As part of working with local suppliers we visited a potato farm who supply the potatoes to Seabrook’s crisps, a local business that has gone national but still aim to source all their potatoes from Britain.

The farmer gave a very insightful explanation about the varieties of spuds, and how the ever-changing British weather causes a constant stream of problems for growing. So much for enjoying the sun! Driving down the road to the Seabrook’s factory, we watched the washing, slicing, flavouring, packaging, and then the final products being driven off, ready to be stocked on the Asda shelves all over the country.

After a very interesting morning with the potato grower, and then seeing the crisps being made we then had a chat with Phil, the commercial director at Seabrooks.

Seabrooks really is a local success story for Asda, beginning it’s relationship with us as a small Bradford company which evolved into a mutually beneficial desire to grow and sell Seabrooks on our shelves across the whole UK.

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Asda is committed to Scotland and in June 2009 we signed the Scottish Retailers’ Charter. It is a vital market for us and we now employ over 19,000 colleagues in Scotland across 50 stores and with 2 depots in Falkirk and Grangemouth.

To communicate this commitment we’re proud to exhibit at the Royal Highland Show every year and showcase our local farmers and suppliers.

The 2010 Show has set a new attendance record of 187,644 – an increase of more than 11,000 on last year’s!

There were some great highlights including the CEO of Morrisons Dalton Phillips popping in for a chat, a meeting with Scottish Rural Afffairs and Environment Minister Richard Lochead and of course Ainsley Harriot judging the best Asda steak competition from our Scottish farmers with our very own Meat Buyer Jim Viggars. Both were stars (see video)!

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During the summer we travel to 7 of the best Agricultural Shows across all 4 countries in the UK. They’re a great opportunity to communicate our commitment to British Farming and local food.

We have a large stand that travels with us and from it our chef cooks great tasting steak dishes in minutes allowing the audience to taste, we run competitions and sample great tasting local food.

It’s also the best way to get direct feedback from the farming community, talk about their issues and also have business meetings to discuss future opportunities.

It was the Royal Cornwall Show last week and a total of 125,748 people visited – the third-highest total ever recorded.

We hero’d some phenomenal local suppliers and thanks go out to all including Roddas who helped us delight the attendees with Cornish Clotted Cream Teas and WC Rowe who showcased how to hand crimp a traditional Cornish Pasty!

Please come and see us at the shows – it’s the East of England on Friday, the Royal Highland Next Week, then Yorkshire, Welsh and Westmoreland!

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We attended an event organised by Kirklees Council at the Galpharm Stadium, hosted by the Lady Mayoress!

It was for small producers in the area to showcase their products to various buyers. My Sourcing Colleague Alison Hamlett attended and was introduced to the Lady Mayoress, who was very hands on on the day. She said to Alison “you must try this amazing ice cream” and popped off to get some!

Anyway, to cut a long story short Alison loved the ice cream, met the suppliers Jeremy and Louise and coached them through the process of getting onto our shelves for our customers. You must try it then – Liquorice, Vanilla, Fudge in 500ml tubs. For the ‘Lou’s Liquorice’ line Louise cuts the pieces of liqurice cake by hand, now that is quality!

It will be on sale from in commencing 19th April in Huddersfield, Wakefield and Halifax, and you can read more here in the Yorkshire Post.

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So what is a concession? I’ve been asked this a few times, so whilst in Belfast on Monday looking at how our St Patrick’s Day activity landed in store I thought I’d provide you with a virtual tour! Following the success of our Ethnic Concessions, McGees was the first local concession opening in August 2009 in our Belfast Westwood Store.

The idea is customers increasingly want to buy more locally produced food whilst doing their main shop under 1 roof, so we remove our Asda counters and give them over to a local supplier. We have scoured the country looking for small local retailers whose customers are queueing out of the door and ask if they wish to become our partner and sell their products in their own branded concession area in our shops.

This is McGees, run by Joe McGee who has 4 of his own butchers shops in Northern Ireland. His passion is giving customers the best quality local meat, sourced from his own farm and from farmers he’s spent his life working with. Everyday consistency is a must, but not only that, he believes to keep customers coming back you need an exciting in-store experience with continuous product innovation. As you can see the displays and product range are fantastic and his butchers knowledge and skill is outstanding. Customers love it! Sales are flying, up 1000% on what we used to do as an Asda counter and he’s now in 4 of our shops with more planned.

We now have a further 2 local business partners including a Riddlers fish counter in Newton Abbott store and 3 pie and pasty concessions in Cornish stores run by WC Rowes. Watch out for many more in 2010! And if you have any suggestions of other businesses we should give a concession to, let me know.

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It’s St Piran’s Day on Friday 5th March and we’re backing this celebration of Cornish Culture at our St Austell Store on Friday 5th March. The store will be buzzing with activity including having a go at speaking in the Cornish language and also sampling local food and drink.

We’re also delighted that local celeb and eco expert James Strawbridge will be there join in.

We get behind a lot of the Saints Days and other culturally significant events with activity around celebrating local food like Burns Night and Yorkshire Day, but what other celebrations like St Pirans should we get behind? What are we missing out on? Let me know.

We’re really great at celebrating St Patrick’s Day, St David’s Day and St Andrew’s Day but we don’t really put as much gusto behind St George’s day. Should we put more effort into celebrating locally sourced food from all across the UK? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

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Yorkshire Farmhouse is one of our Hubs. We work with 9 across the UK covering 13 regions. On a very basic term level they consolidate suppliers products and distribute them into our nearby stores, allowing very small suppliers to sell their products within a major supermarket.

However Yorkshire Farmhouse, run by Rachel and Amanda on the Potters Family Farm, is a great example of a hub who do so much more – including sourcing products, coaching suppliers, working with them on packaging and new products development etc.

