Mud, sweat and fears: how local businesses have struggled to survive the pandemic

A trained lawyer turned meat trader and a former vegetarian photographer are hardly the most likely business partners. But for the co-founders of The Ethical Butcher, Glen Burrows and Farshad Kazemian, it proved a winning formula.

The company was on everyone’s lips in recent weeks due to their viral ‘regenuary’ social media campaign, encouraging people to buy regeneratively-sourced products throughout January.

Based in London, the firm that “launched three weeks before lockdown” last year, says Glen, and offers a range of meats and animal produce – from steak to peri peri chicken – for online purchase from their suppliers to your door.

Before the pandemic, the pair were “introduced by a mutual friend” and soon, after “shredding the first two plans”, a third idea emerged. Glen  and Farshad would set up the only meat supply business that focussed on quality and ethics. According to Glen, the two are “very much interlinked”.

And so their pledge to farm in a ‘regenerative’ way was born. This approach to agriculture prioritises enhancing and rehabilitating the ecosystem of the whole farm, with a focus on soil health, fertiliser use and increasing biodiversity. It is the approach that Glen looks for when picking suppliers.

“The non-negotiable baseline is that the grazing animals, beef and lamb, have to be 100 per cent pasture-fed, no question. No grains, absolutely no soy, and no supplemental feed. Absolutely nothing that isn’t certified with the Pasture Fed Livestock Association (PFLA).”

But despite “the pasture-fed approach being a very sustainable model, it’s not always necessarily regenerative”. Donning his detective hat, Glen then fires off questions to potential supplies if they pass this first test.

“What have you done to improve biodiversity? Are you measuring it? Are you putting in any extra hedge rowing or agroforestry systems?” These are just a few up his sleeve. And so, despite April in lockdown creating a “ballistic” number of orders, some suppliers were turned away.

The Ethical Butcher has made a virtue out of a virus, but other small businesses were forced to adapt. With sales down by 60 per cent when the pandemic first hit in April, this is a strategy Mary Quicke of Quickes knows all too well. Based in Exeter, suppliers of the regenerative agriculture and cheese manufacturers, Quickes, continue to farm land they have “nurtured for 500 years” to produce their clothbound cheddar, and their connection to the soil remains as strong as ever.

Mary knows the fields like the back of her hand, and is able to tell under her boots which field is arable, and which is grass and clover. This “sentimental side of business” must not be lost, she says.

The pandemic has put 500 years of business to the test. And so, to survive, the company made “a real pivot” to online retail to follow the changing market. For “food manufacturers it has been incredibly difficult” with the food industry becoming increasingly “devastated”. Yet, as a small artisan business, Mary says they have been able to connect directly with customers who had been “extraordinary”.

Many businesses in other regions have not been so fortunate. In Bristol, ordinarily a hub of the South West’s exciting food and drink scene, the city’s hospitality sector has been decimated by the pandemic. The city suffered from the yo-yoing between tiers over the uncertain festive period. “Everyone now plans for two weeks of trading,” says Adam Brittain, Business Relationship Manager at the Bristol Association of Restaurants, bars and Independent Establishments (BARBIE), but this constant tier movement threw a spanner in the works.

Supply chains were affected and businesses had to decide what to do with excess stock. Breweries, in particular – which Adam feels have been neglected – have had to deal with leftover beer. “Once you tap a cask, it has a life of about two weeks on it,” he says. If the beer couldn’t be turned into takeaways, it had to be thrown away.

Is the city a cautionary tale or a sign of things to come? According to Adam, that’s up to the government. Throughout the pandemic, Adam took calls from his members who were struggling to make ends meet and took to “selling their cars” and taking “extra money on mortgages” in order to keep going. Things are now looking desperate for the once vibrant city with “60 per cent” of its hospitality sector in danger of not returning next year, with the question for a lot of companies being “at what point do they just stop?”

In response, BARBIE is about to release an app to help independent businesses become more competitive while saving them money on venues. The app will work in a similar way to Deliveroo or Uber Eats and will incorporate features like delivery, click and collect, track and trace, table ordering and offers. In light of the damage the pandemic has caused BARBIE’s members, it is reducing its commission to 15 per cent, and hope to reduce this further to 10 per cent once the service is up and running.

A stone’s throw away in Bath, the sector has also been under pressure. Chris Williams, who owns a French bistro and a Spanish tapas restaurant, explained how they had shut and would only reopen when they were permitted to do so. “We aren’t in the business of selling food, as such, but people buy food when they are with us,” Chris said. His business is about the experience food brings which does not “lend itself well to takeaways”. Having lost December, which ordinarily makes up for the quieter months of January and February, Chris is now left “praying for the Easter holidays” and the footfall it could bring.

BARBIE isn’t alone in its efforts to prop up local businesses. On a national scale the cries for help for the hospitality sector have etched far and wide. Last summer, owner/operator of The Pig Hotels and The LimeWood Group, Robin Hutsun, wrote an open letter to the government about the damage of pandemic restrictions. After acknowledging the steps already taken, Hutson called for rent assistance, an extension of the furlough scheme and a backdating of furlough up to 19 March 2020. The 40 signatures on the letter included those of Rick Stein CBE and Jill Stein OBE who employ 700 people in their restaurants from Padstow to Hampshire.

Eight months on and many of these demands have been met. But Adam Brittain explains that this assistance is not all it seems. “The furlough scheme is flawed” and the grants businesses are getting directly “won’t help”. What’s really needed is an individual to “asses the situation,” says Adam.

Last week, after a petition supported by industry heavyweights like Tom Kerridge, Tom Akiens and Yotam Ottolenghi, as well as Seat at the Table – a 30-day campaign to “give hospitality a voice” – gained over 200,000 signatures, parliament debated creating a ‘Hospitality Minster’ position within the government. Paul Scully, Minister for Small Business, Consumers and Labour Markets, claimed this was unnecessary as the sector was already “well-represented in government.” But MPs voted overwhelmingly in favour of the motion.

“Every business has a Covid story,” says Sam Holliday from the Federation of Small Businesses. From ones of “adaptability” to devastation, Sam has heard them all. There has been a “massive increase” in calls from members seeking advice during this difficult time and Sam is adamant that, nationwide, the sector is in urgent need of “more support” and “investment”. Failing this, for too many of Britain’s beloved local hospitality businesses the pandemic may be their final chapter.