[00:00:00] Stephen: I've been particularly blessed with all the guests that I've had on the Wow at Work podcast, but today's Guest is particularly inspiring. Today's Guest is Ruth Anslow, who spent a large part of her career working in the corporate world, and discovered that her values and the values of the corporate world were misaligned. And rather than just sitting tight and playing out her career within that corporate world, she decided to be quite radical. And she decided to take on that corporate world, and she decided to set up her own supermarket. The supermarket she has is called HISBE, and the story that she's going to explain to us is really interesting.

[00:00:37] HISBE stands for How it Should Be, and this is a wonderful story about somebody who has become a fly in the ointment for bigger corporations to be able to just look at how we could possibly do it a little bit differently. And if we do it a little bit differently, who benefits and who gains, and what does it look like? This is a beautiful, beautiful episode. Enjoy today's episode of the Wow at Work podcast.

[00:00:59] 

[00:01:02] Stephen: I'm always delighted. And today we're gonna talk about things that like, many of us don't sort of recognize or see or when we go out shopping, but I'm not just talking about shopping. What I'm really interested is how we can create a better world with a greater future, with greater vision and think progressively like 10, 20 years into the future. But before we even get into that and we start to discuss all the great stuff you guys do at HISBE, can you tell me what's your background? What led you to forming HISBE?

[00:01:26] Ruth: I guess what led me to forming HISBE is I got pissed off with Tesco. You know, I, I did an international business degree and then I went on to a graduate scheme at Unilever, and I was 15 years at Unilever and Sara Lee. So working on big brands.

[00:01:40] And one of the big themes was negotiating with the big supermarkets. So I used to negotiate in the sales team with the big supermarkets to get our products in. And I just kind of got to see firsthand how supermarkets do business and the impact that that has. So the problem is that we have you know, the current food system is unsustainable. So a third of all carbon emissions are created by the food system. The way we produce, consume, distribute, store food globally. And it's a very globalized, industrialized system, and supermarkets are enormously powerful within that. 

[00:02:15] So logic says that if we are to have a sustainable food industry, supermarkets must evolve. So my starting point was, Oh my god, look at what the impacts are of the way supermarkets do business. And I started researching it with my sister. And we could see that they're really run for short term profit and they're squeezing profit margins all the time. So, you know, there's massive exploitation of suppliers here and abroad. A lot of British farmers as well as producers from all over the world or countries in the world that suffer as, as a way of them doing business and screwing down price.

[00:02:48] There's mass exploitation and industrialization of animal production, which is unhealthy and environmentally unsound as well as very unnecessarily cruel on the animals. There's, you know, huge environmental impact from industrialized food system. In terms of pollution. I mean, look at Covid. There's biodiversity loss. There's, Supermarkets come into towns and take over high streets and you lose local businesses. They don't pay people properly. So as taxpayers, we are subsidizing supermarket workers' wages because they have to rely on tax credits cuz they're not paid enough.

[00:03:23] And the up the upshot is for me, Steve, is that bad food has become normal because bad business has become normal. So the way supermarkets do business is too short term. It cannot stand, It cannot be this way in the future if we are gonna have a sustainable food system. So yeah, it started with just getting really grumpy at the way things are, how it is. 

[00:03:48] So my sister had a very different professional background, but we got together and we went, Let's look at how it is. And we looked at how it is, how the food system is, the role that the supermarkets play, how they work, and we decided to create our vision, articulate a vision of how it should be. So HISBE, my business stands for How it Should Be, because we've taken the supermarket model and we've gone, That's how it is, and this is how it should be. And our dream really is to pursue how it should be. Maybe we'll land on how it could be. 

[00:04:17] Stephen: With this idea in mind, so you've been in the corporate world for 15 years. You see the practices that had gone on with that idea in your mind that things could be different, can you tell me how you brought that from a thought inside of your head or an idea into fruition to having, you've now got two stores, but even to get to the point of where you got to the first store. How do you even open a store and? 

[00:04:35] Ruth: We had no idea, you know, so I was out in Barcelona. I was an expat in Barcelona for Sara Lee and working very hard on their objectives and plans, and I kind of got disgruntled and aware that I wanted to change, but it was a slow process. So there was maybe a year, in sort of 2018, 2019, where I was realizing I needed to do something else, that it wasn't fulfilling. We also knew that we were being taken over, the company was being taken over by another company, by Proctor and Gamble, and that we would be made redundant and you know, move on.

[00:05:07] So I was on one hand getting disgruntled with what I was doing, and on the other hand, I was thinking about how do I invent my future? What do I want to do? And I got really into this idea that I could create a business that did something good as well as made money and made a job for myself. 

[00:05:23] And at the same time, my sister was thinking about that stuff. So there was probably 12 month period of talking to my sister. She came out to live with me for a while, creating the values that we, that mattered to us in a job. And this was all way before we decided to open a supermarket, But we started thinking about what we cared about, what our values were. And I was reading very voracious reading, read everything by Anita Roddick. Got really inspired by her and Daniel Pink and Malcolm Gladwell and forward thinkers on what business can be. Not just a money vehicle, but doing more than that.

