Retail Memo: Meet Waitrose's Two-Legged 'Hog Blogger'; He's An Integral Part of the UK Food Retailer's 'Save Our Bacon' Campaign

No, United Kingdom supermarket chain Waitrose's "Hog Blogger" isn't a real hog. But he is a real pig farmer, as well as being the upscale food retailer's chronicler of all things porcine on its website.

You might say Waitrose's "Hog Blogger" is the "whole hog." He's 33-year old Fergus Howie, a second generation pig farmer from the English countryside town of Essex.

About his recent debut as a blogger in February, 2008, second-generation pig farmer Howie says:

"I thoroughly enjoy pig farming, it's great fun. As a farmer, I take tremendous pride knowing my pigs have had a lovely life. Our Wicks Manor bacon is dry cured by hand and smoked over oak and beech - in my experience, people are happy to pay a little extra for good quality. I'm proud to be the Save Our Bacon hog blogger. Over the coming months I'll be sharing my tales of life on the farm and I look forward to hearing what you think." Waitrose stores feature the farmer's Wicks Manor bacon mentioned above.

The full-time hog farmer and part time Waitrose blogger is part of the supermarket chain's "origins of our food" policy and program. Under that policy, Waitrose has three principles regarding the foods--especially locally-produced food products--it sells in its 165 upscale food stores and supermarkets in the United Kingdom.

Those three principles are: knowing the provenance of the foods it sells in its stores; food traceability, not only knowing where it comes from but keeping track of its origins in a quantitative manner; and responsible sourcing, which the retailer says means buying locally-grown and produced products whenever possible, along with making sustainable and Fair Trade foods a priority in its procurement and merchandising practices.


When it comes to hogs and pork (bacon, sausage, chops), Waitrose has launched a local foods campaign called "Save Our Bacon," which is designed to save, protect and sustain the British hog farming industry, which has been challenged and threatened by a variety of factors like economics, urbanization, animal disease and the rise of cheaper imports of pork products to the UK.

The Waitrose "Save our Bacon" campaign and the retailer's policy of selling local pork products is where Waitrose's "Hog Blogger" comes in. The full-time hog farmer, part-time blogger, who's local hog farm supplies bacon and other pork products to Waitrose, posts once a week or so on his blog, depending we imagine on how busy he is on the hog farm. [Click here to read and learn all about the grocer's "Save our Bacon" local foods campaign.

Below is the "Hog Blogger's (who remember is a first-time blogger so be gentle) inaugural post when he kicked off the blog on February 20 of this year on the Waitrose website:

Life on the farm
Published: 20 February 2008 20:18:06

Hello this is my first ever blog so stick with me. I’m a pig farmer, Dad started the pig farm about 45 years ago, I was brought up with pigs and my brothers and I used to ride them as small children (Dad said it gave them exercise and would make them better mothers), it was a bit like bucking bronco, and you had to watch where you fell. Our pigs are all farm assured as you would expect, and live...

You can read the "Hog Blogger's" latest post titled, "Who's the Boss," along with all his others to date at the blog here.

Waitrose prides itself on personally knowing every British farmer who supplies local pork, beef, poultry, eggs and dairy products to the upscale supermarket chain.

In fact, all of the beef the grocer sells in its stores comes from British Farms, for example. All of the sausages sold in the stores also come from British farms. Waitrose's bacon comes primarily from UK farms but some comes from Denmark as well. You can read more about the grocer's meat procurement here.

Waitrose, which was founded as a single small grocery shop in west London in 1904 called Waite Rose & Taylor and has been owned by the John Lewis Partnership since 1937, also owns and operates its own farm, the 4,000 acre Leckford Estate,which supplies free-range hen eggs, honey, flour, apples, fresh mushrooms and much more to Waitrose stores.

This weekend, which is the back holiday in the UK, Waitrose is holding a food faire for local vendors and customers at its Leckford Estate. The grocer also conducts regular tours of the estate farm and has a shop on premises which sells fresh produce and other foods produced on the farm.

In terms of the "Save our Bacon" campaign, in addition to pig farmer and "Hog Blogger" Howie, Waitrose has built a strong coalition to move the campaign forward in the UK. The coalition includes celebrity chefs, foodies, farmers, politicians, food industry types and many others. [You can read a recent "Save the Bacon" campaign update from Waitrose here.]

The campaign's strategy is to build local consumer awareness around the issue of saving Britain's hog-raising industry, as well as to promote sales of local pork, and to create laws and policies which will sustain and grow local hog farming and related industries and businesses.

Waitrose regularly writes about the issue and campaign in its popular consumer magazine Waitrose Illustrated and even has a "Save our Bacon" pledge here online which consumers can sign. There's also a "piggy quiz" at the link, where you can test your "pig knowledge."

Meanwhile, pig farmer and "Hog Blogger" Fergus Howie's last blog post was May 14, which is nearly two weeks ago. In other words, the world's only full-time pig farmer/supermarket chain blogger of all things pig (or the whole hog) is due for a new post.

In fact, he's a little late, based on his normal schedule. However, we understand mid-to-late May is a busy time on the pig farm, so we understand.

But we do hope Fergus Howie can break away from his work with the real pigs, so that "Hog Blogger" fans like us, who miss "pigging out" on his posts about life on the pig farm, can get a fresh taste of his latest comings and goings about life on the farm.

