The Offshoot Story
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The Offshoot Story |
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The Offshoot story starts back in 1976 when homemaker Annie Speller, frustrated by the lack of healthy food, and the difficulties in finding out exactly what we were eating, took matters into her own hands. She had ordered some "wholefoods" from a friend who was operating a tiny delivery service. The order took so long to arrive she made an offer for his entire stock. "Wholefoods" was a new idea to her and her family, and just about everyone else at that time. The stock arrived at her home quite soon, amazingly, and Annie's first Natural Food Retail Business was launched. In those days it was fashionable to choose cute earthy names for alternative enterprises, and Annie came up with the agri-veggy name of FODDER.
Fodder grew rapidly, working as a home based delivery service. It put on so much weight that the upstairs stockroom was threatening to become a downstairs stockroom. More convenient, but messy.
Soon Fodder was on the lookout for new premises in Bingley, West Yorkshire, England. A terraced corner shop in an older part of town was the choice. Annie reasoned that a specialist shop doesn't need to be on Main Street, and the little corner shop site was ideal. Working in partnership with two other like-minded minded friends Annie built Fodder into a guiding light for people who cared about the honesty of their food. Time passed, and the shop grew more successful but the partners decided to move on in their various ways. Fodder was sold in 1987 and Annie and her family moved to nearby Keighley. Annie had promised herself a rest but a small wholefood business in the town became available.. It didn't take Annie long to make up her mind to buy the business with the proceeds of the previous sale. The name of the outfit was Octopus Wholefoods. Octopus lived in a leased shop next to the Victoria Hotel in Keighley's impressive Cavendish Street. The lease was due to expire in 1989 and Annie began looking around for new premises. She finally settled on Number Twenty in the same street, and made the decision to buy the building outright. There's nothing like commitment! A change of name went with the move, and Offshoot was launched. With it came a huge overdraught and a staggering workload. The Offshoot logo was designed to show real food breaking out of its confines and ready to grow for a second generation of health food fans. Offshoot began to grow - through bad times and good. An opportunity came up in 1996 to buy the property next door, a matching unit in Cavendish Street's imposing row of listed Victorian buildings. To fit in with the period style of the street we installed a new shop front in keeping with the architecture which has proved very popular with visitors and customers.
Visit Offshoot on most days and besides the helpful and friendly staff you'll probably find Annie dispensing sound advice to happy customers. The wholefoods are easy to sell - just provide the best quality organic grain, vegetables, pulses and nuts and let them speak for themselves. The vitamin and supplement lines are trickier - Annie is careful to give unbiased and frank advice, and to protect the good name of her particular retail speciality. Many customers will know that vitamin sales are under attack by authorities and by the EU, all keen to be seen to be doing the right thing. US shoppers would be surprised by the amount of control and restriction. European shoppers would find the British regime liberal by their standards. So here we stand, one foot in Europe, one in the US, feet on the ground and head in the clouds . . . that's . . .
George Speller (I'm the other half)