[00:05:55] And so when it came time to move back to the UK and repatriate, which was August, 2010, Amy and I knew what we were gonna do. We were gonna start a new supermarket chain. But it was a process of thinking that through, We didn't start with supermarkets, but the concept was how do you transform the food industry? And we thought of lots of ideas, but we landed on the supermarket is the way to do it, because we need to engage shoppers. We need to have a face for it that all the produce comes to and engage shoppers. Oh, okay. So we need to start a supermarket chain. But honestly, we had no idea how to do it. We just knew it had to be done, you know?

[00:06:34] So, by November we'd constituted the company and we spent a long time putting together a business plan. And it took us three years to get that first store open. The big, the hardest thing was finding the right premises, actually. That's always the hardest thing that took 18 months. But business planning and money raising and building a brand. We built a voice online. We were really into social media, which is very, was very different back then. Twitter was new back then. And we started to use social media and created a platform for ourselves. And we went out in Brighton and met everybody that we could in this space and linked with them and learned from them. And so, yeah, it was very hard, but it was about learning from scratch how to do that.

[00:07:12] Stephen: Wow. And how did it feel like the very first day that you opened up the doors at that store?

[00:07:16] Ruth: It was amazing. It was one of the best days of my life because it was so exciting and so, we were overwhelmed that we'd done it. It's a really big shop. People, you know, imagine a small shop, but it's a, the size of a small Tesco, and so it's a big deal. But I was at the same time as being completely delighted, I was broken. Like, Amy and I were so frazzled from this, you know? We joke because we were, you know, we were drinking red wine and smoking fags and dealing with the stress. And she had lost two stone and I'd put two stone on. And honestly, you know, we were at the most stressed, anxious point of my life ever because it had been really, really hard to do this.

[00:07:54] And it, it brought up everything. Was in our way, which was mostly in our heads. But I'd come from this corporate world where I wasn't happy there at the end, but things are mapped out and they're easy for, they're done for you. You know, there's no real risk, there's no real personal sacrifice apart from your time. So yeah, to come out of that and be inventing everything from scratch was a massive challenge and a massive, I needed a massive change in the way I operate and think. And that didn't happen by the time we opened our first shop. It was a long, slow process over about six years.

[00:08:30] Stephen: So when you walk into a HISBE, if I was to walk into a HISBE store tomorrow, What would I experience? What does it look like? What's different?

[00:08:35] Ruth: Okay, so yeah, it's very bright and very blue. So we've got this really bright, strong turquoise color, which is my favorite color. And the first thing you would do, it's a big shop and you've got total line of sight across the store. You can see across the whole store. The lighting's great. There's no big aisles that you can't see around. It's about having line of sight across the store. And that's already puts people in a more relaxed mode. Cuz a lot of people in regular. Supermarket shopping mode are anxious. They wanna get in, they wanna get out, they wanna get it done. It's a chore. It's hard work. They have to navigate people. And it's stressful because there's so much range and choice and it's big and crazy. So our objective is to switch people into a more mindful, conscious mode and out of that stress.

[00:09:17] So you walk in, it's very spacious, you can see everything. There's a lot of color, a lot of engaging kind of images to look at. And then you walk straight into fruit and veg because that says everything about what we are. It's mostly local. If it's not local, it's organic or fair trade. And it's abundant and it's all loose. It's not in plastic. So straight away you kind of see, seeing some of the differences in the product. So you've got all the, all the fruit and veg and you walk past the bread and you walk past the chillers with the meat and the fish and all the dairy stuff. So yeah, we do all the, you, you see the fresh food first. We do all the fresh food you'd expect, but it's all locally and high welfare sourced. So it's within 30 miles of the shop. I'm exaggerating is about 53% of it is local and if it can't be local, it's from further afield in Britain.

[00:10:05] And then you'll also notice things like cans of soup and teas and you know, anything that's groceries. There are no big brands in there. There's no Nestle, there's no Mars Barss. There's no hot Pot Noodles, there's no Wheatabix, there's no big brands, supermarket brands. Cause a lot of those brands are supporting an unsustainable way. So what we do instead is we choose the most sustainable, responsible source products we can find in each product category. And you'll have a choice of maybe three or four brands, not 200. So it's simpler but it's thoughtfully sourced.

[00:10:37] Then you'll walk a bit further and you'll notice that we've got big rows of loose goods. You can buy everything from pasta to rice to chocolate buttons to sweets, pulses, nuts, seeds. You can buy it loose by weight. So it's really convenient and that way we cut out packaging. We just do compostable paper bags if you don't bring your own tubs and stuff. And it's cheaper so you know, you can buy 20p's worth of rice or you know, if you live on your own that's quite handy. We've got a lot of students in our area. You can buy a small amount of something and you can buy one on your, one carrot, 20 piece worth of rice and a couple of well high welfare sausages and it's really reasonable price if you shop like that.

[00:11:18] So yeah, we have a whole loose section. And then at the back there's these taps where you can get liquids, so you can refill cleaning, liquids, shampoo, body wash. And again, they're all brands. They're eco brands. They're brands that have put a lot of innovation and thought into making eco-friendly formulations that are still effective cleaning products.

[00:11:38] And then you are at the back of the store then, and then you've come round to the front. You pass a load more of these bulk dispensers. And then you come round to the cafe at the front and you've got a cafe. You've got the tools and the cafe, which sources and cells all locally made cakes and treats and the coffee's brewed locally and it's really kind of a showcase for food that's local, packaging free, high welfare, carefully sourced, and ethical. The idea we had is to put all the good stuff in under one roof and make it accessible.

[00:12:09] Stephen: Do you know what you remind me of? I'm just thinking the customers that first turned up to your store on the first day, not quite knowing what to expect when they walked into the store. Or customers that may arrive not knowing what the HISBE model is. It reminds me of where my brother lives there's a craft beer pub down the end of his road. And I remember being in there once with my brother having a drink and the bar had only opened up so, and the idea of having solely craft beer pubs that don't sell any the big brands was very new. And I remember this, this guy who must have been local to the area. Anyway, he walks into the bar and he goes Uh, pint of Budweiser, please. And the barnan goes, Eh, no, we don't serve Budweiser. What? Okay uh, I'll have a point of Carlsburg. And we don't do Carlsberg. A point of Carling? No, we don't do Carling. Oh, forgot. And I just remember him walking back out again, not even questioning or asking then what can I get? Or whatever, you know, because it seems completely new. Did you have that same issue with a lot of your customers arriving, expecting other products, but not being able to?

[00:13:02] Ruth: Yeah, it, That's right. I mean, it basically, supermarkets have taught us that they're the be, they're the best and every, and they're cheap and everything else is overpriced and not good. So, you know, you kind of had a lot of people looking and going, Oh, that looks interesting, but it's not Tesco, so I can't afford it, but not actually coming in. And then that's a big major barrier, that perception of price, that's not always accurate. And then there's people that come in and they don't recognize any of the brands. And some people stop and look and investigate and other people just go around the shop and pick up bits they do know. And then other people are put off and leave.

[00:13:37] But over the years as a lot of the trends that we are into, I call them trends, you know, they're things that have to happen. But a lot of this interest in local and un unpackaged stuff, and, you know, different kinds of suppliers and brands has grown, so people are giving it more time and giving it a fairer look. You know, they're not expecting us to be Tesco. They're not expecting to have Mars bars and Pot Noodles. They get that it's different. And that's become more normal now. But yeah, at the beginning it did put people off for sure.

[00:14:06] Stephen: You're a breath of fresh air because I think about all the recycling that I've, since we've started to recycle in the last, I'd say about 10 or 11 years or so, recycling has become something that we all do as well. I've realized how much plastics, and how much cardboards and how much wrappings that I get when I go for my normal shop. And every couple of weeks there's just a huge amount that has to go back into recycling. Then I always wonder, is the recycling going to where it should do? And. I feel I can't go to a store now and I can't buy a product without having to have it wrapped. Courgettes in particular. I have to see two courgettes on a tray wrapped in plastic wrapping before I can take it home. I It's harder now to pick a courgette and just bring it home. It's harder for lots of products. 

[00:14:45] And it always reminds me of, You mentioned that you spend time in Barcelona. When I go to Spain, I go to Italy and I go into a, you know, a green grocery shop, and there's just fresh fruit and vegetables, and they're easy to buy in a paper bag, and you bring it home. how come this has become such a difficult model in the UK and Ireland?

[00:15:01] Ruth: Oh, that's a great question. I think, I mean, it's all driven by Ultimately it's driven by the supermarkets wanting to make more profit. So you know, they cover stuff in plastic and move it around in plastic cuz it lasts longer. It's easier to manage, stuff get, doesn't get bruised. Plastic during the seventies and eighties became a ubiquitous products that are very, very cheap to make and produce, and it's a byproduct of the petrol industry. You know, it's, very versatile and very useful and it started to creep in and become normal to wrap stuff in this way. And it's helps the supermarkets run their businesses and it helps them make money.

[00:15:36] And so now everything, I mean, everything is in plastic and most of it gets thrown away when you're finished with it, except it doesn't go away. It goes into landfill or it ends up in the sea because most people don't recycle it. And even when you do try to recycle it, often recycling's not as good as we think it is. It's doesn't get somewhere because we haven't, in the uk, I dunno about island, but in the UK we haven't got a very good systems for recycling. And you know, through the seventies and eighties and nineties when we should have been building those systems, we were way behind most other European countries.

[00:16:09] So, yeah, it's, it is a real problem and it's just, yeah. These, this has become normalized by big business. It's the supermarkets and it's also, the products that make the best profit for their producers and the supermarkets are the things that are really cheaply made. You know, they're high in cheap fat, high in cheap sugar, high in cheap salt, and wrapped in a container. That's what they want to sell us. Because it's all cheap inputs. You know, you can get hold of very, very cheap fats and cereals and sugar and salt are all highly commoditized products. And when you put them in food, they're addictive to people.

[00:16:44] Biologically we haven't moved on for like millennia, like we still our bodies. If you don't, if you don't switch off your autopilot, your autopilot wants you to snack on high fat, high salt and high sugar products because that's what our biology is wired for. But actually it's not what best for our bodies. But the supermarkets and the big food companies make a lot of money by satisfying that need and by making bad food normal, it's a great big business model for them. It's very profitable.

[00:17:12] Stephen: Yeah, the buy one get one free. Never seems to come in the organic products.

[00:17:15] Ruth: No. No, exactly. And they don't, you know, they put most effort behind the stuff that makes the big profit.

