What we look for, and what happens after you write.
Roughly forty producers a year ask to supply the shop. Between two and four end up on the shelf, and the reasons the others do not are almost never about the food.
The route in.
Check the distance first
If you are more than sixteen miles from the shop, the farm shop cannot stock you under any circumstances. That is a planning condition and there is no appeal to us about it.
Send one email with three things in it
What you make, where you make it, and what you would want for it wholesale. Not a deck. Not a brand story.
We come to you
Within about six weeks. It is half a day and it is the same visit as an audit, because there is no sense doing it twice.
We take a small quantity and see
Usually a fortnight’s worth, at your price, sale or return for the first order only.
If it sells, we agree a standing order
With a volume floor we commit to buying, because that is the thing a producer actually needs and the thing shops are most reluctant to give.
Why applications actually fail.
| Reason | Share of refusals | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Outside sixteen miles | ~45% | By far the largest category, and nothing to do with the product |
| We already stock something too similar | ~20% | The shop is small. Two chutneys is a range; five is a wall |
| Cannot supply the volume reliably | ~15% | Usually somebody making it at weekends around a job |
| Label claims that will not survive checking | ~10% | Almost always "local" or "handmade" doing too much work |
| Price leaves nothing for either of us | ~7% | A wholesale price that only works at a retail price nobody will pay |
| The food is not good enough | ~3% | It happens, it is rare, and it is the easiest one to say |
What a volume floor is, and why it matters more than price.
Every small producer we have ever dealt with would take a lower price for a guaranteed number. Almost no retailer will give one, because a guarantee transfers risk from the producer to the shop and a shop with two hundred and sixty lines does not want two hundred and sixty guarantees.
We give them anyway, at a level well below expected demand, because the alternative is a producer building capacity on a forecast and eating the difference. That is what happened at the bakehouse for eight months, and a volume floor is the direct consequence of it.
The floor is deliberately conservative. It is meant to make a producer safe rather than rich.
What supplying this shop involves.
You get
- Fourteen-day payment terms from invoice
- A volume floor we commit to buying, once established
- Your name on the shelf card and on this website
- A free audit, and the mark if you want it
- A reason in writing if we delist you, a cycle in advance
- The right to sell to anybody else you like
You do not get
- Any listing fee, ever
- Payment for shelf position or promotion
- Exclusivity in either direction
- A guarantee about volume before the first order
- Stocking outside the sixteen-mile radius
- Anything at all in the September to December window for a new line
Applying, at a glance.
Sixteen miles
The first and largest filter.
One email
Not a deck. Three facts.
Fourteen days
From invoice, not delivery.
No fees
At any point, for anything.
Read the standard first.
Eleven clauses, and clause nine is the one that causes arguments.
What people actually ask.
The two questions this page gets most, answered without a support ticket.
The words are ours. The brands are not, and nothing here is licensed.
The cast page names every person and what they are actually responsible for, which is not always what the programme implies.
