Britain’s cornerstone: ROBERT HARDMAN says our defiant smaller stores still have all we need


Historians still quibble over whether Napoleon Bonaparte actually said it or not. Yet it has stuck. And it was certainly not meant as a compliment. 

‘England,’ scoffed the former French Emperor in his twilight years, ‘is a nation of shopkeepers.’ 

To which, right now, one can only respond: ‘Amen to that.’ 

For as we confront the gravest national and global crisis since World War II, it is our shopkeepers who are rapidly emerging as one of the principal bulwarks against downright anarchy.

Local heroes: A jam-packed convenience store in Broadway in the Cotswolds. Often with staff of just one or two, these places always seem well-stocked, open all hours and an oasis of calm

And I mean the real shopkeepers — the ones who own the shop and, in many cases, live above it. We used to call these places corner shops, though they prefer to be known as convenience stores.  

Right now, they are not merely convenient but, as millions of us are discovering, they are essential. As the retail giants are stripped bare on a daily basis, it is our local village shop that stoically — sometimes heroically — manages to fill the gaps. 

Similarly, while the online supermarket networks seize up under the demand for home deliveries, it is dynamic local businesses which are busily beetling from door to door at our beck and call. 

At present, you must wait days or weeks to get a patchy selection of staple goods from a jumbo operator like Ocado. 

Or you can order separate deliveries of meat, fish, household products and much else from a lean and eager small supplier and see it on the doorstep within a day. 

The moral of the story right now: small is beautiful. 

It certainly is for anyone suffering from the curious new by-product of Covid-19 — what one might call TDA, or toilet deprivation anxiety. If you still think you are understocked in the bathroom department, then just head for a corner shop. 

It may not offer umpteen cuts of beef or pak choi or ten types of pesto, but it will still have lots of loo roll and soap, too — not to mention your favourite newspaper.

Shop keepers in Shepherd's Bush, London, are stocking many items the supermarkets are running out of, such as toilet roll. Pictured: Pradip Chandegara of Best Wines

Shop keepers in Shepherd’s Bush, London, are stocking many items the supermarkets are running out of, such as toilet roll. Pictured: Pradip Chandegara of Best Wines

A member of the NHS stands in front of shelves stripped bare. Much of the anxiety with the big stores right now is the glaring lack of information, writes Robert Hardman

A member of the NHS stands in front of shelves stripped bare. Much of the anxiety with the big stores right now is the glaring lack of information, writes Robert Hardman

Often with a staff of just one or two, these places always seem well-stocked, open all hours and an oasis of calm. This could be their finest hour. 

There are nearly 50,000 convenience stores (classed as those below 3,000 square feet) nationwide. Napoleon might have mocked ‘England’, but they are quintessentially British (Wales actually has the highest percentage with one shop for every 1,071 people, while a third of convenience shopkeepers define themselves as ‘Asian British’ or ‘Asian’). 

Their premises are not in prime locations; only one in ten is on a High Street. Most are in residential areas. They are the village shops that are often all that holds an isolated community together. 

They are the ‘parade’ shops, catering to the residents of a huge housing estate. They employ 400,000 people and, last year, accounted for annual sales of £40billion. It is safe to say that figure is going to be very much higher at the end of 2020. Wandering down a random road in West London this week, I stop at one after another and cannot find a shopkeeper who can put a figure on the upswing. 

‘We must be up by at least 50 per cent easily but I can’t be precise,’ says Raja Ishaq, who has been running Fairway Foods on Shepherd’s Bush Road for 19 years. He hasn’t raised his prices, with cheaper loo roll at four for £1 and a four-pack of Andrex’s finest for £4.75 (the pricing is pre-printed on the factory packaging anyway). 

Plus there is all the usual beers, wines, crisps, butter, milk, newspapers and soap at the regular prices. 

A lady comes in, interested in a large bag of rice, but says she can’t carry it home. Raja says he will drop it round on foot later. Asda could not do that. 

There is a Tesco superstore less than a ten-minute walk from Raja’s door (there’s not a loo roll in sight in there) but that has never been much of a rival, he says. What has made life much harder is the more recent arrival of a Sainsbury’s ‘Local’, a mere two minutes down the same road (there is no loo roll there, either). ‘Things were OK before Sainsbury’s came but then our trade went right down,’ he says. ‘But now it’s going up day after day.’ 

It’s a similar story a few hundred yards further down at Best Wines where Pradip Chandegara is busy but still well-stocked with loo roll (£2.49 for four) and much else. There are no empty shelves in here either, though Pradip says he has noticed some moderate panic-buying of cigarettes. 

Not far away in Wandsworth Bridge Road, another corner shop which had been grimly clinging on in the face of another Sainsbury’s ‘Local’ is suddenly in rude health. Its previously downcast owner is a man reborn as he cheerfully replenishes his shelves with kitchen roll. 

