Full steam ahead for new health food shop at station

Filmore and Union, which specialises in healthy yet tasty food to eat in or take away, opened its first delicatessen and cafe in central York last March.

It was swiftly followed by a delicatessen and cafe in Harrogate and a branch in Wetherby which will soon be offering a restaurant.

Now, the company is about to open its first branch aimed specifically at people on the move – because it is at York station.

Owner Adele Carnell said: “I was sick of having nothing healthy to eat, so I decided to open up at York station because I tend to go there on the way to London.

“We’ve got huge interest from our customers in York and elsewhere, who get fed up with not having anything healthy to eat when they travel. We know there’s a huge demand because our customers can’t wait for us to open.”

Although the food itself will be the same as that offered in the central York branch – all made fresh that morning using healthy ingredients – Ms Carnell said more attention had had to be paid to the way it is sold.

“We’ve had to look at the packaging carefully,” she said.

“It’s minimal for environmental reasons and to make it more transportable. Because we do a lot of take-out food anyway in our York shop, we have a lot of packaging available already.

“We take the environmental side of things really seriously – if you are using a lot of packaging, it has to be biodegradable. We don’t use a lot of plastic and we source our suppliers really carefully.”

It already has a loyal following of local people at its existing branches and there are plenty of requests for new shops from those who pop in when they are visiting Yorkshire from elsewhere.

“We have so many customers from the North West and Scotland and London coming to York anyway, asking us to open near them,” said Ms Carnell.

“The fact that our products are going to be travelling to new areas is really exciting for us.”

More branches – within a 10-mile radius of the Wetherby headquarters – are being considered and the business could consider expanding to more stations.

Ms Carnell added: “York station have been really innovative by letting us go in there and they’re really excited about being able to offer a healthy option. With the North East line, we would love to get into some other stations.

“But we’re a small company; we don’t run before we can walk. “