Celebrating 35 Years of Arthur's Organics!

Tony Park celebrated 35 years trading as Arthur`s Organics last month!

Arthur`s Wholefood shop opened in Dereham in 1985. Back then flour, oats and rice were among the few products that were sold as organically grown. By the time Tony left the shop in 2002, most of the shop`s floor space had been taken over by fresh organic fruit and vegetables supplied by Hughes Organics. Grahame Hughes was a pioneer of organic growing and vegetable box delivery in the 1990s. He still grows under glass at Bunwell and remains Arthur’s premier local supplier. Grahame, we salute you!

In late 2002, Tony took over a Friday afternoon delivery round of 20 customers from Grahame’s wife, Lizzie in South Norfolk, and Arthur`s Organics Deliveries was born. 

Within a couple of years, Tony had built up the round to a full-time business. 

Tony moved to Norwich in September 2009. Since then, Arthur’s has incorporated the box schemes of multiple firms and some of those customers were from the oldest box-scheme in the country and are still with Arthur’s today. In 2015, Arthur’s started delivering to Bungay and other nearby parts of North Suffolk.

In January 2020, we delivered boxes to our record 187 customers in one week. This figure was soon dwarfed in the lockdown when we delivered 352 boxes in one week in April.

The growth stretched Arthur’s to the absolute limit. This is where the partnership with Goodery began! Arthur’s Organics transferred to Goodery in the summer of 2020. 

Tony hopes to retire in 2021. Tony has two daughters, Emily and Lucy and two Sons, Daniel and Jude. He also has two grandchildren Oliver and Sofia, children of Lucy and husband Vicente. Vicente helped Tony run Arthur’s for several years and built our first website. 

Tony loves cryptic crosswords and his favourite author is Alexander McCall Smith. Tony also loves to play table tennis and play the guitar and penny whistle. He is in fact Goodery’s in-house lead musician! He plays in a duo with Janine Marsden (another valued Goodery team member), called Marsden Park. You can see them in action on the link below:

 https://www.youtube.com/user/Tonyarthur100.

Tony has been a vegetarian since 1989 and tries his best to eat a wholefood diet (which can be rather tricky when you have teenagers that love pizza). He has been a member of the Green Party since 1989. He served on Dereham Town Council and Breckland District Council and stood for parliament in 1997.

Tony. You are our head singer and organic guru. We are beyond chuffed to have you as part of the Goodery family. Congratulations on this remarkable milestone.