Supermarket heroes ‘keeping Britain fed’

Cast your mind back to February and March – people were going about their daily lives, and perhaps stopping off at either the corner shop or the supermarket to pick up our groceries on their way home.

But suddenly, that all changed.

Over the last few months, during the coronavirus lockdown, our perception of those who keep us fed has shifted dramatically.

Supermarkets have been dubbed the UK’s fourth emergency service, and store staff have gone from mere shelf stackers to lauded key workers in the blink of an eye.

Meanwhile, retailers, who are normally the deadliest of competitors have started talking freely to each other, sharing information and ideas, and standing shoulder to shoulder in a combined effort to feed the nation.

For this one-off documentary, Sara Cox and Ade Adepitan are given access to some of Britain’s biggest food retailers and their suppliers to see how their systems stood up to the most testing time in their history.

Sara says: “Like everyone else in the country, I’ve learned over the past few weeks how much of a crucial role our supermarkets, small shops, suppliers and farmers play in keeping us fed in times of crisis.

“I’m really excited to meet the key worker heroes at the very heart of this huge effort to provide us with our weekly shop – from keeping shelves fully stacked and managing queues to delivering food to our door.”

Ade adds: “Watching people legging it out of supermarkets with packets of self-raising flour, stacks of loo rolls and seeing empty shelves in my local grocery stores was surreal.

“It made me realise that before the pandemic hit the UK, I took food and all the systems that are in place to get it to our tables for granted.

“Whilst making this show I met the people who are helping to keep these systems running smoothly and found out how they coped when our food supply chain was pushed to almost breaking point.”

Sara witnesses what goes on in one supermarket over 24 hours to see how they’re coping during the crisis.

And Ade sees how the nations’ farms, factories and depots have risen to the challenge to produce and supply food in these exceptional circumstances.

The duo also gain insights into how our shopping habits have changed during the crisis.

They discover how close the supply system was to reaching breaking point, and explore the long term impacts of the pandemic on shops and the way we shop.

Food retailers shared some of their considerable profits with their staff, their customers and their local communities.

Tesco paid staff a 10-per-cent bonus, Morrisons donated £10million to food banks, the Co-op pledged £4.5million to various charities, and Iceland staff visited other outlets in order to buy toilet rolls so that they could give one to each elderly customer with their shopping.

In addition to these extraordinary acts of kindness and generosity across the sector, store staff, if they didn’t already, held their heads with pride – they, alongside doctors, nurses, ambulance crews, firefighters and paramedics are now designated as being key workers.

And in many people’s views, that is the way it should be.

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