Brighton and Hove is rarely short of campaigns against new supermarkets and now the fight to save the streets from the onslaught of identikit food vendors has taken a new turn. Brighton and Hove Alternative To Supermarkets (BHATS) began life as the People’s Supermarket project, with the aim of providing sustainable, local food to the people of the city and challenging the domination of national supermarkets.

Despite the existing independent food stores and veggie box delivery services, BHATS says many people still lack access to local food and are often priced out of the market. However, it soon became clear that opening a food shop, like the People’s Supermarket in London, might not be a viable proposition in both a business sense and for fulfilling their aims of affordability.

Joe Newbigin, a barman from Brighton, has been involved since the beginning. He says, “We want to make sustainable, local food accessible and affordable. They’re the key issues for us. We’re looking at all the different forms it could take and their different strengths and weaknesses, it could be a delivery service or a pop-up shop. Each street could have a food pick-up point, or all these ideas could work as a hybrid with each other.”

Members of BHATS come from across the spectrum – people with experience in cooperatives, academics working at food-based think tanks or on issues of food poverty, people who work with NGOs or people with experience in running supermarkets.

Joe says: “The thing that draws us all together is that we are all foodies and all interested in creating a local, sustainable food network.”

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