Best Brands 2019-20

2 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

FINE FOOD DIGEST

WELCOME

Hopefully the results of our annual Best Brands survey will prove a welcome antidote to the post-election blues or your postChristmas inertia Michael Lane, editor, Fine Food Digest

ADVERTISING advertise@gff.co.uk Sales director: Sally Coley Sales manager: Ruth Debnam Sales executives: Becky Stacey, Sam Coleman Managing director: John Farrand Marketing director: Tortie Farrand Operations director: Christabel Cairns Operations manager: Karen Price Operations assistants: Claire Powell, Janet Baxter, Emily Harris, Meredith White Training & events manager: Jilly Sitch Events manager: Stephanie Hare-Winton Events assistant: Sophie Brentnall Business development: Edward Spicer Financial controller: Stephen Guppy Accounts manager: Denise Ballance Accounts assistant: Julie Coates Chairman: Bob Farrand Director: Linda Farrand GENERAL ENQUIRIES Tel: +44 (0) 1747 825200 editorial@gff.co.uk Printed by: Blackmore, Dorset ADDRESS

My local polling station feels more like a regular pit stop these days. And I’m sure you might feel just as jaded – for a variety of reasons – as I do about votes and their outcomes.

Hopefully the results (starting on page 4) that we serve up for you here from our annual Best Brands survey of independent retailers, the cornerstone of this publication, will prove a welcome antidote to the post-election blues or your post-Christmas inertia.

Like recent political events, we’ve got it all here.

There are the inevitable landslides in some categories and some reassuringly strong and stable results in others. Some brands are great at what they do and have earned their places as the Fathers (or Mothers) of the independent food retailing house. As I’ve said before, it is a great thing for our market to have a few stalwarts to keep tills ringing and providing start-ups with an aspiration.

Other areas are a bit more like the hung parliament we didn’t get in December. But in some categories, like coffee, jams and confectionery, a wide dispersal of votes and a lack of thumping majorities shows that retailers and their customers are supporting the local producer economy and the grassroots of our sector.

There’s also a great deal of new blood in these results. Some names have returned from the cold after absences and there have also been a few brands that have retained their seats after

surprising us by appearing at all last year.

Yes, there was even the odd spoiled ballot paper but every response has helped to give us a snapshot of the changing tastes and buying patterns in our market.

As always, there is a bit of analysis to give you more of a glimpse into the data and lift the lid on a few intriguing subplots.

There’s a noticeable shift in the snacks market, with votes indicating that retailers and customers are moving away from traditional potato crisp brands. Soft drinks seem to be getting the injection of D the category finally needs And the new wave of British cheeses are selling well off more than just their local counters. People might even be broadening their drinking horizons beyond gin (only joking!).

Beyond our survey, we’ve looked to add value with some oven-ready lists to help you re-stock in the new year. We’ve compiled a good deal of this year’s award-winning products (page 49), put all of the must-stocks from 2019’s FFD Delis of the Month in one place (page 57) and tapped up top buyers (page 43) and our own editorial team (page 63) for their top picks.

And if you feel like your business should be in this publication we’ve also looked into what makes a good brand – whether you’re a supplier (page 36) or a retailer (page 33).

I hope this magazine lifts your spirits and gets you ready to do it all again in 2020.

Happy New Year!

Inside:

Guild House, 23b Kingsmead Business Park Shaftesbury Road, Gillingham, Dorset SP8 5FB United Kingdom

MUST-STOCKS Led by general manager Alan Downes with his supermarket background, Hawarden Estate Farm Shop has cast off the gingham-clad image of yesteryear’s farm shops. Instead, offering a contemporary ‘Instagrammable’ destination that’s all about the experience Interview by Lauren Phillips

THE WELL-KNOWN SAYING ‘never judge a book by its cover’ comes to mind when I arrive at Hawarden Estate Farm Shop.

From the outside, the modest rectangularshaped building resembles a shipping container that’s been clad in weather-beaten wooden planks. The inside, however, tells a different story.

Neon pinks, greens and oranges pop out

FINE FOOD DIGEST

from the contemporary fixtures and fittings of the high ceiling and shop floor. Framed vintage posters adorn the walls too, while an enthusiastic ‘Hello’ emblazoned on an orange sign is a welcoming beacon at the back of the shop. You’d sooner see all this in a London deli or eatery than a farm shop four miles from the Dee Estuary in Flintshire, North Wales.

In fact, I can’t help but think this aesthetic

is the perfect backdrop for an Instagram photograph, which is exactly what the general manager of Hawarden Estate Farm Shop, Alan Downes, had in mind.

