British expats can't say goodbye to familiar tastes

Groceries

New company Sterling Shopping, an outfit that delivers British groceries into France, has claimed that its customer base has swelled to more than 3000 since it began trading little over a year ago.

In this short time Sterling Shopping have seen a tremendous amount of interest build. The company ships out foodstuffs from familiar British supermarkets such as Waitrose, Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s. Customers make their selections via the stores’ respective websites and give the Sterling Shopping address. Sterling Shopping then package the goods and send them out of the UK, adding on a charge of 20-25 percent.

The company was started by husband and wife team Mark and Alison Faulkner after they experienced the lengths people will go to get products from their home countries firsthand. Speaking to The Telegraph Alison said of their time as expats: “We found that we just kept driving back to Britain to stock up on things we missed. Our friends started asking us to bring back this or that, and eventually we thought it would be worth opening a business. Since then, it's just snowballed. I'm inundated with hundreds of emails a day.”

With such demand Alison says there are strong plans for expansion afoot: “Recently, we've had enquires from expats in Spain, Germany, and even New York, and we've already outgrown the warehouse we're currently using. So we're thinking now of expanding the service.”

One of the factors contributing to this rise in business for Sterling Shopping could be the state of sterling itself. With the pound currently weak against the euro it may actually be cheaper for expats to ship food over.