Artichoke Wholefoods WE ARE HERE

Aim

Stay on the high street through a tough economic climate, stabilise our stock and introduce new lines and develop our infrastructure.

Stage 2: WE ARE HERE

When we started Artichoke Wholefoods we always knew the building of the shop would happen in stages. We are raising money to action Stage 2, which will include:

~ A new range of health supplements with in-house advice.

~ A new organic wines and Bristol craft beers section.

~ Improvements to the shop's infrastructure

~ An expanded locally made and eco gift section.

~ We want to keep Artichoke Wholefoods on the Fishponds high street in a tough economic climate. 

Hello, readers! Calling out to all lovers of Artichoke Wholefoods, the new local shop of Fishponds that welcomes all our customers with happy, smiley faces, real actual conversation, eye contact, and generally a lovely place to be, to shop, to feel a sense of community. THANK YOU TO ALL WHO HAVE BEEN PART OF THIS CREATION SO FAR AND WELCOME TO NEWBIES.

We are now starting a crowdfunder to raise the money we need for the next stage of establishing ourselves and the building of the shop. We want our crowd to help fund stage 2 of the shop’s journey, which is to consolidate and grow Artichoke Wholefoods. If each of our customers give what they feel like, we will be able to raise the funds we need to keep Artichoke and to see it thrive, even in a testing economic climate. 

"Recently found this gem of a shop and now a firm favourite.  Very friendly and helpful service plus great, local produce with eco-packing in mind.  It's so easy to take your own containers and stock up on store cupboard essentials thus reducing single-use packaging.  I love their organic deluxe muesli - so much better than mainstream supermarkets'.  Great asset to Fishponds and thoroughly recommend." - 5 Star Google Review from Julia 

Now we need your help, to keep this space and everything it does and represents. It is time for the Stage 2 of establishing the shop and we want you to be part of the sustainability of this.

How much money we need and what we need it for

We are looking to raise £30,000 for the second phase of investment. 

The four areas we need to focus on:

1. To buy in new stock and new lines

What does this mean?

As much as we have achieved – and people who now visit our shop are AMAZED at the variety we have fitted in there – WE WANT TO GIVE YOU MORE. We want to start selling organic and natural wines, locally brewed craft beer, organic West country cider, organic gin, and the holiest of all English alcoholic drinks, mead. We want to grow our sparse one shelf of food supplements in to a full section for core supplements and herbs, Penny is a qualified Nutritional Therapist and has been advising on diet and supplements for over 10 years and has so much knowledge to share! We are all set-up and supplier ready to sell loose leaf tea, again at affordable buy-as-you-weigh prices. To do this, we need capital. The initial alcoholic drinks order alone will come to several thousand pounds. This is what we mean by ‘to buy in new stock and new lines’

2. To develop the infrastructure of the shop

 What does this mean?

As mentioned above, our initial £35,000 budget got us so far. We never got to complete the shelving project in the shop. We have space for lots more shelving in our back area/liquid refills room. Our disabled access large rubber ramp got stolen from outside our shop only a few weeks after buying. We need a new one! We want funky fun dynamic signage all around the shop that would help navigate old and new customers around the store. This is what we mean by ‘To develop the infrastructure of the shop’

3. To financially secure the shop

Artichoke needs a contingency pot and so be able to move quickly with new opportunities such as stock lines or to fire-fight in the face of soaring energy prices, rising rent rates and possible continued inflation.

 What does this mean?

Home energy prices have doubled in twelve months and business prices have also risen sharply. Imagine what it costs to light a shop and power fridges all day, seven days a week. We firmly believe in a real life in-person shopping experience, in providing a physical space where people can come and be and meet people and feel their produce before they buy it. But providing this COSTS A LOT. We are an independent shop run by a husband and wife with our two children. Unlike Morrison’s, or Aldi, or Lidl, or Sainsburys or even Better Food, we have no national or multi-store mega-budget to draw upon. We have what we take in the shop and what you, our co-users are prepared to give. 

 We opened post Covid-recovery funding, so there are none of those grants available to us. As local councils budgets have been and continue to be slashed nation-wide by the UK government, there are no current business grants available to us from Bristol City Council. Business bank loans are unavailable to a new business until they have two years of trading accounts. Don’t believe what you hear about lots of new start-up loans available for new entrepreneurs: those are all personal loans backed by the government, but that ultimately ask you to put your house and all personal assets at risk during a volatile economic period. So unfortunately the government are not currently prepared to provide business loans to help kick start the necessary post-pandemic high street recovery. 

We feel we have given and are giving so much to Fishponds high street and Fishponds area in general. We took a risk, we were bold and fearless because we had a vision to uplift the high street of Fishponds, to bring people back to want to walk up and down the high street. That risk is paying off. We are part-established. Hundreds of people are benefitting from using our shop. The Crafty Egg and FED saw what we were doing and 5 months later followed suit. Hallelujah! Something is happening here! BUT WE NEED YOUR HELP.

4. To stabilize stock levels, continued supply chain and replacement stock

What does this mean?

Like many other wholefood and refill shops, we buy in bulk but we sell in tiny portions. Selling in tiny portions (for example 50g of rice or 6 dried apricots or 1 banana or 1 gift card) makes things affordable and accessible for our customers. But to keep the price low to pass on to our customers we need to buy in bulk. A 25kg sack of organic porridge oats requires us to fork out £34.71 but we won’t get that money back for days, possibly weeks. Eventually we will make some profit on the 25kg bag but way before then we will have been asked to pay for the whole bag. So securing stock of quality food for our customers requires up-front capital and because we are a small, high-turnover store we are constantly under pressure to pay new invoices. The shop would benefit from a large pot of stock-buying capital for us to buy in bulk pay up front and get ahead of our supplier’s invoices. 

