The role of conventions in the running of farm shops in the UK

UK farm shops have received little attention in the alternative food network (AFN) literature. Farm shop environmental context was interrogated to establish its influence on the consumption experience. A holistic multi-methods approach was adopted drawing on autoethnography, an exploratory survey, G.I.S, an open-ended customer questionnaire, customer e-WOM reviews, online space rhetoric and imagery, and interviews with owners and farmers partners. Braun and Clarke’s formalised approach to thematic analysis was employed. A negotiated ‘transference’ of trust was identified between vendor/producers and consumers, dependent on primary producers adhering to their production ethos when sourcing brought-in products. Negotiated transference of trust was identified as connected to institutional proximity, afforded to farm-sited farm shops, facilitating customers’ acceptance of AFN hybridity. Farm shops met Pine and Gilmore’s (1998) five factors that aid consumption experiences. These enterprises were revealed to be places of nostalgia-evoking experiential consumption (Hamilton & Wagner, 2014) realised through owner intention (e.g., retroscaping) and incidental associations (i.e., multi-sensory on-farm location). Farm shops facilitated customer escapism through a positive themed event, revealing how the materialities of the farm shop and its working farm environ establish experiential consumption; identified as a source of resistance to supermarket co-optation. Farmers’ partners exhibited an entrepreneur identity in the development and running of the enterprise. Reporting positive rewards of status, emotional pride, and economic contribution to the farm business. These benefits appeared compartmentalised to the enterprise with renegotiation of reproductive work allocation unrealised. The multi-disciplinary approach employed a conceptually-driven lens, utilising convention theory and Brown’s (1999) retroscape, to explore the practices and representations of alterity, experiential consumption, and patriarchy in the formation of the farm shop. The findings provide knowledge progression and promise new ways of understanding AFNs.