Stockholm: an organic supermarket at last!

Tradition has it that organic products are marketed in Sweden via the conventional retail trade, and for years the various chains like Coop and ICA have included organics in their product ranges. This is the reason why the specialist trade has had a hard time and is much less developed than in Germany, the Netherlands, France or Italy. Despite this state of affairs, the first organic supermarket opened about a year ago in the Swedish capital and the founder, Johan Lindeborg, can look back on a successful first year. As you walk round Stockholm you come across more organic establishments – there are three organic restaurants, a professional fair trade shop and a number of smaller wholefood shops.
Photo: A costumer is looking for ice cream, after apparently having bought an olive tree somewhere else, which is in her buggy.


Sweden has 9 million inhabitants and only about 20 specialist wholefood stores. One of the few that are almost 100 % organic is Hermans Ekohandel, that was founded on 16 December 2008 at 3 Tegnérgatan to the north of the city centre. Johan Lindeborg, who used to work in IT, found the wholefood stores in Stockholm were not professional enough and their main focus was on the requirements of vegetarians. In his 200 m² organic supermarket he stocks a full range of approximately 4,000 articles, including vacuum-packed meat and sausage.

The organic supermarket Hermans Ekohandel is not substantially different from the same type of store in France or Germany. However for Stockholm, with its 780,000 inhabitants, the variety of products on sale constituted a minor revolution. There are only three more large-scale stores in Sweden’s two other major cities: two can be found in Göteborg (490,000 inhabitants) and one in Malmö (280,000 inhabitants). The first organic supermarket in the whole of Sweden (Ekostore) opened in Göteborg in March 2007 (see our earlier report). In Malmö, the vegan and vegetarian organic supermarket Astrid och Aporna (Astrid and the Apes) opened in April 2007 (see our earlier report).

Stockholm’s first organic supermarket attracts on average 300 customers a day – with practically no advertising. “Apart from a few articles in the newspapers after we opened, it was all word-of-mouth,” says Cecilia Lundblad (picture), one of Johan Lindeborg’s five employees. Goods are supplied by 30-40 companies, because in Sweden there aren’t any wholefood wholesalers supplying a full product range. As Lindeborg points out, the supply by Swedish organic farmers and processors is not adequate, and a high proportion of goods have to be imported by a firm in Malmö from Germany, France and the Netherlands. Sweden produces, for example, organic bakery goods (farmers grow a lot of cereals in Sweden), meat products, two-thirds of dairy products and a small proportion of fruit and vegetables (like the carrots, see photo left). There are also some further processed products like carrot juice that is produced in Järna to the south of Stockholm.

“We try to keep our prices as low as possible,” is how Cecilia Lundblad sums up the store’s maxim. With this approach, Hermans has won the hearts of a large number of customers in a short period of time. Nevertheless, the prices of imported goods in particular are naturally much higher than in their countries of origin. Prices can only be reduced if the number of organic supermarkets in Sweden rises and if there is a higher throughput and also more domestic production. Klaus Fossgreen is organising with his company Biova the import of a complete organic assortment from the German wholesaler Grell.

The smallest and most recent organic restaurant is run by the personable Barada Nasser (picture) in the centre of Stockholm. Nasser, whose training was in tourism, took over a failed vegetarian restaurant called Happyhippo and, after complete renovation and contemporary re-designing, she launched the bistro “Luxive - organic coffee paradise” in March 2009. The seating capacity is about 20 places, including eight comfortable armchairs and a couch where you can really relax. Barada Nasser says 80 % of the raw materials she uses in the kitchen are organic, and all the coffee and tea she serves is organic. At the moment, this little restaurant is in the certification phase. Working together with her chef, who prepares Lebanese dishes like hummus, falafel, tibouli sambosek and vegetable wraps with beef, she also offers a catering service. She currently supplies around 120 meals a week, mainly for special events in the locality. The image she likes to project is less about organics than value for money, freshness and quality. “Very few of my customers have so far been interested in organic,” she says. There are two more organic restaurants in classic eco-style in the north and south of the city. At Hermans (picture/not to be confused with the organic supermarket) you can choose from a 100 % organic and wholefood menu and – free of charge – you get a fantastic view of the old part of Stockholm. It is highly recommended, both summer and winter.

One and a half years ago, the attractive Fair Trade Shop (70 m²) was set up as part of a Christian bookshop that has been in existence for 70 years. An advantage was the fact that the building belongs to the church. The shop stocks around 700 articles, which is much more than the average fair trade store. There is a chilled food department with a sliding glass door where coffee, tea, chocolate, jam, sweets, chocolate-coated fruit and nuts are sold. 80 % of these goods are organic. The shop windows have been nicely designed by Bojana Savic (photo) and display a wide range of eco-textiles, natural cosmetics, books and artisan articles.

“Basically, all the textiles are made from organic cotton, apart from the recycled bags that were designed by Swedish designers. The leather bags and fairly produced jewellery are new additions to the range,” explains the managing director Lars Linden, who owns the shop together with 40 committed colleagues. They source about 40 % of their stock via Gepa in Wuppertal; other goods come from Sakeus (coffee, tea and chocolate) or are supplied direct by producer cooperatives in developing countries, such as toys from Sri Lanka. The Fair Trade Shop at 8 Tegnérgatan (the same street as the organic supermarket) is the most professional of the roughly 40 fair trade enterprises in Sweden.

There are a number of smaller specialist wholefood shops in Stockholm, like Gryningen and Good Store, that are both in the south of the city. Whilst Gryningen might well be one of the oldest organic shops in Stockholm, Good Store (80 m² of retail space) is modern in design and stocks a wide vegetarian product range.
(Photo: Organic restaurant Organic Green in Stockholm)


Tips for Stockholm:

Organic food stores
www.hermansekohandel.se
www.matdistriktet.se
http://www.goodstore.se

Organic restaurants
www.luxive.se
www.hermans.se
www.organicgreen.se

Fair Trade Shop
www.fairtradeshop.se

Organic wholesale
www.biova.info