Back to our roots
Windy Arbour Farm • August 26, 2022
Windy Arbour Farm shop re-engages with British Food Fortnight to remind customers old and new what the business is about and what drives them.
Windy Arbour Farm shop is almost 50 years old. Established by Granny Turner selling eggs and potatoes from her back door after a great growing season in 1974, the family business went from strength to strength throughout the 1970s and 80s supplying countless chip shops and schools alongside a farm shop at a time where potatoes were on the menu in most homes every night. The 90s and early 2000s were more challenging with the growth in supermarkets but the shop endured and in 2009 passed to its 3rd generation (the 6th on the farm) in the form of Rachel Rigby (previously Turner) and her husband Geoff.
With youth and enthusiasm, they hugely expanded the ranges to begin to offer as much as possible for the weekly shop alongside the local fresh produce for which the shop had always been famous. In 2011 Windy Arbour took part in British Food Fortnight for the first time, decorating the shop with Union flags and running pop-up stalls and meet the grower events to highlight everything that was good and new about the new era.
For some reason, that was the Last time the shop took part. Such was the growth of the business that there probably wasn’t time to indulge in such events again. But over the decade since then, Windy Arbour has navigated the growth in the cheap supermarket, increase in popularity of online ordering and menu boxes, and of course a pandemic where for 6 months, like many local retailers they were the heroes.
But times change, costs rise, and life is tough for small business and consumers alike. So in 2022 we’ve decided to go back to our roots and re-engage with British Food Fortnight. Our push at the moment is to remind customers old and new what we’re about and what drives us. BFF offers the perfect vehicle to do that, and we’re looking forward to making a great British fuss this September!
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