Kindly: A Zero Waste Brighton Supermarket
Now this is more like it! Kindly (Brighton) is a big busy vegan supermarket (which offers carbon-neutral home delivery) that was founded by an Internet techy wizard, who got bored and decided he wished to do something with his money, to do good.
His aim is to ‘flip the supermarket model on its head’ and put planet before profits. His supermarket even offers vegan sandwiches in compostable packaging (handmade in Brighton).
Before cooking, read up on food safety for people and pets. Indie shops can learn which plants and flowers are unsafe near pets, to know what not to sell to people with animal friends.
Do Big Supermarkets Support Communities?
Not really. Many offer ‘tokens’ that you put in boxes, to help local charities. But in fact, most end up destroying local communities as indie shops go to the wall (most also only offer 2-hour parking, so after doing your shop, you can’t go and enjoy a tea in a local cafe or browse independent shops).
Supermarkets often differ in what they sell, depending on where you live. For example, Budgens in the affluent town of Holt (Norfolk) offers organic produce in plastic-free packaging, no canned music and strawberries from 4 miles away. There is also a post office, same-day home delivery, electric car charging points and an upcoming solar panel on the roof.
Yet in Clacton-on-Sea (one of England’s least affluent areas – Nigel Farage’s constituency), the website for Budgens offers no local food, instead boasting of national lottery tickets, and special offers on toilet roll and giant bottles of Pepsi cola.
A few years back, there was a goliath 13-year battle in the Norfolk town of Sheringham, to stop Tesco building a big supermarket, in one of the towns left without one. When Paul Kingsnorth covered the story in his book Real England, the battle was ongoing.
Things looked hopeful, when a local entrepreneur offered to fund an independent supermarket, even hosting cooking classes above it. And yet the council (the council!) received the proposal, then voted to give planning permission to Tesco.
Today (many locals are likely unaware of the history) it’s a busy supermarket, and of course Tesco ‘gives back’ to the community. But many independent shops there have now gone under, there are no ‘blue tokens’ in the box to help them. A community has been half-destroyed.
And now the update is: after spending over a decade fighting (and losing) the campaign to keep Sheringham independent, it now has another one to contend with: pizza chain Dominoes is now going to court after being refused permission to open a chain in a town that already has 40 food outlets. Anyone who has ever seen the littered ‘plastic sauce trays’ on the street, knows what the end result would be.
And of course, if opened, the profits (like with Tesco) after paying staff would mostly be going to shareholders nationally and abroad, not to local people, as what happens with indie shopkeepers.
Big supermarkets rarely offer ‘choice’. Try looking for a natural toothpaste, a hair dye without chemicals or a vegan cake without palm oil. Despite all being ambient products (with long shelf lives), you won’t find any.
Some bigger supermarkets are independent, but don’t really fare much better. In East Sussex, local bakery chain Jempson’s has a supermarket in a local village, but you have to drive there (it even has its own petrol station).
And Booths (often called ‘the Waitrose of the North’) is too expensive for most people (the ‘ready meals’ are tremendously expensive, as is orange juice from a machine you use to make yourself).
Good food should be affordable to everyone, not just those who can pay for organic sourdough bread. Booths website boasts that it has ‘removed all plastic cutlery’. That’s because there’s now a single-use plastic ban, so giving it out would be illegal anyway.