[00:17:22] Stephen: but I love the idea of being able to come to your store and being able to get the refill of the shampoo or the detergent on whatever. That makes complete sense. Or even buy the amount of rice or whatever it is, the beans that I need rather than having to buy a huge, big packet. Cuz I could be somebody who lives on my own or, you know, have larger or lesser needs than other people as well. And we end up with all this waste that sits inside of our,

[00:17:43] Ruth: Exactly. And also we've got so many, I dunno about you, so many containers at home. Like I've got so many Tupperwares and containers and they will outlive all of us. You know, we might as well use them. We could use them our whole lives. We could use the same six containers our whole lives, you know?

[00:17:58] Stephen: I think there's talk of, you know, about 800 years of life in a Tupperware container, which is pretty impressive.

[00:18:03] Ruth: Exactly, and, you know, we measure this. So since we started our customers actually have saved 880,000 bits of plastic by buying our fruit and veg and our loose stuff. And that's just one shop, so imagine if everyone did that, or everyone did a bit of it. 

[00:18:18] Stephen: And it's incredible. You don't have your bread hidden away at the back of the shop like most stores do, cuz you go in to buy your two apples and you want also to get some soda bread or something like that. And you have to walk to the back of the store. And then before, you know, you buy lots of other products in the way. I presume that's the idea behind it. But you have everything together.

[00:18:33] So when you, you, you opened up in 2013, the doors opened for the first time. Customers began to recognize how, how slow or how quick did it begin to take off?

[00:18:42] Ruth: Well actually, uh, the Brighton store, we had more people through the door than we expected, right from the beginning. I mean, we'd, we'd had a long run up. We knew a lot of people in Brighton and we'd created this kind of rallying cry for a new type of business. And it was you know, it was great. We built a crowd and we did crowd funding. So we had a lot of people. The problem we had was profit. You know, pricing everything properly. Making sure that we were keeping hold of the money that came through the tills. That was really, really hard. We had a lot of expenses and we didn't have the systems in place to manage it. We do now, but it was, yeah, right from the beginning we had tons of customers.

[00:19:17] Stephen: So at the start then, you just mentioned pricing. How, How did you decide, decide the individual prices of everything as well? Cause you must have had hundreds to thousands of products, and you're trying to decide what should you charge for each of them?

[00:19:28] Ruth: Yeah, so we had about three and a half thousand products and we had to, we had to make a certain percentage, we had to make a 32% margin to survive. So we kind of had to build this model where we looked at the, all the products and they all would have to add up to 32%. But we made deliberately some things cheaper like fresh fruit and veg, and then other things more expensive. So if you buy a slice of cake or coffee from the cafe, we are getting a nice slice of money that helps us keep the price on the onions and the carrots accessible for people. So, you know, that's, there's a fine line with making the money that we need and pricing. 

[00:20:04] But yeah, we, when we first started, we launched everything at just below the recommended retail price. So we were keenly priced. It's not the same nowadays because of prices going up all the time. But we've always been as cheap as we can afford to be, and made um, just enough to keep going. So yeah, and I get criticized for that sometimes in some quarters. But yeah we've, we've made it as accessible as we can possibly make it. The idea is that it's a fair price for everyone. 

[00:20:30] And we talk about where the money goes. So if you spend a pound in HISBE, 67p goes to the supplier. And that's revolutionary, because in a normal supermarket, 9 or 10p goes to the end supplier. So we have, because we have short supply chains, the suppliers get most of the money. And that it, that changes everything. If you give the supplier most of the money, they can make better food right?

[00:20:53] Stephen: I was only talking about this last night. This is really interesting. There was some sort of a documentary that came out, God, about 20, 30 years ago called Mange Tout or something like that. I dunno if it's fully seen. But it was the idea of all the mange tout that was in Tesco's, I think came from a, a small African country. And one of the buyers from Tesco's actually went out to the small African country to visit where the mange tout was, was made in what Tesco's used to sell it for, I dunno, 69p, whatever, I don't know what the price was, but the supplier, the people who grew it, used to get 2 or 3p I think it was per packet. And then the profits went to Tesco's.

[00:21:25] And when they arrived out there, all the people from the area had these little Tesco flags and they all waved them. Cause they actually taught Tesco was a country. But the buyer was out there to actually undercut them by another penny to tell them that um, he was taking another penny back from that. And how damaging must that be and how much difficult it must be to have people bound by you know, a huge organization telling them that you need to cut prices. 

[00:21:49] Or even when it comes to, I was talking to a farmer a couple of years ago and I said to him, There's another big multinational in Ireland. And I said, Well, when they have like, you know, cut the price of carrots down to whatever, 29p for pound when it was originally something else or whatever, you know? I said, Who takes the cut? And he says, Well, I do, I am informed that if I want to remain a supplier. Is that the case?

[00:22:09] Ruth: Yeah, that's normal practice. They do all sorts of things like that. They'll place orders with, say strawberry season comes, they'll place orders with three strawberry suppliers and then make the decision right at the last minute and cancel the other two based on price. So, you know, it's normal that, you know, sometimes farmers, if they get an order canceled it's cheaper and faster to plough the food back in than it is to pick it. And they've wasted a whole crop. And yeah the Tesco and the big supermarkets want to put all the risk on the supplier. It doesn't how matter, matter how small the supplier is. They want all the risk on the supplier and they want to be able to dictate price and to change their minds anytime they want. So they'll create agreements with people and break them all the time, or they'll create agreements and then another buyer comes in. So yeah, the practice is to screw down price with suppliers as much as possible.

