Artichoke Wholefoods
Date Published: 12-10-2022
Artichoke Wholefoods offers a fantastic selection of locally sourced produce, zero waste provisions, kitchen cupboard staples, household items, gifts, bakery bread, and coffees.
After a very successful Crowdfunding campaign, Artichoke Wholefoods opened on Fishponds Road 11 months ago. In increasingly uncertain times for small businesses, Penny and Jonny have just launched a phase two Crowdfunder to expand and ensure that they can continue to serve the local community in the Fishponds area.
In our second episode of Support Our Independents, we visit Artichoke Wholefoods and speak to owners Penny and Jonny about what it means to be an independent business in Bristol.
It is wonderful to see when communities come together to make things happen. Artichoke was created from a Crowdfund campaign that highlighted the need for locally sourced produce in the Fishponds area. Can you tell us a bit more about how that came about?
Penny: We moved to the area a couple of years ago and we couldn’t find the type of shop and produce that we wanted to have in our local community. Having lived in a few different areas of the city, we were spoiled with the variety and the independent shops where we could source organic, local, sustainable, ethical, and package-free products. Although it wasn’t really on our mind to open a shop, and it’s not something we have done before, some people suggested that we should do it and the opportunity came around to create a community project to seek some funding. So, we thought, let’s just do it. Let’s make it happen as this is something we want.
Jonny: Also, the pandemic happened and suddenly a lot of people were out of work and had to stay at home. As a musician, my work was cancelled so we were looking for a new opportunity to do something positive with the community that could use our skills. I think we also saw during the pandemic how important it is for communities to be together and to actually meet and have physical interaction as it wasn’t really possible for a while during that time period. So, when the community grant opportunity came along and the idea of the shop came along that satisfied two desires for us; one was the food and the way of living, and the other was to have a space in Fishponds where people could meet and talk and share a live experience. That seemed missing on the high street at the time.
Penny: Yeah, because you have the supermarkets in the area, although they’re big enough to house people to see each other, it’s not so much of an inviting place to meet…
Jonny: … they don’t really have that vibe; nobody wants to hang out under those lights and chat about their vegetables or what they might be doing next week. Hopefully, people can do that here.
Penny: We also wanted to not only have it as a space but to sell products that are made locally or sourced locally because that wasn’t readily available on the high street.
Jonny: A lot of people have talked to us about how they would have to go outside their community, outside of Fishponds, to find food or gifts, which is counterintuitive isn’t it?
What can you tell us about your customers?
Penny: I’d say that within Fishponds we have quite a broad range of customers. Including some people that have lived in and around the area for many years and then we have customers that have moved here because of what Fishponds has to offer.
Jonny: There are definitely two communities that come together. There are people that have lived in Fishponds for over ten years, up to a whole generation, and then there’s a whole swathe of people that have moved to Fishponds in the last five to ten years because there are more green areas and there’s a Steiner school here. There’s also a bigger range of housing available. A majority of our customers are new groups of people, but we also have some old-school Bristol customers too. It’s lovely to have a mix…
Penny: We really do have a mix coming into the shop and we love that because you never know who is going to walk through the door. Also, there are a lot of university students too, and they are always interesting to meet and to hear where they come from and what they’re up to. We do have a good mixture and it’s great.
Jonny: We have a mixture of people with different budgets as well, so some people can’t afford to do their general shop here. A lot of our customers, I would say, choose to do part of their weekly shop at Artichoke. They may get some bread, vegetables, and a little treat. Some people just come in for their oat milk or cow’s milk refills…
Penny: … or they just come in for a coffee...
Jonny: … yes, we do have the coffee and flapjack crowd also!
We created this campaign to showcase all the great independent businesses we trade with. What does it mean to you to be an independent high street business?
Penny: Well, we love shopping independent so we love being an independent shop. It’s something that we really value. We value other independent businesses and we love it when customers come through the door and really appreciate us for being independent and having independent values.
