Home comfort

In the months and years before coronavirus reared its ugly head and spread with undue haste around the world, the mantra ‘buy local’ was one to be heard frequently.

But over recent weeks it has morphed from an aspiration to a necessity for many.

And as we start to emerge from the lockdown, buying locally-grown produce is perhaps more essential than ever. Not only will it directly assist in the rebuilding of shattered local economies but for many, during the darkest of times, it has been the only way to access the food and drink essentials we once all took for granted. Produced in Kent’s Floortje Hoette, an organisation which promotes the local producer, said: “The coming together of the Kent community has been incredible. We’ve seen an enormous rise in the support for local shops and producers. Many people are swapping to local food suppliers – for some it’s the first time they’ve tried shopping locally.”

In addition, it has spawned a host of unlikely heroes - those for whom many of us turned in a bid to secure food as the major supermarkets found their shelves stripped bare by panicked shoppers. Freddie Hewett is founder of coffee shop Stag which has

In ‘normal’ times Watts Farms would provide the South East’s top restaurants and supermarkets with the fruits of the 600 hectares of land it farms in Kent, Essex and Bedfordshire. Headquartered in Aylesford, the large scale operator’s distribution business had the rug pulled from beneath its feet as the lockdown neared and restaurants and hotels were forced to close their doors. In a quick bid to plug the gigantic financial hole it faced, it switched from selling exclusively to its top-end clients to a home delivery groceries service too - with Kent produce at the core of its offering.

Explains director Ed Gray, whose firm employs some 350 staff: “It was a sink or swim scenario. Do this or shut down essentially. We had the drivers, we had the staff, we had the produce - it was just a case of getting the website up and running and shouting about it.”

The result saw, at its peak,

branches in Ashford and Canterbury.

He pivoted his business on the first day of the lockdown, having seen the direction of travel, contacting his local suppliers to fuel a home delivery groceries service covering the two areas and stretching to Folkestone and Tenterden.

“We source our fruit and veg, milk, eggs, apple juices and other artisan food and drink some 600 deliveries a day to homes across the county using its hastily arranged service.

And while that number has dropped since the lockdown began to be eased, it has been the saviour of many struggling to get food on the table. “We used to do 1,000 deliveries a day to restaurants,” adds Ed, “and after the peak of home deliveries, we’re now doing about 350 a day. I hope this is a fundamental change in shopping habits - that we will look more to local providers and producers. Shoppers with a penchant for strawberries can have them delivered to their home just a day after they were picked from our fields.”

Ed concludes: “We’ve been saved by people buying our produce and without their orders we would probably have gone bankrupt.”

lBusiness booming at the county’s farm shops - see the front page of What’s On

from local providers,” Freddie explains.

“And they’ve been happy to have an additional outlet during this period.”

His aim was simply to serve the community during the crisis and break even. He’s done both, with up to 40 deliveries a day during the peak of the crisis. He fully intends to keep his delivery service running going into the future.