Award-nominated businesses highlight the brilliance, ingenuity and community spirit of independent retail during COVID

COVID features repeatedly in this year’s Love Your High Street Awards nominations, with independent businesses reflecting on how they supported their communities and adapted during the pandemic. Their stories offer a reminder of the important role local businesses played during a period of unprecedented disruption.

Five years on from the COVID-19 pandemic, its impact still features in the stories independent retailers tell about their businesses and communities. more than one in every ten nominations for Bira's 2026 Love Your High Street Awards explicitly mention COVID, the pandemic or lockdown.

High street businesses specifically described things they did to support customers or their communities during the pandemic, and others refer to COVID as part of a wider story of surviving, adapting and continuing to trade.

The findings provide another perspective on the stories behind the businesses featured in the Love Your High Street Awards, and echo the sentiments shared in another Bira piece on the topic of the pandemic, which looked at how independent businesses adapted during the pandemic and how some of those changes continue to shape them today.

What the submissions show

More than 10% of profiles chose to mention COVID without being specifically asked about the pandemic. In several cases, the shops describe very specific ways the business changed how it operated to help people locally.

Supporting communities when normal life stopped

For some businesses, the pandemic is remembered through the practical help they provided when customers and other local residents could not use the high street in the normal way.

Billingtons of Lenzie describes going beyond its usual role as a local retailer:

“During the COVID-19 pandemic, Billington’s went above and beyond to support vulnerable residents. The team voluntarily delivered soup to elderly and vulnerable people in the local area and created care boxes containing everyday essentials for those who were shielding.”

The business says that this community work was subsequently recognised in Parliament, with Billington's named the Scottish winner of the Local Legends competition.

At Habbyhub, the lockdown meant changing almost overnight how the business served customers:

“The community aspect became very important when the village went into lockdown during covid. This was a very challenging time for everyone and the business had to adapt quickly to keep providing a service that was still personal but able to provide stock & advice to customers that needed crafting to use as their mental well being therapy!”

The submission adds: “The way I served the community changed overnight. What was a normal 8hr day quickly turned into 14hr days. I offered live video shopping, on curb collection, video tutorials...which were hilarious!!”

For The Blue Teapot, community support included preparing food for vulnerable residents:

“We donate our time to worthy causes, for example making 105 afternoon teas to deliver to vulnerable people in our community during COVID.”

At The Mug Tree Tea Room, the business itself was forced to close, but its owner used that time to establish an emergency support group:

“In 2020, when we were suddenly hit with the pandemic The Mug Tree itself was forced to close, so instead I used my time to establish an emergency action group supporting vulnerable local residents with grocery shopping, prescription collections and befriending.”

The nomination also says: “During the pandemic and onwards we also provided free lunch bags to struggling families during school holidays.”

The experience was different for Not Just Pets, which remained open and changed its delivery arrangements:

“During the Covid pandemic we remained open and delivered to so many of our customers when they couldn't get to store.”

And at Garden King, a simple practical contribution helped people reach a local vaccination centre safely:

“COVID was a tough time for everyone. When it snowed, we donated rock salt to our local COVID vaccination centre to help people get their jabs safely.”

These examples cover very different types of independent business, but the common thread is that the submissions remember the pandemic through the role the business played locally, rather than simply through the disruption it caused to trading.

A marker of survival and adaptation

A marker of survival and adaptation

For another group of businesses, COVID is less about a particular community initiative and more about what it represents in their wider history.

Antique Rose describes itself as having remained a high street fixture through several difficult periods:

“We have been a high street pillar for years adapting , expanding and adapting, supporting our customers through difficult times such as covid and town regeneration but always remaining.”

For Berserks Glass Gallery & Studio, COVID sits alongside wider economic and high street challenges:

“Sixteen years in, through recessions, covid and a declining footfall, we’re still making, still selling, still teaching, still changing things when they need changing and still genuinely excited about what comes next.”

Flux Piercing similarly places the pandemic within a 25-year story of change:

“We have survived recessions, a pandemic, the transformation of the high street, changing shopping habits and an industry that is almost unrecognisable from the one we entered 25 years ago. We haven't survived by standing still; we've grown with it.”

For Handmade By You, COVID is one of the challenges the business has faced while becoming established on its local high street:

“We are a big part of the community and the high street and are one of the longer standing businesses in the town despite Covid.”

And Nellies Keepsake Co. places the pandemic alongside a series of other challenges:

“We have survived a devastating fire, the pandemic, the cost-of-living crisis and the many challenges currently facing the British high street. Through all of it, we have continued to adapt, invest and believe in bricks-and-mortar retail.”

Taken together, these submissions show how COVID has become part of the timeline businesses use to explain their longevity. It is one of the points against which some retailers measure the ability to adapt, keep going and continue investing in their high street.

...and a businesses that begun during the pandemic

There is also a different story among the submissions: not every reference to COVID is about surviving it.

French & Day Delicatessen opened in December 2020, with the owners describing the circumstances as a catalyst for finally starting the business:

“French & Day opened in December 2020, in the depths of the pandemic, founded by husbands Thomas Day and Tom French. What started as a long-held dream - finally made possible by a lockdown that gave us time to stop talking and start doing - has grown into one of Ware's best-loved independents.”

The business also notes that one of the local producers it supported had launched during the pandemic too, showing how the period features in the origin stories of some newer businesses as well as the survival stories of established ones.

Remembering what independent businesses did

The 2026 Love Your High Street Awards submissions offer a reminder that the pandemic was not simply a period when independent businesses had to find ways to keep trading.

For some of the retailers featured, it was also a period when they delivered food, made care packages, supported vulnerable residents, delivered products to customers who could not reach their shops, provided practical help to vaccination centres or created new ways for people to remain connected.

Five years on, those experiences are still being volunteered as part of the answer to what makes independents such a vital part of the high street and indeed the community.

For a notable group of businesses, the experience of the pandemic remains an important part of their story and for several, a point of pride in how they responded when their communities needed them.

The Love Your High Street Awards are intended to recognise the independent businesses that contribute to the character and life of their communities.  These submissions show that, for some retailers, that contribution was particularly visible when the high street itself was unable to operate as normal.

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