UK, it is all about the price and nothing about quality

I just came back from a business trip in Apulia, Puglia for Italians, and was pleasantly surprised of what I discovered despite being born only a few hundred kilometres away. I never thought Apulia had so many interesting producers and products, fantastic, passionate people with great products.

Apulia is often associated with olive oil and wine but I also discovered great bakeries and pasta makers, buffalo mozzarella producers, it was an eye opening trip about a very little known region, at least for me.
I had different meetings and we are working on bringing some of the products I tasted back in the UK, however, what really surprised me was the idea of the UK market and importers these producers had.

Their previous experiences, approaches, from the UK were all price driven, every request they received was about being able to supply at a certain price, with no interest about the quality of their products, for that reason, they never supplied the UK and did not have a good reputation of the UK market.

This opinion wasn’t just shared by small producers but also medium and big ones, producers that have pride in their products and believed in them, producers that have principles, producers that are not prepared to compromise on quality, producers that had, before we came along, given up on one of the biggest market outside Italy.

We read every day about the price war going on between the main supermarkets and we all seem to enjoy the low prices, but we dont see what happens behind the scene, the impact this war is having on producers all over the world, not just Apulia or Italy, that are seeing their margins getting squeezes to almost zero and pushed out of business and our food becoming more and more industrial, with producers being forced to compromise on quality to be able to supply at the asked prices.

We dont seem to see or simply ignore, the impact of what we eat and drink on our body, on our well being, our mind, we seem to be happy when we can save a few pounds but we dont realise that not only we are accomplices in pushing these producers out of business but we are not doing any good to ourselves. Good, natural, healthy ingredients are being replaced with cheaper and industrial versions creating plenty of problems, from obesity being the most immediate and the first that comes to mind, to diabetes.

When buying for our pets we read the labels, the ingredients, we spend time and money, we want to know what we are giving them, when buying our own food the main driver seems to be the price, the offer, the deal, we never check the ingredients or ask ourselves whether these are the things we want to put inside our body. We spend more for a litre of engine oil for our car than for a bottle of olive oil that fuels us, our own engine and can't be replaced like a car.

Always remember, you get what you pay for