I first came across the concept of a ‘refill’ shop when I was a student living in Bath, and I began a challenge during Lent to buy no plastic. The idea was to commit this time to really experimenting with what plastic-free options were out there so I could then adopt some into my regular food shopping once the challenge was over. There were quite a few items which I simply couldn’t buy plastic free, so didn’t (which was manageable for the 4 weeks of Lent), but fortunately my challenge also coincided with the opening of a brand-new refill shop on Walcot Street where I was living. The novelty of going to The Refillable Shop soon became one of the highlights of my week: exploring what items they had in - many of which I’d never come across, filling up funky jars and rustic paper bags, and getting to know the lovely Brazilian owners. In spite of some practical challenges (not least regularly spilling lentils all over the floor because being only 5ft tall I couldn’t see how many I was pouring into my tub from the rather high-up supply container), it became an easy way to feel more intentional about my shopping habits and made a mundane weekly task a lot more interesting and creative.
Now, 4 years later, I see refill shops popping up everywhere, including Roots Gloucester in my home city of Gloucester. For this blog post I had a chat with Rosie, the manager of Roots Gloucester, to hear her insights about running a refill shop. Roots began as a community café about ten years ago, and has developed into a refill shop (with a café element) over the last couple of years. The concept is that you can bring your own containers (or borrow spares from the shop) to fill up on items which are bought and stored in bulk at the refill shop, rather than buying your whole food shop in individual plastic packaging. As well as reducing plastic, it reduces food waste as you can measure the amount you need rather than having to buy the quantity on offer in the supermarket. Item options vary from shop to shop, but Roots Gloucester stocks loads of types of dried pasta, cereals, rice, pulses, herbs and spices, eggs, pick-and-mix sweets, chocolates, toiletry items, cleaning products, and lots more. They also partner with local artists, selling some lovely craft items and jewellery.
Here’s what Rosie had to say:
Is this your first time managing a refill shop?
Yes, it was the first one I’d used, it was the first time I’d managed a shop, it was my first lots of things. I’m actually trained as a manufacturing engineer, and then when I had my little boy, I realised that that kind of career and looking after a family didn’t quite go hand in hand, so I left that walk of life and was a stay-at-home mum for a while. When I was looking to go back to work, I wanted something that wasn’t quite so corporate, and I saw the refill shop manager role advertised, and applied for it, not in a million years thinking I would get it, and then I did – so that was delightful.
How does the refill shop fit into the Kingsholm community?
When doing research, we looked for a few of our own suppliers, because we really wanted to make sure that we were really price conscious. Refill shops have a reputation of being really expensive, and we just didn’t feel that was relevant in our neighbourhood. So we were looking for environmentally conscious, but also price conscious.
Recently we had to review our prices because a lot of our suppliers had gone up, and we got the point of saying we’ve got to raise a couple, but we all made the decision that the ones we would raise were the luxury items. So the pick-and-mix had to go up in price because that is a luxury item. Things like pasta and rice and the staples everyone uses to make a decent family meal absolutely do not go up in price because we want to make sure that regardless of what you’re going through you can still come and buy the things you need to make a family meal.
It’s lovely because we do have a lot of regular customers, we know their names, they know us, we have a chat, it’s a really different style of shopping, there’s a real personal element to it. Sometimes we see people who come in once a month, some people who come in to do their weekly, some people just walk past on their way to work and maybe two-three times a week will come in to pick up bits and pieces. We have customers who have become our friends which is lovely.
How does it work practically, managing supply and best before dates?
The hardest thing I think is just gauging what people want, and how much to order. We want our customers to come in and walk away happy. But we’re a CIC - we’re not quite a charity, we’re not quite a business, we can’t afford wastage. We can’t afford to have something that doesn’t sell, so juggling the risk of buying a new product in can be a bit nerve wracking. Whenever we have a new product I’d buy the smallest quantity of it just to trial it, and then we gauge how well it sells. Basically all of it is guesswork.
When looking for environmentally-friendly suppliers, we look at what packaging they deliver in, is it recyclable, or made from something recycled, because we want to make sure that when people come in here and shop they know we’ve done the leg work behind the scenes, so they can shop knowing that even though it looks like a refill shop, there isn’t loads of wastage going on in the background they don’t see. The whole process is thought about.
With best before dates, we’re quite lucky that because everything is dried, the use by date is really long on them so we don’t usually have a problem with that. Now and again we do, and we just very clearly state to people, ‘this is past its best before, please just take it home and use it, it’s free’. Cause we also don’t want to have food waste.
What’s the refill community like? How did you conduct your research?
Before we opened up the refill shop, Owen and I (we manage the shop together) went and did a lot of research. We went and visited a lot of other refill shops and we spoke to refill shop owners, and it’s amazing the community that exists there. It isn’t rivalry, it’s definitely everybody helps everybody. And we found a few of our suppliers from them.
Do you think refill shops could be the future of sustainable shopping in the UK?
I think it really depends on the model. We are a community interest company, we’re affordable, we’re trying really hard to help people use this regardless of their economic position. Is this the model that could go forward and be ‘normal’? I would say yes. The type of refill shop where everything is organic, everything is two, three times the price people would find in ASDA, yes we need them because people want them, and there are people out there who want to pay that money, but I don’t think we should have just one type. You have ASDA and you have Waitrose - you would need to have a variety of them to ensure that everybody has accessibility to them.
Does Roots Gloucester give you hope for the global plastic crisis?
I definitely think so. We have a really fancy system and Owen is able to pull a number off it that tells us how many pieces of single use plastic we’ve saved, and in our first year it was about 30,000. Some people only come in once a month and buy 5 things and they think ‘I’m not really doing my bit am I?’ but it’s not about one person, it’s about everybody, and it’s made such a huge difference.
When trying to go more plastic-free, I would say start small. Don’t try to change your entire life all at once. Just pick one thing and think, ‘okay this has run out, so before I go and buy it automatically from a supermarket or order it online, maybe I should have a look for a refill shop, or think of a more environmentally friendly way I could have this in my home’. Don’t try to change all of your habits at once because that is overwhelming.
Are there any plans for the future of Roots Gloucester, and how can we keep updated?
We’re doing the refill side of things, the café side of things, we’ve got lunches, we’ve got the new coffee machine, and we basically want to keep growing the business. We’ve got ideas like an open mic night which we’ve just started, and community meals. There’re a lot of things that we want to do to make sure that Roots Gloucester is a profitable business and can stand on its own two feet, which means we can then do the community element a lot more comfortably.
We do have a Facebook and Instagram – search ‘Roots Gloucester’. When things run out and they come back in stock we try to keep it updated on there, and we definitely see a link between putting stuff on there and people coming in and saying ‘I saw this on your Facebook, can I get some?’ so that’s really helpful for us.
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I would highly recommend having a look in a refill shop near you when you have a chance, even if just for some inspiration and a coffee. As Rosie said, you can’t change your whole life at once, and there are of course practical challenges to using refill shops too – one being they simply can’t sell everything you might need. But as I discovered in my Lent plastic-free challenge, with environmentally conscious lifestyle changes, it’s better to do them imperfectly than not at all.
Thanks to Rosie and Owen for their contributions to this blog! 😊
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