OPINION: From the shop floor: A good year for fruit

Retailer Gary Pilsworth writes in his monthly column about the ongoing building work near his store and how he’s having a successful year with local fruit.

All the building work in the village has currently been held up as tests have revealed things of archeological interest. I’m not going to progress too much with all our work until they’ve got under way.

It could be months before it all gets started properly so everything is in limbo. We’ve been looking at bringing hot food in, and I’ve got some of the equipment ready to go, I’m just going to wait until we find out exactly what’s going on. 

Business has been very good, and I think the kids going back to school has helped a lot. 

We’ve got a new supplier for our fruit and veg. They go to the London markets every day, so it’s really fresh. We’ve got an old-fashioned trolley outside the shop for fruit and veg, which is working really well. 

A lot of the seasonal English fruits are selling strongly making it our best year yet for fruit. Strawberries, raspberries and blackberries are going great. We have a guy locally who picks blackberries and puts them in punnets – you don’t see many places doing that. We also have end-of-season runner beans from the local gardening club. 

Although we’re still selling summer fruit and veg, people are looking forward to winter. I’m selling lots of logs, as well as compost, with people planting their seeds and winter baskets. 

We have a new EPoS system in place, which seems like it’s going well. It’s early days yet, and I’ll talk about it more next time, but so far it looks like it’s working.