Of course, we did this when we started the shop. But a combination of an unknown market (some stock lines have proved completely unpopular and had to be wasted eg. Polenta and dried red kidney beans), February storms and the Russia-Ukraine war, hyper-inflation caused by Brexit and the war, led to a huge slash to our takings and profits January-April leaving us with creeping supply invoices. The debts from that period are still there and we are compromised with our buying power and business decisions as every week we use our current takings and profits to handle that debt.

Our suppliers are so important to us: obviously because without them we cannot provide the products we want to, but also because they are also under pressure during this difficult time in the UK economy and our support for them and continue custom will ensure diversity in the local organic/eco economy: I’m taking about local businesses big and small such as Essential (Fishponds), The Community Farm (Chew Magna), Assembly Bakery (Old Market), Boona Boona Coffee (Staple Hill), Bruton Dairy (Somerset) that are providing local jobs and generating wealth in the economy, just like we are doing in our micro-business. Each of these businesses is a micro-hub in a chain and a web of our local economy. Without them/us, the place you live would lose so much diversity, colour, provision and community. This is what we mean by ‘To stabilize stock levels, continued supply chain and replacement stock’.

Ways to help

• Small contributions add up: Give as much or as little as you would like to: your reward will be the continued presence of Artichoke Wholefoods and gift shop on Fishponds high street. Plus an especially designed limited edition Artichoke Wholefoods WE ARE HERE gift.

• VIP Friends of Artichoke Wholefoods: For a minimum donation of £500, you will be come a VIP Friend of Artichoke Wholefoods. Your name and photograph and sentence of support will be published (should we have your blessing) on our website and in store on our wall of VIP Friends. You will be invited to an exclusive VIP Friends dinner party and live music evening if we meet our target and the Stage 2 appeal is successful.  You will receive a year-long discount of your shopping at the Artichoke shop and any future online shop and postal delivery service.

• Contributions of £1000 upwards. As well as becoming a VIP Friend of Artichoke Wholefoods, you will receive a long-term discount on shopping at the Artichoke shop and any future online shop and postal delivery service. You will also receive quarterly investment report updates on the state of the business, new projections, creative ideas and opportunities for the business and will be invited for your feedback and views on the development of the shop. You will be invited to an exclusive VIP Friends dinner party and live music evening if we meet our target and the Stage 2 funding appeal is successful. 

Here’s a brief appraisal of where Artichoke has got to so far:

 In 10 months Penny and I and the Artichoke team have created a new space for Fishponds; a shop that sells many delicious and gorgeous things, including:

~ Organic fruit and vegetables: food that has no chemicals sprayed on it, that tastes delicious, that doesn’t cost the soil and ecology where it was grown and that gives a good price to the local and international growers that produced it and the suppliers that got it to Fishponds

~ Freshly, locally roasted fantastic tasting coffee to take home in packs of beans or ground and that we serve to drink at the shop/take away, with a choice of organic cows milk from Somerset, or oat milk or chai syrup produced in Bath.

 ~ Fresh every day organic bread and pastries and cakes provided to us by Assembly Bakery (Old Market) and Lockdown Loaves (Hambrook) Radek’s (Easton) Against The Grain (Fishponds) and Wild Yeast (Staple Hill).

 ~ Organic cow’s milk and Minor Figures oat milk on tap! So we can all minimize our tetra pack/plastic wastage.

~ Home cleaning/laundry and body care refills to give our community a place to reduce, re-use and recycle.

~ Beautiful and fun and dynamic cards, artwork, ceramics, candles, and many other gift options created by Bristol artists.

 ~ An essential grocery section that provides a range of organic and quality food goodies for your cupboards, including organic flour, eggs, cheese, tofu, butter, vegan butter, yogurts, olive oil and so much more.

~ A help-yourself scoop section for organic staples such as rice, oats, pasta, nuts, pulses, dried fruit, sweets, herbs and spices that allow people to buy small custom amounts and with zero plastic waste.

~ Gorgeous house plants that oxygenate our shop and can be bought by customers to add to their home space.

~ A place to sit in the sunshine out front of the shop, take a weight off, enjoy a healthy or naughty treat and perhaps a cold drink or a coffee and watch Fishponds high street slowly re-enlivening, a place to be still and look up! See the hidden gem architecture of old grand Fishponds. Meet a friend or neighbour on the high street.

 And as well as all this, Penny, myself (Jonny) and the team have been at the counter waiting to serve, to listen, to support every customer. It was mine and Penny’s vision that as much as providing the good things, we wanted to provide a space where people could come and feel safe and loved and appreciated and not rushed: after the appalling experience of the UK Lockdown and pandemic and in the face of ever-faster, less and less human shopping experiences that proliferate in Fishponds and the UK in general, we have provided an alternative.

Stage One of funding saw me and Penny raise £35,000 of capital to get the shop up and running. This was made up of:

£10,000 of our own money

£10,000 crowdfunded money 

£5,000 community grant won after a successful votes poll from over 500 people backing our project

£10,000 from private investors.

We were advised at the time by a friend and successful multi-million pound fund-raiser that double that figure would be more like it to open the kind of all-singing, all-dancing local provision shop that we achieved. In many ways they were right. While we have achieved so much, we are in need of a significant investment to stabilize, build on and make sustainable the shop.

This project successfully funded on 4th November 2022