SOURCING: OUR OWN BACK YARD Never mind all those far flung delights. Stores are finding that people have a real craving for the best of the British regions Buyers used to look overseas, particularly to Europe, the US and Far East, for products that were niche, unusual, handmade, of top quality and in limited supply to fit the speciality' tag. Now they are scouring the UK for the best in locally produced food and drink to sell in selected stores. Food from Britain is behind this initiative and has been working with Tesco, Sainsbury, Somerfield, Morrisons and Booths to help source local products. Speciality foods director Charlotte Lawson says: "This is a new strategy. The multiples now recognise that consumers want to buy in their local stores the specialities for which their locality, region or country is noted. "So instead of applying a standard speciality product range across all outlets, they are tailoring their lines in the different areas of the UK to appeal to local tastes. Devolution in Wales and Scotland has sparked off this greater focus on locality. In both countries, country based sourcing for local sale is well under way, even to the point of responding to the different needs between east and west Scotland. Tesco increased its Welsh specialities in Wales by 100 last year." And even in England, where the England brand' is less distinctive, Lawson says the emphasis is on sourcing regionally. "West Country stores will have the specialities of the region, such as farmhouse Cheddar, for example, while those in Lincolnshire will feature the local sausages. " The lead in this development has been taken by Somerfield which has been engaged in an ongoing project with the FFB for a year to find local specialities for its stores. "Somerfield buyers have been brought together with the regional food groups to build a range of regionally focused foods. From Taste of the West alone, this has resulted in 60 new lines for West Country stores," says Lawson. Stores in the south west were the first to introduce local specialities last August. Since then the scheme has been progressively rolling out to other areas of the UK. The last to join will be Scotland in June. By then Somerfield aims to have introduced 1,000 new UK speciality lines from 300 suppliers. Dealing with lots of small orders from lots of small suppliers, and on a store by store basis, is alien to the multiples whose policy in the last few years has been to rationalise suppliers to achieve cost savings and efficiencies. As a result the internal systems just aren't there to handle the complexities of a large-scale small supplier operation. Somerfield's response has been to appoint Product Chain, a broker for small manufacturers, as the interface between itself and its suppliers. Product Chain's Somerfield national account manager James Wood says: "We provide Somerfield with a single contact, order and invoice point. Effectively it means they're only dealing with one supplier ­ us ­ but have access to 300 new suppliers. It's a complex operation. We break down Somerfield's orders and despatch them to suppliers for delivery to nominated depots for each region. Suppliers invoice us, which we consolidate for Somerfield." Product Chain has also helped with supplier auditing for due diligence. "We also ensure suppliers meet Somerfield's bar coding requirements, an area small producers are often unfamiliar with," says Wood. Ambient specialities are displayed in a dedicated 4ft five inch shelf fixture created by Product Chain for the West Country launch. "Products are very diverse, ranging from mushroom oil in north Yorkshire to mustards in Cheshire and regional beers from micro breweries. Somerfield expects it to generate £13m in extra business in the first year," says Wood. {{FOCUS SPECIALS }}