Community shops are popular, with most being far more resilient than chain stores, as they don’t shut down during recessions etc. Most have one paid manager, then the rest of the staff are usually volunteers who all give a few hours time each month. Owned by the community, you can usually choose what you wish to be stocked, as it’s your shop!
Run an indie shop? Many seeds, flowers and plants are toxic to pets so read up on what to avoid selling households with animals.
The Galleries (just outside Bath) is a thriving community shop and cafe, with a few paid employees and around 80 volunteers who all help out for a few hours each month. Founded after the closure of two local shops, today it’s thriving with over 200 daily customers each day (low overheads means prices are only a little bit more than supermarkets). Yet money earned here goes back into the community, rather than to shareholders far, far away!
The Plunkett Foundation are the experts on all-things-community-shop. They can help you set up or save a community shop (or pub) and also provide discounted services like insurance. The site includes lots of inspiring tales of people who bought their own community shop, often to save a village store that had been owned by families for generations (to stop it being taken over by big corporate business).
Read The Little Bookstore of Big Stone Gap. This is the story of a couple who had always dreamed of owning a bookstore. When the opportunity arose to escape a toxic work environment and run to a struggling Virginia mining town to open a bookstore, they plunged into the dream. They chose to ignore ‘the death of the book’ and the fact that people were closing bookstores nationwide. And six years later with their pets and books and a love of life, they managed to create something else – a community amid the Appalachian mountains.
dividing parcels of land among villagers
An interesting village is Laxton, one of just a few left to practice open field strip farming, which divides parcels of land between villagers (a bit like a community shop, so everyone gets access to equal share of food). Unlike today when a tiny majority of people own our land.
life in the village hardware shop
Rivets, Trivets & Galvanised Buckets is the story of the author’s daughter-in-law who took over a hardware shop that was over 100 years old. It also presents a fascinating history of technology – from who thought up screwdrivers to where spirit levels come from. Hardware shops (ironmongers) are few and far between these days, but please do support them as they are an essential part of our communities. Unlike big DIY stores that sell nails in plastic bags, at an ironmonger you can just buy one – loose! And the owner is likely to know about DIY, rather than the sometimes gaumless assistants in big superstores who don’t know their chisel from their hacksaw!
a new-build community-owned village shop
Oakley Village Stores is a proposed new community shop that has just raised more than expected funding, so hopefully will open soon. Designed to a new-build at the rear of the village hall, it will also offer a decked outdoor seatng and a cafe selling drinks and cake. It will likely be owned by the Parish Council and set up as a Community Benefit Society with profits reinvented and volunteers mostly running the shop. It also aims to focus on selling local quality produce.
