Kevin Hawkins
Kevin Hawkins is an independent retail consultant.
Comment & OpinionDairy farmers need unity, not Adjudicator intervention
The Efra Committee report on dairy told us little we didn’t already know and passed the buck to the Adjudicator…
Comment & OpinionNo room for sentimentality in food retail
“April”, wrote TS Eliot, “is the cruellest month.” He was wrong – that title belongs to January…
Comment & OpinionObesity: Big Food should act to help solve crisis
Occasionally you encounter a contribution to a contentious topic which makes you stop and think…
Comment & OpinionThe egoism of 'diet or die' health reports
Here we go again with yet another ‘diet or die’ report, this time from 2020 Health…
Comment & OpinionTesco is not a basket case, says Kevin Hawkins
“When sorrows come, they come not single spies but in battalions,” according to Shakespeare…
Comment & OpinionScottish independence: a dream as far as food & drink goes
Now that the big hitters in Scotland have given the thumbs down to independence, what do Scottish farmers say?…
Comment & OpinionDiscounters: a fashion that is here to stay?
“The fashion of this world passeth away.” Seldom has this been shown more clearly than in today’s grocery market…
Comment & OpinionSugar debate must recognise personal responsibility
When the government announced a cull of quangos in 2010, one of the 192 bodies on its hit list was SACN…
Comment & OpinionDon't blame the Adjudicator
Nothing is more certain to fail than a top-down attempt to change behaviour designed by bureaucrats…
Comment & OpinionLabour plans to micro-manage our diets - it won't work
The nanny state, like an old comic opera, is about to have a revival…
Comment & OpinionSunday trading laws: why keep them?
The only sensible change is to let retailers decide for themselves…
Comment & OpinionSupermarket price war is pure folly
Yesterday’s villains have a habit of becoming today’s heroes…
Comment & OpinionMorrisons' Safeway dilemma
So the wolves are sniffing around Morrisons, attracted by the freehold assets and the scope for financial engineering…
Comment & OpinionSugar hysteria is feeding new food fads
Here we go again – another bout of hysteria sweeps the media…
Comment & OpinionWhy 2014 promises more of the same for grocery
Where will the grocery industry be this time next year? Probably about where it is now, except more so…
Comment & OpinionThere's no end in sight for austerity
The past few years have been a story of simultaneous squeeze and squander…
Comment & OpinionDo we want good value food or good food 'values'?
Value or ‘values’? Over the past 20 years we have heard one diatribe after another against ‘cheap food’ sold by supermarke…
Comment & OpinionHigh streets need a reality check if they are to be reformed
To innovate is not to reform” said Edmund Burke, a distinction that would-be saviours of the Great British high street usu…
Comment & OpinionNGOs will never be satisfied
Not long ago it was reported that several NGOs had withdrawn from meetings at the Department of Health…
Comment & OpinionEnd of the nanny state?
After years of clamour for state manipulation of eating habits, a health minister has rejected dietary micro-management…