We offered Alexia Robinson from British Food Fortnight (www.lovebritishfood.co.uk) a chance to come and visit, so she travelled up from London and I picked her up from Thirsk Station.

We had a chat with Rachel, talked about my plans for the year, British Food Fortnight, had a look around the farm and then were joined for a fabulous Yorkshire lunch by Andrew Jones who supplied us with some great Yorkshire Pies and Pasties. We also had Bleikers Salmon, Shepherds Purse Cheese, Foster Bread, Yorkshire Outdoor Sausages and Harrogate Spa water. It was a toss up between who was the star on the day, the great food or cute new Jack Russell puppies in a basket in the office.

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With every £1 in £5 spent in our Northern Irish stores on local Irish lines, we’re rightly proud of the range we have and the positive impact Asda has on the Northern Irish economy. So working with our Corporate Affairs Team we organised an event at Stormont to showcase the range and announce our ambitious plans for 2010.

The event was really well attended and we were thrilled it made GMTV on which the Enterprise Minister made some really positive comments.

It was my first time at Stormont and it was a suitably iconic venue. However I think we caused a bit of a stir as to get all the chillers in we had to open some doors that were last opened when the clintons visited!

The event was also featured on GMTV news:

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As blogged back on 18th November, Steve was short-listed for the Marketing Initiative of the Year from the British Free Range Egg Producers Association for his work on free range eggs.

Anyway – HE WON! Well done Steve.

Here’s the footage and spot the moment when I had to make a quick decision when the winner is announced.

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Mae gennym amrywiaeth wych o gynhyrchion Cymreig ac rydym yn falch iawn o’r holl waith rydym ni wedi’i wneud i ganfod a gwerthu rhai o fwydydd a diodydd gorau Cymru. Roedd yn ddigwyddiad gwych. Gweddnewidiodd y trefnwyr safle marchnad y Fenni i neuadd fendigedig gyda llwyfan, band jas band a chegin agored yn paratoi Bwydlen Gymreig ragorol i ni.

Roedd 11 o gyflenwyr lleol Asda ymysg y rhai a wobrwywyd gan gynnwys y Traditional Welsh Sausage Company, The Village Bakery a First Milk. Fodd bynnag, heb amheuaeth, seren y sioe oedd Bev o Puffin Produce sy’n cyflenwi Tatws Cymreig i ni…mae’n werth i chi weld ei dathliad!!!

Rydym yn falch iawn o noddi a chymryd rhan mewn noson wych fel hon sy’n dathlu Bwyd, Diod a Diwylliant Cymru…...llongyfarchiadau mawr i’r trefnwyr a’r enillwyr! Dyma’r ddolen gyswllt.

Click here if you’d rather read this post in English.

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Riddlers is a family-run 4th generation fish company based in the South West. They have been landing processing and selling fish from the local harbours of Brixham, Plymouth and Newlyn since the 1920’s. So when we were seeking a quality company to partner with to open a brand new fish counter in our Newton Abbott store there was only 1 choice.

One of the biggest barriers to customers buying fresh fish is not knowing how to deal with it. However Rowes has a dedicated team on their counter in Asda to provide full advice.

Here are some pictures taken last week when we ran a Masterclass filleting & preparing fresh fish for the public and I’ve included some footage of the Radio advert we recored to promote the launch.

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This is Steve our Egg Buyer and he’s done such a good job that he’s been nominated for an Award…..you could say he’s done a ‘cracking’ job (get it?!).

Sorry.

Anyway Steve has been shortlisted for the Marketing Initiative of the Year from the British Free Range Egg Producers Association for his work on Free Range Eggs.

He has worked hard to find and list truly local eggs from free range suppliers across the UK such as Ellis Eggs in Wales and Geldards in Cumbria. He has responded to customer demand by removing barn and intensively produced eggs and giving over more space to free range resulting in a 15% sales uplift….and happy customers and chickens!

The Awards Ceremony is on 3rd December and we’ll report back from there!

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Local Sourcing is part of the Emerging Markets Team at Asda, which also includes our Free From and Ethnic ranges. On 31st October, the Ethnic food team went down to London for the inaugural World Food Awards.

It was a great event, and we were really excited to be named Best National Retailer for ethnic foods. We’ve worked really hard to develop good ranges for our world food customers and were delighted to have that recognised! Let us know what you think of our world food ranges and if there are any foods you particularly want us to stock.

The award comes at the end of a really exciting week when we launched our first world foods store in Hounslow. We’ve added loads of new products to our Asian, Caribbean and Mediterranean ranges, making Asda Hounslow our biggest store for world foods. You can also see our new George Asian clothing range there.

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When I ask customers what local food they want they always say fruit and vegetables. We’ve made a big effort to communicate on our packaging where our produce is grown, so when it’s grown in Kent we say that on pack. We’re also encouraging our suppliers to grow more produce that will allow us to do more of this.

Guy Poskitt has been a supplying Asda for donkeys years and on friday we went to see his fields of Lancashire Carrots we hope to be selling soon. I went with Anne the buyer and Dan from Technical and we met Peter (his man on the ground).

Now I grow my own carrots and took the opportunity to take a couple along and get some tips from the experts!

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Ok, so it wasn’t exactly a 1-2-1 with Gordon Brown, but I met him nevertheless!

We were told there was a chance we might be able to spend some time with him so I jumped at the opportunity to explain our local story.

As it happened he was running late so we only had time to introduce ourselves, shake hands and he said “thank you for coming”.

Shame we couldn’t have had more time, but at least I can say I, a humble Bradford lad, met the country’s leader!

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