From the greengrocer to the gift shop, residents brace for the prospect of crashing out of the EU

“You see the melons over there?” said Ali Ahmed, pointing across his extensive display of fruit and vegetables at his greengrocer’s shop in Stevenage town centre. “They come from Spain. Most of the apples come from Poland. The tomatoes are from Holland.”

Ahmed, who has been running Star Groceries for about five years, gets most of his fresh produce from New Spitalfields market. “We’ve spoken to the wholesaler and [if there is a no-deal Brexit] they say it’s going to be very, very, very hard. But we have no idea what’s going to happen. I don’t know what I can do. You can’t stock up on fresh fruit and veg, so I’m just hoping they get a deal.

“When we are in the English season we bring the produce from farms here, but the English season is short,” said Ahmed. “I couldn’t stock my shop from just English produce. I’d only be working for part of the year.”

Jeremy Corbyn visited Stevenage on Tuesday to speak to small business owners about the possible impact of a no-deal Brexit. He said those he had met were “appalled at the idea of a no-deal Brexit … I think the prime minister should go and talk to them.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Jeremy Corbyn meets business leaders at the town’s Business and Technology Centre to warn against impact of a no-deal Brexit. Photograph: Joe Giddens/PA

Ahmed seemed to be in agreement with the Labour leader. “I’ve got lots of friends who own small businesses and they’re not happy at all. They’re not happy with a no-deal Brexit. It’s going to affect almost every small business in the UK.”

A few shops down from Star Groceries is LC Furniture and Flooring, one of a chain of four shops across Hertfordshire. The manager, Naz Miah, said this year had been the toughest of the 10 the business had been in existence.

The company experienced an initial dip in sales in 2016 after the EU referendum, followed by a slight recovery, but is undergoing another fall. Miah said staff were seeing a decline in “bread and butter” business, such as new homeowners and landlords seeking to furnish their properties, because of a slowdown in the housing market.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Wesley Hills, manager of Limited Edition Comix, says: ‘We danced through the last recession.’ Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

While most of the beds the company sells come from the UK, a significant chunk of the business comes from the sale of large wardrobes, which are manufactured in Germany. At the beginning of the year, deliveries were coming in very slowly because businesses were over-ordering and the manufacturer could not keep up with demand.

“We’ve been going to furniture shows, looking for a UK option for about two years, because it means you get them more quickly and it’s good to go local,” Miah said. “Maybe a company will pop up after Brexit, but it’ll take time because Germany has factories with the right machinery and infrastructure [for larger wardrobes].”

At Limited Edition Comix, around the corner, Wesley Hills is comparatively chipper. The world of comic books, he said, felt separate from the everyday economy. “We danced through the last recession. It’s a collector’s market. If they want it they will pay for it.” One thing that has affected the business is the exchange rate with the dollar, which has made imports more expensive. But comic books are also more popular than ever – thanks, in part, to the influence of the Marvel film franchise.

Also relatively unconcerned is Sapphia Nicholson, whose family runs the next-door gift shop and piercing studio Unikorn. “Most of our stock is from the UK, so we’re only really worried about the economy going into recession and people not having enough money to spend in our shop,” she said.

“We do get some stock from Thailand – some body jewellery for the shop – and the exchange rate for baht has dropped. We usually bulk order twice a year, so we’re just hoping it improves by the time we put in the next order. We’ll just have to wait and see.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Naseer Saeed, who runs Fone + PC Fix shop, remains optimistic despite Brexit fatigue. Photograph: Sean Smith/The Guardian

Naseer Saeed has been running Fone + PC Fix for about five years. “We’re not sure how we could prepare,” he said. He gets most of his stock from a wholesaler in Southall, west London. “All they have said is that the prices might go up. At the end of the day that means we have to charge customers more. Our rents and things like that aren’t falling and we need to survive.”

Overall, he seems fatigued by all the Brexit speculation. “It’s all been going on for a long, long time and it keeps getting delayed. In the end something will happen and we can’t stop that,” he said. “But people will always need to get their phones fixed and need new chargers.”