[00:22:59] And during the nineties, particularly when I was in the industry, it was the big thing. It was all about price competition, taking pennies off the pound, and getting suppliers dependent on the big guys. And it worked.

[00:23:14] Stephen: And do enough shoppers do enough of us when we go into stores, shop at a conscience are, do we just go in and we switch off and we just, we're just looking for the deepest product. 

[00:23:23] Ruth: Everybody's on autopilot. It's a chore. Most people don't enjoy shopping and they wanna get in and out as quickly as possible. People don't think about the food, where it's come from and how it's made. Some do, but, and a growing number of people do, but most people don't, and that's how they get away with it, of course.

[00:23:40] Stephen: So this brought you on then to decide that one store was not gonna be enough or one store needed to be more, and you decided in the middle of a pandemic, what about 2021, around the January time when everybody else was sort of cutting back, you decided, let's go for it. You probably had been thinking about this for a while.

[00:23:56] Ruth: Yeah, so our vision is to create a local hub of stores in Sussex. So by doing that, we'll scale up the local suppliers. We create resilience in the food chain. I mean, in the future there needs to be a different food system, which is much more localized so that we have regional hubs of stores, and we are eating everything that's produced on our doorstep, and more stuff is produced on our doorstep, and that's the way it needs to go. So we are thinking into that, you know? 

[00:24:21] So we imagine that our role in that is to create local chains in different counties. So in Sussex we've got a Brighton and a Worthing store, and we want one in Lewes and Chichester and Horsham and, you know, Shoreham and Hove and others in order to create that resilient local, self-sufficient supply chain. And that's the dream, you know, that's the future.

[00:24:43] So yeah, we've been interested in opening new stores when we're ready for a long time. And we found that we actually had a store that fell through because in 2016 we found a great store, a second store in Brighton. But we were in a nine months negotiation with the landlord and they ended up giving the premises to Starbucks. So, you know, this is the another thing. Landlords and commercial premises is a massive cutthroat kind of world, and we get caught up in that as well.

[00:25:10] Anyway, that fell through, but in 2019 we found a great premises in Worthing and Wording's a great town. It's got a real local pride in independent business. It's got a history of local food and farming. It's got a kind of increasing interest in sustainability and plastic free and stuff. So we looked at Worthing and we thought, Wow, this is great town. It's, and it's up and coming and there's a lot of change going on, and they're interested in Brighton brands. So we found this great store and we raised £450,000 through crowdfunding to open it and to, you know, support it for a year, and shore up our cash flow and stuff. But we signed the lease on the Worthing store on the last day of February in 2020. We got the money a week later, and then Covid hit the week after that.

[00:26:00] And Covid had such an, a massive impact on our whole business. It decimated the Brighton business. We had to make a lot of changes to make it work. And we couldn't open that store until the following January. So yeah, it had a big impact. But when we found and unexpected to open the wording store, Covid wasn't anywhere near us yet. So yeah, we ended up steering the Brighton store, staying open, using a lot of the money we'd raise to shore up what we had, and opening the Worthing store much later. But opening it in the surprise lockdown that came in after Christmas, 2021. That was our launch date. So, yeah, it's been very difficult.

[00:26:39] Stephen: So you're year and a half now into the wording store as well. How has that been going?

[00:26:43] Ruth: So it's picking up now, but it had a very slow start because of the lockdown, and then a few months into being open, the council dug up the whole road in front of it and blocked off the end of the street, which was just unlucky timing for us. Really unlucky. So it's had a slow start and it's not quite breaking even. It's being supported by the Brighton store. So we expected it to be doing much better by now, before Covid, but it's going in the right direction. We're slowly picking up the trade and now the um, just on Friday, the road was reopened again. And so, you know, we are in a great position now of being able to kind of relaunch it.

[00:27:19] But yeah, no, it had a slow start because of the situation, the circumstances, and it's been very hard for the store manager there and the team there to manage all this. And very, very hard for me and Jack to steer the whole business through two years of covid. And it's not over, you know, for people like us, for small businesses, it's not over yet. We, we are not back where we were two years ago. And customers are still doing their Sainsbury's from home, their, their Waitrose online, whatever they're doing, but they're slowly starting to come back, which is great.

[00:27:48] Stephen: I love the idea, like when I meet people like yourself who's transforming the world of the way we, you know, we purchase things and food for the better, and I think there should be more people like yourself as well. And I like to slow. Well, I can understand the slow, easy way that you've began to, you know, slowly move into this and it's been a long heart slog, but it's, it's, it's a good journey because you're doing the right thing. I can imagine the suppliers who work alongside you feel the same way. What's your relationship with your suppliers and have they worked with other people before and worked at you and see a difference?

[00:28:17] Ruth: Yeah, so what's interesting is the suppliers that we work with are most, a lot of them are local. They are too small to work with supermarkets. So as a supplier, say you're a farmer of anything, you have to decide, do you wanna scale up and work with the big guys, or do you want to support the independent trade? And the independent trade is lots of shops like us and farmers' markets and small village shops and all of that stuff. So we work with the independent trade suppliers. A couple of them, you know, there's one that supplies M&S, one of M&S's products. You know, a couple of them are on the bigger side, but generally they are used to working with people like us, but not at our scale. So we are bigger than their average customer. So they like it.

