Popular Glasgow shop and cafe takes ‘difficult decision’ to close

Locavore has announced that it will be closing its shop and cafe in Garnethill.

It revealed the ‘difficult decision’ had been taken on social media, citing rising costs and a drop in custom.

The social enterprise, which sells organic produce and aims to create a more sustainable food system, will be closing the store, which only opened last year, on the 19th.

The post said: “We’ve been impacted by the cost of living crisis with our costs going up while custom in some areas has dropped. At the same time our overheads have increased massively following the very busy last 18 months which saw us open Garnethill, Kirkintillock and Edinburgh shops as well as take on new land and set up our central hub in Oatlands. It’s a lot of new rent.

“Unfortunately our new shops, including Garnethill, haven't been as busy as we had hoped and although we are seeing more and more customers each month we are forced to take drastic changes now to secure the future of Locavore.

“We’d hoped to avoid this by securing some further investment from Social Investment Scotland which would buy us the time to slowly build sales and make all the new bits of Locavore work over time. We started speaking to them in spring and were told to expect a decision by late July, but a series of delays meant we did not get a decision till late October. They turned down our application.

“If we had been given a decision in July we would have had more options, but now we are in a precarious situation where we need to quickly make some big unpleasant savings quickly in order to secure the future of Locavore. We think SIS have failed in the timely delivery of this process and will be putting in a formal complaint to the Scottish Government, their funder.

“Next week we will launch a Crowdfunder which we hope brings in the money we need to see us through the next few months as we make the changes we need to be financially sustainable into the future. We hope you’ll support us in this.”

You can find out more about the work Locavore does on their website.