Based on the sessions “Top tips for generating footfall at no extra cost”, “Staff culture: building a team to thrive” and “Resilience: navigating the challenges facing UK specialist retail”, delivered at The UK Food & Drink Shows 2026.
Speakers:
- Mark Kacary, owner and managing director, The Norfolk Deli
- Richard Nicholson, director, Cannon Hall Farm
- Nick Sinfield, co-founder and ceo, Teals
- Emma Mosey, owner, Yolk Farm
- Robert Copley, ceo, Farmer Copleys
- Tom Clark, UK general manager, Brit Stops
- Roderick Mountain, director, Zebra Energies Ltd
Estimated read time: 16 minutes
Quick read summary
- Farm retailers under cost pressure are generating income from space, attention and assets they already own rather than new borrowing.
- Energy, wage and stock costs continue to climb while closure rates across speciality food retail stay stubbornly high.
- Seventy-two per cent of English farm businesses now run a diversified activity, up ten percentage points in a decade.
- Speakers recommended starting with assets already paid for, then building the management structure capable of running them.
- Audit your car park, your quiet trading hours and your unused buildings for revenue that requires no capital outlay.
Richard Nicholson’s father took over the family farm at 16 years old. His own father had a farm taken by compulsory purchase, moved to another, and died the year after. The boy left school before his exams, went back to sit them, and inherited the debt.
For the three decades that followed, by his son’s account, the farm never cleared more than £700 in a year. When he proposed opening the land to the public, his bank told him to sell up while some equity remained. He found a different bank, sold two houses the family has since bought back, and in 1981 opened a 50-seat tea room built around a scone recipe his mother and her friend Rosemary had perfected using two bantam eggs, or one hen egg, because that was what the birds were laying.
That tea room is now a business employing 280 people, split roughly evenly between farm shop, restaurants and the farm itself.
The point of the story is not perseverance. It is what he actually had to work with, which was a field, a recipe and a willingness to let strangers onto the land. Across three sessions at the Farm Shop & Deli
Show, operators running businesses from 35 to 280 staff described the same pattern in contemporary terms. The income came from assets already sitting on the balance sheet, and the price was paid in hours rather than pounds.
What is driving farm retailers towards diversification now?
The pressure is measurable and it is not new, but it has sharpened. Defra’s Farm Accounts in England found that 72 per cent of English farm businesses ran some diversified activity in 2024/25, a rise of ten percentage points since 2015/16. Those businesses earned an average of £31,100 from it. Letting buildings was the most common activity at 50 per cent of surveyed farms, with solar generation second at 27 per cent.
Beyond the farm gate, the picture is harsher. Mark Kacary, owner and managing director of The Norfolk Deli in Hunstanton, has traded for twelve years in a market he described bluntly. He was asked how a two-person coastal deli had survived when so many comparable businesses had not.
“There’s a lot of people who like the idea of opening something. I don’t necessarily think that as many people fully appreciate what it actually takes to keep something open.”
- Mark Kacary, owner and managing director, The Norfolk Deli
The distinction matters commercially. Opening requires capital and optimism, both of which are obtainable. Staying open requires an income line that does not depend on footfall in a wet February, which is a harder thing to buy.
Robert Copley, who runs Farmer Copleys near Pontefract, framed the same pressure from the operations side. He told the room the business was hunting efficiencies because costs were climbing across the board and he did not want to pass all of it to the shelf edge.
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| Seventy-two per cent of English farm businesses ran a diversified activity in 2024/25, earning an average of £31,100 from it. |
What can a farm business earn from space it already owns?
Tom Clark runs Brit Stops, a scheme founded fifteen years ago by his parents after they used a French equivalent on family holidays. Farm shops, pubs, breweries and vineyards let motorhomes park overnight at no charge. The scheme takes nothing from the host and funds itself entirely through member subscriptions, currently £44 a year across roughly 40,000 members and 1,500 host sites.
Hosts pay no fee, sign no contract and can leave in a week. The reason it clears the regulatory hurdle that stops most car park ventures is worth understanding precisely. Clark explained why the scheme sits outside campsite planning rules.
