The independent food shop is all but dead following a long and sad decline caused by large supermarket chains, according to Mr John Shepherd, chairman of the British Guild of Fine Food Retailers.
He told an international symposium on speciality foods in Kinsale, Co Cork, yesterday it seemed sometimes that the only people who like speciality food shops "are over 60, who hanker after the specialists of pre-war Britain but who are catered for by `airport retailing syndrome'; unreal shops, precious mini-theme parks, peddling nostalgia".
There were an estimated 20,000 independent speciality food shops in the UK 35 years ago and fewer than 3,000 now, due primarily to "the march of the large supermarkets". Speciality foods were described as high value/quality produce, usually made by small-scale producers.
Mr Shepherd, who owns Shepherd Foods and Partridges of Sloane Street, London, said he understood the epidemic was spreading to Europe and there were signs it was occurring in Ireland. Such outlets were refusing to lie down, he told the Bord Biahosted event, attended by 200 international speciality food buyers and representatives of 72 Irish food companies.
Customers were bored with shopping, and needed excitement and human contact. "Value, quality and choice are given, but excellence in something else, even just one thing, must be achieved."
He said "The new independent [shop] will have to convince the new customers who are demanding, time-pressurised, informed, fickle and more price-aware than ever before. Being nice to people and dealing with customer complaints is regrettably not enough anymore."
The restaurateur, chef and television personality, Antony Worrall Thompson, said that in the past people ate organic food without realising it. It was before the time of man-made fertilisers or pesticides. There was a need to go back to those organic times, but it was difficult for organic producers to compete.
There was massive choice now but few varieties. Where once there were 200 potato varieties, there were now just a handful.
"People want flavour in their tomato, not a perfect orb. I can say for myself, beauty is more than skin-deep. A plum should not have crunch, it should be soft with the juices flowing down your chin."
The next 10 years, once consumer quality concerns were fully embraced, would be "the decade of time", Mr Michael Duffy, Bord Bia's chief executive, said.
"Western societies are becoming increasingly time-pressurised and mobile . . . The average time spent cooking each day has fallen from three hours in the 1940s to an estimated 20 minutes each day."
With the rise in eating food outside the home and the wish for convenience came demand for "food service" and variety. Irish speciality food producers, currently employing 1,500 people and generating nearly £100 million a year, needed to take a much greater hold in that marketplace.
