WE ARE
A REBEL
SUPERMARKET.
WE’RE BREAKING
ALL THE RULES
AND REINVENTING
THE WAY
SUPERMARKETS
DO BUSINESS.
So if you’re in the neighbourhood,
come in and feel our tomatoes.
LET’S
IGNITE A
REVOLUTION
Buck convention, break the mould, reinvent, challenge, transform, make good FOOD normal, affordable, accessible, source LOCAL, SEASONAL, ETHICAL, sustainable, don’t WASTE it, eat it, support independents, real producers, pay fairly, price fairly, be transparent, less hype, more truth, value our PEOPLE and respect customers, farmers, suppliers, ANIMALS and the PLANET, champion quality, health, provenance and service, create a real food community and put happiness before profits. Together we will transform the food industry. So eat your greens, smile at strangers and know this to be true: being a fully conscious shopper will make you popular, desirable and very attractive.
How it should be
Written at our kitchen table next to the soap box.
Come to HISBE Bootcamp
We know we can’t transform the food industry on our own. So, to all you people out there creating your own REBEL SHOPS and FOOD BRANDS, we want to help you to follow in our footsteps. We’ve been on quite a journey over the last ten years and have learned so much that we can share with you.
Get The Support you Need
We offer curated talks, events and bespoke consultancy packages delivered to you by our founding team to equip you to get going, start up and grow your food business.
Sign up here to find out more or email bootcamp@hisbe.co.uk
HISBE FOR HIRE
We get a lot of requests for help and information from other food businesses, think tanks and brands, so we decided to start hiring out our time and our brainpower. We enjoy supporting other organisations and their money goes back into HISBE Food, to help us expand our work.
Feel free to contact us if you could use a bit of HISBE vision at one of your evens, or you want to work together on sustainability, social enterprise or the food industry. We are happy to deliver presentations, participate in discussions, lead workshops and offer consultancy.
Talks / Discussions / consultancy
Click on the logos below to see the HISBE team in action.

Walk
this
way
All our fruit is 100% traceable, perfectly imperfect, and packed with flavour and big personalities. Much of it comes from Sussex producers to ensure seasonality, freshness and minimum food miles. And if it’s not local, it must be organic and free from chemical nastiness. Sweet.
Our vegetables are rooted in the community – literally. Produced by small-scale farms, most are harvested locally to ensure seasonality, freshness and minimal food miles. If not grown in Sussex, they must be organic and 100% traceable. It’s not rocket science.
With great bread comes great responsibility. So if you’re after something that looks like polystyrene and tastes like carpet, we suggest you avoid our local loaves. Lovingly baked in small batches and delivered fresh every day, our bread is made with real ingredients – not stuff you’ve never heard of.
Vegan, vegetarian, flexitarian, salad-dodger, whatevs – we don’t judge. But our meat is always local, high-welfare, with no growth hormones, and not dyed or bulked out with water, additives or bits of other animals. It looks, smells and tastes how it’s supposed to. It’s meat.
We know we’re milking this, but when it comes to dairy produce, we grant ourselves two wishes: it has to be either local or organic. You could call us the dairy godmothers of this category.
It takes approximately 36 hours for a genuinely liberated hen with a beak to lay one these locally sourced, organic eggs. A day and half of hard graft for that little shelled miracle to land on your plate. It’s a beautiful thing – an organic, superior-quality beautiful thing to be exact.
Big supermarkets are happy to sell cheap junk food and hike up the prices of the good stuff. We prefer the healthy products made with real ingredients, sourced from trusted brands and wholesalers who share our values. Check out our refill bar for some essential supplies.
Save water! Drink crafty beer and innovative wine. And while you’re at it, you’ll be supporting the exciting talent on our doorstep. One of our most extensively researched and stimulating categories: thoughtful, sociable and, utterly quaffable …hic!
A refined stash of innovative home and body care products that are best in their aisle for using simple, natural ingredients, responsibly sourced and packaged. No crazy synthetic chemicals to be effective. A refill service is available on some essential items too at our Refill Bar.
Food : Good
Everything in our stores is inspired by the notion of how things should be. Food ought to be simple. No industrial farming, no over-processing, no misleading labels hiding toxic nasties, just good, honest food. Our vision is to make real food an everyday normal thing because well-made food should be accessible and affordable. Not a lot to ask.
buck fake food
Local : Yes
We prioritise the best, local Sussex produce. It’s fresher, hasn’t had to travel far, and keeps your money in the local economy. Besides, we like to get mud on our boots and work directly with independent suppliers we trust – dedicated producers who truly care about what you eat. That way, we can be sure of quality and provenance. It makes a nice day out too.
buck food miles
Seasonal : Naturally
You know, Mother Nature had this all sorted long before we came along. Food is naturally more nutritious and healthy when grown in season. It’s cost-effective, uses less energy and, you tell us, tastes better. So we champion seasonal, farm-fresh produce. It’s better for you, good for our planet, and doesn’t freak out the wildlife.
buck artificial growing
Animals : Healthy
Intensive factory farming is a shameful embarrassment. It may produce cheap meat and dairy products – but look at the costs to animals and the environment and our health. Scary nonsense. We prefer to source from local farms committed to traditional farming practices where high-welfare animals are treated with care and respect. Cows are put out to pasture, sheep and chickens roam free, and pigs play in mud – exactly where they want to be.
buck animal cruelty
Planet : Happy
We support traditional farming practices that work with nature, not against it. Sustainable food production has integrity. It values the land and encourages biodiversity. We know the enemies and weed them out: harmful agrochemicals; GMOs; soil-eroding, water-depleting farming methods; big brands that spend more on packaging than the product itself. There. We’ve said it.
buck engineered food
Waste : No
It‘s no secret that big supermarkets waste thousands of tons of food and packaging every day. What a load of rubbish! So, wherever possible, we avoid packaged foods. Instead, we enable customers to buy the quantities they want by using their own containers or our lovely compostable alternatives. It’s good housekeeping. Oh, and we never throw away food that can be eaten.
buck that
People : Valued
We’re building a good food community where our relationships with customers, suppliers and staff are based on trust, honesty and respect. That means paying and charging what’s fair for quality produce and service. We love what we do because we are more than a store. We’re a kind of good food dating agency for customers and producers to find each other, and our store team is the matchmaking glue.
buck exploitation
BUSINESS:ETHICAL
It goes without saying that we source products with strong ethical credentials. But it doesn’t stop there. We run a thoughtful, transparent business that directly benefits the local community and environment. We call it business beyond profits. They call it Social Enterprise. It’s proper purposeful stuff that makes us walk the talk (and the dog), and keeps our house in good order.
buck bad business
About
Us
HISBE stands for How It Should Be. We’re not a health food shop. We’re not an exclusively vegan or vegetarian food shop. We’re a regular supermarket – operating how it should be. And we want to transform the food industry by challenging the way big supermarkets do business.
Next time you go shopping, demand more change.
– Dame Anita Roddick
get in touch
Got an awesome product we should know about? Email us at newsupplier@hisbe.co.uk to tell us all about your business, your product, and how it’s a great fit for HISBE.
If you’re already one of our brilliant suppliers, please contact us at supply@hisbe.co.uk.
Interested in working for HISBE? Please send your CV and an introduction to recruitment@hisbe.co.uk.
Are you a customer wanting to get in touch? Ask us anything at hello@hisbe.co.uk.