The culinary reputation of Britain’s seaside resorts might once have been limited to fish and chips and sticks of rock, but thanks to a rise of high-quality local producers and retailers, coastal communities are building a reputation for being foodie destinations as well as holiday hotspots.
One recent addition to Brighton’s eclectic food scene is Katie’s Nuttery, founded by former chef and mother-of-two Katie Wiggall, who moved there from London with her husband Tom and their two young children.
“I didn’t set out to run my own business but it made sense with my food background and it was something I was passionate about,” she says.
Her passion was for non-dairy milks, and unimpressed with the brands on offer in the supermarket, Wiggall started making her own milks and nut butters at home – ones with a higher nut percentage than usual, resulting in a more luxurious flavour. Her nut milks are free from emulsifiers, thickeners or preservatives and are made from 100% organic nuts.
“More and more people want to try non-dairy products, and nut milk and nut butter are increasingly popular,” explains Wiggall. From her kitchen at home she produces six milk and six nut butters, including almond milk, cashew milk, pecan butter, hazelnut butter and a chocolate hazelnut milk flavoured with dates. Wiggall is a regular at local farmer’s markets, supplies shops and cafes in the area, and also sells via a local electric-bike delivery service.
Tourist business booms during the summertime, when there are festivals and summer events galore but there is a downside to that, says Wiggall: “Our best customers are the regular ones, and lots of them go away for their holidays in the summer.”
Wiggall has used payments system iZettle from the start and says that it’s been brilliant: “I’ve got a lot of sales thanks to it. Often people are just passing by, for example when we do Brighton Vegan Market, and they don’t necessarily plan to spend money. With contactless it’s just really easy for them to buy something.”
Ed Hallet, managing director of iZettle, says: “If you are a food or drink retailer who relies heavily on passing trade, it’s vital that you are able to make the most of the peak times. You have to make it as quick and easy as possible for your customers to buy, or else you will lose sales, so you’ve got to cater for everyone.”
Just down the road in Ringmer, near Lewes, Andrew Cooper is having another hectic day as sales manager for Franklins Brewing Co. Owner Steve Mednuik bought a share in the brewery six years ago, when it was based in Bexhill-on-Sea, later buying the whole company and moving it to its current location two years ago. The brewery now produces up to 5,000 litres of beer a week and, in spite of tough competition – there are 60 breweries in Sussex alone – it is making a name for itself with eye-catching varieties such as chipotle-smoked porter, brewed specially for Bonfire Night, and its award-winning English Garden classic ale. Business is booming – Franklin’s beer is available in local pubs, as well as in its newly opened tap room, which hosts events and tastings.
“Our tap room is another revenue stream for us, and using iZettle to handle payments couldn’t be easier,” says Cooper. “You just link it up to your iPad and away you go.”
As for being affected by the seasonal nature of coastal trading, Cooper says it doesn’t make much of a difference, as Brighton is a busy town year-round. What does make a difference is the weather, good or bad: “The terrible weather in March meant lots of people stayed at home rather than going out, while in July the weather was so good people were going to the beach rather than to the pub!”
In another coastal town, this time in Wales, the picture is rather different. Yvonne Crocker and her husband John bought health food shop Maeth y Meysydd in Aberystwyth, on the west coast of Wales, 14 years ago, when the previous owner retired. Stocked with nuts, fruits, seeds, porridge, muesli, organic foods and seasonal vegetables and salads from John’s farm nearby, the shop, in Yvonne’s words, sells “wholefood, not pills and potions – I’m a great believer in food being the best medicine.”
Business went well for many years: “It was booming, even [the recession of] 2008 didn’t bother us,” says Crocker, but then: “The cuts started to come in – councils, hospitals, schools, all the local services – and the council moved its offices out of town, so a lot of our customers just aren’t in town during the day. It’s had quite a detrimental effect on the town.”
The tourist trade does help boost numbers in town – there are lots of caravan parks nearby and people come back year after year – but the allure of cheap flights, plus an ageing holidaymaker demographic, whose children are less likely to keep the tradition going, are affecting this.
“Thankfully we had the really good summer, which helped, but with flights to Turkey going for £20, it’s hardly surprising that things are the way they are,” says Crocker. “There are 25 empty premises in town and there are three at the end of our street. It’s very sad, and it’s all just really happened in the past couple of years.”
Last year’s takings were £25,000 down on the year before, and while this year will hopefully not be as bad, Crocker is not optimistic for the future. With increased staff costs, business rates and fewer customers, she says that she’s happy to “hang on” until next year, when she can retire.
“I’m so lucky I’ve got such good staff who keep morale up,” she says.
Just down the road is Spanish delicatessen Ultracomida, set up in 2001 by husband and wife team Shumana Palit and Paul Grimwood. “We’d always wanted to set up a deli somewhere together and we loved Aberystwyth, as we’d visited the place many times before,” says Palit. The biggest challenge to their business, she says, is the uncertainty over Brexit, with fewer Europeans choosing to live in the UK, along with rising costs and a very price-sensitive market, which mean she can’t raise prices without losing customers.
“Specifically in Aber, the town is now empty of all the council and university offices that used to provide us with a daily lunchtime trade, and with parking next to impossible it’s not practical for people to pop in on a lunch break. There have also been huge cuts to public-sector services in this area over the past three years, leading to huge job losses and wage cuts – so there is less money in people’s pockets at the moment in this area.”
However, Palit remains optimistic: “For us the biggest factor is trying to find great staff. Our produce is fantastic, but people ‘buy people’, so we need to make our customer service a reason to make the effort to come to us. We’re working on improving our customer service and also keeping staffing costs at a manageable ratio to sales – as long as we do this we are confident that we can ride out the next few years of uncertainty.”
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