“These are customers using your car park anyway. You’re not setting up a campsite. You’re not taking a fee.”
- Tom Clark, general manager, Brit Stops
Because no charge is levied and no facilities are provided, the activity remains ancillary to the existing trade rather than a new use of the land. An operator can join on a Tuesday and host on a Wednesday.
The commercial return depends on having something to sell once the vehicle arrives. Clark cited a host with a farm shop and a pizza oven that has taken around 400 overnight visits in five years, and a pick-your-own site that draws families repeatedly. His members skew towards retired couples aged 55 and over, travelling with disposable income and, frequently, dogs.
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| A motorhome stopover avoids planning permission because it is ancillary to an existing business, charges no fee and provides no facilities. |
Electric vehicle charging follows similar logic on the same tarmac. Roderick Mountain, director at Zebra Energies Ltd, described operators taking supplier-funded installation in return for rental income, or buying units outright and retaining the margin. He pointed to one farm shop generating its own electricity at a few pence per unit and selling it to drivers at substantially more.
Copley’s version uses the land rather than the car park. His trading year runs on a seasonal events calendar: a tulip festival in April and May, strawberries in June and July, sunflowers through August and September, pumpkins in November and Christmas in December. Headcount tracks it, from 85 year-round to around 105 during the tulip festival and peaking near 120 for pumpkins.
Nicholson is expanding the same model at Cannon Hall Farm, where a gelato operation opened roughly a year ago and a dedicated hire is planned to grow the pumpkin and Christmas events.
Why does diversification stall without the right team structure?
Adding an income line adds a workforce problem, and this is where most published guidance goes quiet. Nick Sinfield, co-founder and chief executive of Teals, spent six years in HR before running seven businesses under one roof with around 60 staff. His view is that the attraction problem and the retention problem are the same problem seen at different moments.
He described the type of person a growing operation pulls in, typically aged between 22 and 32 and moving from a larger, more rigid employer.
“Quite often, they’re stuck in structures where they can’t impact change with their own decision making.”
- Nick Sinfield, co-founder and chief executive, Teals
That is an employer branding proposition rather than a pay proposition, which matters when you cannot outbid a multiple on salary. Teals offers autonomy from the first week and holds new starters to it, running a line manager check-in at the end of week one, an informal review at six weeks, a formal probation review at three months, and then an impact development plan tied to the company’s B Corp commitments from six months onwards.
Emma Mosey, who owns Yolk Farm near Boroughbridge with her husband Ben, argued that none of this works without the management layer beneath the owner. Her business runs 35 staff under a single general manager who appoints his own supervisors. She and her husband have deliberately stepped out of daily operations, including organising staff events.
Copley reached the opposite structure from the same starting point. Farmer Copleys has no overall manager. Heads of department run the butchery, cafe, farm and events, handle their own buying, rotas and wages, and report a margin to him monthly.
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| Robert Copley caps direct reports at ten, on the basis that a manager is most stretched at that number. |
Both models produce the same outcome, which is a business that can absorb a new venture without the owner personally running it. The most useful contribution to staff retention strategies came from Mosey, who challenged the assumption that low turnover is automatically the goal.
She had just described a former general manager who left to keep alpacas in mid Wales, and a first employee, hired at 15, whose final music college performance the family travelled to watch.
“I don’t think we should be afraid of turnover because I do think sometimes it’s for the right reasons.”
- Emma Mosey, owner, Yolk Farm
For an operator scaling from seven staff to 35, this reframes a recurring anxiety. A team that changes as the business grows is often a symptom of growth rather than a failure of culture, and the manager appropriate to a seven-person shop is rarely the right appointment at 35.
How do operators fund growth without borrowing?
Stock is where a speciality retailer’s cash disappears. The Norfolk Deli sells almost exclusively Norfolk-made products, and its cellar carries nothing alcoholic produced outside the county, drawing on local vineyards, breweries, cideries and distillers. Range breadth is the whole proposition, and suppliers imposing six-bottle minimums made it ruinous on a small floor.
