MUST STOCKS
Trusted and
true
Every shop needs a core of reliable best-sellers. Here are the lines that consistently delivered strong returns for FFD’s Deli of the Month stores during 2017. shelf talk
The Rustique Paté Co coarse Dorset liver paté Dorset Blue Vinny cheese Lyme Bay Winery traditional mead Just So Italian orzo pasta Just So Italian squid ink pasta Martin Carwardine coffee beans Springfield Dressings Rebecca’s Kitchen pineapple & fig chutney Home-cooked ham and beef
deli of the month vital statistics Location: 26 Institute Road, Swanage, Dorset Floor space: 400 sq ft Turnover: £100k-£120k Main wholesaler: Hollies Fine Foods, Hawkridge Farmhouse Cheese, Bournemouth Cheeses
must-stocks O Montgomery’s
cheddar
O Conker O Field
Gin Honey Coffee
O Jurassic
O Tiptree
‘Old Times’ orange marmalade Dorset Knobs O Homemade mackerel paté O Carla Cherry Daniels’ Dorset apple cake O The Rustique Paté Co coarse Dorset liver paté O Moore’s
Diana Jones and her team create a welcoming atmosphere in a tiny but brightly lit and colourful shop where local food has become the main focus
Perfectly Purbeck It’s small, it’s quite seasonal, but when it comes to delivering a warm welcome, Swanage’s award-winning Purbeck Deli can teach bigger stores a thing or two
R
obert Field’s Dorset Honey, Conker gin from Bournemouth, The Seasonist from Bridport, The Gilded Teapot – they’re in Dorchester…” Between sips of latte, Diana Jones is perusing the shelves alongside us and pointing out just a handful of the many local producers available to her as as owner of Dorset’s award-winning Purbeck Deli. Not that we’re actually in Dorset’s award-winning Purbeck Deli. We’re in Love Cake, a “café, deli and cake emporium” just round the corner from Jones’s shop in the neat little coastal resort of Swanage. As an interview venue, this has two advantages: an espresso machine and a bit of space to sit down with a notebook. At something under 400 sq ft, Purbeck Deli has neither. “We are teeny tiny,” Jones had told me in an email earlier the same day. It turns out that Love Cake,
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owned by caterer Emily Strange, is one of several similar local businesses that Purbeck Deli trades with on a regular basis. “They make fabulous cakes here,” Jones tells me, “so if we suddenly find we can’t get a cake or a quiche we’ll call them and say, ‘Can you make one?’ And if they run out of cheese, they’ll come to me.” It all sounds very neighbourly, although Jones stresses that it’s also business-like. “Everything is done by invoice or receipt. It’s not an airy-fairy bartering thing. If they need something from me, I’ll invoice them.” I’ve met Jones only 20 minutes earlier, but I’ve immediately warmed to her. In fact, if Swanage had a welcoming committee to greet its many thousands of day-trippers and holiday visitors, you’d want her in the front line. Last time I was here – to visit premium chocolate-maker Chococo
Deli of the Month INTERVIEW BY MICK WHITWORTH
– it was the height of summer, the narrow streets were swarming with tourists and parking was murder. This time, in the second week of January, I’ve left the car on an empty seafront, and I’m still 50 yards from my d estination when I hear a female voice hollering “Are you looking for the deli?” We’ve never even spoken – the interview was arranged hastily by email over the weekend, with Jones kindly agreeing to stand in for another deli owner who’s fallen victim to the flu – but she greets me in the street like a long lost friend. We briefly pop our heads into
the shop to say hello to manager Amy Spreadborough – busy in the back room, preparing pastry cases for her next batch of quiches – before heading off out again in search of caffeine. Several locals are given similarly warm hellos as we make our way to Love Cake, including one older man who turns out to be Jones’s dad, on his way to do her banking. “He‘s the rock behind my business,” she tells me, after we’ve sat down. A former financial director, he’s the shop’s accountant and visits every day to look after the cash. Jones, as it turns out, is usually at the shop only once or twice a week – and this despite it winning the Best Specialist Retailer title in the 2016 Taste of the West awards. She and husband Dave, a chef, also own Worth Matravers Tea & Supper Room – winner of Best Café/ Tea Room in the same awards in 2015 – and while it’s only three or four miles away, Jones has found trying to run both on a daily basis is just too much of a stretch. After they met, with Dave working restaurant hours and his wife in the deli, they had been “like ships that passed in the night”. They took on the Worth Matravers business so they could work together, but Jones found she was forever driving back and forth
