Booths announces partnership deal with Slow Food

NORTH West supermarket chain Booths has formed a partnership with Slow Food to promote quality, provenance, seasonality and regionality of food.

Slow Food promotes the enjoyment and protection of locally-produced food products and regional cooking.

The partnership has been formed in recognition of Booths’ commitment to sourcing products from the counties it serves.

At least 25% of all products in Booths’ stores at any one time are sourced from Lancashire, Cumbria, Yorkshire or Cheshire.

Around 85% of its meat and 65% of its bread is from the region and in season, 100% of its tomatoes are British.

The new partnership will enable Slow Food to build on its core infrastructure, serve its network of local groups more efficiently and support its education projects.

Some of the initiatives which will be launched as part of the partnership include: ‘taste adventure’ interactive workshops to communicate the excitement of food to families; membership of Slow Food for both Booths staff and customers; and recipe cards throughout the store highlighting ‘good, clean and fair’ food.

Edwin Booth, chairman and the fifth generation of the Booth family to run the retailer, said: “The first time that I heard about Slow Food I was struck by its passion for good food and drink which is produced with care and tastes good.

“It is products like this that form the bedrock of our range at Booths.”

In a separate initiative, Booths has provided a donation to fund the start up of Slow Food Wisdom.

This project will engage with the older generation to help rediscover the UK’s food heritage and ensure it is not lost for future generations.

Catherine Gazzoli, CEO of Slow Food UK comments: ‘We’re delighted to be working with Booths, the partnership will bring valuable funding into Slow Food and will benefit our grassroots volunteer network allowing us to give them more support and enabling us to deliver on the projects we’re currently planning.’

The majority of Preston-based Booths stores are in Lancashire and Cumbria, but it also has three sites in Yorkshire and one at Knutsford, Cheshire.

Last November, Booths showed it had been able to overcome the downturn as it increased profits for the year to April 2009 by 8.7% to £7.5m on sales up 3% to £254m.