Helping small suppliers to sell their products
Commercial Director Richard Brasher with Mary Galbraith and Debbie Swift of the Incredible Fruitcake Company
We know our customers want to be able to buy more regional products and many small suppliers are keen to work with us. In the past small suppliers may have found it difficult to approach us, so we have made it easier for them to sell goods through our stores. We will be opening five new regional buying offices to support our commitment to locally produced products. Our regional teams will be based in the East, Midlands, North, South and South West of England and a separate office in Wales. These offices will be in addition to our regional buying and marketing operations already established in Northern Ireland and Scotland.
In order to build new contacts with potential suppliers in the regions we are also hosting a series of regional road shows, which will see local producers and our senior buying teams getting together with the objective of getting hundreds of new locally produced lines in stores for our customers. At the road show event in Cornwall in September, we met 80 local companies whose products ranged from Cornish Ale to jewellery.
One of the suppliers who attended the event was a small fruit cake company. They started making fruit cakes for family and friends and before long they were supplying a much wider demand. They now use a local bakery to bake the cakes.
The company’s founders pride themselves on picking only the very best ingredients for their cakes.
They thought the regional sourcing event was a fantastic idea not only for them, but that it also presented numerous advantages for local people. During the day, their small company secured an order to supply our stores in the region with cakes for Christmas.
We will also be doing more to promote locally produced products to customers including regional counters, improved promotional material in stores and a website that will allow them to recommend their favourite regional products to us.
If you want to find out more about this initiative visit our new regional sourcing website www.tesco.com/regionalsourcing
Key facts at a glance
Long-term suppliers
We have over 1,500 suppliers who have been working with us for five years or more.
Local products
We offer our customers over 7,000 local products in our stores and have plans for even more.