between the two. “It was bit crazy. But then Amy came along, who had worked for me before at the tea room. She has been with me at the deli full-time for a year now, and she’s my right-hand woman.” Jones moved to Swanage with her parents as a child, and remembers visiting Purbeck Deli even then. “It’s been a deli forever,” she says, but by the time she bought the business 10 years ago, it was “very dilapidated, dark and dingy”. Jones had worked in a local language school for many years, and was a nanny before that, all over the world. This might have exposed her to a lot of different cuisines, but she had no professional experience in the food game. “On the day we took over the shop, I remember standing there with my mum, thinking, ‘What have I done?’ I had a lot to learn.” She stripped out many of the deli’s dusty, unloved lines – there was a lot of miscellaneous stuff in cans, she recalls – introduced home-cooked beef, hams and other shop-made ready-to-eat lines, and then steadily took the ambient range
further and further down the ‘local’ route. “Even at the start,” she says, “people really appreciated being able to buy something handmade, rather than manufactured, and I’ve gradually made it more and more local.” Swanage sits on the south east tip of the Isle of Purbeck, the picturesque peninsular between Weymouth and Poole. The area hosts a lively community of small food and drink producers; the wider county of Dorset and the rest of the West Country even more. “I tend to start with Purbeck and work out from there,” Jones says. Visitors to the West Country have a clear expectation of finding local foods on sale, and she makes it her business to keep her offer refreshed. “My approach is to keep the range moving, looking for new people and new things. I go to the local fairs and markets and make sure I know what’s going on.” Again, day-to-day ordering is delegated to
O Dorset
Blue Vinny cheese Lyme Bay Winery traditional mead So Italian orzo pasta So Italian squid ink pasta Carwardine coffee beans Dressings O Rebecca’s Kitchen pineapple & fig chutney O Home-cooked ham and beef O
O Just O Just
O Martin
O Springfield
On the day I took over the shop I remember standing there with my mum, thinking, ‘What have I done?’ I had a lot to learn.
Januar y-Februar y 2017 | Vol.18 Issue 1
Vol.18 Issue 1 | Januar y-Februar y 2017
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JANUARY-FEBRUARY
shelf talk
Location: 4 Church St, Ludlow, Shropshire SY8 1AP Floorspace: 500 sq ft (approx.) Turnover: £500,000 Staff: 1 full time; 4-5 part-time
must-stocks l Coedcanlas
marmalades No 8 and No 9
l Healthy
Boy soy sauce Brewery – Oracle
l Salopian
pale ale
Dancing to their own tune
With limited space in the shop, located in a medieval building on Ludlow’s market square, the range has been carefully 'curated’ by the Mackleys l Ludlow
At Harp Lane Deli, Henry and Hannah Mackley have reinvented a Ludlow landmark food shop in the image of their home larder: ‘Everything has to look beautiful and taste good’
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t might not have the heritage of Fortnum & Mason (established in 1707) or Paxton & Whitfield (1797), but the little deli at 4 Church Street in Ludlow is something of an institution. Set up nearly three decades ago as Ludlow Larder, it then saw 13 years as Deli on the Square under the ownership of Maggie Wright. With its prime location in a beautiful medieval building at one corner of the Shropshire town’s traditional market square, it was perfectly situated to ride the wave of interest in Ludlow that followed the launch there of the UK’s first major food festival in the mid-1990s. Now, along with shops like its neighbour Mousetrap Cheese and butchers like D W Wall & Son, it’s at the core of Ludlow’s reputation as a food destination. No pressure, then, on Henry and Hannah Mackley, who took
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over three years ago and bravely set about reimagining a store that some shoppers had been loyally supporting for three decades. “We had big boots to fill,” admits Henry, when I visit the Mackleys at what is now called Harp Lane Deli on a grey Thursday afternoon in early February. Luckily, though, the couple came to the shop with a strong local foodie heritage of their own. Not only are they both Ludlow born and bred, but their parents were together instrumental in setting up the now-famous festival in 1995. Hannah’s father is a retired former MD of Pol Roger Champagne, while Henry’s mother Lesley is a food writer and cook and is heavily involved in the Slow Food movement. “Our parents are all very fooddriven,” says Hannah, adding it was “kind of inevitable” she and Henry would eventually work in this sector.
