Taste Cheshire asked for their views by Parliament #Blog

Briony Wilson
19th September 2019

Our very own Stephen Wundke has recently been asked by parliament for our perspective on the current trends in the industry and the place of the high street. It was an honour to be asked to share our perspective and great to see Taste Cheshire once again having a voice on the National stage.

Following the financial crisis crash of 2008, Stephen Wundke was entrusted with the job of getting footfall back on the streets of Chester after what had been years of serious decline with substantial year-on-year losses. Through a series of big-scale city centre events, better communication between stakeholders and council and by addressing and listening to the serious issues of both visitors and locals, Stephen and his team achieved their goal with great success. They created “free after 3pm parking” and raised footfall by more than 25 per cent. Stephen explains how they managed to get things back to where they should have been for a leading city like Chester but reflects on whether the work is complete.

Almost ten years after we began work in Chester and, if you believe the media, the high street is once again collapsing. Large retail chains fall week after week and lay bare our once shiny, sparkly window displays, replacing them with for sale and rent boards. I may no longer be doing the job at Chester City Management, but I still think I have a good handle on what is going on at street level through our Taste Cheshire network of stakeholders. Rather than panic, what I am seeing is a very real opportunity for towns and cities to re-establish what is important to their success and get back their identity, which for too long has been missing.

Second revolution in shopping

Cities and towns were created through trading, as a place to swap goods – such as foods you’d grown or reared for building materials you needed; drink you’d created for machinery you used. Each place across the UK had its own unique identity. Livestock in one place, grain in another. With mechanisation and increased productivity came shops and shelves bulging with goods, better houses and all that we now know on the high street. Surely it would live and flourish forever, but then along came the internet. No longer was there the need to fight the traffic, pay the exorbitant car parking fees that fed council pockets or traipse through shop after shop only to find they hadn’t got what the advert on the TV said they had. Now we could sit back and let our fingers do the walking and wait for it to be delivered. Bizarrely, most of the big retailers didn’t see it coming.

It was the second revolution in shopping. The first was the continued sprawl of out-of-town centres, with free parking that eroded footfall, but the second was even more devastating and that is where we are now. The big problem for many towns and cities is that landlords have created such high rents and are demanding huge covenants, leading to the high streets starting to look the same everywhere. Landlords turned their back on the small and independent retailer, the ones that made the city centre unique, in the belief that the big boys would always survive and were a far safer financial proposition. In fact, the small independent retailer and artisan, family-owned business has always fought harder to survive. The large chain just collapses the shell and moves on, leaving carnage, both personal and material, in their wake.

While these huge, empty edifices may well be ugly and a blight on our high street, they serve as a reminder to landlords that tenants can only pay what makes the business work. You either pay a higher rent to have footfall go past your door on the high street or you pay less and become a destination to attract people away from those high-footfall areas. Businesses can’t survive when the high rent they pay for footfall isn’t delivering customers.

Finding response

Right across the UK, the third revolution in retailing is starting to take shape, however, providing hope. A co-operation between landlord and tenant, an understanding of each other’s aims and common sense has emerged, and it just might be the answer. The challenge is to find a way to populate the high street with businesses that are internet proof, and I have heard many theories on this.

Some say that it’s personalised shoe shops that will save us, but more and more the answer revolves around food and drink. Cafés have sprung up like daffodils and maybe they will last longer as the coffee republic seems a strong one. Restaurants and bars are multiplying and rightly so because, you see, the one thing you can’t do on the internet is have a meal out, meet for coffee face to face or drink a pint of bitter with your friends.

There’s more, and this is where it gets truly exciting. As we start to think about what we eat, what we drink and its provenance, with this comes the return of the artisan. Bakers who make real bread without preservatives, butchers that know the farmer, the herd and the process from farm to fork, and fruit and vegetable shops with the right produce in abundance, at the right time of year and price. Produce that tastes of something because it spent time in UK soil developing flavour. Now there is something special. Asparagus in April and May, tomatoes in summer, berries in autumn and lamb in spring. They all taste better and are cheaper in season and while it hasn’t quite happened yet, the small retailers are starting to reclaim the high street.

Capitalising on opportunity

Landlords with sensible rents and banks who have begun again to lend to real people are starting to make it possible. These are the things you just can’t get, with integrity, online: real people, selling real produce, who understand their products and deliver them with honesty and passion. We ‘see more farmers’ markets back in towns and cities and relationships developing between customer and vendor. The weird thing is, this is what used to happen, and it worked brilliantly for a good 400 years. In life terms, the big retailers and their huge shops were just a blip on the retail radar. Our town centres are the supermarkets of the future. The little guy has learnt from the big chains: how to display their produce, how to simplify the supply chain and how to be a better retailer, and now they are reclaiming their crown.

It is an exciting time and people have never been as concerned about the provenance of goods as they are now. They want to know where it’s from and its route to market. People are spurning volume for taste and they understand that time and effort costs a little more. It’s a slow process but it is happening. The third revolution is underway, and we can all be a part of it. This is what made us the nation of shopkeepers we once were and what will once again deliver the great in Great Britain.

https://www.theparliamentaryreview.co.uk/organisations/taste-cheshire