[00:28:57] And then we have some very small suppliers who are making you know, hot sauce or brownies, or greetings cards or they're very small kitchen table suppliers. Lots of those people. Their route to market is to go and sit on a market stall. And that's hard because they'll be at the marquee stall maybe Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, and then actually making the product the rest of the week. It gets really difficult. So they want outlets like us that will look at them, even though they're very small suppliers, they know they can come to us and we'll stop their stuff because we like local suppliers.

[00:29:27] So yeah, we have, um, we have helped a lot of suppliers get shelf ready, get commercially aware. Cuz a lot of the time they're making a product they love with the passion that they have, but they're not always commercially aware about how to launch it. So, we kind of mentor and help suppliers do that. And then the larger ones are set up for it already and it's a matter of agreeing. And we are very, very flexible, which others aren't. You know, the supermarkets definitely aren't. And they punish suppliers and they put all the risk on suppliers, but we allow prize suppliers to set their own prices and we pay them within 45 days, which is really unusual. And we just really as flexible as we can be. There's lots of little guys that we pay faster when we can.

[00:30:09] It's difficult at the moment. You know, we've got a cash flow, slow cash flow at the moment because of two years of Covid. So we don't always stand by those agreements to pay them that quickly, but we do our best and it's a big juggling act and it's improving.

[00:30:22] So yeah, it's a very different relationship to one they would have with the supermarkets if they work with those guys.

[00:30:28] Stephen: So if I was to come to your store, that's exactly the feeling. I'd leave. I know I'm doing something good. You are doing something good by the suppliers. Cause I think about when you mentioned Starbucks there earlier as well, and we talk about big chains. And I'm always thinking about growth for the sake of endless growth. And when I thinking about what we do, what you do in the, in your field and what I do with leaders as well, is to be able to create a world where just life feels better. And a lot of it just is, is down to logic and is down to sense. And what you do does that, Let's buy locally. Let's pay people at the right price. Let's treat our people well and less packaging and all those different types of things make complete sense.

[00:31:02] And then sometimes I just see complete insense in a lot of the ways. And I remember I was in Bologna back in about 2016 or around about that time, 2017. And I remember walking down to the city center and seeing a Domino's opened up around all these other pizzerias and fritorias and all the other Italian specialties and their brilliant food. And I went, Oh my gosh. Who, who decided this? Yeah. Why, who decided this? And I remember a flyer came in the door of my, my, my friend Carlos' um, apartment. A Domino's flyer. And he just looked at it with indifference and didn't even know what to do with it. Like, what's this even for? Or whatever, you know. 

[00:31:38] And I've always thought about this cause in Italy, like when you open up your pizzeria or your gelateria or your whatever it might be, nobody seems to decide I'm gonna have 300 of these and I'm gonna take over Italy, and then when take over Italy, you're gonna take over France and then I'm gonna move worldwide, and before you know it.

[00:31:53] So consequently, now Dominoes decided in the last couple of days that they're gonna move out of Italy. But at some stage, at some board meeting, at some marketing meeting, at some sales meeting, somebody stood up and said, Listen to this. I've got this great idea. And nobody said, Hang on a second here. Maybe this isn't the route to go down. Or nobody seemed to ask the right questions.

[00:32:15] And I think that's what we've come to. We've come to a world where we expect over consumption. We expect to find a McDonald's at the end of the um, Sahara Desert as we walk out of it. Or Mount Everest might have a subway just at the bottom. It, you know, to satisfy our needs. And, yeah we, we invented this world. And you a breath of fresh air in what you do is, is, is just looking at things logically and going, It doesn't make sense. We're using up resources in a world of finite resources rather than infinite resources.

[00:32:39] Ruth: I couldn't agree more. You know, and when you look into the future and projects what needs to be there in a hundred years or 50 years, a lot of this stuff has to go. We can't continue being in this system which encourages massive overproduction, massive over consumption and world hunger. You know, there's all this hunger, but we massively over produce food. There's more than enough. But you know, you have big companies, they go into countries all over the world and they take resources to make fabric conditioner, bottled water, beer. All of that stuff they take from the locals and, and the money doesn't go to them. It goes to big corporates based there. So it's can't carry on. It just can't carry on. There has to be a different vision for the world.

[00:33:22] And I see myself as, and lots of people like me, we're sewing little seeds for that world. We are doing what we're doing, we're pass on our lessons. I'm trying to, I'm, you know, my dream is to an online how to HISBE, an operating model which captures absolutely everything that we do and how we do it and what we do and all the hard work that we've learned over, it will be 15 years by then. Puts it all one place and open sources and licenses, bits of it so other people can copy and do the same. We need to create mass change. We need to find out how to solve some of these issues and join up the dots.

[00:33:54] And so yeah I, I'm kind of sowing seeds for that vision in a hundred years time and then pass the battle on for people to keep going and learn those lessons because I don't know how, but bits of the system will start to fail. It, It just can't go on.

