Speciality Food Jan/Feb 2026

she had skin in the game when it came to setting up and running a successful company. To her, it felt like a no-brainer. “The area has a large number of primary schools, and young families are moving here all the time. There wasn’t a deli back in 2020, and the building and location were everything I wanted.” eventually setting up her own digital PR consultancy, Good Stories, moving to Holt, where her deli-led desires were fulfilled by the well- bedecked stores of North Norfolk. “Then, in 2017, my brother got diagnosed with leukaemia. He loved his job. He used to run ITN. One day the doctor called him at work and said, ‘you have to come in straight away’. He never went back and died in 2021. I thought, if someone calls me tomorrow and said my working life was over, would I have done what I wanted to?” It was a moment of complete clarity for Laura, who travelled far and wide around the UK to find a deli and start a new life – the life she’d always hoped for. Starting afresh Laura landed on premises in Orpington, pitching the idea to her husband in a two-minute call to her husband. She knew, she says, that it really was a dream, and that plenty of food businesses fail, but also that 34 @specialityfood L aura Roberts has been a foodie forever, she smiles. “I baked for my friends at school, and catered one of my mum’s leaving dos fromwork. As soon as I was able to get into a kitchen, I would cook for my family,” she says. “Sometimes,” she jokes, “it was the same things over and over again, but I was always, always passionate about food fromway back, and I always said I would like to open a restaurant or deli. But I think, when you’re young, these things don’t seem possible – too hard or too expensive.” Despite it feeling like an impossible dream, Laura spent her youth and early adulthood dutifully collecting and gathering trinkets and decor she could one day use, should her ambitions come to fruition. “And I was obsessed by farm shops and delis. I would go in, then come out with a box of stuff, taking photos of products and saying to makers, ‘if I ever get a deli, you’ll be in there’.” Marketing and digital media were where Laura landed, however, Of course, opening just as a global disaster (Covid-19) struck wasn’t ideal. “However, in hindsight, that period of time was good for shops like ours. People didn’t know we were here, but 21 years of digital marketing helped me pivot to focus on social media, delivering essentials packs and themed boxes. That got people following me on Instagram to see what we had every week. I really was basically a delivery person for a while, and I’d open up the shop for a bit, then go home and homeschool the kids!” A vision 20 years in the making Laura had years to think about what her deli would look like, and largely that was somewhere that celebrated sharing good food, with lots of samples. “It’s a higgledy-piggledy deli, but in Covid nobody wanted to touch anything, and nobody wanted you to touch anything. I wanted charcuterie hanging from the ceiling that I’d slice in front of people, and all that went out the window. So the experience wasn’t there at the beginning. But I remember the first day I could put a sample on the counter. A customer came in and did a little happy dance!” Being interactive and encouraging engagement is very much at the core of the shop. Today, Laura says anyone who visits is struck immediately by the sheer number of products on display. There are jars, bottles and tins everywhere. “Some say they feel a little overwhelmed when they come in, but I love that sense of abundance. I always say to people we are a traditional deli. “We champion British produce, We care about what we sell, and these people care about what they eat with a little taste of Europe and further beyond.” At the core of Laura’s Larder, Laura says, are bakery, cheese and wine, with everything else riffing off these pillars. “If you have cheese and wine you need crackers. If you have crackers you need butter and chutney. It builds from there,” she explains. Having a younger audience thanks to the proliferation of families in the area, Laura says she It’s important to follow your dreams says Laura Roberts, founder of Laura’s Larder BRITAIN’S BESTDELIS: LAURA’S LARDER ORPINGTON PICTURES: KATE DARKIN