Arthur Potts Dawson launches The People's Supermarket

Two centuries after the first co-operative movements, a new one has just sprouted up in a run-down 1950s shop on Lamb's Conduit Street, just north of Holborn. But The People's Supermarket has a much bigger task on its hands than its Victorian predecessors. Those 19th-century co-ops were also mostly devoted to selling food, but that was in the days before Tesco, Sainsbury's and the other megamarkets had conquered the British high street.

Arthur Potts Dawson, the visionary behind The People's Supermarket, is a 6ft 6in dynamo. Good-looking, cheery, and born and brought up in Camden, he even has a Jamie Oliver accent to go with it. What's more, his step-uncle is Mick Jagger. All in all, a charming frontman for a new Channel 4 series about his progressive shopping brainchild - the Big Society's supermarket, you might call it. But, still, he knows what a daunting challenge he faces. 'My original criteria were to sell organic food in a loyal, decent and honest way, with the community running the supermarket, and profits being ploughed back in,' he says. 'I wanted it to be fresh and wild. But I realised quickly that 90 per cent of the population don't shop in Fresh & Wild.'

As a result, alongside the fresh Kent apples, the Devon Rose Gourmet Meats, straight from the farmer, and his own-brand products - The People's Eggs, The People's Milk and The People's Loaf - you'll find the staple brand names of the supermarket chains: Angel Delight, Sugar Puffs, Corn Flakes. 'If people want Nestlé products, we'll stock them, even though I don't like what they've done with baby food in Africa. Some customers will then come in and protest but you can't please everybody.'

The aim is not to be a health food shop but to be a supermarket run by the shoppers; one that provides good-quality food at affordable prices; one that restores the link between the shopper and the producer. Practically all the fresh produce comes from British farmers. For all the Coca-Cola and Angel Delight, there's still a strong accent on freshness and wildness, and while the supermarket big boys grind down farmers and food producers to minimal margins with their vast marketing power, Arthur's business model is almost entirely dependent on goodwill and social enterprise. 'Owned by the people, for the people' is the mantra of The People's Supermarket. Each member of Arthur's new co-operative must pay a £25 annual membership fee and, on top of that, volunteer for four hours' shop work every month. In return, they get around ten per cent off their purchases. Each member then also gets a vote in deciding how the whole enterprise should be run.

Set up last May, The People's Supermarket has just begun to turn a corner. The £180,000 start-up costs have been met so far by goodwill from many of the producers, plus small grants from Camden Council and the Development Trust Association. It helps, too, that Rugby School, the supermarket's landlord, has offered a generous rent deal because of the project's community aspect.

'We broke even last week for the first time,' says Arthur. 'Which is pretty good for such a new venture. The number of shoppers grows by about seven per cent a month. And the kitchen is already paying for itself, and more.' The kitchen - set up with a free cooker donated by Ikea - is housed in a small corner of the supermarket. Every day, any fresh food that has failed to sell is used by the kitchen to make lunch dishes. A large poster next to the counter reads: 'This kitchen saved 210kg of food waste this week.'

I tried a flourless chocolate cake, broccoli and stilton soup, and a mushroom and pecorino tart - each dish costing £2.20, and all original, cheap alternatives to yet another Pret A Manger sandwich. The gluten-free products are popular with children with allergies at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children, round the corner.

'It's not really like working,' says Suki Jobson, 34, a SOAS graduate and academic specialising in international territorial disputes, who works in the kitchen three days a week. 'I live on this street and, when I saw the site was for sale, I thought it was going to be another Tesco. But this is so much more than a shop. It may happen slowly, but it will change people's attitude to food producers and our whole approach to food.'

The whitewashed kitchen has a make-do-and-mend feel, as does the whole venture - Arthur has done much of the painting and cleaning himself. 'I got the tills for £500 from a shop in Islington that was going out of business,' he says. 'Kate [Bull, his co-founder, a former commercial executive at Marks & Spencer] got good deals on the shelves and the fridges.' Behind the chiller cabinets you can still see the old blue tiles from when this was a Tesco back in the 1970s. The storeroom downstairs is a bit of a hotchpotch, pushed
up against a desktop lined with computers, next to a tiny kitchen where the members make their tea. Halfway across the room, the paint colour changes. 'That's where the new paint ran out,' says Arthur.

But there's nothing amateurish about the operation. When the two men on the tills start joking around, Arthur turns to them briskly. 'Lads, what's going on?' he says, half-friendly, half-admonishing. They get back to work, sharpish.

Potts Dawson has just turned 40. He lives in North London with his seven-year-old son Aron, four-year-old daughter Tuulla and his girlfriend of nine years Paloma, and has been in the food business for more than 20 years. He began as a kitchen porter at Lord's Cricket Ground when he was 15, followed by a three-year apprenticeship with the Roux brothers, before working at Kensington Place, The River Café, Petersham Nurseries Café, Cecconi, and as executive head chef for Jamie Oliver's Fifteen restaurant.