Pipers Farm closes Exeter shop

This Saturday, 29 October, Magdalen Road will bid a fond farewell to Pipers Farm as the family run company, which has had an active presence on the road for 23 years, has made the decision to focus its entire business online.

Peter Greig of Pipers Farm states they will be leaving with “so many wonderful memories” and “feeling very positive and optimistic about the future of family farming.”

Magdalen Road is a thriving trading community located in St Leonards, Exeter, boasting a variety of independent businesses, including shops, cafes and restaurants.

Pipers Farm first took residence on Magdalen Road in 1993 with Peter Greig, founder of the successful farming enterprise that works with 25 small-scale farmers to supply consumers and businesses with a mail order meat delivery service, being Chairman of the Magdalen Road Traders Association for 15 years.

Pipers Farm state they are committed to securing an independent retailer as the new tenant as quickly as possible and encourage interest in particular from butchers.

“Magdalen Road is a thriving trading community with strong loyalty from its local customer base. Newcomers on the scene, such as the Magdalen Road Village Bakery, have been very well received and show Magdalen Road is still very much at the heart of the community,” says Peter Greig, founder of Pipers Farm.

“However, we simply cannot ignore the huge growth from online sales and we had to make the decision to pull away from the retail outlet on Magdalen Road in order to allow us to fully focus on opportunities from the online marketplace. This will allow us to not only safeguard the farming community we have established over the years, but allow it to flourish,” adds Peter.

To mark the occasion, on Saturday (29 October) Peter and Henri, Pipers Farm founders, will be cooking on the barbeque, offering complimentary breakfast rolls for well wishers to enjoy

“We want to take the opportunity to meet with our loyal customers and personally thank them as well as reassure them they will still be able to enjoy our products through our online, telephone and email ordering service,” says Peter.

For 30 years Pipers Farm has passionately championed traditional farming methods over ‘factory farms’ and it states a rise in demand by both consumers and local chefs for ethically farmed food is allowing Peter and his team to tip the balance in favour of family farms.

Peter comments: “The provenance of food, in particular meat, has been increasingly on the agenda over the past few years and more and more people are choosing to support sustainably produced food and they are doing this by buying online through businesses like ours. This is great news for our small-scale farmers as it means we are able to direct more volume to them, meaning they are less reliant on income from other sources.

We are now in a situation where after 30 years of collaborative hard work by our team and the efforts of all of the farms we work with, we are seeing a significant shift towards young farmers opting to return home and continue the long line of traditional farming that has been in their family for generations.

Over the years, we have had to constantly evolve as farming still remains one of the most volatile and vulnerable industries, but by constantly adapting we are confident we can add even more small-scale farms to our collective, meaning we are achieving our ‘family farms not factory farms’ ethos.

We remain committed to protecting the farms we work with and we are doing everything we can to ensure they are able to continue to develop and grow. In order to do this, we must continue to look ahead and we welcome the continued support from our loyal customers who over the years have been dedicated followers of our ethos. We believe by moving into a new era of our business we can not only continue to support our local community but we can make a real difference to the way food is produced in this part of the world,” says Peter.

Peter Greig, together with his family, runs Pipers Farm, a 50-acre farm in Cullompton. For more information, visit http://pipersfarm.com