Global retail giant Tesco has revealed that the sales of locally sourced products have soared 30 per cent in the calendar year to date.
According to Retail Week, the grocer initiated a strategy two years ago to ramp up its local produce offer and now stocks products such as East Anglian rapeseed oil, Cornish brie, Hampshire watercress and Northumbrian black-faced lamb. This week its first outdoor crop of Jersey Royal potatoes will go on sale a month earlier than usual.
“Customers want to know where their food is from and they want to support local businesses. Last summer we sold 5,400 packs of local watercress every week in Hampshire stores – almost twice the national sales figure,” quoted Lucy Neville-Rolfe, executive director, Tesco in the report.
“Our aim is to ensure that locally sourced produce becomes part of our mainstream offer to all our customers,” she added.
