Report of visit to Welcombe Community Shop, Saturday 19 November 2011
Welcombe community shop
Sally and I visited Welcombe, a small community owned and operated general store. The visit gave us a very good insight into the work required to set up a community venture, its operation and potential for success. I’ve also appended a report of the shop’s summer season from the local parish magazine.
Our sincere thanks to Alison Hutton, Ruth Funnell, Sheila Phillips and all who run the shop for their time and invaluable advice.
Welcombe is a small village on the border between Devon and Cornwall just off the A39. It is 6 miles from Kilkhampton, 12 miles from Bude and 6 miles from Hartland.
The village is fairly spread out on a couple of minor roads leading from the A39 to the coast. There is a pottery, a pub and the headquarters of the Yarner Trust in the village. There are a number of self-catering properties as well as b&bs scattered in Welcombe and surrounding hamlets.
The old shop and post closed suddenly in March 2005 when the owner/postmistress decided to retire.
The community immediately set up a committee to look at options for a replacement community owned and operated shop and post office.
Within 2 months the committee came forward with an option to site the shop in an annex to the village hall. This was agreed and work began on raising funds. The community also agreed to form a co-operative under Industrial and Provident Society rules, as recommended by the Plunkett Foundation.
The co-op raised about £1000 from selling £10 shares within the community. They decided upon £10 because that is again a common practice amongst community ventures.
Setting up the co-op was relatively straight forward, benefiting from advice from Plunkett. The rules require filing annual accounts to the Financial Services Authority instead of Companies’ House as other companies are required to do.
We met Ruth Funnell who was the original committee secretary (and briefly secretary/treasurer). Sheila Phillips, current chairman, popped in to buy goods and stayed to have a chat too.
The shop site was moved from a central location – the village hall – to a farm building 400 metres off the A39 because it was a cheaper option. The building is owned by a local farmer who lives opposite the shop site. There is also a camp site next door, owned by the farmer.
Funding came from a variety of grants including the National Lottery Awards for All and Devon Renaissance . There were also local donations of about £1000. There were no fundraising events.
The committee received lots of advice from ViRSA (now part of Plunkett) and the Community Council for Devon. They also got good support from their parish council.
Building work was carried out by the building owner. All the fittings and fixtures were installed by the shop. They had a purpose built counter, but all the shelving is secondhand, bought from the former shopkeeper. Fridges and the freezer are owned outright, all new. The original larger freezer broke down a year and was replaced for £800 (from the local Euronics shop). This was paid for through an anonymous donation.
Shop counter, fridges seen from the entrance
The shop has an electronic point of sale (EPOS) system running the cash register and stock control.
The shop opened in June 2006. It is open Monday to Saturday 9 am to 1 pm. They currently run entirely with about 11 or 12 volunteers each doing a 2 or 4 hour shift, once a week.
To manage for the first two years, the shop employed a part-time manager, funded by a further grant (Esmée Fairbairn). This helped get the shop up and running.
The shop is housed in part of an old farm building which was going to be converted to holiday lets. Overall it is about double the size of the BB Methodist chapel vestry, but some of the space is set aside for a large office, store and kitchen. The actual shop space is an L-shape with maximum dimensions of about 15 feet by 15 feet.
Counter, EPOS and post office counter
There is a large counter, built by a local carpenter. The counter also houses a small area for the outreach post office. Behind the counter is the alcohol, tobacco and medicines stock.
Looking from the back to bread, fruit and veg, fridges and dry goods
Facing the counter on one wall there are cards, books and other local products for sale as well as vegetables, bread and other bakery items. There is also an ice cream fridge against this wall.
Looking to the back: household goods, freezer and dry goods
Around the corner there are shelves all around, up to the ceiling, except for a single freezer holding meat and other products and two fridges holding dairy, meat and drinks. All the produce, except vegetables is shrink wrapped.
There is a very comprehensive array of household products, cleaning materials etc. Apparently these are good sellers because of the holiday trade.
The shop does not sell newspapers of magazines, but will sell Saturday papers on order only with a 10p markup. They buy these in from a shop in Kilkhampton. This is because a wholeseller requires that shops sell at least 50 papers a day, excluding the Western Morning News. The North Devon Journal and other local monthly magazine/newspapers are available.
The shop will do advanced orders for the many self-catering holiday homes in the area. This works very well. Orders can be placed online or by posting a form. The orders can include perishables, such as milk, cheese, fruit and vegetables.
Ruth estimated that 30% of the village use the shop and that some of the shareholders don’t use it. Some share buying was on a “guilt” basis by second home owners!
Shoppers can pay by card thought there is a £10 minimum. They offer cashback, subject to funds in the till!
There is a range of suppliers used by Welcombe shop. Ordering for each supplier is done by nominated individuals on the committee.
There is a good range of local products like cards and books.
Welcombe lost its post office a few years ago. It now gets an outreach post office service from Hartland. This comes on Mondays and Thursday for a couple of hours and is housed in the shop. The shop also sells stamps and is a parcel point.
From St Nectans parish magazine, October – November 2011…
Welcombe Community Shop
This summer, in spite of the indifferent weather, the shop has had its busiest season yet. This is not only because visitors have preferred to shop locally rather than use petrol going further afield, but because more of our local community have found that we have some jolly good buys) Our really wonderful and efficient volunteers have worked incredibly hard and would be so pleased if you could shop a little with us over the autumn and winter. If you have never tried us, call in to see what we have on offer, you may be pleasurably surprised.
All suggestions about what we could sell are considered, and at the moment we have some tempting reductions.
We are now stocking meat from Moore’s, the butcher in Kilkhampton, and will have their pasties on a Friday and Saturday – place an order to avoid disappointment as they sell fast.
Did you know that we have organic milk from Holsworthy and that the rest of our milk is from a Cornish dairy? We have a good range of Dunstable ice cream, and some excellent wines, most of which challenge supermarket prices. Lisa’s lovely cakes arrive every week and these can also be ordered. We have locally made jams and chutneys and some excellent biscuits.
We also stock a very good range of interesting greetings cards, some of which are also locally produced, at more reasonable prices than are to be found elsewhere.
So shop locally and find out what is happening in Welcombe at the same time.
Jill Edwards
