Support your local…

We used to have a butcher in our 2000 inhabitants village. His products were fantastic, fresh, direct from local farmers and you could get exactly as much or as little as you wanted. He  trimmed the fat off the meat, prepare cordon bleu as you waited, made his own lasagne and if you got unexpected guests on a Sunday (most shops here are closed on Sunday), he’d meet you at the back door of his shop and see what he could do to help. Gristle was unheard of, and he always had a little bag of something for customers with cats or dogs.
I used to buy all my meat from him, plus other stuff he sold, such as his aforementioned, to-die-for lasagne, herb butter for steaks, even a simply fabulous Gruyere cheese which he also used to buy from a local farmer.
He closed down his shop over 2 years ago and I still miss him.
The problem was, that there is a Co-Op almost opposite and a huge Migros supermarket only a mile or so away. And people think that if, say, the supermarket’s lamb chops are 35 Swiss Francs a kilo and the butcher’s lamb chops are 38 SFr a kilo, then obviously the supermarket’s meat is better value. But that’s not necessarily the case. These customers don’t calculate the difference in price when they have to cut the fat off themselves, and have to leave chunks of gristle at the side of their plate. Look at it like that and the butcher’s meat – besides probably being fresher, and most likely coming from more naturally raised animals than most  supermarkets’ offerings –  is better value for money.

The same applies to bakers. We still have a baker’s shop in the village and I still go there to get my bread. And if it’s late in the afternoon and she has too many small cakes left, she’ll give them away to customers in the shop, or to passing schoolchildren, rather than let them go to waste.

The next village to us still has a cobbler. Remember cobblers? Usually dark shops smelling gloriously of leather and polish. Fortunately local farmers and horse riders go to him to have bridles, saddles and other leather goods repaired so I hope he’ll be around for a long time to come.

These small local shops and businesses are the true lifeblood of communities and they deserve everyone’s support to help them survive in this modern world of superstores and supermarkets. So if you’re driving through a village, don’t look for a supermarket to do your bit of shopping – look for the small shop where you are treated with old-fashioned curtesy and have the satisfaction of supporting part of our world which is being elbowed out of existence by megastores.