Sustaining local family food business: leadership without authority

The creation of a sustainable community requires leadership that can influence stakeholders with a combination of power and interest over the community’s outputs. Exemplars of economically sustainable communities are family businesses in local food supply chains. These businesses have a wide reach of stakeholders from end consumers who as individuals may have lots of interest but relatively little purchasing power to organisations who may have lots of purchasing power but relatively little interest. This paper follows the continuing journey of a couple as they move from fourth generation local food retail outlets with power and interest over the supply chain to stakeholder/leaders with influence (Keith as a researcher in CRED and Jacqui as vice-chair of the SPAR Retail Guild ) to stakeholders with interest but no official power (working as Jardine Jackson Associates for local food retailers; developing supply chain research for Carlisle Food City and working at Lancaster’s CFB with regional family food businesses). This journey covers the interaction of ownership, power and interest in the local food supply chain and captures how currently with the help of a disparate group of local and national stakeholders they are continuing to influence the actions of the local food supply chain