The staff at Infinity Foods, winners of the
Observer's Ethical Award for best
local retailer. Photograph: Observer.I'm so glad I polished my Birkenstocks at the start of this week, because if the UK green movement has ever known such an exciting week, I haven't heard about it.
On Tuesday, eco couture label, From Somewhere opened a Notting Hill Shop, on Wednesday US retail outfit Whole Food Market unfurled its 'flagship UK operation' and last night we held the second ever Observer Ethical Awards.
Aside from my personal favourite from this triumvirate: the Obs Awards - obviously, I am the founder - it was the opening of Whole Food which has been greeted as the Second Coming and left even the palest green journalists breathless. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the next phase of the super league of organic retailing ...
It is, admittedly seductive. The company first launched Fresh and Wild here in 1998 which made it acceptable - no aspirational - to put fruit in brown paper bags and eat organic lamb cutlets for a fiver each. (Let's be clear this is not a value store - I once did my own, deeply unscientific price test and the same alfalfa sprouts were 90p cheaper in Harvey Nichols foodhall than Fresh and Wild Clapham Junction).
Now this first, 'flagship' Whole Food Market, a hit with investors, presents 80,000 square feet full of prime organic produce, products and even eco clothing. WFM is already a successful retail model in the US - investors love it.
But will it just become a kind of light green behemoth retailer? Tesco in a kaftan? How much of its produce filling this large space is imported and how will it deal with food miles? All of this remains to be seen.
Meanwhile, last night Infinity Foods in Brighton (as a wholesaler, it's a nationwide operation) bagged the Observer Ethical Awards prize for best independent retailer, beating heavyweights Howies and Gossypium.
This was reader voted, so the fact that they are my local store had nothing to do with it but I'm so pleased they won, in this week of Whole Food domination. I felt nervous for their future as a cooperative facing down a US super organic retailer.
But Infinity is not playing David to Whole Food's Goliath. It's cooperative workers are not locked in the stockroom crying into their fairtrade rice. Quite the reverse. They're knocking through into the ex bathroom shop next door to their 'flagship' Brighton store and continuously sourcing new products to sell to the increasingly ethical consumer who doesn't want palm oil in their mayonnaise.
They have 5000 lines in store (in 1990 they had less than 1000) and they wholesale all round the country - perhaps Whole Food is a customer. In fact I might even suggest that Whole Food has made them raise their game.
But what of the other independent, ethical food retailers? I feel sorry for those on Kensington High Street, or are they convinced there are enough ethical customers to go round these days?
And what about the products? There's allegedly been a big decrease in farms turning over to organic certification in the UK, so it seems unlikely we're going to be swamped with organic local fruit and veg for all these stores - and the supermarkets who've moved into organics in a big way - any time soon. Does this bring us back to a heavier reliance on organic imports and those big old food miles?