The fix came from a local consolidator holding stock from many producers and selling single units. Kacary orders online until 11am and receives goods by 8am the following day, which lets the shop hold two bottles of a line, sell one, and replace it overnight. He described it as running something close to a just in time stock management model borrowed from car manufacturing.
Online now accounts for roughly 30 per cent of the business and is climbing. He built the website himself, taught himself about domain authority and backlinks, and reports outranking several of his own suppliers without any spend on paid search. Suppliers occasionally email the deli believing they are contacting the producer.
Nicholson made the same case from a farm with 700,000 Facebook followers and more than 100,000 on Instagram. He was clear about what that cost to build.
“You see a lot of people with businesses that aren’t trying very hard on social media, and they just give up. Well, you know, make the effort.”
- Richard Nicholson, director, Cannon Hall Farm
His budget started with the cost of a few thousand black and white leaflets per year, written and photographed by himself. The audience became the foundation of a television partnership with production company Daisy Beck, and when lockdown closed conventional filming the farm shot roughly thirty hour-long programmes for Channel 5 on iPhones.
What happens when a diversified business changes hands?
A farm with five income lines is harder to hand over than a farm with one, and family business succession was where several speakers were most candid. Nicholson studied graphic design while his brothers read agriculture, farmed for years without enjoying it, and found his contribution in audience building instead. He was asked whether the brothers get along.
“I don’t believe anybody who says that they run a family business and that they always get on, but we’ve always rubbed along together well enough to make it work.”
- Richard Nicholson, director, Cannon Hall Farm
The next generation is arriving with different training. His nephew Thomas has returned from Marks and Spencer and Tesco with a corporate background and a law degree. Cannon Hall has separately recruited a managing director, a former army sergeant, specifically to take cost out.
Mosey approached handover in reverse, building the leadership structure before the exit rather than after it. Her general manager now runs the operation while she and her husband work on new developments.
What should an operator check before adding a new income line?
A decision framework drawn from what the speakers described. Work through it in order, because the later questions have stopped ventures the earlier ones waved through.
- What do I already own that earns nothing? List the car park, quiet trading hours, unused buildings, marginal land and any existing audience. These are the only assets that carry no acquisition cost.
- Is this ancillary or is it a new use? If you charge a fee or provide facilities, you have probably created a planning question. If customers are using space they already use and you take nothing for it, you probably have not.
- What will they spend once they are here? Brit Stops hosts benefit only where something is available to buy. Footfall without a transaction is a cost.
- Who runs this on a Tuesday in February? Name the person. If the answer is the owner, the venture has a hidden salary attached to it.
- Does my management layer already exist, or am I building it at the same time? Both Yolk Farm and Farmer Copleys had a structure in place before adding complexity, whether a general manager or heads of department.
- What does it cost in working capital? Anything requiring stock ties up cash indefinitely. Ask whether a consolidator or a shorter reorder cycle can shrink the commitment before you commit it.
- How many hours a week does this add, and to whose week? Answer honestly and in numbers.
What this means for farm shop and speciality retail operators
- Farm shop and farm retail owners: before costing a barn conversion, price the revenue available from your car park and quiet hours. A motorhome scheme or charging point can be live within a fortnight and needs no borrowing.
- Deli and speciality retailers without land: ask your largest three suppliers whether a local consolidator can break their minimum order. Freed working capital funds range breadth, which is the thing customers actually come for.
- Operators approaching 20 or more staff: appoint the management layer before the next venture, not after it. Decide now whether you are running a single general manager or heads of department, because retrofitting either during a growth phase is what breaks teams.
- Owners planning an exit within ten years: identify which income line the next generation is qualified to run and which they are not. Bringing in outside skills, whether a corporate retailer or a professional manager, is a succession decision rather than an admission.
- Anyone considering a zero-cost scheme: calculate the time cost in hours per week and assign it to a named person. The schemes are free to join and are not free to run.
Frequently asked questions
What is farm diversification?