“The world is becoming more ‘Instagrammable’,” he tells me. “People are taking pictures of their food and their environment for social media, so it’s about creating more of an experience and that’s what we want to show.”

‘Experience’ is a word Downes uses a lot, but everything from the contemporary, colourful decor to the choice of background music (a current mix including The Beatles, Bob Marley and Taylor Swift) does make visiting Hawarden an experience.

“We’ve realised that you have to create an experience of exceeding people's’ expectations,” says Downes. “So that they want to come, sit here and enjoy our food. It’s modern, gives the people what they want and that’s what we want.”

Current consumer behaviours and trends, like experience-led retailing, drive a lot of the decisions made by Downes and the staff at the shop and makes up a huge part of its business model. If this sounds a little more ‘supermarket-y’ than your average independent retailer, it’s no surprise given Downes’ background.

A trainee butcher at 14 and shop manager of his local supermarket at 21, Downes spent the best part of 12 years working his way up from the fresh meat counter to ambient grocery lines at Asda until becoming general manager for the Walmart supercentre in Queensferry.

He decided to swap the system and process of the supermarkets for the flexible and artisan food world of the farm shop after completing a dissertation on local food sourcing for an Open University course in business management.

Downes even pitched this work to Asda

VITAL STATISTICS

All independent retailers will tell you that some items are more important and crucial to business than others.

Here’s a rundown of every must-stocks list from each of Fine Food Digest’s 2019 Deli of the Month interviewees.

From its contemporary-styled store fronts and polished steel ‘walls of cheese’ to its newly launched online store, Clare Jackson’s Slate proves that grey – in all its shades – can be a retail turn-on

MUST-STOCKS Gorgonzola dolce (Carozzi) Shipcord extra-mature (Rodwell Farm Dairy) Baron Bigod (Fen Farm Dairy)

THERE ARE THREE kinds of shop name, Clare Jackson tells me. There’s the “surname name” (think Candice Fonseca’s Delifonseca in Liverpool). There’s the “place name” (Neal’s Yard Dairy and a thousand others). And then there’s the “random word associated with the product”.

“One that I love,” Jackson says, “is Pong. You know? Pongcheese.co.uk? I just love that. It sticks in the mind.”

We’re sitting in a quiet corner of a striking café and beer shop created by brewer Adnams in its home town of Southwold, Suffolk, and we’re talking about Slate, the brand that Jackson and her father John Ormerod dreamt up long before they had a cheese shop to stick the name on.

Like cheese, Jackson expains, slate is a natural product. It also gets better with age. And while the colour grey, she admits, can be “a bit dull”, when you put it in the hands of a decent branding

and design agency – she and Ormerod chose What Associates in Ipswich - it’s transformed into something cool and contemporary.

The Slate brand now sits above the door of two Suffolk cheese shops, which both opened under that name in November 2017. One is in Southwold, almost next door to the Adnams’ café that has been Jackson’s unofficial office since she first found premises here. The other is in Aldeburgh, half an hour’s drive down the coast, in what was once Lawson’s Deli.

And now there’s an online shop too, grafted on to Slate’s website a few weeks before Christmas 2018 and already picking up orders.

Considering neither Jackson nor her father have retail backgrounds, that’s not a bad start. But then, they’re not exactly low achievers. Before taking a career break to have kids, Jackson worked in London for PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of

Suffolk Gold (Suffolk Farmhouse Cheeses)

the world’s biggest accounting firms. Ormerod was a UK senior partner at the biggest, Deloitte, and spent 30 successful years with another professional services giant, Arthur Anderson.

Although 70 this year, he still has fingers in many business pies, says Jackson. Yet often, at weekends, he can be found on the pavement outside Slate Southwold, luring shoppers into the tiny 400 sq ft store with tasters. “They call him the ‘Pied Piper of Cheese’,” she says.

And Jackson too gives the lie to the image of accountants as a bit dull and, er, grey. She’s zesty, knowledgeable and laughs a lot, but still has that sharp edge that ensures, for example, that FFD’s camera doesn’t pick up anything in the shop that she’s not proud of. When I rib her about this, she says quickly: “Do you know any small business owner that isn’t a bit controlling?”

Jackson’s family had been coming to this

Weydeland 1000-day-aged gouda Burt’s Blue cheese Bray’s Cottage pork pies Pump Street bread Pump Street chocolate Peter’s Yard crispbread – original The Fine Cheese Co Toast For Cheese – dates, hazlenuts & pumpkin seeds Foods of Athenry gluten-free crackers Eastgate Larder medlar preserves Fruit Magpie fruit cheeses ose ud Preser es fig chutney Slate own-brand chilli jam Bracey Bees honey

prosperous area of Suffolk for decades – part of that weekend and summer exodus from the Capital that made this East Anglia’s first “London-on-Sea”. Then in 2016, with one of their children at boarding school in Suffolk, she and her husband moved home permanently to Woodbridge, north of Ipswich.