[00:34:09] Stephen: I like this whole idea of this hundred year thinking. I dunno if you've ever heard of, um, Katie Paterson, She's a Scottish um, artist and she's created this wonderful hundred year thinking. So what she's done is that she has up in Norway, they have this piece of land, the parcel of land they've actually planted 1000 trees they have in this parcel of land up there. And since 2015 I think it is, she has brought up an author every year in a round about May time when the snows have cleared. And they bring them up in the mayor from the local town and various different people. And what they do is the author comes up and I think the very first author was Margaret Atwood, I think was the very first author. So they come up, Margaret Atworth comes up, she has a box, and in the box is a manuscript of a book she has written, and she reads out, I think it's the first page of the book. And then she puts it back in to the box, and the box is put into a vault, and the vault is locked. And the, the vault will not be open for 100 years. And in 100 years time, what they will do is they will start to slowly release the books by cutting down the trees to create the paper, to create the books, to give to people, but nobody at that ceremony, not one of those people at that ceremony would ever get to read that book. So we're thinking about people into the future and I love the way you do that too as well. So that's, so we've gotta think about people into the future.

[00:35:24] The other question I wanted to say too as well is if I became an a HISBE employee, what would I expect?

[00:35:31] Ruth: Yeah. So, the, it's key as well to have a model where retail staff get paid properly because they don't, you know, they're underpaid and overworked and overscheduled and that's become normal as well, unfortunately. So you have a lot of people who can't afford to make ends meet even though they're in full-time employment.

[00:35:48] So yeah, we we have always paid and always will the real living wage. So the Living Wage Foundation is an organization that makes those calculations and decides what the real living wage is. It's higher than the government living. Which is a fudge of the figures, but the real living wage is based on prices that are going up and how much you need to live reasonably, and that's our benchmark. So we pay people the real living wage, and we put that up every year when it goes up. I'm sure there'll be a big jump this year because of inflation, so it will go up again.

[00:36:23] But yeah, that's the minimum really, I think if you've got a business where you are not paying at least what people need to live on, then it's exploitation, you know? Unless, I don't know, there's, that's maybe too much of a sweeping statement and there's people who prepared to work like that, but you know, you are almost saying if I could get away with paying you any, any less, I would, but I can't, you know? So, so yeah, you, we need to have business models where we pay staff properly. And so yeah, the staff, they get the real living wage and they get a good amount of holiday, and they get 20% off that all their shopping at HISBE, which most supermarkets don't do. And you know, they're just, it's just a sort of a culture of fair treatment and respect and transparency and commitment. And, you know, the store managers have a set of values that they hold with those staff.

[00:37:12] We are very empowering for the store managers. You know, Jack and I don't want to be getting involved all the time in the stores. It's very important that they're locally run and they know their locals and their store manager is in charge of that store. So what's nice about that is then there's a slightly different culture and way of being in each store, but the values are the same in every store. And the values about pay and how people are treated are the same.

[00:37:37] Stephen: I always think about like when we can't earn enough to be able to do the simple things like, you know, pay the rent, put a roof over ourhead, you know, food on the table. Like when you talk about Maslow's hierarchy of needs, there can never be stuff like self-actualization, it can never be an experience of happiness because if we're struggling all the time, which so many people are, and so many people will be into this winter with inflation and everything else, and energy costs it's a breath of fresh air to see organizations really thinking of their employees. This is important. And I think more than ever we need to be able to um, We may understand the needs of the employees within organizations and what they might be going through and what they feel. And when we understand that on a human level, they feel they have somebody above them or within in the organization that cares about them as a human, and it transforms absolutely everything.

[00:38:22] So how has Brighton welcomed you? Because this is a completely new thing. Like if I live in Brighton, I'm sure I have a choice of going to all the big major stores as well. 

[00:38:30] Ruth: Well actually, really well because I mean, Amy and I moved to Brighton and started the business in Brighton cuz we thought if it can't work in Brighton, it won't work. Because Brighton is very forward thinking and they love local brands and local entrepreneurial ideas and you know, there was a food, local food scene. There was good, some good work that Brighton and Hove Food Partnership, it's excellent, I would say one of the best in the country. There's good collaboration between that. The food partnership and the council. The council are aware of green issues and have signed up to declaring a carbon emergency. So you've got a city that is very forward thinking. And so yeah, I would say there right, HISBE was and continues to be really well received there. And people have got an activist edge. They like the idea that they can put their money towards something good and support something good. So yeah it's a good, it was a good fit.

[00:39:22] And then Worthing is a very different town. It's much more, it's more old fashioned in its thinking, but rapidly progressing. But, whilst Brighton is quite activisty and they're into vegan food and you know, they're into putting their money to good use in creating change it, Worthing's not so much like that, but Worthing, there they really respect localism, they really respect local traders, local suppliers and well crafted independence. So yeah, there's slightly different profiles in those towns and half of it is hooking into what the local people want and think about.

[00:39:54] Stephen: And if you could actually jump into like, so 10 years from now, what would you like to see the world of supermarkets be? Right, so you started off from where you are now, you're making an impact already, but what is the world of supermarkets like in 10 years? 

[00:40:05] Ruth: I hope that in 10 years we are living through mass change of supermarkets, so that we have legislation on things like plastic and food waste, and sugar, and we have legislation that clamps down on some of their behavior. Although Obviously they are more powerful than governments, so I don't hold much hope out for that. But yeah, I think we'll see lots and lots of people like me challenging the system, hopefully using the operating model that we've created and more and more independent supermarkets coming onto the high street so that it's more normalized and more people have a choice, they don't have to go to Sainsbury's, Tesco and what's on their doorstep, they have got the choice. They can choose to support local farmers and plastic free and sustainable brands and eco-friendly and all of the stuff we stand for. And that that set to then, prices become a bit cheaper cuz more people are into it.

