It may have a catchment of just 800 households but the village shop in Brockweir boasts an impressive annual turnover of £300,000 (€385,000). In fact, it has increased its trade every year since it opened in 2004. Business manager Alison Macklin puts its success down to the careful tailoring of stock to a range of wallets, the popular café and the organisation’s 40 voluntary staff. “We can’t do without our volunteers; they’re our USP,” says Macklin, the only full-time paid employee.

The Brockweir and Hewelsfield Village Shop is deep in Gloucestershire walking country. On the day Monocle visits, volunteers are getting to grips with a new till system in the contemporary, light and spacious structure built from green oak.

The community here was spurred into action after two nearby village shops closed. They had been run along traditional rural lines, which typically depend on a couple “working astronomical hours”, says Philip Bradney, chair of the shop’s management committee.

Stepping through the doors of Brockweir’s shop, you get a sense of a future for rural retail. Of the 300 or so community village shops operating in the UK, this one has among the highest sales volumes. Alongside basics, nearly half of its produce comes from within a 16 km radius, including wine from Fingal Rock in Monmouth and cheese from nearby producers. Much of its meat is from rare-breeds farm Cowshill, just a few miles from the shop’s doorstep.

Brockweir sits between the wealthy Wye Valley and the economically straitened Forest of Dean, so the shop needs to appeal to people of all incomes. The café is a key ingredient. “The food is fresh, homemade and reasonably priced,” says Ken Johnson, who regularly drives 30 km with his wife to have a spot of lunch here and stock up on meat, fish, butter and cheese.

This pricing strategy is deliberate. “The café keeps us in the black because of its higher profit margins,” says Macklin. “It means locals can afford to come here week in, week out.”

But the shop makes its contribution in other ways too. There’s a book-swap scheme, an informal delivery system for villagers and artists from the area can exhibit in the café. “This model has the best chance of survival in a small place like this,” says Macklin. “Who better to provide for the community than the community itself?”

A community shop depends on unpaid staff and when the Brockweir and Hewelsfield store was first mooted, there were concerns about whether anyone would sign up. “A big worry was whether we would get the volunteers for the times that we needed,” says founding committee member Michael Lenthall. “Fortunately that concern proved unfounded.”

The shop has dozens of volunteers and the pool is refreshed by newcomers who want to meet their neighbours, locals of retirement age and people living alone, such as Sally Secrett; she volunteers every Tuesday afternoon. “It’s a way of keeping in touch because the shop is the heart of the community,” she says.

In the remote mountains of Japan’s southern Nara prefecture, retirees keen on their fresh meat and seafood can face a two-hour taxi ride to the supermarket in town. “They are too frail to walk to the bus stop or carry their own groceries and there’s nobody around to help,” says Kohei Yasukawa. “Their only option is a taxi.”

Yasukawa has first-hand knowledge: he has in mind customers of Yoshino Store, the small chain of grocery shops from Oyodo that three generations of his family have run since 1951. But he has come up with a solution: four years ago the company bought a lorry with an expandable cabin, equipped it with refrigerators, freezers and shelves and hit the road.

The truck carries 800 items – from toilet paper to Kagoshima pork belly and kelp-flavoured sweets – and runs six days a week to more than 40 small groups of homes scattered throughout the forest and mountains, known collectively as the village of Kawakami. Last year Yasukawa worked with officials from nearby Gojo to expand his coverage with a small refrigerated truck, the better to navigate the steep mountain switchbacks.

It’s not yet a profitable venture: Yoshino Store loses roughly ¥4.5m (€36,000) a year between its two lorries but for now subsidies from public coffers make up the difference. For 33-year-old Yasukawa, a former microchip engineer who returned home to take over the family business, helping residents is the priority. “Our goal is eventually for this to pay for itself so we can keep it going,” he says.

Japan’s government reckons that seven million people have no nearby grocer for daily necessities and no transport to reach shops farther away. The media call these have-nots kaimono nanmin (from the words for “shopping” and “refugees”); many are elderly and live in villages with declining populations where prospects for shops are bleak. The government spent ¥2.2bn (€17m) in the last financial year on projects such as Yoshino Store.

Tag along with the company’s drivers and you realise how vital the service is. When Monocle hitches a ride, Yoshinori Kishimoto is blaring out the 1968 hit song “365 Step March” as he pulls the lorry into Nakaoku, a huddle of 14 homes. Two women in aprons and house slippers climb aboard and chat with Kishimoto and his sidekick Shizuka Yanagihara while picking out milk, tofu, soybeans and sweet potatoes. At the next stop Kishimoto takes a call – an order from a resident – and Yanagihara delivers it to the customer’s house.

“We could just leave groceries by the door but we make sure everyone is doing all right,” says Yanagihara. “A lot of our customers live alone so it’s nice for them to have someone to talk to.” If regulars don’t show up, she knocks on doors; if someone isn’t feeling well she passes on the message to village officials. “We’ve become quite close to our customers.”