived.
15 years later I came back to the Valleys and set up Connect Assist. I’ll write about that later.