The Enfield Food Gatherer by Emma Lundie

24th June 2014

Last month saw the launch of The Food Gatherer. A brand new online local food shopping hub and home delivery service, exclusively for The London Borough of Enfield, including Palmers Green, Southgate & Winchmore Hill.

The Food Gatherer enables you to shop from the best of our borough’s independent specialist food shops and producers via thefoodgatherer.com and then have the prepared produce collected and delivered to your door, all in one shop!

So why do we need this service? We’re lucky in the borough of Enfield to have some great specialist shops with shopkeepers who really know the produce they’re selling and their customers. Sadly, despite best intentions, many of us don’t shop in them as often as we might - why? Often, there simply isn’t enough time, the opening hours may not suit our working lives and the shops are widely spread across the borough. The prospect of parking can put us off making that effort too. Conversely, supermarket shopping is easy and ordering online is for many of us a hassle free option and is a fast growing retail trend.

It seems to me that in order to compete and keep our high streets alive shops will have to adapt to changing lifestyles and habits of residents, but for most shops, offering online shopping and home delivery isn’t an option with often limited manpower and resources. This is where The Food Gatherer steps in. By bringing our local shops together and harnessing the power of the internet The Food Gatherer can offer that convenience of online shopping and deliver the foods from your local shops and producers to your homes and workplaces.

When you order via The Food Gatherer you also get great quality food and drink, much of it locally produced. Imagine receiving your order of fresh artisan bread from the award winning Holtwhites’ Bakery, fresh vegetables – some locally grown at Forty Hall Farm, fantastic quality meat from Peatchey butcher in N21 and delicious Turkish foods such as hummus, meatballs and bulghur rice – handmade by Ebru, who learned how to cook from her mother, growing up in Palmers Green and then turned her knowledge and passion for food into a food business. Doesn’t that sound tempting?

The Food Gatherer has had terrific support from both shops and residents and our pioneering Food Gatherer shoppers are embracing the service wholeheartedly. One customer, Dani Gavriel told us;

“I absolutely love the whole concept. The site has enabled to me to do my shopping without having to get in to each store where parking and time can be an issue. I enjoyed selecting items from my local butcher, baker and food suppliers and the website is very user-friendly. The service was 10/10 and I’m already excited about my next order!” So, I invite you to take a look at our site www.thefoodgatherer.com and meet more of The Food Gatherer’s shopkeepers and I hope you will be local shopping with us soon. You can also join us on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram for insider info, great recipes and meet new shopkeepers as they join us too!

Emma Lundie

Founder of The Food Gatherer

Winner of The Enfield Innovation Awards 2012 www.thefoodgatherer.com sign up to the mailing list at: hello@thefoodgatherer.com