Saturday, August 23, 2008

Dad’s Fruit and Veg Round

This is one for the, “Was old is New Again”, file I think. Saw on TV recently how a couple are running a Fresh Fruit and Veg store on the Net. While it may appear “new” to some, this is not all that different from what my father and his father before him, did, when you think about it. Sure this guy uses the Net for people to order their weekly Fruit & Veg, but he then goes to the major Wholesale Market and buys the produce off the growers and then takes it home, packs the specific orders, and then delivers them by vehicle to his customer’s door.

The Only difference between this and what my father and Grandfather did, is that they drove to the market, bought what they thought they needed for their customers and then drove around to their front gates and sold it to them straight from the vehicle. In my father's case it was from a big Blue Bedford Truck. In my Grandfather's case, it was straight from the horse's cart, to their door.

My grandfather started this round way back around 1902, even before he even bought the property he spent the rest of his life on, and in fact only found through his travels on his fruit round. Dad took over from his dad after WW2 and promptly upgraded the horses for an old truck before buying the Bedford, brand spanking new in 1950. (The same year that he produced his third son, (me). He continued on in this trade and he and the truck retired together in 1978, because the demand for fresh fruit and veggies was removed by its then wide dissemination into Supermarkets. (Also the reason my wife and I sold our own fruit and Veggie Business in Eltham 4 years earlier.)

Anyway, it was interesting to note that with the rise of demand for organic fresh fruit and veggies, and produce not stored for lengthy periods in the Supermarket chain’s supply systems, that a niche market is re -opening up again for small suppliers to supply direct to the customers door again.

So once again we see an old Idea revitalised and made ”New" again. So what about you? Maybe you can’t invent something new, but maybe you can repackage something old and make it new again, even if only for a small Niche market. What say you?

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