Businesses in a tiny Perthshire village have taken on a supermarket giant in a bid to encourage people to shop locally while helping children learn.
Bob Brawn, who runs the store in Bridge of Cally, and hotel owner Donald Alan hope a new initiative will help supply the nearby school with tablet computers.
They are offering to donate 10p for every soft drink bought over the summer, with the aim of raising about £1,000.
The idea was triggered by a Tesco promotion, which offers tokens for every tub of Flora margarine bought. Every 100 tokens can then be swapped for a tablet device.
The scheme has raised £20 in the few days since it began running but Bob hopes the summer tourist trade will help boost the total.
As the village’s own school, Strone of Cally, closed recently, children at nearby Kirkmichael Primary School will be the ones to benefit.
Bob said: “We are a small family shop and we’ve been running it for 10 years. When we heard about the Tesco promotion, we decided it was our chance to give something back.
“Our village school at Kirkmichael understandably would like to participate in the tablet computer scheme, which means that anyone wishing to support them must go to Tesco.
“Personally, I think Tesco gets enough business as it is often at the expense of the small shop and I think the local community should have a chance to support its own facilities.
“Furthermore, as a business in the area which is also dependent upon that support, we should be ready and willing to give something back.
“Therefore, we have come up with the simple scheme of donating 10p on every soft drink sale throughout the summer no matter the brand or style.
“I suspect the hotel might do better than us because they sell a lot more drinks than we do.
“At the end of the summer, the total collected will be available to the school to purchase as many tablets as possible.
“I’ve been in touch with the PTA and they are looking for eight or 10 of these things one for each class.
“From looking online, I’ve found that they are about £110 a piece, so we are looking at about £1,000. I think if we went someplace and said we wanted to buy 10, we might get a discount.”
He added that he hoped the promotion would encourage more people to visit his store, rather than choosing delivery from a major supermarket.
He said: “Tesco has been delivering for about a year and I’ve seen Asda, Morrisons and, more recently, Sainsbury’s in the village.
“Hopefully, this scheme will get people to come back to the local shop again. The shop used to be the cornerstone of the community and I’m trying to get people to see it that way again.
“In the 10 years we’ve been here, we’ve won the Scottish Countryside Alliance Best Village Shop award twice, in 2008 and 2010, and we won that because of nominations from the community itself.”