Deli of the Month INTERVIEW BY MICK WHITWORTH
Although she’s currently at the shop only part-time while looking after their two young children, Hannah previously worked in sales and marketing for multinational ingredients supplier ADM. “I’ve always been in customer service or sales in something to do with food,” she tells me. If those are useful skills for a deli owner, Henry’s experience was even better. After university in London he cheffed for a couple of years, then “stumbled into a job” at Harvey Nichols Fifth Floor in London, home of its main restaurants and
foodmarket. After a stint out of the food industry – “I did a bit of property marketing” – he returned to Ludlow, where for three years he helped run the deli section at Ludlow Food Centre, on the A49 just outside the town. And it was here he learned many of the tricks he is now applying in his own deli. “I wouldn’t have been able to run this place without that experience,” he says, although he also stresses that the Food Centre – built 10 years ago on the edge of the Earl of Plymouth Estate and incorporating a large café,food hall and several onsite food production units – was an entirely different operation. “It’s almost incomparable,” he says. “They’re a company employing 100-plus people. We employ one full-timer and four or five part-time. And they have quite a different customer to us.
“But the experience was invaluable. I was co-managing cheese and deli, but towards the end of my three years there I spent more time in the office working on new product development. So in a relatively short time I covered a lot of ground.” Even a quick glance around the shelves in the compact little Harp Lane Deli tells you a lot about the approach the Mackleys have taken. With limited space they’ve gone for the best of everything, but also for products that look great on-shelf. As Telegraph food writer Xanthe Clay put it when she spoke at Harp Lane’s official opening, it’s “curated”. “In general,” says Hannah, “everything is here because it looks beautiful and tastes good. It has to do both of those things.” “And it’s here because we like it,” her husband adds. “What’s the point in having a shop like this if you can’t fill it with stuff you’d want at home?” He continues: “It sounds a bit superficial, but I want everything in my cupboard at home to look nice, and it’s the same in shop. In
2017, there’s no excuse for bad packaging.” Products like Ortiz tuna from Brindisa and Jose Gourmet canned fish, bought through a small Portuguese importer in London, set the tone, along with McClure’s dill pickles from Detroit, USA, sourced through Buckley & Beale. “These are ferociously expensive,” says Henry, holding up a big jar of McClure’s. “You don’t get much change out of £9. But on a scale of 1 to 10, how sexy is it?” It’s three years since the Mackleys took over the Deli on the Square, and they then closed the shop for six months to effectively rebuild the interior – within the limits of its Grade II listing – before reopening under their new name. Walls were squared up, and a joiner was brought in to install deep shelves, carefully measured to enable full cases of
product to be put out on display. The building, squeezed between Church Lane and Harp Lane, is the width of a standard §medieval “rod, pole or perch” – just over 16ft – and perhaps twice that in depth, with narrow stairs up to small first- and second-floor rooms. The first floor incorporates Henry’s kitchen and a tiny 6-8 cover informal dining room that is used a few times each month for pre-booked functions. Storage is on the top floor, and you wouldn’t want to be going up and down those narrow stairs too often in a day. “At Christmas, things become pretty tricky,” says Hannah. Another aspect of the refit was the addition of a small coffee bar on one side of the shop, encouraging shoppers to linger. “It was a very functional deli before,” says Henry. “We wanted to make it more of an extension of our own home – a nice
Brewing Co – Blonde beer tuna and anchovies Gourmet canned fish
l Ortiz l Jose
l Easy
José coffee Nut Co luxury granola Scotch Egg Co
l Ludlow
l Handmade
scotch eggs l MacNeil’s l Brindisa
smoked salmon salted Catalan
almonds l Galeta
pasteis de nata (Portuguese custards tarts) Normande à Londres – French saucisson Delicious cakes Yard Creamery – Perroche goats’ cheese to Age – Roquefort Vieux Berger
l Une
l Simply
I want everything in my cupboard at home to look nice, and it’s the same in shop. In 2017, there’s no excuse for bad packaging.