It was here that, with her father, she began mulling her next business move.

“We had the idea for Slate – the name and concept – the summer I was moving up,” she recalls. “We thought it could work in Southwold, and started looking at this shop, but then we saw Lawson’s was on the market and thought that would be a good option to start with.”

They took over from long-time owners Richard Lawson and Claire Bruce-Clayton in January 2017 and ran the Aldeburgh shop under its old name for 10 months – “We sort of slipped in under the radar” – while learning the ropes.

One big bonus of moving into an existing shop was inheriting the staff, most of whom had worked at the high street store for several years.

“So that gave us a jump-start, particularly as they were very experienced in the Aldeburgh market – what customers like, and the pattern of the year, which is so seasonal.”

VITAL STATISTICS

Locations: 6 Victoria Street, Southwold, Suffolk, IP18 6HZ and 138 High St, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, IP15 5AQ Floor space: Southwold: 400 sq ft, Aldeburgh: 600 sq ft Turnover: £500,000 (combined) No of employees: 8 full-time equivalent (varying seasonally), plus the owners 52

Aldeburgh was rebranded and – after a flurry of building work at both sites – opened in unison with the new Southwold Slate store in November 2017. But there was still plenty to learn. “A lot of people come at running their own food business through the chef route and knowing about food,” says Jackson, “and find things like VAT returns and payroll the big learning curve.

“For us, if the VAT people want to do a spotcheck on our records, that sort of plays to our strengths. Our learning curve was round things like managing stock.

“We had lots of ideas, but it’s the practicalities of keeping the show on the road – like not ordering too much on the first day. I just love big wheels of cheese but they’re too big to cut in our shop. I didn’t realise you get the supplier to cut them into halves or quarters!”

While FFD originally reported on the “takeover” of Lawson’s deli, and even how father and daughter planned to open “a second branch of Lawson’s”, Jackson is quick to quash that idea.

“We don’t call this a deli,” she says. “We took over Lawson’s premises, but Slate is a cheese shop. To me, it’s a different mindset.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 55

January-February 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 1

Vol.20 Issue 1 | January-February 2019

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Although it began life as an outlet for its founders’ organic produce, Somerset’s Trading Post Farm Shop has grown into a specialist food store that covers all the bases. Now under the stewardship of former shop manager Kate Forbes, it is reaping the rewards of some bold retailing decisions.

Interview by Michael Lane

the Year competition.

“Interestingly the average basket spend has not gone up since we took over,” Forbes tells FFD, analysing the shop’s financial performance.

“Footfall of customers, that’s what gone up – which is a brilliant place to be. Because a lot of people spending the same amount of money is better than a few people spending more.”

It doesn’t diminish her achievements but Forbes already had a solid base to build from.

She had worked in the shop for the best part of a decade before buying the goodwill, stock, fixtures and fittings from previous owners Sue Hasell and Steve Friend. They set up the business 20 years ago – as an organic farm with the shop as an outlet for its produce. That supply relationship continues today and they retain the site, renting it to Forbes. There is also an extra footfall magnet in the form of The Railway Carriage Café next door

MUST-STOCKS Beenleigh Blue Vintage Cornish Gouda

that shares a back door with the shop but, again, is a separate business.

Having been manager for the last couple of years and constantly pondering what she would do if the shop was hers, Forbes still saw plenty of scope to boost customer numbers and takings.

And the new owner really hit the ground running.

“We closed for a day, changed the entire shop around and then reopened the next day. People came in and they thought we’d extended because there was so much more space.”

Forbes estimates that there are some 5,000 different lines across the shop’s two main rooms – plus a couple of adjoining nooks and crannies – but it truthfully doesn’t feel crammed. This is made more remarkable when you consider that there is no stockroom. Any extras are stored under tables but the majority is ordered on a just-in-time basis, both from wholesalers like

Driftwood (White Lake Cheese) Smoked Somerset Brie Grubworkz pork belly ready-meal i erty o e Coffee Teoni’s stem ginger cookies Newton House Gin Conker Cold Brew Bower Bakery sourdough Baboo passionfruit sorbet Hembridge Organics real ale chutney Brian Wogan Sumatra coffee Wriggle Valley Beer Hotch Potch gluten-free chorizo & tomato Scotch eggs

Cotswold Fayre, Holleys and Diverse and direct from over 80 local suppliers.

