Garages! I am not going to cook whilst driving but why are garages stocked with crap food?

[Suncottage]

I mean there is nothing there but crap to eat. Crisps, chocolate, soft drinks etc etc.

In many places they are the only convenience store left in villages. Why can't they stock food ?

Not overpriced coffee or croissants or pork pies. I mean food. Not overpriced and over packaged fruit.

The village shops have gone as have many of the pubs - why can't the garages sell local fruit and veg and meat?

Because they don't see a market and they are probably right.

This idea that you have a right to have a shop selling x within y miles of home is just another aspect of the entitlement culture.

They don't have the custom-considering the likes of Tesco have stolen most customers from most outlets.

Entitlement?

Why are farmers complaining that they are forced to sell out to Tescos?

I buy from farm shops and from the local shops but it seems like I am in a minority.

you've just answered your own question.

You are a minority. People now tend to get everything all at once so go to the biggest place they can on the assumption it will have it all. Even if they don't, there is usually an alternative.

Sadly, Village shop owners also need to survive and if they are being offered quite a bit of money at the right time when business has been down for a while, they are more likely to take it.

If the garages sold local produce and did not stock, Pringles, confectionary, Coke, Sprite, crisps etc surely that would create a market?

I am probably going to give up on this argument soon.

People want to buy crap food when there is a ready made shop on their doorstop that could stock local produce?

ffs LadyOfTheManor - customers are people and cannot be stolen. They make their own choices.

That applies particularly to car-borne customers which by definition is what the users of filling-stations generally are.

If garages are rapidly becoming the 'corner shop' then surely they should move with the times.

They have forced the village shop out of business but have provided no alternative.

Why can't farmers/local smallholders sell their produce at the BP/Shell garages?

Car borne customers can shop there and not everyone has a car.

We converted our garage into a sitting room. No food allowed here. Neither crap nor good food.

HTH :o

It was getting dark. I'd trudged through deep snow from the place I was working in Aberdeen last Winter to my hotel near by last Winter and I went into the garage en route for something for my dinner. There was not one single food there I could eat. It was as if Scottish garages, Scotland being the home of the deep fried mars bar, rather than its healthier tradition of oats and meat, wer ea world away from those in London. None of the foods London garages I know have were there.

There was not one single piece of any kind of fruit!
There were not even nuts and raisins.
I left empty handed.

Our local garage has an M&S which sells proper food so some garages do.