To be honest though, we haven't eaten much pork since discovering and regularly reading the "Hog Blogger" blog in March.

Local Foods Retailing Memo: Tesco is Making Stronger Commitment to Local Foods Sourcing, Marketing and Merchandising in the United Kingdom

Tesco, the world's number three retailer and the number one food and grocery sales market share leader in its home country of the United Kingdom with about 32% of the nation's total retail food sales, is launching what appears to be the biggest local foods sourcing and merchandising program in the UK.

Last year, Tesco opened five new local foods' regional buying and marketing offices in the UK cities of York, Leicester, Plymouth, Peterborough and Horsham, making it the first supermarket chain in the UK to develop such an extensive regionally-based structure designed to procure and market locally-based food and grocery products.

Each of the five local offices has a buyer and marketing person who's jobs are to find and procure high-quality, locally-produced products to sell in Tesco's UK stores.

As part of its local foods procurement and marketing program, Tesco also has started holding "Meet the Farmer" local foods events in its UK supermarkets.

Since Tesco launched the program, called "Local Sourcing", last year, the retailer says it's five regional UK offices have thus far launched over 1,00 new, local food and grocery product lines in its stores, bringing the total number of locally-produced products the retailers sells currently to about 3,000. Tesco also says it's added 90 new local suppliers to its vendor list.

Tesco UK also has an executive in charge of the local sourcing program, Emily Shamma. Ms. Shamma says UK consumers want to buy quality local food and to support local producers by doing so.

Tesco customers also want to buy more local foods to cut down on food miles and the resulting carbon emissions, Shamma recently told Natural~Specialty Foods Memo.

Further, UK consumers see locally-produced foods as having overall superior quality to food products imported from elsewhere, as well as liking the idea they can know more about how the local products are produced (because the goods are local) compared to imported food and grocery products.

Tesco plans to further grow its local foods' sourcing and marketing program, according to Ms. Shamma. She says the retailer's goal is to sell more locally-produced food and grocery product lines than any other UK food retailer.

To further this aim, Tesco also has set up a fund designed to help small, local farmers expand their businesses. This is similar to what U.S.-based natural foods' retailer Whole Foods Market, Inc. is doing for small farmers in the United States as a way to promote small-scale agriculture and local food production. Tesco has put ~1 million-p ($1.95 billion U.S.) in the fund to use to help give local farmers and producers a leg up in expanding their operations.

The British retailer also has created a local technical team in each of the five regional offices. The team offers and provides free help to the local producers in the areas of manufacturing, packaging, quality assurance and marketing. part of the reason for creating these dedicated technical teams is so Tesco can make sure the local producers have the means available to meet the retailer's overall product quality control standards for the goods it sells in its UK stores.

Samma also says Tesco doesn't just want to make local foods available in its stores to wealthy consumers. Rather, the goal is to make local fresh produce for example more affordable so that it's available for UK consumers of all income levels, she says.

Tesco's current goal is to sell ~400 million-p ($780 million U.S.) worth of locally-produced food and grocery products in its stores this year, with a longer-term goal of selling ~1 billion-p ($1.95 billion U.S.) worth of the locally-produced bounty by 2011.

Tesco PLC had gross sales internationally of about $84 billion U.S. in 2007.

The locally-produced products Tesco has introduced in its stores just since last year when it opened the five new regional buying offices range from fresh produce like Yorkshire cucumbers and locally-raised fresh meat, pork and poultry products, to locally-produced ice cream and beer. The local foods initiative is across all store product categories, from fresh and frozen, to refrigerated and shelf-stable.

Tesco's main competitors in the UK--Wal-Mart-owned Asda, Sainsbury's, Morrisons, Waitrose, the Co-op and a couple others--also are to various degrees involved in local foods sourcing and marketing programs. Besides Tesco, probably Waitrose and Sainsbury's, followed by the Co-op, are the second, third and fourth most aggressive in local foods procurement and selling in their respective stores in the UK.

None of these competitors however has created as aggressive and as comprehensive local foods program as Tesco has with its five fully-staffed regional offices. And perhaps they don't need to. There are many ways to procure and sell locally-produced foods in their stores.

However, based on the fact Tesco has added 1,000 new locally-produced products in its stores, and 90 new local vendors to its roster in less than a year, it seems the regional buying office concept complete with the in-house technical teams is working well for the retailer--and for the local farmers and food producers who thus far have been able to get their goods into Tesco's UK supermarkets, which exist in nearly every city and town in the nation.

Sainsbury's and Waitrose both are increasing their local foods procurement and merchandising efforts in the UK, particularly upscale Waitrose. In per-capita size, Waitrose, which is much smaller than Tesco, is arguably the leader in local foods selling in the UK.

Wal-Mart-owned Asda recently announced it would be putting much more emphasis on local foods procuring and merchandising in its UK stores than it has up to now.

Local foods selling is becoming an international trend for Wal-Mart. The mega retailer has focused strongly since last year on procuring and selling local Canadian foods, especially fresh produce and meats and poultry in its Supercenters in that nation.

Wal-Mart also is stepping up its local foods merchandising in the U.S., the retailer's top market. It's stocking more fresh, local produce, meats and poultry, as well as more grocery products of all kinds produced locally throughout its U.S. market regions.