Although she admits that the wealth of brands and categories can seem like “organised chaos”, Forbes is adamant that the approach puts customers at ease with browsing.

“You go to some farm shops and it’s all very same-y because they’ve branded everything.

“No one wants to walk into a wall of the same label. You actually end up not looking at anything.”

Encompassing gluten-free biscuits, the latest British gins and spirits (which I’m told are Andy’s department), vegan Scotch eggs, high quality balsamic, and even cannabis-derived CBD oil, the broad range reflects Trading Post’s ethos of “being everything to everybody”, and makes the shop hard to pigeonhole. But the sourcing philosophy is relatively simple.

“It’s local, it’s organic, it’s fresh – we get the fresh pick from the field every morning – or it’s delicious. Those are my four things.”

Those may be the criteria but Forbes also seems to have a knack for sussing out what her varied customer base wants. Some of her more major changes are cases in point.

Although installing a proper cheese counter

VITAL STATISTICS

Location: Trading Post Farm Shop, Lopenhead, Somerset TA13 5JH Turnover: £606,000 (Feb 18 - Feb 19) Total annual footfall: 43,800 customers Average daily sales: £1,674 Average basket spend: £13.83 Staff: 7 (part-time) 54

was one of her long-held dreams for the shop, it was accelerated by the proposed closure of a nearby deli.

Trading Post introduced a tight range of West Country cheeses in May – including Westcombe and Montgomery cheddars, Cornish Yarg and a variety of ewes’ and goats’ milk creations from White Lake – and this line-up has served the shop well thus far.

Cornish Gouda works as an alternative to Parmesan, while the West’s strong blue contingent (Bath, Beenleigh, Dorset Blue Vinney) covers off the Stilton conundrum.

That said, Forbes has permitted the introduction of a monthly “guest cheese”.

Given the disappointing performance of loose olives behind the glass (Forbes wants to move them to a self-service station elsewhere), there are going to be more counter inches available soon for a more permanent range of cheese from further afield.

That is, if the other new counter speciality doesn’t take them first.

“It was a massive gamble,” says Forbes of the loose chocolate selection that was introduced at CONTINUED ON PAGE 57

March 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 2

Vol.20 Issue 2 | March 2019

55

With only two years of trading under their belts you might think Emma and Ben Mosey are relative farm shop novices. But they are picking up accolades and increasing sales all the time with a business plan that revolves around their small flock of hens and home-grown veg rather than meat.

FOR ALL OF YOU OUT there whose weekend breakfast preparations are filled with dread, FFD can bring you some comfort via North Yorkshire.

“People blame themselves for not being able to poach eggs but it’s actually all to do with freshness,” says Emma Mosey, co-owner of Minskip Farm Shop. “It’s impossible to get the eggs to supermarkets in 10 days or less, so they’re unpoachable by the time they get there.”

It’s hard to imagine that Mosey, a novelist (under her maiden name Chapman), and her husband Ben, a geologist, could bore anyone at a social gathering. But she insists that they have been earmarked by friends as the people who talk endlessly about eggs at dinner parties.

Even if their assertion that you shouldn’t even need a drop of vinegar or a whirlpool (yes, really) in the pan doesn’t make you sit up and listen, then the couple’s success far beyond the

breakfast table should.

This most humble of products is at the heart of their business and looks set to be its future, as turnover increases rapidly and they embark on a long-term plan to expand and diversify – with their eggs remaining the centrepiece.

The Moseys are still relative novices when it comes to this game. Although Ben had plenty of practical knowhow from growing up on his family’s sheep and pig farm, the couple had no prior retail experience two years ago when they took over a farm with 6,000 laying hens and its own shop, 20 minutes north west of Harrogate.

At first glance, the shop is more “farm gate” than a rural retailing marvel – there is no butchery, no deli counter and it’s closer in size to an urban shop. The fact that they are in an area of the UK that is rich in farm shops (there are three within 5 miles of Minskip alone) and

VITAL STATISTICS

Location: Minskip Farm Shop, Minskip Road, Boroughbridge, YO519HY Turnover: £400,000 (incl. wholesale eggs) Total Annual Footfall: 30,138 (2018) Average basket spend: £11 Staff: 7 (part-time) 56

MUST-STOCKS Purple sprouting broccoli, kale, spinach and chard all from Mins ip s mar et garden

have a supermarket five minutes up the road, should see the odds stacked further against them.

Yet, the shop pops up regularly on awards shortlists and they have been invited to join a Farm Retail Association board meeting the day after FFD visits. Their numbers back up these endorsements.

