London Chefs’ Favourite Supplier Takes Its Produce Nationwide for Winter Lockdown

London chefs’ favourite supplier goes nationwide

Natoora, whose produce is a hallmark of many of the city’s most acclaimed restaurants in the Euro-small-plate-big-plate seasonal vein, is extending its home delivery service nationwide after reintroducing it to London during the first lockdown in March. Like then, restaurants that aren’t cooking don’t need ingredients to cook with, and many suppliers — farmers, butchers, fishermen — again find themselves in the same position as restaurants: their primary business wiped out overnight.

Natoora deliberately exited the home delivery market in the mid 2010s, barring a partnership with Waitrose; its fully fledged return a sign that lockdown or no lockdown, the restaurant-adjacent economy is now making the assumption that shutdowns will continue, and that resilience, built up across different markets, is an essential tool for maintaining business. The likes of Warrens butcher in Cornwall, seafood supplier Pesky Fish, Namayasai farm in East Sussex, and the Estate Dairy have all taken their restaurant specialisms and turned them onto the consumer-direct, in order to keep supply chains working and businesses afloat. Natoora has established its own farm, Melilot, also in Cornwall, shortening one part of its supply chain further.

Initiatives like these need scale to survive and Natoora’s prior experience doing national delivery will have been logistically and financially advantageous, with a readymade app ready to be adapted to consumer needs. Not all suppliers have the prestige and bandwidth to make such a decisive pivot. The growth of influence from it and suppliers like it may have the short-term impact of making those Euro-small-plate-big-plate-seasonal restaurants more homogenous and predictable than they might once have been. The nationwide delivery is expected to roll out in mid-November.

And in other news...

• A fine tooth-comb explainer of what the new coronavirus lockdown means for restaurants in London.
• McDonald’s is keeping each and every one of its U.K. restaurants open through November.
• The ultimate guide to eating and drinking at home in London.
• The government has once again pledged to keep U.S. meat that doesn’t meet the U.K.’s food standards out of trade deals, but it is still yet to enshrine this in law.
• Mayor of London Sadiq Khan is pushing the government to extend the current business rates holiday for hospitality businesses. It runs out in April 2021. [Big Hospitality]
• Good tweet: