Food is bought fresh from the market daily

Most businesses depend on suppliers to give them the goods or services they need to sell on to their customers.

The number of links in a supply chain varies, but for a restaurant business the food frequently passes through many different hands before it ends up on our plate.

Not so with the Goods Shed in Canterbury.

Here the restaurant, which can be found in an old railway goods shed along with its sister farmers' market, buys its produce straight from the farmers.

There are no "middlemen" involved.

The Goods Shed was created by Susanna Atkins just six months ago.

The idea was to combine a daily farmers' market with a quality restaurant serving fresh traditional English food.

And together with her chef, Blaise Vasseur, they have created a restaurant that's had critical acclaim.

The produce is bought every morning from the market and the menu is made up from those ingredients.

Seasonal

This means the dishes have a very seasonal flavour and change on a daily basis - sometimes even twice a day.

It's a different way of working for Blaise, who trained in London restaurants.

"Usually a chef prepares the menu, then sources the ingredients," he explains.

"Here it's the other way around."

He uses the local vegetables, meat and fish from the market to produce the meals.

Nearly all the food they cook comes from the market - the only products that are bought elsewhere are ones that can't be locally produced, like olive oil, salt and vinegar.

Better value

Buying from the market means that the produce is as fresh as can be - and it saves money.

"It's much cheaper than getting a delivery from a wholesaler. It's better value, and you know exactly where the food is coming from," says Blaise.

But what if the farmers failed to produce the goods - there was a flood, for instance. Would they go to the supermarket and buy the food?

"That's not happened yet, but no, if that happened, we wouldn't run to the supermarket. That's not the idea.

"We'd close for the day, but hopefully that won't happen," says Blaise.

The relationship with the suppliers is very important for both Blaise and Susanna.

It's what the whole business is about.

Susanna comes from a farming background, and is passionate about food.

She has been disappointed by the growth of supermarkets and the move away from buying and eating local food.

For her, eating the fruit and vegetables that are in season is the norm.

Rapport

She doesn't want food that has to travel halfway around the world to get to the dinner table just so we can eat it all year.

"I love the rapport with small shopowners and producers - it's a much more pleasurable experience eating and shopping here than in a supermarket," explains Susanna.

That rapport can also be passed on to the customers.

After the recent food scares and crises in farming many customers like to know where their food is coming from.

With the Goods Shed the chef and owner are able to give precise information about the origin of food to their clients.

"Eating here allows you to think about food much more," says customer Diane Houston.

A good relationship with suppliers also means that waste is reduced to a minimum and the chef gets exactly the results he's looking for.

For example Blaise can tell the Goods Shed's meat supplier, Ian Mather, how long he wants the beef hung for before delivery.

Blaise also tries to use all the meat from the carcass by using off-cuts to produce soups and pies that are served in the restaurant or sold on the market.

The same is true of the fruit and vegetable supplies; jam and coulis are made from the part of the fruit crop which might just be too old to serve whole.

Ian Mather says the Goods Shed has put fun back into farming.

"We used to sell direct to wholesalers at the livestock market," he says.

"Now we sell everything through our own shop and the farmers' market. We've taken control of our destiny."

Less intensive

Ian says that while it actually works out more expensive producing to order, the farming is now less intensive so costs have been kept down.

The philosophy of the Goods Shed is: