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VIEWS FROM THE SHOP FLOOR
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CHARLIE WELLS, director, The Farm Stratford
We have a few different zero-waste areas; it’s a big part of our ethos. An Unpackaged unit was the first thing we got in and we’ve got 48 dispensers now which we regularly change depending on customer comments. We have fill-your-own orange juice and milk, all our fruit and veg is loose, and we also have Fieldfare’s zero-waste frozen range. We have minimal plastic where possible. Reducing our plastic usage and minimising food waste is such a big thing for us. With us customers can buy whatever weight they want – they aren’t wasting as much food and we aren’t wasting as much food – and they love the concept. We incentivise people to bring their own containers as each time they do they get 10% off that product and extra loyalty points. We’ve converted new customers to the concept, and that’s down to the products that are in there. We’ve got your staples, but we’ve also got a lot of sweet treats, so it’s a bit like a pick and mix. If customers use that initially, they’ll see the other products and start to use it more, we use the attractive treat to lure them in – sweet blackmail basically. We’ve got the chocolate and sweets at kids’ eye level to get the kids to use it and coax the parents into using it too.
KATE FORBES, coowner, The Trading Post, South Somerset
We set up our refillables room in what used to be my office back in 2018. As well as being a good fit with our organic ethos, it has also had a number of business benefits. We thought we should try it because there was a gap for it in this part of Somerset. Despite the 75-ish sq ft floor area here, we now have over 200 lines held in both gravity silos and large jars. The amount of space it has freed up in the main shop has been a big bonus. We used to have lots of dried cereals, pulses etc in bags. The bags were hard to stand up and forever falling off, and they were taking up three whole shelving units. Now we can use them for something else. From a stocking perspective, topping up silos from 25kg bags simplifies ordering and gives you a much better idea of what’s selling and what’s not working. Footfall has been the other big contribution. The room has brought in customers, who didn’t shop with us before. And once they’re in, they might browse the rest of the shop and pick up some other items. Once something’s dispensed we can’t put it back, so there is wastage due to customers – thankfully we’ve only had one £11 bag of pine nuts abandoned at the till! – but overall it has been a very good addition.
JAMES BRUNDLE, co-founder, Eat 17, London
In our stores we’re big on the refills – we’ve got them in all four of our outlets – and it goes well for us. It varies by location as to what lines do best, but across the board, they perform well. There’s an increasing number of producers out there offering zero-waste options now. We’ve always wanted that as part of our offer; we’ve got the usual dry goods, but we also do refill orange juice, wine and a range of cleaning products. Cleaning products is where we’ve seen the most growth, actually. They're not an area where we make amazing margins, we find the customers who are looking for the environmental choices are looking for value for money as well. We take the opportunity to offer a reasonable price to the customers to get them in the habit of using the refills; they benefit, and it keeps them happy. Because we’re premium food-led it’s not easy to get a lot of those items as refillable options, so we do stock both packaged and unpackaged lines, but they tend to serve different types of customer. We are cutting back on the prepackaged as and when we can and when it’s viable from a business perspective, but we do have a really wide range in the refills.
March 2021 | Vol.22 Issue 2
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zero waste ZERO-WASTE SPECIAL
Zero-waste specialists Unpackaged and Cotswold Fayre have teamed up to create UnpackagedAT – a one-stop solution to help independent retailers reduce plastic packaging in-store. The system combines the refill systems with a bulk range – including nuts, pulses, dried fruits, grains and sweet treats – plus the company’s guidance through the installation process and beyond. beunpackaged.com Ecover offers its range of green cleaning products – including washing-up liquid, laundry detergent and hand soaps – to zerowaste retailers, even trialling its branded refill station in Sainsbury’s. Retailers can purchase large bags or tubs of the brand’s products as well as the pumps, taps and accessories necessary direct from the manufacturer. ecover.com Newton Print is a family-run packaging printing company, specialising in biodegradable, recyclable, shortrun packaging for the food and drinks industry. It has an MOQ of 250 which has proved popular with startups and SMEs. The company has recently been certified to the World Land Trust Carbon Balanced scheme, meaning packing can be produced carbon neutral. newtonprint.co.uk Geami is a sustainable paperbased wrapping material from Ranpak. Geami is 100% paper-based. It’s non-toxic, biodegradable, renewable, easy to recycle and FSC certified. The 3D structure is created on-demand to save on storage and reduce transport and handling. One pallet of Geami material equals 9.8 pallets of Bubble Wrap material. ranpak.com
