Britain’s biggest organic farmer is planning to open a series of neighbourhood restaurants serving hearty meals for less than a tenner a head.
Guy Watson, who founded the Riverford network. Hopes they will become the centerpiece of urban communities as well as spurring interest in healthy eating.
The restaurants would serve dishes such as roasted root vegetables, winter salad with pears and Moroccan lamb soup.
Watson says he wants them to be run by local people and says he is interested in the “social enterprise, co-operative type thing from the 60s and 70s but without worthiness”.
Geographically, he adds, he would probably start with a couple of restaurants, perhaps one in London and the other in Bristol.
Riverford is now the largest supplier of vegetable boxes in the country supplying organic produce to 117,000 customers, with 1,000 employees and a network of six farms from Devon on Cheshire.
The Independent 27/09/08 page 17
