All this week The Glasgow Times is featuring the six candidates hoping to be voted Glasgow's Favourite Business for 2021.
The award, sponsored by this paper, is part of the Glasgow Business Awards organised by Glasgow Chamber of Commerce with Royal Bank of Scotland as the main sponsor.
Champions of sustainability and ethical shopping, Locavore have come a long way since starting as a social enterprise ten years ago.
With a clear mission to radically reform the way we eat, think and shop when it comes to our food managing director Reuben Chesters managed to build a thriving business with strong roots all over Glasgow.
He said: “We started off working on charity projects aiming to teach people more about cooking or the importance of buying local, organic food.
"Then we opened our first shop as Locavore in 2012 and took on some land to do some organic market gardening in and around Glasgow.
“We’ve grown a lot faster since 2018 because we moved into a bigger shop in Govanhill and people became more aware of us, but we’ve been around for a long time.”
Locavore now has three farm locations all within a ten-mile radius of Glasgow where all manner of crops from beetroots to blackberries are grown to be sold in stores or via their immensely popular veg box delivery service.
The title of “Locavore” was chosen as a play on words to mean someone who eats a diet of only local produce and has now become a Glaswegian household name thanks to their expansion into shops all over the city in Partick, Garnethill and Govanhill.
Pictured: Reuben Chesters Managing Director of Locavore
This year more than ever these shops became a vital part of their local communities as the pandemic changed our attitudes towards big brand shopping.
Reuben said: “Recently, with covid, there were a lot of people who shopped outside supermarkets for the first time.
“They didn’t feel comfortable going to a big busy shop so were looking into getting produce delivered.
“Alongside that, there was this feeling that the economy was really struggling and that we should be doing more to support local businesses
“A lot of the values that we stand for have really been highlighted in the last year from environmental awareness, to fairness in supply chains.”
A visit to any of Locavore's shops is like entering an Aladdin’s cave of independent Glasgow businesses.
Locally produced fruit and veg, zero waste refill stations and preserved goods galore can be found under one roof with staff who are always happy to help you find exactly what you need.
Pictured: Reuben and the team from Locavore in Partick
Reuben said: “Although our shop is essentially a small scale supermarket, it’s also a movement and a mission.
“Everyone in the team understands that and we’re able to show our enthusiasm to our customers. That’s a really big part of what we do.
“In our shop, there’s a lot of things to play with. You can make your own peanut butter or get milk from a local organic dairy farm from a vending machine which makes it feel like a different experience.”
Reuben hopes that as society becomes more aware of major issues like climate change or food poverty people are beginning to understand that shopping locally is a way of making our lives simpler and more sustainable rather than an extravagance.
He said: “The products we sell can sometimes be seen as quite posh or even as sort of status symbols, but for us, it’s all just about the impact that these products will have on society.
“As a business, we’re pretty salt of the earth people. We want the things we sell to be accessible to everyone and try really hard to achieve that.
“Although it’s something that we’ve always tried to promote, we’ve definitely managed to grow off the fact that more and more people have started to become aware of where their food is coming from in recent years.”
It’s an exciting time for the business that has played such a big part in Glasgow’s communities over the years with initiatives like their ‘Grow the Growers’ campaign which gives local residents the opportunity to take over their own piece of land to practise gardening for profit.
When talk turns to the future, however, this is only the start of Locavore’s mission to shake up the way we shop.
Reuben said: “It’s been a difficult year as a business but we still have that ambition to get bigger even faster and bring food to people that is better for them, the economy and the environment.
“We have a plan which is to have ten shops by the end of the year which will create more jobs.
“Everything we do is just about using the money that’s spent on food for social good.”
The Glasgow Business Awards are hosted by Glasgow Chamber of Commerce and sponsored by the Royal Bank of Scotland. Winners will be announced at the award ceremony at DoubleTree by Hilton on the 7th October 2021, with voting for Glasgow’s Favourite Business opening on Monday 23rd August 2021.
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