Farm diversification means generating income from non-agricultural activity that uses existing farm resources, such as retail, events, letting buildings or energy generation. Defra excludes contract work on other farms from the definition. In 2024/25, 72 per cent of English farm businesses had at least one diversified activity.
Can you diversify a farm without capital investment?
Yes, though the options are narrower. Motorhome host schemes, supplier-funded EV charging and organic social media all start at zero cost because they use space, infrastructure or audience that already exists. The trade-off is time rather than money, and every operator at the show was clear about that.
Does hosting motorhomes on a farm need planning permission?
Generally not, where the activity is ancillary to an existing business, no fee is charged and no facilities are provided. Charging for overnight stays or installing toilets and hook-ups changes the position and brings campsite regulation into play. Confirm with your local planning authority before proceeding.
How many people should report to one manager in a farm retail business?
Robert Copley of Farmer Copleys works to a ceiling of ten direct reports, which he considers the point of maximum stretch. Businesses of a similar size take different routes, with Yolk Farm running 35 staff under one general manager and Farmer Copleys using heads of department instead.
Is high staff turnover a sign of a problem?
Not always. Emma Mosey of Yolk Farm argued that staff leaving to pursue their own ambitions reflects well on the business, and that a growing operation needs different people at different sizes. Turnover driven by unresolved negativity is a separate matter and should be addressed through direct conversation early.
Conclusion
The businesses that came through the last few years did not find a new revenue model. They found revenue in things they were already paying for and had stopped noticing, whether a field, a car park, a phone camera or a member of staff capable of more than the job description allowed. What none of the speakers pretended is that any of it arrives free.
The cheapest income line on a farm is the one running through a car park that stood empty anyway. The most expensive is the one that quietly adds a seventh working day to the owner’s week.
Speakers
Mark Kacary, owner and managing director, The Norfolk Deli.
Spent more than thirty years in IT sales and marketing, the last twelve in IT security, before buying a Hunstanton wine cellar and converting it into a deli twelve years ago. Runs the business with his wife Rosie, a fellow director, and handles all buying, production, website and social media in house. Winner of Deli of the Year at the Farm Shop & Deli Awards.
Richard Nicholson, director, Cannon Hall Farm.
The eldest of three brothers, he trained in graphic design while his siblings studied agriculture, and built the farm’s audience to more than 700,000 Facebook followers from a starting budget of one leaflet a year. Leads marketing and social media, buys for the gift and farm shops, and was instrumental in the Channel 5 television partnership. Author of the farm’s cookbook.
Nick Sinfield, co-founder and chief executive, Teals.
Read law before spending his first six years in HR managing a team of around 100. Founded Teals with his wife Ash, opening in Somerset in December 2020, and now employs around 60 people across seven businesses on one site. A certified B Corp. Unusual among chief executives in bringing formal HR grounding to a growth-stage retail operation.
Emma Mosey, owner, Yolk Farm.
Bought Minskip Farm Shop with her husband Ben with no retail experience and rebranded it as Yolk Farm, adding a restaurant, a play barn and a dog-walking field. Served three years as chair of the Farm Retail Association, the representative body for UK farm shops and farmers’ markets. Came to farm retail from a career as a novelist.
Robert Copley, co-owner and director, Farmer Copleys.
Runs a farm retail and events business at Ravensknowle Farm near Pontefract with his wife Heather, employing 85 people year-round and rising to around 120 at peak. Currently chairman of the Yorkshire Agricultural Society and a former chair of the Farm Retail Association. Built a year-round events calendar spanning tulips, soft fruit, sunflowers, pumpkins and Christmas.
Tom Clark, general manager, Brit Stops.
Son of founders Steve and Mandy Clark, who launched the motorhome hosting scheme in 2010 after being inspired by the French France Passion network. Has led the move onto a digital platform and continues to run UK operations following the 2023 acquisition by US parent company Harvest Hosts.
Rod Mountain, director, Zebra Energies Ltd.
Part of a small consultancy that has worked predominantly with farms and farm shops for fifteen years, advising on energy cost reduction, solar and EV charging installation.
Based on sessions delivered at The UK Food & Drink Shows 2026.
