A NEW campaign is to be launched throughout May encouraging people to make a change to their food shopping habits.

The Make One Change campaign aims to help boost rural businesses by supporting small food and drink establishments and bring new customers to independent food stores in the UK.

The campaign is one born from the local food and drink website bigbarn.co.uk, hoping to entice the customer to make one single change to the way they do their food and drink shopping.

This could be something as small as supporting a local butchers or baker, signing up to a vegbox scheme, visiting a farm shop or going bigger and ditching local supermarkets altogether.

Through making this one change, local suppliers and small businesses will benefit hugely from the new wave of customers and hopefully will have the opportunity to bring customers back long after the campaign ends.

With an increasing amount of demand from consumers to know more about the source and the environment that their food originated from, supporting a local business, butcher or baker is a great way to taste a new variety of food that is as rich in history as it is in flavour.

A huge number of people have pledged their support already through the website bigbarn.co.uk/make-one-change and a band of media support has spread the word.

Founder of BigBarn, Anthony Davison said that almost 60 percent of retail spend is made in the supermarkets and that it is time to make a change in the way that people shop and ensure that small, rural businesses can survive.

He added: “At BigBarn we are always striving to find new ways to entice people away from the supermarkets and into small, independent stores. The aim of Make One Change is to prove that even small changes can make a big difference and that shopping locally doesn't have to be a challenge.

“Shopping locally is not only a more appealing and pleasant experience, but it can also save money,

“What we've always found in the past is that once a person makes a decision to change the way they shop, it normally leads onto other small changes.”

Big Barn have said they are hoping that the campaign will invite a whole new way of thinking for people and prove that local food is better.

You can also get involved in the campaign and pledge your support at bigbarn.co.uk/make-one-change and follow the campaign on Twitter by using the hash tag #make1change.

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