Jonny: I love it because it means it’s our own space that we can add a unique place to Bristol that wasn’t here before. As a customer, as Penny said, we love going around to other shops that have their unique take on wholefoods, art, or anything that people sell in the independent wholefood sector. To be able to add ourselves to the chain of independent businesses in Bristol is really exciting because first of all, it means we get to stock all the products that we want to buy and take home, which is a lovely thing to do but also it means that we get to share our vision of hope for a better world with people in Bristol through the shop, and that feels like a privilege.
Penny: ... and we can support other independent businesses by stocking their products, whether it be gifts, cards, or food products. The coffee that we sell in the shop is locally roasted in Staple Hill…
Jonny: … the bread comes from Old Market Assembly in Bristol, as well as houmous made in Clifton.
Penny: We’ve got so many products around the shop and that’s what we like to go for first; stocking local independent brands as much as we can before then going further afield if possible.
Jonny: It means we’ve become a part of an economic web of producers and makers that we’re supporting by selling. I also want to add that it’s a lot of hard work being an independent business. That’s also what it means. For good and bad, that’s given me some perspective on what it means to be independent. You have to put the work in to earn that.
Penny: Yeah, so overseeing all aspects of the business and knowing that you can’t call on the head office to sort something out. We are the head office.
Jonny: It’s nice doing it as a husband and wife team because it means there are two bosses to take on the workload. I don’t think I’d be able to do it on my own.
You have a great selection of zero-waste products in your store and have really utilised the space well. How popular are these products?
Penny: The products are very popular. I would say that there are still a lot of customers that are daunted by the refills but also haven’t got into the habit of refilling because it’s not something that they are used to. Also, because we do have a great selection but we are not solely a zero-waste shop; someone can come here and top up on some of the regular items, but they don't just have to do a fully zero-waste shop…
Jonny: … we’ve got lines that include rice, lentils, cereals…
Penny: … we have herbs and spices too, as well as household liquids and our milks on tap. We have both cow's milk and oat milk. But it is very popular and I think it could be even more popular and we would really like to turn the back room into a refill room so that you are surrounded by the refill experience.
Jonny: That will take a while, I think. At the moment they will probably stay where they are.
Penny: We’ve got a lot of staples, but there are also more refills that we would like to stock. Some people are using us regularly for their refills and there are still more people to lure.
What does the future have in store for Artichoke Wholefoods?
Penny: As of today, we have launched another Crowdfunder campaign. It’s phase two of our funding. After being open for nearly a year, we’ve done amazingly well and the customers have shown up in numbers. But we feel like we didn’t start with enough capital and that we also want to do more as well. So, we have just started a phase two Crowdfunder.
Jonny: The short-term future is to consolidate what we have and then to make some small expansions of stock. Hopefully the sale of alcohol; we’d like to sell organic wines and locally crafted beers. We would like to increase our health supplement range to have a full range of health supplements. A lot of people come here looking for vitamin C and vitamin A and this and that. We’d like to increase our range of locally made gifts as well. The other side of the future is to expand our customer base within Fishponds. We feel like there are still a lot more people in Fishponds that don’t know about us or, if they do know about us, haven’t been into our shop yet. We’d like to be able to spend some time promoting and telling the Fishponds community about who we are, which we haven’t had the time or the budget to do in the first eleven months as we have been trying to get the physical shop established.
Penny: So yeah, hoping to establish ourselves further, make some changes and grow.
Jonny: I think the first Crowdfunder we did, which was the initial one to get some of the funds that we needed to set up the shop showed that there was a customer base in Fishponds that wanted this to happen. Now, I feel like, we’re just at the tip of the iceberg and people want to see us grow and be here and have this as a local resource…
Penny: … and to keep us here.
Jonny: We can’t rely on a huge budget, like supermarkets for example. Everything is through what we are taking over the counter or what our crowd can help us with. That’s great, I’m really proud of that, and it means we’re independent, but it means we’ve got to be completely independent financially.
If you are interested in participating in an upcoming Support Our Independents feature, we would love to hear from you! We want to represent as many businesses as possible and highlight how diverse independent businesses are. Simply email marketing@essential-trading.coop with Support Our Independents in the subject line and we will get back to you as soon as we can.
Our next episode will be on Iechyd Da, a shop providing the Whitchurch area in Cardiff with ethically and sustainably sourced health foods.