MY LIGHT BULB MOMENT

Planet Organic’s Renée Elliott

RENÉE ELLIOTT, 52, founded Planet Organic, one of the first organic supermarkets. She lives with her husband, Brian, and their children, aged 15, 12 and nine.

IN 1991, my husband and I took six months off work to do a course in personal development on the East Coast of America.

While there, I started shopping in a large organic food store near our rented home.

After a while, we checked out another organic supermarket in the suburbs of Boston. There were plants and music, and I’d never heard of some of the brands before.

One day, as I wandered up and down, I looked at my husband and said: ‘I’m going to open a chain of organic supermarkets in England.’ I wanted it so badly, I almost had a stomach ache.

Back in the Nineties, nobody really knew about organic food. I wanted to offer people the same thing I saw in those aisles — the best and widest range of fresh food, organic meat, sustainably sourced fish and healthy choices.

Anita Roddick, who set up The Body Shop, was my role model. I was desperate to do the same thing for food.

I knew that I needed hands-on experience. So I took a job stacking shelves in a health food shop for £3.50 an hour. After three months, I was promoted to manager and, after two years learning the ropes, I left to launch my own business.

My first shop was unlike anything else at the time. All the meat was Soil Association-certified and bred on British ground, we had a sustainable wet fish counter and Britain’s first organic juice bar.

Trade was slow at first. But after the BSE and E.coli scares in 1996, sales took off. Then, in 1998, the GM crops scandal broke and, suddenly, everyone wanted organic.

RENÉE’S book, What To Eat And How To Eat It, is published by Pavilion Books.