All too often, I am seeing various establishments and people using cheaper products in the hope that their consumers don’t notice a difference - we’ve all done it I suppose, but when the consumers do notice, how do you deal with it? The best way to deal with it is to obviously put your head in the sand, and pretend it’s not happening. For example - yoghurt on a breakfast buffet. I personally like rich, thick, flavoursome yoghurt that compliments the granola or fruit or pancake that I’ve chosen to start with, because let’s face it, everyone needs a fry up.
What I saw was a cheaper alternative served to customers for over a week, and 85% of those who were served it, absolutely did not like it! Watery, weak, tasteless, loose - not best for your granola. But instead of trying to make things better like, hanging it in a J-cloth, or something else, the powers that be, simply ignored the concerns of their guests and persevered.
Is money really that right nowadays that you need to cut costs to the point that it affects your final product? I mean we all know that if you buy cheap, then you buy twice.
Another example at the moment I see often is Beef products. Now I am completely biased and I think the beef that comes from a certain Wiltshire butcher who gets from a Wiltshire farm is second to none - but with that quality, there’s obviously a premium, but you get what you pay for.
Why would you automatically opt for a lesser product, that gives you a result similar to your great grandmother cooking Sunday supper. I don’t want my medium rare bavette to be tough. I wanted it to melt. I want to taste beef, and get the taste of the butter and seasoning and love that chef has put into it, instead of nothing. Yes, you get the saltiness and you get the flavour that suggests at one point, the steak was on a cow, but all for a very short time before it was sent to a freezer and then sent across the world on a plane or a train.
We must stop going after cheaper alternatives especially when there are so many amazing products available to us in the UK. Yes they might cost a little more, but I tell you that you’ll experience less if you spend less.
We really must be keeping the local farmers, local butchers, cheese makers, greengrocers, dairies and bakers busy with our orders no matter how big or small they might be. The more we use them and keep them on our streets and in their farms, the better the world becomes. If you go into a butcher on the same day every week for 6 weeks, by week 3, that butcher recognises you, the “hello” turns to “how are you”, and then it turns to “oh I saw your” and then should you miss a week, it’s “I haven’t seen Mr Bloggs - have you?” It brings the community together.
More importantly it eliminates the need for importing products into the UK when we are bloody good at doing what we do over here. I don’t want Polish chicken, and I don’t want Dutch bacon.
I certainly don’t want Peruvian asparagus in October. Just stop, and think. What do you like, how do you like it, these guys that start at the crack of stupid o'clock and are still going when you’re turning your night light off are what does it for us.
The blood sweat and tears are involved in the pricing that we obviously do begrudgingly pay, but they’re often a small family business that might need to increase the price of a chicken soup this week by 10p, due to legislation changing or the price of fuel going up.
We should not be compromising on quality to save a few quid. Absolutely not. Keep the local producers local and in business and you’ll see the difference and more importantly you’ll taste the difference when you enjoy the chicken from round corner, and the honey from up road, or the bread from Doris on the corner.
Quality food brings out a quality in life - that’s something money cannot buy
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