l Neals’
l Fromage
March 2017 | Vol.18 Issue 2
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Vol.18 Issue 2 | March 2017
MARCH
PURBECK DELI Swanage, Dorset
Handmade Scotch Egg Co scotch eggs MacNeil’s smoked salmon Brindisa salted Catalan almonds Galeta pasteis de nata (Portuguese custards tarts) Une Normande à Londres French saucisson Simply Delicious cakes Neal's Yard Creamery Perroche goats’ cheese Fromage to Age Roquefort Vieux Berger
HARP LANE DELI Ludlow, Shropshire
Montgomery’s cheddar Conker Gin Field Honey Jurassic Coffee Tiptree ‘Old Times’ orange marmalade Moore’s Dorset Knobs Homemade mackerel paté Carla Cherry Daniels’ Dorset apple cake
shelf talk
deli of the month vital statistics
Henry and Hannah Mackley both have close family ties to Ludlow’s food community
Coedcanlas marmalades No 8 and No 9 Healthy Boy soy sauce Salopian Brewery Oracle pale ale Ludlow Brewing Co blonde beer Ortiz tuna and anchovies Jose Gourmet canned fish Easy José coffee Ludlow Nut Co luxury granola
shelf talk
deli of the month
deli of the month
attractions
Lucinda La Velle, whose grandparents moved to Millets Farm in the 1950s. She is now joint site manager with brother Ben Carter.
O Farmhouse
Kitchen café restaurant/function space cream parlour barbecues maze
O Limbrick’s O Ice
O Summer O Maize
O Pick-your-own O Children’s
play area walkway O Carousel/merry-go-round O Woodland walk O Frosts Garden Cente (tenant) O Beauty salon (tenant) O Falconry centre (tenant) O Clock and mirror shop (tenant) O Animal
vital statistics Where? Market Street, Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire Opened: July 2014 Opening hours: 8am-5pm (Mon-Thurs), 8am-10pm (Fri & Sat) Staff: 7 full-time, 7 part-time Floorspace: 1,000 sq ft
must-stocks O Millets’
own hot cross buns Mill strong bread flour Batholomew cows’ milk cheese Biscuits dark chocolate gingers Hole cheddar Darlington’s Legendary Lemon Curd O Well Preserved Oxford marmalade O The Fine Cheese Company extra virgin olive oil & sea salt crackers O Shaken Oak Old Hooky beer mustard O Cotswold set honey O Toppings pickle & Wensleydale topped pie O Hook Norton Hooky Gold pale ale O Auntie Caroline’s Cheek Burning Chilli Chutney O Wessex
must-stocks
O St
l Coaltown
O Border
Managing a maze of attractions With an ever-widening offer stretching from its pioneering maize maze to Wimbledon tennis teas, family-owned Millets Farm Centre has all the advantages – and all the management challenges – of a highly diversified operation
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he doesn’t look it, but Lucinda La Velle admits to feeling a bit frazzled when we sit down in the Farmhouse Kitchen restaurant at Millets Farm Centre to talk about her family’s third-generation business. La Velle has just emerged from the Centre office and whizzed behind the café counter to rustle up a very competent cappuccino – just one sign of the multi-tasking she and brother Ben Carter have to undertake in their shared role of site manager. “We both have that job title, but we’re really general dogsbodies,” she says, not entirely in jest. Like anyone brought up in a family business, she’s been mucking in with everything from bag-packing to trolley collection since her school days.
