Support for specialist local wholefood stores
There is an encouraging stability in the trade of smaller health food and wholefood retailers, in spite of supermarkets adopting ranges previously only found in the specialist stores. Customers are still choosing to shop at dedicated wholefood stores for these products.
Mintel’s “Health Food Retailing – UK” (March 2003) report indicates that the opportunity for specialist stores in this sector is to “develop good choice as well as high levels of authoritative customer service”. This reflects the historic success factors of the Wholefood Planet inspiration – Daily Bread – consistently updating the product range and providing information and recipes for customers.
A survey of the top 100 UK health food and products companies, quoted in “Natural Products” (April 2004), found that smaller companies in this sector seem to be prospering whilst the larger organisations’ sales are not growing at the same pace.
“The report says that ‘size does not necessarily lead to success’ in the health food market. Smaller businesses were found to be more profitable than the bigger players and only 16 of the top 100 companies in the market showed profit growth in three consecutive years. Plimsoll says that smaller firms are less vulnerable to takeover than in other sectors because they don’t offer the strategic opportunity in a market that is heavily congested at the top. It is more likely, predicts the report, that some of the biggest players will be forced to merge to create room for manoeuvre.”
These figures are reflecting the high public interest in healthy eating and the explosion of media coverage which has increased trade for specialist wholefood retailers.
In addition, there is the strong “buy local” campaigns which support specialist stores who stock local wholefood products working with regional suppliers. Consumers are more interested in where there food comes from than ever before.