[00:40:54] It's feasible that one of the big supermarkets could fail in the next 10 years. They're massively overstretched. You know, Morrison's just just sold out to a big American VC which is clamping down on everything right through the organization. And, you know, they did a big survey where they identified that every interaction with the customer costs the organization two pence. So they are actively reducing staff being allowed to interact with customers because it saves them money.

[00:41:19] So, yeah, I think that in the world of supermarkets we'll see a lot more of that happening with the big guys. A lot more automation and cost stripping. And then you'll see this wave of people like us making true alternatives that are much more in line with the sustainable future. And there may be an opportunity at some point where HISBE or concepts like ours can roll out nationally as some of the big guys try to get in on, on this and divest part of what they're doing and move to better brands.

[00:41:49] So I hoping that in 10 years there'll be a lot of change in this area because there needs to be. We can't keep up with the amount of waste and we can't keep making bad food normal.

[00:42:00] Stephen: And I love the idea then that you could probably, when you go to HISBE have a conversation with somebody in the store as opposed to the model that we're talking about where Morrisons are worried about, you know, every 2p is a, is the cost of an interaction. When we quantify things so heavily like that, it just becomes a really, really weird world. Because we're humans and we're not mathematics and we're not machines and we're not robotics, but it seems that we're entering this world and we, I think we need more human interactions than ever before. 

[00:42:25] Can you share three things for us as consumers that we could do? Just if there's three things that we could immediately do to change our shopping habits that would make a difference?

[00:42:33] Ruth: Yeah, so what would make a difference is supporting local shops instead of supermarkets. I know it's hard, but when you spend money with local shops, it goes to local people. It goes to the local economy, people who've made that food or, or at the very least, people who are supporting their families when you put your money into them. So go local and find these places that are supporting local suppliers.

[00:42:56] And then the next thing is you can avoid plastic. No. You can start to avoid throwaway plastic. You can't avoid plastic, but you can start to avoid throwaway, plastic and taking little plastic containers out in your bag. A knife and fork from home for eating on the go. Take a lunchbox to cafes and ask them to put your lunch in that lunch box if you're doing lunch on the go. Saving plastic and going to the shops that do a loose food offer, because they're springing up all over the place and they need our support.

[00:43:24] And then the third one's just about rewarding the good brands. So if you've got breakfast cereal brands that are just filled with sugar and crap, and they've got 24 month shelf lifes on them and you know, they're covered in plastic. There's not good food in that box. It's crap. You know, it's not gonna do you any good. It's not doing the world any good. It's just there to make the supermarket and the food company profit. So choose better brands. You know, there's Lizi's Granola, there's all sorts of brands that are better than the supermarket big versions. And you can find those brands by looking at Ethical Consumer organization. There's a, they're an amazing organizations. They rank brands. They'll take all sorts of products from mobile phones to coffee, and they look at where your money goes and what their parent company does with your money. And we only take brands that score 10 or more out of 20 on that scale. And most supermarkets' brands are scored five or less. So you can make a big change just by swapping just a few things that you normally buy into better brands that, that aren't just owned by big conglomerates, but actually are trying to create something healthy and something more ethical. 

[00:44:39] Stephen: I've spoken to Enso van Santen, who was the choco evangelist for Tony's Chocolonely a number of years ago. Yeah. And I like what they're doing as well in the chocolate field, which is a huge, huge billion, billion dollar market. And they're the small little fly in the ointment. They like that little mosquito that Anita Roddick would talk about. If you feel that you can't be powerful, just lie a bed with one mosquito and see how that feels. I've read her book and I think it's fascinating too as well what she did. 

[00:45:04] And I always remember the saddest day she talked about was the day she applied shareholders to her. She went public with her company and she said, it's something I regret

[00:45:12] Ruth: Yeah, we're very lucky to have Gordon Roddick as one of our mentors now. And I mean, I idolize Anita and Gordon, they're amazing. And, and their daughter, Sam Roddick we know and they're great, but you know, he always regretted that. They tried to buy back the shares following it. And yeah, he always regretted that. But you know, they still remain an example of what could be done. And they were huge, hugely innovative and forward thinking and ahead of their time and, have inspired a lot of people, including me.

[00:45:39] Stephen: Ruth, how could people, if they need to get in touch with you, are I need to find out more about HISBE? How can they do that?

[00:45:44] Ruth: Okay. So they can find our website just at hissbe.co.uk. We're also on Instagram and Twitter and Facebook. And it's pretty easy to find us. And you can link in with me. I'm on LinkedIn. I kind of use LinkedIn a lot to you know, meet people and come across interesting opportunities to talk and or contribute to others. So yeah, you could find me at Ruth Anslow on LinkedIn. I've got a pretty unusual name, so it's pretty easy to find Ruth Anslow in Brighton.

[00:46:09] Stephen: Ruth, I wanna say thank you so much for showing us how we could make life better by doing what you and HISBE do. Thank you very much.

[00:46:15] Ruth: very welcomed. I love it. I could talk about supermarkets all day, so thank you, Steve.

[00:46:19] Stephen: I love it. Thanks, Ruth.