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Now, she is as likely to be found clearing tables in the café-restaurant as attending to the financial or HR duties that are more in her ‘official’ line of work. “At Christmas I’ll spend quite a lot of time behind the deli counter, wrapping cheese,” she tells me. The role has become more of a beast, she says, as new elements – from an ice cream parlour to summer barbecues – are steadily added to
Deli of the Month INTERVIEW BY MICK WHITWORTH
what is far from being a simple farm shop operation. Despite the presence of events manager Jo Kent and site development manager Daren Fisher, it is stilll a monster to manage. “Although we have department managers who can run their section to a high standard, you need people who can move between them and oversee things. Particularly in the summer, we’re getting pulled more and more in all directions.” Based near the village of Frilford, a few miles from Oxford, today’s Farm Centre began life as a pick-your-own strawberry shed on the family farm. La Velle’s grandparents, John and Christine Carter, bought Millets Farm in 1952 and ran it for many years as a mixed dairy and arable operation. “Then my father and uncle [Nigel and Tony Carter] got involved,” she says, “and brought the business to where it is today.” Pick-your-own was developed in the 1970s. The original shed eventually became a shop and café,
All the Farm Centre’s events and attractions are designed to drive footfall in the core farm shop
and then 25 years ago the current farm shop building was erected, and it remains the financial core of the Farm Centre. The farm is still productive, but the cattle have gone and the focus today is very much on fruit and veg – contributing to a fresh produce section in the shop that represents 25% of sales. But bolt-on attractions have always been important at a site
that is nowadays a coach-party destination. Notably, in 1998 Millets opened what La Velle says was the UK’s first maize maze – a giant with over a mile of pathways that won it a Guinness World Record. Great publicity, of course, but she adds: “The next year we scaled it back, because people didn’t want to be in there for two hours!” The list of on-site attractions nowadays ranges from a falconry centre, beauty salon and clock and mirror shop, all operated by tenants, to a children’s play area and farm animal walk-way. The calendar of events at Millets is impressive, from hosting MGB car owners’ rallies to storytelling sessions for kids and, in June, “tennis & tea” afternoons, allowing customers to watch Wimbledon on a big screen while indulging in a tennis-themed tea. Ultimately, these are all about pushing more money through the tills, and it’s seen as important they don’t distrupt normal trade. “Our events are
always about benefiting retail first,” says La Velle. “We’re mindful of not putting off regular food shoppers by making ourselves too busy. When it comes to driving footfall, Millets has also benefited hugely from a long-standing tie-up with Frosts Garden Centres, a small, family-owned chain that has been a tenant at Millets for decades. The two work closely to ensure their offers are complementary. “We’re very lucky to have Frosts as our partners,” La Velle says. “They put a lot of investment into our site.” The Carter family was fortunate to have diversified into PYO and retailing in the 1970s, as it made the decision to quit dairy production less painful than for others who faced the dual catastrophes of BSE and foot-and-mouth. “We were very lucky we had the retail operation,” she says.