The farm is turning over £400,000 (up 38% since January 2017), of which 70% is retail revenue. Remarkably, those super fresh eggs along with a strikingly merchandised array of vegetables – quite a few of which are grown in the Moseys’ own market garden – account for half of all sales. In total, 96% of the lines stocked are sourced from within 20 miles.

With meat sales from a small multi-deck accounting for just 5% of sales, you might think they have hamstrung their growth potential but

ery large eggs Mins ip s o n Bear & Mouse Chocolate Acorn Dairy Mil or shire Mayo er -fed poultry Whitta ers in anoras Ba ery sourdough Cartright & Butler iscuits and preser es Bessie s or shire Preser es ishman s

du a

Bad Co Bre ery eers pello

keeping this category to a minimum is Minskip’s major point of difference.

“When we first looked round the shop, we actually thought that was a weakness and we should be meat-based because most are,” says Emma Mosey. “But what we’ve learnt – especially with the kind of trends that are going on at the moment – is the hens are the most unique thing about our business.”

The relatively small scale of the operation is also something Mosey sees as a boon rather than a negative.

“Because we are smaller, we’re very transparent. You can see the veg as you drive in, you can see the hens from the car park.”

She adds: “As farm shops get bigger, some lose that and become more café-based than anything. It’s not a negative thing but we found, when we were first starting, that you can’t tell the difference between some shops, what their USP is or what the original farm was.”

After a couple of years getting to grips with the business, Emma Mosey says they are now looking to upgrade on the single building inherited from the previous owners with a caférestaurant. This is just the first phase of a bigger project.

Farm Ba ery

“We’ve got a 10-year plan, it’s taken us two years to make it!”

Eventually, Minskip will evolve into a destination for visitors to learn about food and farming. While further phases remain a closely guarded secret, Mosey says they have taken inspiration from the foodie attractions they saw while living in Perth, Western Australia, especially those in the nearby wine region of Margaret River.

“We’ve weighed up other options in terms of growth,” she says. “Those have gone along the lines of more generic food & beverage or a play offering for kids. But both of those things are very replicable, and not just by farm shops but by all sorts of people in the leisure industry.”

The chosen direction is also informed by Mosey’s own “townie” fascination and love of the rural way of life.

“Through meeting Ben I’ve become addicted to the farming life and reconnecting with our food. We are really passionate about trying to find a way for people to see their food growing or the hens lay the eggs, in a way that’s really exciting and educational.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 59

April 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 3

Vol.20 Issue 3 | April 2019

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It was while trying to save her local high street that Vicky Skingley decided to become a part of it when she opened Good Food – a South East London deli and social enterprise on a mission to give back to its local community Interview by Lauren Phillips

Location: 7 Sandhurst Market, Catford, London, SE6 1DL Turnover: £280,000 approx.

No of staff: 7 (part-time) Average basket spend: £7.80 No. of retail lines: 1,467 (1,000 lines currently on the shop oor 48

May 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 4

FINE FOOD DIGEST

2019 Best Brands Survey results

4

Shop of the Year

22

Retail branding

33

Branding & packaging

36

Emerging brands

43

National & regional award winners

49

CONTINUED ON PAGE 51

Vol.20 Issue 5 | June 2019

informed that, at Christmas, customers will queue around the corner for an hour to get their hands on a piece of Colton Bassett Stilton.

There’s not a smörgåsbord, meatball or rotten herring in sight.

This is Möllans Ost, a cheesemonger and deli that sits at the heart of the city’s Möllvången neighbourhood – an area renowned for food thanks to its daily produce market. The shop is also at the core of a €6m operation which includes a nationwide import and wholesale business, as well as a second retail unit in Malmö’s trendy Saluhall food market.

It hasn’t always been such a serene beacon of food retailing, though.

Owner Peter Mårtensson – who some readers may recognise from recent Supreme judging panels at the World Cheese Awards – set his heart on opening a shop seling “ost” (Swedish for “cheese”) after a wine-filled evening while

travelling in Spain during the mid-80s. He realised this dream in 1988 in a tiny 43sq m unit around the corner from the current premises.

“The first customer I ever had was an old lady,” he says. “She looked around and said ‘Do you maybe have some old pieces of cheese to sell to me cheap?’

“I thought ‘Oh, this is how my life’s going to be.’”Mårtensson stuck with it, though. And he quickly decided to seek his own suppliers abroad to differentiate his shop from the supermarkets that were all buying cheese from larger wholesalers.

At the exact moment he was unwrapping his first ever pallet from a small Parisian exporter loaded with €1,000 of small French goats’ cheeses – and telling himself he was going to go bankrupt – a curious food journalist happened to walk in and Möllans Ost had the exposure it needed.

