About Us

Greenways began life as a shop in Leighton Buzzard in May 2007 and is the creation of Andrea Curd and Ian Kidd, who together thought of the shop on August 30th 2005. It was Ian's birthday, and as a present he had been given the Organic Directory. When looking through the Bedfordshire section it was obvious that there was very little in the area, and it was agreed that they should start an Organic shop and cafe. The idea grew over a period of time into an emporium for all things Organic, Fairtrade, Local or otherwise ethical.

Whilst Ian continued to work full time and Andrea worked on her recycled card wedding stationery business they did all the suitable preliminary research to see whether the idea was viable, and when we were sure it was, Ian took a redundancy and started to work fully on getting the shop started. Neither would have dreamt that it would take as long as it did to open the shop, but writing the business plan, acquiring the loan, finding the right premises, waiting for it to be empty and then negotiating the lease, took longer than anticipated!

Greenways believes passionately in the need to reduce the consumer "footprint" and hopes that providing an outlet for products made in harmony with the environment and the people who work in it, might help us live more sustainably.

As residents in Leighton Buzzard, Ian and Andrea felt that their beliefs should be borne out in their own backyard (so to speak). They hope that there are others who care about green issues in the area who will support the shop and help make this cultural shift progress at an even greater rate than it currently is.

Supermarkets are making some of this produce more available to the masses, but unfortunately they are encouraging even more food miles to be added to goods that can be produced on our shores, whilst squeezing suppliers for every ounce of margin they can to increase their own wealth for the benefit of the shareholding few. The producers that we represent generally refuse to deal with the supermarkets so that they can continue to operate according to their strong ethics and methods, where otherwise they would need to multiply their yields to meet demand and discount to meet the targets that the customer allegedly requires, which has been set by the ludicrously underpriced products that we buy today*.

We believe in our suppliers and the products that they sell. Some of the local produce may not be certified organic as their production levels are too low to warrant the £500 registration fee (per year), but we recognise their methods and sell them as being grown to organic standards but NOT being certified. Local producers need to be supported, and the benefits afforded by the low food miles make sense... its fresh, you can see where it has been grown and it doesn't burn pointless oil.

*Despite inflation, we spend 30% less on food than we did in 1970. This money has to be taken from someone, and the supermarkets are doing very well thank you very much.