“No matter how much you love something, you can’t afford to have it dragging down the rest of the business.” It’s a little unusual, La Velle points out, for a farm shop to develop around a fruit & veg offer, rather than beef, pork or lamb. That’s the main reason why, for many years, the butchery counter was let out as a concession. But six years ago it was taken in-house, giving Millets more control over this key category. “We do feel that being able to set the same standards across the board is helpful,” La Velle says. The same principle led to another change in January 2016 when the Farmhouse Kitchen, previously tenanted, was also taken in-house. With 160 covers inside, many more outside in summer, and up to 30 staff at peak season, it has brought new management challenges but
It’s about saying, ‘That product is going there because that’s where it works best for the customer, as part of a holistic offer’
April 2017 | Vol.18 Issue 3
l Happy
APRIL MILLETS FARM CENTRE Frilford, Oxfordshire Millets’ own hot cross buns Wessex Mill strong bread flour St Batholomew cows’ milk cheese Border Biscuits dark chocolate gingers Wookey Hole cheddar Mrs Darlington’s Legendary Lemon Curd The Fine Cheese Company extra virgin olive oil & sea salt crackers
F INE FOOD DIGEST ·
l Rhydlewis
The Kindreds’ spirits
also some major benefits. “Running it ourselves enables us to give the same provenance message across the site, and that has been great,” she says. “We already have four bakers making bread for the shop, and now customers are served the same bread in the café – not a Warburton’s loaf. It doesn’t sit well for customers to be told they can’t have the same products they’ve seen in the shop because ’it’s nothing to do with us’.” Now, sausages and burgers made in the butchery department, quiches made behind the deli counter or cakes produced in the large on-site bakery are all available in the café, while soups or patés made in the restaurant will migrate back to the shop. “There’s a fair amount of interbusiness number-crunching going on,” La Velle says. With each department manager naturally focused on their own targets, this inter-trading needs clear ground-rules, so the various production kitchens are paid at a fixed 40% discount to the retail price. The Farmhouse Kitchen or the Vol.18 Issue 3 | April 2017
Best Brands
Coffee strawberry gin jam (Miranda’s Preserves) Belly scotch eggs smoked salmon l Alex Gooch artisan bread l Albert Rees Carmarthenshire ham l Silver & Green piripiri stuffed olives l The Baker’s Pig salami l Dash Seafood Pembrokeshire crab l Gwenlas dairy milk and butter l Foraging Fox beetroot ketchup l Snowdonia Black bomber l Trealy Farm merguez salami l Ginhaus
O Wookey O Mrs
Artisan gin is doing the business for delis and farm shops up and down the country but one retailer in Carmarthenshire has taken it to a new level. FFD visited Llandeilo’s Ginhaus Deli to find out how its founders have incorporated more than 350 different gins into its deli-café set-up.
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hen Mike and Kate Kindred first met in a pub on Market Street in Llandeilo, I doubt anyone could have predicted that they would be sat in almost the exact same spot some 20 years later. Back in 1997, Mike was the bar manager at The Three Tuns, “a proper drinkers’ pub”, and Kate was a customer. Fast forward two decades, including a few years away from their hometown, and the couple are indeed back where it all began. While they can’t prop up the bar anymore (the pub closed in 2002), drinking is still very much a part of the building’s current existence, as Ginhaus Deli. A deli-café/gin bar is not something FFD has encountered before – and it is just as much the former as it is the latter – but the Kindreds’ concept is thriving in this
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Shaken Oak Old Hooky beer mustard Cotswold set honey Toppings pickle & Wensleydale topped pie Hook Norton Hooky Gold pale ale Auntie Caroline’s Cheek Burning Chilli Chutney Well Preserved Oxford marmalade
2017-18
relatively remote Carmarthenshire market town. There are still traces of the original pub, such as the smokestained textured ceiling above the deli, but the gloom is warmed by a charming hotchpotch of furniture, signs and homemade light fittings. The whole space feels both modern and old at the same time – a bit like the spirit formerly known as Mother’s Ruin. Given the renaissance of gin, the Kindreds’ timing was very good. But
Deli of the Month INTERVIEW BY MICHAEL LANE