Location: Möllans Ost, Bergsgatan 32, 214 22 Malmö, Sweden Turnover: €6m (overall), €1.1m (retail) No. of shops: 2 Average basket: €20-€25 Average margin: 50%

49

Retail staff: 22 (3 full-time) 52

Peter Mårtensson

July

Möllans Ost Malmö, Sweden MUST-STOCKS Von Mühlenen – Gruyère Onetik- Coeur de Basque Emmi – Kaltbach Creamy Käserei Champignon- Montagnolo Affiné Almnäs Bruk – Almnäs Tegel Ford Farm- Farmhouse cheddar Lincet – Delice de Bourgogne Fine Cheese Co Toast for Cheese Skånemejerier – Sandwich cheeses Corsica Gastronomia marmalades Colston Basset- Stilton Boni – Pamiggiano Reggiano DOP Queserias del Tietar– Monte Enebro Dongé – Brie de Meaux Central Formaggi – Moliterno Truffle Pecorino

CONTINUED ON PAGE 55

July 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 6

Vol.20 Issue 6 | July 2019

53

Regardless of success, so many food businesses face the problem of what to do when it’s time to hand over the reins. Luckily for one busy Cotswold deli-café, the management team was ready and willing. Meet the new owners of Broadway Deli.

Interview by Michael Lane

And the quartet played on...

MOST INDEPENDENT RETAILERS have their quirks but they are in abundance at the Broadway Deli, tucked away on the northern edge of The Cotswolds.

Its grand double-fronted premises is a bit of a warren inside and has plenty of historical features – centuries-old wooden beams, flagstone floors and the upstairs loo still contains the bath from the building’s previous residential use.

Then there’s the vintage Piaggio threewheeler parked out the front, heaving with produce, that attracts plenty of tourists and their cameras. Look closer and you’ll notice another vehicle – a cross-sectioned Fiat 500 – that doubles as a bread shelf in one of the front windows.

Yet perhaps the most curious thing about this establishment is its custodians – not the typical moneyed early retirees that tend to

inhabit this part of the UK. When I try to assemble the deli’s four co-owners into posing together for a single photo, they wryly suggest that it may end up looking like a boyband shoot – but this group is certainly not a bunch of tuneless amateurs.

“There’s over 30 years’ deli experience here between the four of us,” says one of them, George Courts. “We’re all under 30 as well, so that’s quite a lot of time committed to one place between us.”

Not only is this shop a fine example of a bustling deli-café, it is also a bit of a pioneering study into a problem that affects so many at the smaller end of food: succession.

The young owners have only been in charge of Broadway Deli a few weeks but, like all good boybands, they have been mentored well. All of them have worked for years under the previous owners Louise Hunt and Alan Frimley, who set

up and ran the shop for 17 years across a couple of locations in the village, before eventually settling in its current home five years ago.

Until two months ago, none of the foursome had any idea that Frimley and Hunt were planning to retire and hand the reins over to them.

“There’s a few things that happened in the last three years but, at the time, no bells were ringing,” says Will Doyle, who at 24 is the youngest of the four and has worked in the deli for eight years. “But when you look back you think ‘Actually, you’ve got me to do that now so I’m comfortable with this’.”

Alongside Courts and Doyle, the selfprofessed “deli family” is completed by Shane Brotherton and Billy Powell, who is the longest-serving team member having joined initially as a Saturday boy 14 years ago. All four have bought an equal share in a business that is

VITAL STATISTICS

Location: 29 High Street, Broadway, Worcestershire, WR12 7DP Average basket spend: £15-20 Floor area: (retail) 1,330 sq ft, (café) 1,164 sq ft No. of staff: 5 full-time (plus 4 owners)

58

MUST-STOCKS Cotswold Bees honey Ozone Coffee Empire Blend Holmeleigh Dairy Gold Top milk Cotswold Gold rapeseed oil Cotswold Raw dog treats Billy’s Woodland eggs Peter Cooks bread Local vegetables (Drinkwaters) George Courts

Will Doyle

seemingly thriving.

When FFD arrives on a sunny Tuesday, there are customers all over the shop browsing the nooks and crannies of the building that are stuffed with all manner of ambient goods.

In what you might call the shop’s two front rooms are the deli counter and a fully stocked greengrocer’s display. And where there aren’t products for sale, there are tables – some 60 covers are packed in across the two floors and the rear patio.

“The whole point of the café is to showcase the shop,” says Court. “That’s always been the rule ever since I’ve been here. The café is hard work and takes a lot of staff but the shop massively benefits.”

This is borne out by a turnover that is split roughly 70:30 in favour of retail. He adds: “We’ve never had a day when the café’s more than the retail till.”

