Retail eye

PANZER’S DAVID JOSEPHS OUTLINES

CONTINUED IMPACT OF BREXIT ON IMPORTING GOODS TO THE UK simultaneously don’t respect the simples – for a perceived lack of real taste – and are jealous of the huge pro ts made by mass producers. document (that you have to pay for line-byline) and then once it arrives in the UK, the same has to happen in order to import the items.

Honestly, I’ve become frustrated with them both. The gap between the two gangs is now so big that – to return to my supermarket customer lost in my shop – simple taste buds aren’t ready for the complex world of artisan cheese.

I want to show them, just over the horizon, there is a land of interesting avours, old school tradition and experimental modern cra . I don’t need them to like everything, but sometimes it’s so damned hard to get them out of their comfort zone.

This is the reason I stock what I call my mid-ladder cheeses. If I want them to climb up to my clothwrapped cheddars, my alpine Swiss cheeses or my Spanish tortas, I need to give them a leg up. I have hards, blues, so s and avoured cheese speci cally for the newbies taking their rst baby steps out from the pre-packed dairy aisles.

But what gets me is how this gets treated by other cheesemongers and farm shops. It’s a point of honour that many – and this may include you, dear reader – won’t touch these mid-range cheeses because they are not proper cheese somehow.

So, I say to you: just stock them. Build your ladder. We as an industry need, really truly need, a pathway from the supermarkets to us. The customer will always go to a supermarket, but they don’t always need to come to us. To me, making my counter accessible is more than an economic decision. It is an ideological one.

Stilton with mango anyone?

Previously there was no cost, now we pay (with no bene t) for a new industry created by the Brexit disaster to process the imports and, as a result, the cost of goods has increased by 7-10%.

Source: July’s Economics from iew oint e ort, sample size 1,000+ adults

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Since Brexit, we have been on a hamster wheel with ever-increasing bureaucracy thrown at us as we try to bring in goods from the EU –something we managed to avoid for the past 40-plus years.

The paperwork is confusing, arduous, costly and causes delays. Goods don’t leave on time as they haven’t been processed. This is particularly bad in France. The Dutch manage to process documents in 12 hours, but the French can sometimes take more than 24 hours.

This is ne if you are shipping washing powder, but for perishable goods, such as so fruit, it’s a disaster and extremely costly.

We had been shipping seamlessly from Milan’s market twice a week for the past 10 years. Now, we have to place orders 24-48 hours earlier and goods can sit around for an extra 24 hours to be cleared. The paperwork takes place at both ends.

The Italians have to produce an export

What’s even worse, is that later this year, more regulations will be imposed, so there will be further increases in cost and bureaucracy. There will be greater delays and some items might not be able to be imported or exported anymore.

Since Brexit, we have seen a steady decline in the number of suppliers willing to do business with us and the UK. Many of the smaller artisanal producers simply cannot deal with all the new pointless and extremely costly regulations.

This situation is a complete tragedy, both economically and in terms of destroying long-term relationships. The reduction of the variety available to consumers is perhaps the worst thing of all.

All of that said, we are determined to nd willing partners (to replace those that no longer export) and to continue trading with the EU. It is vital that we do – for economic, social and cultural reasons.

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