Fox & West | Support Our Independents

02/06/2023

By Lee Nottle

Thriving with local businesses, prestigious cafes, and a welcoming community, Totterdown is a hotbed for rich culture and innovative fresh food. Located in the heart of this Bristol suburb is Fox & West, and they aim to make shopping an experience to be enjoyed.

Last month, Lee from Essential popped into the store on Wells Road and spoke with Area Manager Jazz about how important the supportive community base is to them as well as how Fox & West has had to adapt as a business throughout the tumultuous times high streets have faced.

Can you tell us a bit about the history of Fox & West?

I think we're going into our sixth year now, and Fox & West was opened by Lucy and Hannah. They were teachers and best friends, so they decided to start a new project. They just had dreams of opening a small community store. So, that's what they did!

We’ve got Fox & West here, and the year before last, we opened up Nook, which is a cafe on Wells Road by Broadwalk. That's our second site, and that also has homewares. Also, last year we opened Corner Stores, which is another small store. So, we now have Fox and West, Nook, and Corner Stores. It’s just kind of grown. I think if you look back at pictures from when we first opened this store, there were like three shelves and a few baskets of vegetables, and now we've just filled up the store with as much stuff as we can because everyone seems to like coming here. 

It's a really beautiful space; I really like it. Everything is laid out so nicely, and it's easy to get around the store…

We've changed the layout quite a few times! This is a bit like how it was before the pandemic, and then over COVID we sort of put some shelves in the way to give our staff some personal space, and we only allowed so many people in the store at a time. We used to have cafe seating indoors, and then we got rid of that over the COVID period because we couldn't have anyone in anyway. Now we've become mainly just a shop, so we reopened the other half and got new shelving and stuff. So yeah, we get people coming in, and they're like, "Wow, it looks really nice!" We still get people coming in asking to sit down for a coffee, and I have to say that we got rid of the seating about three years ago

What can you tell us about your customers?

We are really lucky. We have a lovely community around here. We definitely would've struggled a lot more over the last few years, but we've got a lovely base of people that are really grateful that we're here, and we are really grateful for them. Pretty much every customer that walks through the door, we know them, if not by name, by just their regular order. I think because Totterdown is a bit out of the way, you don't get a lot of people just passing through. So, it is genuinely like families that come in every day after the school run and grab, you know, the veg for dinner, or the customers that come in every morning on their way to town and grab a coffee to walk with on the way. So yeah, it is really, really lovely. We’ve got staff working here that have been here for pretty much the whole time we've been open, so we've seen customers come in and tell us they're pregnant, have the baby, and now they're in school! You're like, "Oh, hello, I've literally known you your whole life—I'm the lady that works in the shop!"

In light of the cost of living crisis, consumers are really feeling the pinch. Have you noticed a change in customers’ spending habits?

In the last year, yeah, definitely. I think everything started to change around the pandemic, and we've obviously had to change our approach quite a few times to keep up with everything. But we're lucky that we order week by week. We can get different things in. If customers come to us and want something specific, we can order it in. But there has definitely been a lot more focus on the price of things. Normally people would pick up things and think, "Oh, I wanted this; I'm going to buy it," and now they're like, "I want this, but I don’t know if I want it for that price," which is obviously difficult as a small business as you have to charge what you have to charge. We've started running different special offers, which have definitely helped and changed our range. So, getting a few more non-organic basics for people who want that price range has definitely been important for us. But in general, people are still really happy to come to us because, I mean, next door we've got a Co-op supermarket, and we're actually a lot cheaper than them on quite a few things, which I think people don't expect at all. So, you can go into the Co-op and buy Heinz baked beans for £1.80, and we've got really nice organic baked beans for £1.59, so you can't really argue with that.

What I've noticed when I've had conversations with other stores is that a lot of people are now cooking meals from scratch. Have you noticed that with customers?

Yeah, I think definitely in this area in particular. We don't have a lot of restaurants, so if people want to go out, they have to go quite far, which is another added cost. We have many people that come into the store because they can buy ingredients that they can't necessarily buy without going quite far away or online, and we've got quite a big foodie base anyway. But yeah, definitely, people are cooking from scratch. Luckily, me and all of our staff are quite into food, so people will come in and say they have seen recipes and ask what we think, and we may say something like that looks a bit strange or that it looks really nice. We have constant conversations about food, which people seem to really enjoy, rather than just going into a shop where no one knows what the stock is or what's in the products at all.

Totterdown is a really vibrant area of Bristol, both in terms of culture and wonderful independent businesses. What does it mean to you to be based here?

Totterdown is a really lovely place to be. I mean, we have three businesses here. This is how nice the area is. When we opened Fox & West, we were like, "Wow, people are so happy to have us here!" They are so eager to support us, so we opened up another café, and it was the same thing again. It's so nice to have such a nice community here. We definitely feel like hubs. People come in and talk to their neighbours and to people whose children go to the same schools as theirs. It is just a constant conversation in the store. Everyone's chatting away, and yeah, it's just really lovely. Over the pandemic, we obviously had a big swap around with how things work, and people were literally coming in and thanking us for working, which you just don't really get. It's so nice. Everyone's just so happy and friendly. It's really lovely.

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