Charlbury Deli: the food shop determined to stay in our town centre

The Charlbury Deli used to be one of half a dozen food shops along the two streets – Sheep St and Market St – that, in 1990, were really Charlbury’s High Street.

In those days, there were 40-odd shops: from sweet shops to butchers. But in 1990, the food shops sold only cans and packets. Not what you’d call Good Food.

So about 60 Charlburians clubbed together, made themselves into a limited company, bought a shop no-one wanted and called it the Good Food Shop .

A few years later, there were fewer stores along the two streets, and a pretty decent, larger, Co-op on the edge of the town. So they changed the name to the Charlbury Deli & Cafe to give customers a reason for coming from the Co-op. In 2017, 60 more shareholders helped finance the move to a far more prominent site on Market Street, which is where we are now.

Here we serve some of the best coffee in the Cotswolds – freshly made for you from beans roasted by Oxford’s finest roastery New Ground, who are a B Corp Certified social enterprise using the finest beans from around the globe and roasting them in their Loring roaster to provide consistently fantastic tasting coffee.

We also sell delicious home-baked cakes and pastries, as well as sourdough bread from Mark’s Cotswold Bakery, just outside Chipping Norton.

Overall, about 80% of what we sell comes from Oxfordshire suppliers: we’re fortunate to have some fabulous local food manufacturers on our doorstep. British isn’t always best of course:  Standlake’s Oxford Wine Co travels the globe to choose really distinctive wine, and our customers swear by our delicious loose Belgian chocolates.

If you want to find where and when we’re open, go to our Visit Us page