Notes on Farmfoods
Their logo is in the public domain as it’s deemed “not original enough”. I thought the font was Arial Rounded but maybe I was being overgenerous – it looks more like children’s fridge magnet letters. Reasons past employees have left? The usual – not paid for extra hours / child labour / poor management / favouritism for being family members. Lucky them.
Their tagline Great Food, Amazing Prices irks me every time I see it. I don’t even recognise most of what they sell as food, let alone as coming from a farm. And it’s not always cheap. Those of us expecting a nice deli were in for a shock.
It just appeared one day without warning. No one had asked for it. We first noticed it during lockdown, and when we were desperate we’d brave its aisles, jossling amongst the zombie-like customers buying crates of fizzy drinks, which seem to take up about a third of the shop, the rest being chocolate, sweets, crisps, frozen food (it makes Iceland look like Waitrose) and, well, to be fair, they do sell potatoes which may have come from a farm. Who knows.
I’d never seen a branch before but apparently the stores – warehouse-like containers that feel like crimes of torture or murder have taken place in the aisles – now number over three hundred in the UK (they are originally from Scotland). They presumably target poor areas (I’ve since seen one in St Austell).
Though the one in Pool, Redruth, was mainly built on derelict land, I’m sure they removed a fair amount of woodland to make way for the massive car park, which is always empty.
Amateur social and cultural psychogeographers may be able to plot ley lines through Farmfoods to Subway, Poundland, McDonald’s, Costa and KFC (if they can make it through the traffic), and find the root causes for the end of the world.
I have mentioned previously how the area around Redruth and Camborne is one of the poorest and most deprived in Europe. And as regards young Cornish men, they have possibly the worst teeth I’ve seen outside of parts of Africa and Asia. We need Farmfoods like we need a kick in the teeth. Which it exactly what it is, really.