r 2017
FEATURES
FARM SHOP & DELI AWARDS
Deli of th e Yea r 201 7
How did Deli of the Year come about as an award?
“
It all comes down to people
”
Judge and award creator Giles Henschel from Olives Et Al
Winding back to 1998, we realised that a lot of delicatessens had a real issue around February time. The lead up to Christmas was really good and January was okay, but then the credit card bills would arrive and everybody would just stop shopping. That meant a lot of hardpressed deli owners were struggling to survive that month, so we thought we’d try and do something to help. We came up with Purple Love Day, an event on 14 February to coincide with Valentine’s Day, where we said: “Look, the high streets are always doing chocolate and lingerie around now, why can’t we get the independents to do something based around food?”
And was it a success?
It was very successful, and we started looking at making it longer to give the independents an opportunity to get more out of it, which led to Purple Love Week. That was a whole week based around food tastings in store, designed to encourage people to go into delicatessens and buy things, basically to keep the tills busy during February. I think it really helped, but there was nothing on a national scale – independents are, by nature, independent. They don’t necessarily 36
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collaborate, and nobody was collaborating on their behalf, so we decided that we would. We gradually grew Purple Love Week until around 2005 and 2006, when we really went to town on it and it became a firm fixture in the calendars for independent delis and farm shops. Around that time Purple Love Week grew into a Deli of the Year competition. We didn’t do the judging for it – to remain impartial as a supplier we opened it up to every deli and farm shop regardless of whether we worked with them, and we had judges such as the head buyer at Fortnum & Mason, food journalists and previous winners. It was a huge project for us – we had somewhere in the region of 500-600 entrants. We were approached by William Reed, who owns The Grocer magazine and also holds the Farm Shop & Deli Show. I told them about my desire to do an awards scheme similar to theirs but not wanting to clash, and suggested incorporating Deli of the Year into the show – which is exactly what we did.
do. No two delis are the same – there’s always an expression of the owners’ individuality and personality. That’s what shines through, and that’s what the judges are looking for. We want to see the personality of the owner, and that they take themselves very professionally – they have to really understand their product, not just buy whatever is cheapest. An understanding of where value is created and a genuine effort to do things differently is really important too, rather than just trying to bash multiples over the head. Multiples are a fact of life, we have to co-exist, and delis absolutely can exist alongside multiples. Sometimes the best place to open a deli is right next to a supermarket. People go to delis because they want a different customer experience, and that’s what the environment you create is all about – it all comes down to people. Judges will be looking at the difference the people behind the deli make to the customer experience.
What will the judges be looking for in the Deli of the Year entries? Signs that the person who is in charge (and the whole team at the deli), genuinely, sincerely cares about what they
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07/04/2017 11:41