Power to the people

The People's Supermarket is changing the way people shop in London, and expansion is on the horizon, writes MARK HENNESSY, who meets some of its Irish volunteers

ON A THURSDAY AFTERNOON in the cellar of The People’s Supermarket in Bloomsbury in central London, staff prepare for a shift-change, while new volunteers listen to an instructor as she taps a whiteboard.

Shift-changes happen often at the Lamb Conduit Street store. Each of the co-operative’s members is supposed to do one four-hour shift a month, in return for a 20 per cent discount on goods: “Volunteer labour is not cheap,” says managing director Kate Bull.

Not everyone does their shift. The store has 500 volunteers listed for shifts, but about 30 per cent of them will not turn up. If they fail to do so for three months in a row, they are gently encouraged to consider their £25 (€29.78) membership fee a donation.

Besides the volunteers, 19 people are on the payroll, at £6.50 (€7.74) an hour – significantly below the £8.30 (€9.89) an hour London Living Wage – but, for now, it is the best that the member-owned and run co-op can manage.

Eighteen months after it opened, and despite the fact that the co-operative has paid its bills and will turn over £1.1 million (€1.31 million) this year, it still cannot find a bank prepared to offer it an overdraft.

“Our biggest problem is cash flow,” says Bull, who previously worked for Marks Spencer, planning its new stores. Now her thoughts have turned to expansion of The People’s Supermarket. Already, there is interest in Hackney in north east London, as well as Cardiff, Exeter and Newcastle. “Hackney is the first real contact, we are talking to Hackney council and a landlord. People have offered to do the wiring and electrics for nothing. Why? Because they believe in what people are trying to do,” Bull says.

Recently, a local waste-collector offered to pick up the Bloomsbury’s store’s waste for nothing after the company owner had been persuaded by an employee – who had worked as a volunteer at the store – to help them out.

“That has taken £2,500 (€2,981) off our overheads,” Bull says.

But doubters say it has yet to prove itself: Bull’s salary is funded by a charity, while the long-term unemployed who have been given jobs have been partly paid by the taxpayer, through the Future Jobs Fund.

But if it is to be successful in the long-run, it cannot be dependant on charitable help, says Dublin-born volunteer, Seán Gibbons: “Some think it is a bit hippy and a bit nice, but I say that it is a business.”

Now working in London for an Irish building supplies company, Gibbons signed up to join the People’s Supermarket before he left Ireland in January, having seen a TV documentary about the store.

“When you take off the 20 per cent discount, it is a lot cheaper than the supermarkets. The beer is from London, and tasty. And I’m not buying scallions from Mexico.”

James Allen, who came to London from Gorey, Co Wexford in 1973, is another who was brought to Lamb Conduit Street by the Channel 4 series on the store. He now volunteers: “I just liked the idea of it . . . when I went down there it hit me that there were lots of people with a common purpose.”

Despite the doubters, Bull insists that The People’s Supermarket business-model is more sustainable than that followed by conventional convenience stores: “They rely on beer and cigarettes to keep going; they make up to 25 per cent of their turnover. We are proving that you don’t have to do that. In years to come it will be harder to buy cigarettes and drink. If convenience stores don’t change, they will die,” she says.

The shelves usually offer three types of product: the cheapest, a branded version and one “with values” – which can vary from the way that it is made, to the treatment of workers, or the journey it has to make to get to Bloomsbury.

“We will never be able to give you the 9p tin of beans, but we are always going to be cheaper with fresh fruit and vegetables. A standard loaf of bread would be £1.45 but with the discount it goes for less. This is lovely, made by a small bakery with five ingredients only.”

Chefs work behind the counter in the store’s People’s Kitchen, where food rejected, or unneeded, by others is turned into ready-meals, using “slightly-limp spinach, for instance, or “slightly dry aubergines”.

This month, they received eight cases of Mexican green tomatoes from New Covent Garden market: “For the best part of a week, we had green tomato salsa and chutney,” Bull says.

The use of such food has provoked interest from Camden Borough’s health inspectors: “[They] have been all over us. One of them said, ‘I’m here to close you down’,” she says. Today, some of the kitchen’s corporate clients proudly boast of using “food waste” on their menus.

Some of the store’s fruit and vegetables come from a local grower, who plants on free ground around one of the local high-rise blocks, while more comes from a commercial grower on lands inside the M25.

“We buy curly cucumbers from him. He gets two crops. The first is straight, but the second can be curly, or straight. He would have to throw them out. He makes hundreds from us, not thousands, but otherwise he would get nothing for them,” Bull says.

A local mental-health charity, Urban Grow, which uses gardening to help its clients, is another recent ally: “On the first day they arrived with 500 lettuces. Now, we are working with them to plan their planting.

“Our florist had a business for 30 years in the area and a shop for 13 years but a developer came in and told her she had to leave. She now employs two people. We can question where the flowers come from, some of them come long distances, but we can deal with that in time. We’re here for the long-haul. We’re open for 18 months. We’ve got the whole world to change.”

See thepeoplessupermarket.org