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# Making locally-grown organic food more accessible
- URL: https://content.changingthenarrative.media/making-locally-grown-organic-food-more-accessible/
- Published: 2026-08-18T20:46:30.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-18T20:46:30.000Z
- Description: Debbie and Kellie of Unicorn Grocery on chalking their prices next to Tesco's, giving before profit, funding their growers, and never opening a second shop.
- Author: Chris King
- Tags: Alternative Models, Community, #How (Not) To Do Business, #Podcasts, Systems Thinking

## Listen 🎧

**You can also listen to this episode on* [**Apple Podcasts*](https://podcasts.apple.com/fr/podcast/how-not-to-do-business/id1896916857?l=en-GB&i=1000784163581&ref=content.changingthenarrative.media)**,* [**Spotify*](https://open.spotify.com/episode/1Fp6BkUoO7qyMDWsnwFvCv?si=kDNOfakFQS-wkV9ljRR6lw&ref=content.changingthenarrative.media) *and other podcast apps*

## Watch 📺

Rising food prices are something most of us notice at the till long before we see them in a statistic. And underneath the food choices we make there tends to sit a quiet assumption: that the food we're told is better for us — organic, locally grown, traceable back to a person — is the expensive option, and so the first thing to go when money is tight.

Unicorn is a wholefood supermarket in Chorlton, Manchester, UK, where making that kind of food affordable was one of the aims from the very start. Thirty years on it's still trading and still holding to it. Two-thirds of what it sells is organic, including all the fresh fruit and veg — and its own prices go up on a chalkboard on the shop wall next to Tesco's, Sainsbury's, Morrisons' and Asda's, so you can check the gap yourself. You might be surprised at what you see. It's owned by the roughly 50 people who work there. All of them are directors. All of them are paid the same hourly wage, whatever job they do.

I spoke with Debbie and Kellie, two of Unicorn's worker-owners. We got into how they keep the prices where they are, the money they give away before profit is counted, the grants fund they run for the farms they buy from, the farm they bought that didn't work, and why they've never opened a second shop — choosing instead to publish a free guide so other people can build their own.

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## About the guests

Debbie Clarke and Kellie Bubble are worker-owners at Unicorn Grocery, a wholefood supermarket in Manchester, England. Kellie has been at Unicorn 28 years and works across the shop floor, buying, strategy and finance; Debbie has been there 22 years and looks after customer communications and Unicorn's solidarity funds.

## Links mentioned in this episode

- [Unicorn Grocery](https://www.unicorn-grocery.coop/?ref=content.changingthenarrative.media) (Manchester, England)
- [Grow a Grocery](https://www.unicorn-grocery.coop/about-us/grow-your-own-grocery/?ref=content.changingthenarrative.media), Unicorn's free guide to starting a wholefood co-operative
- The [Kindling Trust](https://kindling.org.uk/?ref=content.changingthenarrative.media), and Kindling Farm in Greater Manchester, England
- The [Arizmendi Association of Cooperatives](http://www.arizmendi.coop/?ref=content.changingthenarrative.media), the network of bakery co-ops in California, USA
- [Red Pepper](https://www.redpepper.org.uk/?ref=content.changingthenarrative.media)

## Chapters

- 00:00 — The 1% and 4% funds
- 00:39 — How Not to Do Business
- 00:59 — A whole food supermarket that competes on price
- 02:15 — Meet Debbie and Kellie
- 03:35 — The Solidarity Fund
- 04:46 — How they both ended up at Unicorn
- 07:21 — What a co-op gives you that a normal job doesn't
- 09:48 — From weekly meetings to sociocracy
- 14:02 — What Unicorn actually is
- 16:22 — Flat pay, no hierarchy, low overheads
- 20:43 — Growers, climate and the Growers Fund
- 25:26 — How this differs from a supermarket
- 27:43 — Is organic really more expensive?
- 28:41 — Price boards and word of mouth
- 30:31 — Why there's only one Unicorn
- 36:29 — Growth to what end?
- 38:07 — Stewards, not owners
- 40:25 — Why the language changed — and shrinking back from 75 members
- 42:48 — Recruiting for a co-op
- 47:19 — Raising money from customers: loan stock
- 52:20 — The farm: what worked and what didn't
- 58:37 — Is the UK hostile to worker co-ops?
- 1:02:47 — What happened after the co-op heyday
- 1:04:12 — The one thing to take away
- 1:06:49 — Close