Plastic-free grocery store Butterfly Effect is raising money for a mobile shop to bring its eco-ethos to Aberdeenshire’s smallest towns and villages.
The Insch business, which also has a store Banchory, has set a £5,000 crowdfunding target to buy a horse trailer suitable for transporting its zero-waste goods to rural communities.
Butterfly Effect’s owner says the project is vital to allow people in more remote areas to help cut grocery waste.
“We’ve just had so many people come up to us and ask if we can open a shop here, or open a shop there,” says Lauren Brook, who opened her Insch store in 2019 and the Banchory one two years later.
“So we put our heads and thought, how can we reach out to the rural communities that possibly don’t even have a premises that we can go into?”
Refilleries such as Butterfly Effect sell dried foods and other household goods by weight and in reused bags. The aim is to reduce the carbon footprint of shopping and offer an alternative to what the company considers overpackaged supermarket brands.
To mobilise the business, Lauren has her eye on a horse-trailer-style cart that will hook up to her van.
She then plans to spend five-days a week driving the trailer around the north-east, where she can set up shop right in the middle of a community.
She says the mobile shop, called Butterfly Effect’s Refills on the Road, will look something like a trailer operated by Oat Float, a refillery in Bristol.
“That’s basically what it’s going to look like,” Lauren adds.
What towns and villages will Butterfly Effect’s Refills on the Road visit?
The main question Lauren gets asked is what villages and towns will she visit.
So far, Lauren says she’s still working on an itinerary.
“We’re still at the early stages,” she explains. “I won’t be going to places where people can already get this.
“So it’d be places like Oldmeldrum that don’t have a refill shop. Turiff has been asked for, Westhill has been asked for, even little rural places like Kennethmont, Overton, Newmachar. Those are the places we’ll be aiming for.”
Lauren hopes to get the trailer up and running by the summer.
And she maintains the mobile shop will carry a cross-section of the goods she already sells in Insch and Banchory.
“Dry goods, pastas, rice, we’ll have flowers and spices, but we’ll also have household products such as soap and laundry detergent,” she says. “It’ll be a miniature version of Butterfly Effect.”
Lauren can’t wait to get out on the road and start spreading the Butterfly Effect message of plastic-free and zero waste.
She even says travelling sales is in her blood – her father had a fish round for 27 years.
“I’ve been brought up with this,” she adds. “And [my father will] be the gentleman that’s actually kitting out the van, too. He did both of the shops and this will be his next project.”
To donate to Lauren’s Refills on the Road crowdfunding project, visit her Crowdfunder page here.
