Independent Leith Stores 15% Cheaper.

So yet another supermarket chain wants to open its doors near Leith Walk. Greener Leith loves the diversity of our local independent shops so we are slightly depressed at the prospect of the big chains increasing their stronghold yet again on our high streets. Of course, we could submit an objection to the Planning Department complaining that the new shop front won’t look good against the backdrop of a World Heritage Site, but, honestly, is the shop front of the current occupier any better?

As consumers, the main thing we can do is to put our money where our mouths are and express this love for our high streets in hard cash. But how much cash? Or rather how much more or less than you would spend whilst mindlessly slinging special offers in your trolley? Greener Leith did some research and checked out how some prices at the local shops compare with those of the ‘local’ supermarkets.

We started at the fish mongers where the price of haddock was £5.50 per British pound. Needless to say the lb is no longer a feature in the ‘local’ supermarkets, but neither are the haddock, the hot smoked salmon at £8.40/lb or mussels at £1.86/lb. The best we could find there was a frozen pre-prepared over-packaged fishermen’s pie that didn’t look appetising enough to check out the price.

Next to the butchers. Sausages here, made locally, would set you back £7.92 per kg. They were cheaper at the supermarket (£7.18), but you get to carry the packaging home with you as well. Bacon fared the same, £10.60 in a polly bag against £9.96 per kg in a neat little tray. The butchers also sell locally produced legs of lamb and beef as well as liver, oxtail, pork belly and other recently fashionable cuts. Not hugely cheap, but none of these were available at the supposedly ‘convenient’ supermarket.

Still, on the whole and on price so far, the independent shops were a little more expensive. Until we walked into the green grocers.

Carrots £1.08 as supposed to £1.22/kg, lemons 25p as supposed to 32p. Red pepper 61p as supposed to 66p, leeks and Gala apples the same, £2.75 and £1.63 respectively per kilo, but celery cheaper in the supermarket, 72p against 99p. Then came the grown-on-the-vine tomatoes. In the supermarket they came in a dinky little plastic packet costing £2.07 without a mention of their weight. We took them home, weighed them and found that the price per kilo was £7.66, more than two and a half times more expensive than the £2.84 per kg the local greengrocer was charging. In one fell swoop the tomatoes put the independent shops back in the lead, which was consolidated by the parmesan cheese, which cost £15.50 per kg as supposed to £18.49. Had we been buying a kilogram of everything, our total shopping basket from the independent shops would have come out at £39.79 and £46.15 from the ‘local’ supermarket, some 15% more.

We are sorry if you have got a little bored with this long-winded comparison of prices and are rolling your eyes at the obvious limits of this exercise. But apart from our independent shops being better value, we could talk about how it is better to buy from them because the money generated tends to be re-invested locally. We could talk about how local shopping without the car keeps us fit and healthy and makes our neighbourhoods more interesting. We could talk about the dangers of Leith becoming a clone high street - a dreary replica of every other suburban high street, with the same chain stores offering us the same limited range of products as everywhere else.

The bottom line is that our local high street with its independent shops offers us choice, whether that is a fresh vanilla pod, a professional dart board or chicken livers. If, however, we don’t use them enough, because we perceive them as expensive, they go elsewhere or go bust.

Greener Leith would like to see new planning rules introduced to restrict the size of any single shop in areas with good local shopping. This would enable the individual businesses to provide the variety we all like and restrict the large supermarkets from overwhelming the small shops with prices that are so low they can’t compete. This is not an original idea. The French with their ‘Loi Raffarin’ of 1996 have managed to preserve their small shops better by limiting large retail practices and in other European countries different mechanisms are in operation:

In a book that looks at the way retailing is regulated throughout Europe, A. M. Findlay, a Research Fellow at the Institute for Retail Studies at the University of Stirling and Leigh Sparks, a professor of Retail Studies note that “in Italy a licensing system requires any new store to obtain product-related licences to enable it to trade. These are granted by a local agency in which local retailers are represented, with the result that grass-roots politics and inter-community competition become important in the licensing decisions. In 1973 a similar system was introduced in France, but within a regional rather than a local framework. Regional committees comprising various interest groups made decisions on applications for large stores, subject to a national appeal board. Government intervention in 1996, however, amended this framework through the loi Raffarin, which in effect placed an embargo on all new large stores. Policy in Spain has followed a similar route, including national government intervention in 1995 to limit the powers of regions to permit new large stores in out-of-town and edge-of-town locations. In several major countries, therefore, government controls have become tighter.”

Now why can’t we have that over here? Perhaps we should be writing to our local politicians to ask them for it?

Comments

[Fay]

Excellent research and comments Greener Leith!

I hope it will encourage local support and a well-informed campaign on behalf of our small independent local shops.

We tend to accept the argument that bigger shops offer better choices. The huge marketing power of the big supermarkets tells us every day that it is always cheapest to shop with them. It is great to see real proof that this is not necessarily so.
(For more evidence about misleading 'cut price offers' read Felicity Lawrence, 'Not on the Label').

Thanks for adding to the argument I can make in my letters to the council and our local MP and MSP.