The Card in the Window

The card came in a brown envelope, between a tax letter and a catalog of paper bags. It was the size of a postcard, dark green, with gold printing: FINALIST, Best Independent Food Business. Kavita put it in the bakery window next to the opening hours, where it has been ever since.

That card is the part of a local business award that most people actually see. The rest of it works like this.

In most British towns the awards are run by two organizations together: the local newspaper, which wants the pages, and the chamber of commerce, which is a group of local business owners who pay a yearly fee to meet each other. Anyone can nominate anyone. It’s free, it takes two minutes on a website, and there are usually about twelve categories: Best Shop, Best New Business, Young Business Person of the Year, and so on. Kavita didn’t nominate herself. A customer did, and then told her about it, which she says was the nicest part of the whole thing.

The nominations produce a longlist, and the longlist is where the public vote happens. This is the noisy stage: posters in windows, a photo on Instagram, a regular customer telling everyone at her office. It rewards the businesses with the most customers, which is not the same as the best ones, and everyone knows it.

The shortlist is different. Three or four judges visit each business and ask questions for about an hour: usually a retired bank manager, someone from the newspaper, and last year’s winner. In Kavita’s case they wanted to know about her production costs after the flour price rose, about transport, about why she had stopped opening on Mondays, and about how she trains new staff. She found that she liked the questions. Nobody had ever asked her the Monday one before.

Then there is the dinner: a hotel function room, three courses, a local radio presenter reading out envelopes. Tickets are around forty-five pounds each. For a bakery with two employees, that is a real cost, and it is the part of the system that quietly favors businesses which are already comfortable.

Kavita didn’t win. The prize went to a farm shop eleven miles out of town with a much bigger operation, and a much bigger table at the dinner.

But the card is still in the window, and it will stay there. Two or three times a week somebody new comes in and says they saw it from the bus. That, more than any trophy, is what a local award actually does: it puts a small dark green rectangle between your opening hours and the street.