A prime example of this theory in action is the Seggiano green pesto that Broadway Deli counts as one of its bestsellers. The café kitchen ploughs through 4-litre jars of it in various recipes, including the pesto salad on the counter. As a result of getting customers to sample it this way, the deli is selling as many as two dozen 1kg jars (at £20 each) every fortnight.

The café menu changes daily. It contains a soup of the day, soufflé, Ploughman’s, sandwiches (available to takeway from the counter too) and a Goodness Bowl made with cauliflower rice but there are regular variations on all of these, as well as seasonal dishes like Serrano ham, roasted nectarines and burrata.

This approach allows Broadway to account for short-dated produce and deli items from retail and to promote new lines, but it also keeps things interesting for everyone.

Courts says: “It would be a lot easier to

Shane Brotherton

Billy Powell

keep the menu the same for a period of time but we’ve got a massive amount of locals that come here three or four times a week so we need to do it for them as much as anything.”

Despite the location and a recently revived steam railway between Broadway and Cheltenham Racecourse boosting the already hefty tourist footfall, these visitors are still outnumbered by regulars. On busy days in the height of summer, the café will serve 300 covers (or their full capacity five times over), between opening for breakfast and closing.

While Powell has recently become the primary chef and the other three patrol the shop floor and café areas constantly alongside other staff, the four owners are experienced enough to be able to work in any part of the business that needs the most help.

“I don’t think any of us would enjoy being an office person,” says Doyle, “because we like being busy and juggling serving tables with placing an order, or thinking ‘That table needs a dust’, or coming up with a sandwich for the next day.”

None of the quartet has entered into this venture thinking it will be an easy ride and they have to laugh behind the scenes at customers who come in and whimsically suggest they will open delis when they retire.

“It is hard work and is a career. I don’t want to work anywhere else and I don’t want to do anything else,” says Doyle, adding that his old school was dismayed he was the only pupil in his class not applying for university. “There is the outside opinion of ‘Oh, you work in a shop?’ which can be really derogatory and it’s a bad thing that has developed in society.”

“We always joke that we have degrees in Deli-ology,” says Court, highlighting that all

Branded hessian bags Two Farmers crisps Merrylegs apple juice Kingstone Dairy - Rollright Macneill’s smoked salmon Homemade sausage rolls Seggiano green pesto

CONTINUED ON PAGE 61

August 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 7

Vol.20 Issue 7 | August 2019

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The shop has evolved immensely since it was first

September 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 8

Broadway Deli Peter Cooks bread Broadway, Worcs Local vegetables (Drinkwaters) Cotswold Bees honey Branded hessian bags Ozone Coffee Empire Two Farmers crisps Blend Merrylegs apple juice Holmeleigh Dairy Gold King Stone Dairy Top milk Rollright Cotswold Gold rapeseed Macneil’s smoked oil salmon Cotswold Raw dog treats Homemade sausage rolls Billy’s Woodland eggs Seggiano green pesto

The Seasons San Amvrosia houmous Forest Row, East Sussex Brush with Bamboo toothbrushes Apples & bananas Flax Farm Flaxjacks The Sussex Kitchen Berkeley Farm salted Guernsey butter seeded sourdough loaf Infinity Wholefoods nuts Conscious Chocolate – & seeds Citrus Zest Plaw Hatch Farm yoghurt Orchard Eggs

Changing at The Seasons EVERY GOOD RETAILER would say they have a discerning customer base, but the shoppers at The Seasons, situated in the East Sussex village of Forest Row, take “eagle-eyed” to another level.

“If we put a product out there that didn’t fit in with our ethos, my customers would be pretty quick off the mark to say ‘What the hell is this doing here? Have you looked at that ingredient?’,” says director Robin Walden.

Thankfully, the second-generation owner of the shop is just as astute as his customers. The Seasons is a fine example of a modern wholefoods retailing business, but that’s because everything – from its sourcing policy down to the building’s newly fitted eco-cladding – is underpinned by its desire: to be a sustainable and ethical retailer.

This has fuelled its success as a business turning over £2 million a year and the runner-up in the specialist food shop category at the 2019 Guild of Fine Food’s Shop of the Year.

Boni – Pamiggiano Reggiano DOP Queserias del Tietar – Monte Enebro Dongé – Brie de Meaux Central Formaggi – Moliterno Truffle Pecorino

September

DELI OF THE MONTH

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Ford Farm – Farmhouse cheddar Lincet – Delice de Von Mühlenen – Gruyère Bourgogne Onetik – Coeur de Fine Cheese Co Toast for Basque Cheese Emmi – Kaltbach Creamy Skånemejerier – Käserei ChampignonSandwich cheeses Montagnolo Affiné Corsica Gastronomia Almnäs Bruk – Almnäs marmalades Tegel Colston Basset Stilton

August

DELI OF THE MONTH

This is helped by a local Steiner school in Forest Row (an alternative private school that encourages learning through creativity) which means there are a lot of consumers following a holistic lifestyle in the area.