Hundreds of customers queue for over an hour with empty trollies in the car park at Costco wholesale warehouse in Sunbury-on-Thames, amid coronavirus panic buying

Hundreds of customers queue for over an hour with empty trollies in the car park at Costco wholesale warehouse in Sunbury-on-Thames, amid coronavirus panic buying

This is not to criticise the role of the giant retailers. They are doing their best in extremely troubling times. I particularly like a confessional tweet doing the rounds this week from a shopper enraged by a young man in Aldi pushing a trolley heaving with loo roll and hand sanitiser. 

‘Called him a selfish ****, ranted about the old,’ wrote the furious shopper. ‘Told him he should be f****** ashamed. He said: “That’s all good and well but I work here! Can I fill the shelves?”’ 

It is true that a few shops have been indulging in profiteering but there have also been some harsh and febrile accusations by members of the public. For example, social media is now engaged in an hysterical witch hunt against a small, family-run shop in Edgware, North London for charging ‘£10 for a toilet roll’. 

The shop in question actually has a notice saying that it has paid an inflated wholesale price for a small supply of two-ply toilet roll which it is selling at £9.99 for a 12- pack. In other words, it is 83p per roll — hardly extortionate right now — not £10. 

None the less, the Twitter mob — many of whom have never previously ventured outside their superstore comfort zone — are now howling for a boycott, arrests, pitchforks etc. 

During one altercation police were summoned to the shop (just what the cops need at a time like this). The shop is now refusing to answer the phone but the mob should desist. If they want to pick on someone, pick on the worried well fighting over the last pack of tortellini in M&S. 

So why this vast discrepancy in both stock and behaviour between the giants and the minnows? 

‘This is mainly anecdotal but I think there is a different psychology in a small shop than there is in a big supermarket,’ says Chris Noice, spokesman for the Association of Convenience Stores. ‘When people are wheeling a trolley around a big space, they feel an urge to fill it. That doesn’t happen in one of our shops.’ 

He points to the way that some of his members have responded. At One Stop in Leamington Spa, owner Sunder Sandher had the idea of reserving special shopping times for pensioners long before the big chains followed suit (and he holds back stock of the most in-demand items for his OAP customers). The Budgens in nearby Kenilworth has been turning round local home deliveries within 60 minutes. 

It was the internet that gave birth to online home deliveries and launched vast fleets of Ocado and Tesco grocery vans on to our streets, where the omnivorous Amazon is now moving in fast. Not content with flogging us everything we cannot eat, Amazon now wants to feed us all, too. 

However, its website admits ‘inventory and delivery may be unavailable due to increased demand’. And there is no one you can call up to find out just how long that will take. 

Not so with umpteen versatile small suppliers like Foulgers Dairy Farm in Suffolk. It has seen orders for its home-delivered milk plus bread and other essentials ‘go through the roof’. And when too many online orders threaten to overwhelm the system, it simply tells customers to order by phone instead. Bath’s Thoughtful Bakery has started next-day online delivery of artisan bread in selected postcodes. 

Down in Hampshire, relatives of mine produce award-winning trout from the River Test. 

Wholesale demand from restaurants and hotels has vanished but Romsey-based ChalkStream are now busy doing next-day home deliveries of fresh fillets and smoked trout across much of Southern England. They are also giving 50 per cent off to anyone who works for the NHS and offering family-size boxes for freezing. 

Some small traders are teaming up with their neighbours to provide all-in-one shipments, too. In Parbold, near Wigan, for example, Reynolds Butchers have joined forces with Paolo’s Fruit And Veg to provide a single home delivery to those who are increasingly fearful of going out. Visit any supermarket and the big gaps will be in the cleaning sections. Yet a company like Splosh.com, based in Wales, will send refillable and completely eco-friendly surface cleaners, washing-up liquids, detergents and fabric conditioners straight to your home (for less than the cost of supermarket products) and will then keep on sending refills as and when required. 

All these outfits will take orders online but they are also small enough that they answer the phone to give you the latest on stock and delivery times. 

Much of the anxiety with the big stores right now is the glaring lack of information. That only adds to the stress levels, especially for elderly people who face months of solitary confinement. Who would not prefer to hear a human voice with a clear answer to a simple question right now? 

What’s more, it is these smaller operators who can be an essential conduit for important information about the most vulnerable. A lonely pensioner whose prescription is about to run out or who just wants a fleeting moment of human interaction through the window or at arms-length over the corner shop counter still has someone to talk to. And it will be someone who knows the area. 

In short, your entire weekly household needs can still be sourced in a day or two without any great extra expense. You can fill your cupboards without going near a single germ-filled stampede of trolley-pushing wildebeest. 

You don’t have to drive yourself mad battling with the websites of the retail giants to place an online order which might reach you by June. 

Napoleon was right. As we all face weeks in our own self-imposed St Helena, it is the shopkeepers of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland who will help us get through this safe, sound — and sane.