07/04/2026
Britain prides itself on resilience. Yet when it comes to food, we have quietly built a system that is anything but.
Supermarkets now account for 96% of UK grocery sales. Just 4% remains in the hands of independent retailers — the butchers, bakers and neighbourhood grocers that once formed the backbone of local high streets. This is not merely a story of changing shopping habits. It is a warning about concentration, fragility and the erosion of community.
The scale of centralisation behind those figures is striking. Tesco, which holds roughly 30 per cent of the market, supplies its entire national network from just 20 distribution hubs. Other major chains operate on similarly compressed models. The result is a food supply system that is ruthlessly efficient. Yet dangerously exposed.
In an age of cyber‑attacks, hostile interference and increasingly frequent natural disruptions such as flooding, the risks are obvious. When supply is funnelled through a handful of vast sites, disruption does not need to be widespread to be severe. A problem in one place can empty shelves across entire regions.
Yet this vulnerability is rarely acknowledged. Instead, supermarket groups present themselves as pillars of the communities they dominate, celebrating efficiency as a public good. The disappearance of diverse high streets is reframed as progress; local dependence on a single store is sold as convenience.
This contradiction is often visible in plain sight. Outside one supermarket in Aylsham, a prominent sign proclaims the retailer’s commitment to “healthy food for children and community”. The accompanying imagery, however, features crisps and cola. The language of wellbeing is deployed, while images of products which promote anything but good food are displayed.
Communities are not strengthened by monoculture. Resilience comes from diversity: multiple suppliers, shorter supply chains, and local businesses that circulate money within the places they serve. Independent shops act as community hubs, places to chat, interact, and understand the stories behind what is being sold.
When a small number of businesses control almost all grocery sales, supply chains grow brittle, choice narrows, and local economies weaken. All the talk about community support begins to ring hollow when the structures beneath it undermine the very communities being invoked.
At a time when resilience is increasingly discussed in terms of energy, defence and infrastructure, food must not be overlooked. A country that cannot tolerate disruption in its grocery supply is not as secure as it imagines.
From Slow Food in the UK latest newsletter
Totally Locally Crickhowell
