Hampshire community shop hails its move to high street
Environmentally-friendly venture The Green Gram community refill shop in Fordingbridge, Hampshire says it has seen further success since moving to its current high street location.
The shop offers refills of foods, cleaning products and toiletries and is celebrating its first year in the new location, where it has seen a rise in footfall and an upswing in turnover of around 40 per cent.
It is a community benefit society, which means it is owned by its shareholders, or members, for the benefit of the community. It is run entirely by volunteers.
Manager Jo Anderson said: "Our move was definitely the right move for us! We have increased from 4 volunteers a day to up to 8 on busy days and we’ve increased the number of volunteers working in the shop overall to 50, with a couple more in training.
"We also have young volunteers doing Duke of Edinburgh and school-work experience, so we usually have two young people helping on a Saturday now too."
She added: "It’s been a busy and amazing year for us, and we are looking forward to what’s next.
"We’ll be open for the Christmas lights switch on for those people who haven’t found us yet and for those who want to come and say hello. We are also offering extended opening hours on Saturdays from 9am-4pm throughout November and December."
The shop originally opened in May, 2022 and it says its customers have prevented over 1,500kg of plastic waste - equivalent to nearly 66,000 containers.
The Green Gram supplies Jocasta’s Fudge, made in Fordingbridge, and works with Forest Edge Roasting Co (Lyndhurst) and Wimborne Coffee Roasters.
It stocks rapeseed oil refills from The Magnificent Seed in Shrewton near Salisbury and greetings cards by Fordingbridge-based artists Kathryn Coyle aka Little Red Boots and May Summers Perkins.
Members of Avon Valley Shed have produced wood turned items, which are displayed and are available in exchange for a donation to the charity.
Its now expanded space has also enabled it to offer more products, with more flours, organic oats, oils and vinegars, lots of sweet and savoury snacks, natural cleaning products (especially those advocated by Nancy Birtwhistle) and new toiletries and household items, it said.
As well as the shop, the organisation has expanded its outreach programme, working with local uniformed groups including The Boys’ Brigade, Scouts and Guides, and has run two holiday activities funded by Fordingbridge Rotary Club.
