March 14 sees the start of #manxmarch 2022 which challenges us to eat only local, seasonal and sustainable produce for a week.

It’s now in its third year and it has spawned a Facebook group with nearly 4,000 members, all sharing the love for locally grown and produced food.

We get it. In the midst of busy lives it’s easier just to pop into the supermarket and throw a few things into a trolley, maybe giving more thought to the price than the food miles of each item.

We know that there are great food products on the island but it’s too much of a hassle to search them out.

One local retailer, Robinson’s, has been quietly increasing the number of local products it stocks so that it now provides the link between the island’s smaller artisan growers and producers that makes it easy to shop local even when you’re busy - and you can even click and collect.

Janna Horsthuis from Robinson’s tells us why local is best and why you should care.

’We always have stocked local products. We pride ourselves on that and we will always go for local first, but I think with Covid it’s become more obvious to the public,’ says Janna.

For her, it quite simply makes good business sense as she goes on: ’The local products are great and we don’t have to pay the freight on them. And no air miles.’

The Robinson’s retail operation that most of us encounter when we go shopping is really just the tip of the iceberg of their business. The wholesale supply to the catering trade, local schools and the hospital sells an astonishing amount of local food products. In all, they supply more than 5,000 different product lines to over 80% of business, schools, hospitals and caterers.

But given that the Covid closed down local schools, cafes, hotels and restaurants for long periods over the last two years it also meant that that side of the business took a big hit.

To give you some idea, using just one product as an example, Isle of Man Creamery grated cheese in one kilo catering packs: in 2019 they supplied around 105,000 kilos and this dropped to 44,000 kilos in 2020. And it was the same story, of around a 50% drop, right through their wholesale business.

Janna says: ’We’re an independent business, not part of a big corporate - we had to work out what to do on the ground.

’We can’t operate working from home, we need people on the ground, and, even though the restaurants were shut, the hospitals still needed their food deliveries twice a day, and the boat, and the airport, the care homes, and the schools that were open - we still had to go out and deliver.

’In March 2020 we also started doing care boxes for retail customers: a fruit and veg box, a meat and fish box and a grocery box. It was just bonkers, absolutely crazy, because people really needed food and we soon realised we couldn’t keep up that demand.

’All the fridges would just be stacked up and we were delivering, turning stock over and keeping people in jobs, which was our priority. We kept everybody in jobs, we kept everybody safe, but it was hard work.

They also changed their website, adapting the wholesale site to be a bit more user-friendly for retail customers.

Because of this they ended up taking on some of the Creamery’s doorstep deliveries.

Janna says: ’The Creamery were brilliant during lockdown because obviously we did home delivery and people added their milk on to their orders.

’They are a great supplier. We’d never bring in English milk - it’s completely morally wrong isn’t it?’

The delivery habit has continued with some customers.

Janna says: ’We still have regulars, week in week out, and now we also have the click and collect.

’Click and collect is brilliant because there’s no minimum spend: you can go on the website and pick a collection slot up to 6pm.

’So you might read a recipe at lunchtime at work and decide you wanted to make a nice Thai curry that evening. So you can go on the site, put the ingredients in you basket, click and collect, and pick it all up on the way home.’

It’s not so much ’hello fresh’ as ’hello fresh and local with no food miles’.

It’s also an easy route towards doing the Manx March eating local challenge. Robinson’s website helpfully has section dedicated to Manx products and that’s in addition to all the local vegetables they stock at this time of year.

The list of local food producers they stock, on the website and at Ballapaddag, includes bread from Ramsey Bakery, Noa and Ross; Leela’s Kitchen spices; Veg * Vitality vegan products, Staarvey Farm salads and herbs; Davison’s ice cream; Manx loaghtan mince and sausages; vegetables from Stuart Allanson and the Kneale brothers; yogurt from The Dairy Shed, and free range eggs from Close Leece and the Coole Girls, Paula’s Kitchen granola, Morgan’s Pies, and Close Leece Farm’s charcuterie.

Janna says: ’The vision for us for this year is sustainability, and just getting structure back in place, and really looking after people and looking forward. And a really good TT hopefully

’We’re trying to be efficient, trying to buy the best products, offer the best service and just be proud of what we do and keeping on supporting local businesses.

’We’ll never walk away from the local suppliers: if they look after us why would we not buy off them?’