not necessarily intentional. Mike, also an experienced builder, was looking to get out of the trade in 2014 and the lease on a deli within the since-converted and partitioned Three Tuns had come up. His sister-in-law and brother now owned the building and suggested he and Kate take up the lease. But before they had even signed the documents the other retail units in the pub also became available. So, Mike ironically found himself knocking down walls to prepare the floorspace for the forthcoming larger-than-intended deli. It was only when the Kindreds were searching for a name and branding that the idea for Ginhaus was born. “We were looking into the history of the street and this building and we read that there was a gin distillery on Market Street, hundreds
of years ago,” says Kate. The couple started researching gin and soon found themselves making friends with start-up distilleries, like Burleigh’s in Leicestershire and The Old Bakery in North London, and piecing together what has become a wall of different bottles in the shop. “We started off with about 30 gins,” says Mike. “We’ve got about 360 now. We don’t sell any other spirit, just gin.” There are no mainstream brands in the line-up because Ginhaus cannot compete on price with the local supermarkets for gins like Bombay Sapphire and Gordon’s. The collection spans a variety of price points (some even exceed £200 a bottle) and geographical locations. There’s still room for Welsh distillers like Da Mhile, a sister business of Teifi Cheese, and Forager’s from
Snowdonia. The deli has such a specialist reputation now that both start-up and foreign distilleries will approach the Kindreds on social media. Often they get hold of first batches and, in some cases, Ginhaus is one of a handful of UK stockists – alongside esteemed London bottle shops and food halls – for a brand. “It’s nice to be recognised and not be a big company in London,” says Mike. “We are stuck out here, pretty much as far west as you can go, but we can still do it.” Even if other independents reading this think stocking so many spirits is beyond them, Ginhaus is a stellar example of how to sell successfully, regardless of volume. On the bar side, it sells a regularly changing gin tasting board of three shots with all the trimmings. The board includes tasting for each gin to encourage “trainspotterish” note-taking from regulars, who can then build-up their knowledge and enthusiasm. When the deli is open on a Friday and Saturday night, customers
can buy whole bottles (plus £20 corkage) and they’ll also get a pinney plus all the kit they need to run their own little bar-within-a-bar at their table. But Ginhaus does roaring trade in off-sales, too. And that is partly because their approach is fearless. Mike shrugs at the thought of having some £4,000-worth of glass bottles on shelves within reach of
just put it on pour with the rest of them.’ It’s not a big deal.” Given that samples are only a quarter of a shot glass, wastage and losses are negligible but the customers are engaged, Mike says, and they will come back. “If people come in here, especially now, they know they’re coming for a bottle of gin. They want something different.” For the Kindreds, selling gin is just like selling any other deli product. “The ones that are easy to sell are the ones where we’ve been and met the distiller,” says Kate Kindred. “We know the story, we know about the botanicals and we’ve seen where they’ve picked them.” While gin is obviously the shop’s USP, the deli itself is tended just as enthusiastically by Kate and the result is a cut above the average. The cheese selection is a mix of revered locals, like the Goudastyle Teifi and Caws Cenarth’s
must-stock gins l Burleigh's l Da
signature Mhile seaweed
Dash Seafood Pembrokeshire crab Gwenlas dairy milk and butter Foraging Fox beetroot ketchup Snowdonia Black Bomber Trealy Farm merguez salami
We started off with about 30 gins. We’ve got about 360 now. We don’t sell any other spirit, just gin. customers (“We’ve got cameras”) and he’s not shy of giving tasters, either. “We have 40-50 gins on pour [from the bar]. If there’s a bottle customers haven’t seen before, at £60-£70 a bottle, I’d hate to think they’d pay that much and get home and not like it.” “So I say ‘I’ll open it and you can try it. If you like it, that’s fine, it’s the bottle for you. If you don’t then I’ll
May 2017 | Vol.18 Issue 4
l Old
Bakery
l Snowdonia l Masons
Forager's Yorkshire Dry
Vol.18 Issue 4 | May 2017
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MAY GINHAUS DELI Llandeilo, Carmarthenshire Coaltown Coffee Ginhaus strawberry gin jam (Miranda’s Preserves) Happy Belly scotch eggs Rhydlewis smoked salmon Alex Gooch artisan bread Albert Rees Carmarthenshire ham Silver & Green piripiri stuffed olives The Baker’s Pig salami 61