10 Things We Love About Being Different from the Supermarkets...
Our fruit and veg (mostly) doesn't come wrapped in plastic.
Apart from cutting single-use plastic waste, this also means you can buy as much (we sell in bulk, just ask) or as little as you like (we'll even cut big things in half or quarter for you).
Truly taste the difference! Our seasonal food, grown locally, tastes so much better. Unlike supermarkets which don't ask for flavour from their suppliers, we choose items from further afield from market based on their taste.
Short food miles that support local growers: Elder's, Phantassie , Tyningham Community Farm and Tyninghame Organic Orchard, The Ridge and Belhaven Community Garden and so many more...
Our amazing local producers: coffee roasted in Berwick-upon-Tweed or East Linton, The Chocolate Tree, Mungoswells flour, The Cheese Lady, The Dunbar Community Bakery , and so many more...
Ethical sourcing - case study Healthy Oils - a small family organisation aiming to bring about change through ethical consumption. They source high quality organic products from cooperatives or family businesses around the UK and EU. Their products are unique, traceable back to their origin farms and cannot be bought in supermarkets. They sell directly to shops, rather than to wholesalers, allowing more affordable pricing.
Community: people make and meet friends in the Crunchy. We love to have a chat, ask what you're making for dinner. We'll never have a self-service check-out! Sometimes convenience has a butterfly effect that creates bigger inconveniences (like loneliness and isolation) down the road. We are a not-for-profit organisation with a community food outreach worker who runs at least three in-person activities a week in the community creating spaces serving nutritious food, building relationships and cutting food waste.
Independent businesses like the Crunchy make our high street a more vibrant, appealing and enjoyable place to be, which makes our town and our lived environment and more vibrant, appealing and enjoyable place to be. No-one ever planned a holiday to a town because it has an ASDA or a Lidl...
Need something we haven't got? We'll try and order it for you, just ask!
Supermarkets demand rock bottom prices from their suppliers, which means maximum efficiency in all aspects of production. This translates into cheap meat imports that have been intensively reared and fed on grain grown on deforested land; hedges that provide bird habitat being removed because they take up growing space and are expensive to maintain; tonnes of industrial fertiliser being sprayed on land (fertiliser is responsible for approximately five percent of total greenhouse gas emissions); small businesses going bust; workers being paid and treated badly. And lots more besides of course. Sourcing responsibly means supporting farmers that work with nature and avoid the wholesale reshaping of our natural environment in the pursuit of cheap prices that hide real world costs.