How Are Traditional Land-Based Businesses Balancing Online Growth with Real-World Presence?

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In 2020, Watts Farms, a wholesaler supplying Michelin-starred restaurants, found itself at a crossroads. Unexpected market pressures and competition had left it with £400,000 of unsold perishable stock. It needed a solution fast. Typically reliant upon face-to-face sales, Watts knew it had to embrace digitalisation to survive. In just five days, it developed and launched an e-commerce site that enabled both new and existing customers to purchase available stock for collection or delivery.

Six years on, what was survival mode has turned into a successful multimillion-pound online business. £4 million of stock was sold in the first year, with over 56,000 orders processed. Now offering more than 2,500 products nationwide, including meat, fish, beverages, and artisan groceries, Watts Farms is one of a growing number of traditionally land-based businesses to have balanced online growth with a real-world presence.

From UK Food Producers to Horticulture and Healthcare

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Devon-based Darts Farm is another, like Watts, to have found harmony between its roots and a web-based commercial model. Since the 1970s, it has been running a pick-your-own fresh food business with its USP based on its destination experience. But in the early 2020s, it unveiled its first e-commerce platform to manage over 600 fresh products, including specialised temperature-zoned shipping for delicate items like local cheeses. Still very much focused on its customer-facing physical presence, a priority reinforced by being named the UK’s Best Farm Shop at the Farm Retail Association Awards 2025, since its digital launch, the company has seen 8% online growth year on year.

Within UK food production, there are other examples, too. Guy Singh-Watson’s Riverford Organic Farmers Ltd worked with Mapp Digital to scale its local veg routes by using a data platform that sends customers personalised recipes based exactly on what is in their weekly box. The company currently delivers around 50,000 boxes each week. Meanwhile, Coombe Farm Organic built a customer website to transition from a traditional dairy farm to a million-pound online meat business. According to founder Ben White, its online operation went from zero to over £1 million turnover per year within 36 months of launching.

Food production is just one sector where digitalisation is changing business fortunes. Other instances include high street pharmacies. Local chemists are using apps like Healthera to automate repeat prescriptions and the NHS Pharmacy First service to carry out video appointments, in addition to face-to-face appointments at local pharmacies.

In the leisure and entertainment industries, many bingo companies continue to invest in land-based bingo sites while embracing creating online platforms within the iGaming sector. Companies often invest in brick-and-mortar venues to create community presence. However, due to the popularity of bingo online UK companies have also expanded into online platforms to increase customer bases. This has been seen across similar businesses like casinos, which have found it necessary to embrace online casino culture. 

Making Businesses More Resilient

Whether in the fields of Kent or the local high street, the message is clear: digital expansion isn’t about replacing the physical shop but about making it more resilient. By embracing new technology and omnichannel strategies, these traditional UK industries are complementing their roots by reaching a nationwide audience.