“That’s been a core part of our customer base,” says Walden. “Caring for the environment goes hand-in-hand with organic and biodynamic farming, so that’s helped the business grow and sustain here.”

The shop also attracts young professionals coming in for their organic fruit & veg, homogenised milk or nut mylk, sourdough loaf and premium dark chocolate on a weekday lunch hour or evening commute.

This varied trade isn’t just local, either. The shop draws customers from within a 20-mile radius, reaching as far as Reigate in Surrey and Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent. Walden attributes this to the strong and large product range. “There is no shop like us in this area” says Walden. “We’ve seen a few farm shops come and go but nothing substantial. It would be difficult for another shop to even catch up or open something of this size.”

The shop’s offering has grown and evolved from bran, brown rice and standard fruit & veg of the ‘80s and ‘90s. It now covers a wide range of categories across its two floors – fresh and chilled everyday essentials downstairs and dried goods and non-food products upstairs.

“We try and aim for all sorts of markets and products that could please everyone and if you get the range right you will attract those markets,” he says, adding: “We try not to be pretentious or too expensive, but still have good quality products that people are willing to spend extra on.”

That doesn’t mean every product in the wholefoods’ category makes it on shelf and

MUST-STOCKS Apples & bananas The Sussex Kitchen seeded sourdough loaf Conscious Chocolate – Citrus Zest Orchard Eggs San Amvrosia hummus Brush with bamboo toothbrushes Flax Farm Flaxjacks Berkeley Farm salted Guernsey butter Infinity Wholefoods nuts & seeds Plaw Hatch Farm yoghurt

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Vol.20 Issue 8 | September 2019

79

orkshire Mayo erb fed oultry Whittakers in Purple sprouting Vanoras Bakery broccoli, kale, spinach sourdough and chard (all from Cartwright & Butler Minskip’s market biscuits and reser es garden) Bessie’s Yorkshire Very large eggs reser es (Minskip’s own) ishman s duja Bear Mouse Chocolate BAD Co Bre ery beers Acorn Dairy Milk Spellow Farm Bakery

Oatly Barista Edition mylk

They might have been winging the retailing element but Skingley and her team knew the end goal: all the money made in-store would be reinvested into the business and go to pay its employees the London Living Wage (£10.55 per hour).

But the shop still needed to have an official mission statement that would outline what Good Food was trying to achieve as a social enterprise and which the team could refer to to help inform their business decisions.

On paper, it is “To inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real local food, employing responsibly, engaging with the local area positively and considering the environmental impact of everything we do”.

In practice, this means running its veg box subscription scheme or encouraging Catford allotment holders to exchange their surplus

VITAL STATISTICS

20 minutes.”

This flexibility proves useful given the broadness of the shop’s customer base. When I visit on a Tuesday morning, there is a steady trickle of retired women picking up a few bits but Dahl says there is a group of big-spending men in their 60s who frequent the other shop in the Saluhall on a Friday, spending €70 at a time.

There are younger customers, too, but I get a blank look from both Mårtensson and Dahl when I mention the dreaded Millennial. The term might be lost in translation but they both laugh knowingly when I ask whether they have trendier “hipster” customers.

“We’ve got something for everybody here,” says Dahl. “There’s a group of hipsters in Malmö moving around to all the new food places but they come back here when they are looking for something they can’t get at the others. We can always say ‘I haven’t got it now. Give me two weeks.’”

Mårtensson says that taking the time to encourage younger visitors to spend a little in the shop, “even if their wallets are not so thick”, will result in them becoming regular customers.

He adds that generally the clientele is interested in food “but maybe not in such an Instagram way”. Lots of them come in looking to track down something they have encountered on their travels across Europe. Again, the wholesale business comes into play because Möllans Ost’s connections across Europe mean they can add an extra case of something to a pallet that’s already coming from another country.

Additionally, the shop is a great testing ground for products and Mårtensson and his wholesale team can speak from experience about how to merchandise items and what to upsell alongside them.

Sweden has its fair share of stereotypes – especially when it comes to cuisine. But you won’t encounter them at Möllans Ost in Malmö. Set up more than 30 years ago, this is a cheese-led business that has embraced food from around the world.

Interview by Michael Lane

Trading Post Farm Shop Newton House Gin Conker Cold Brew South Somerset Bower Bakery sourdough Baboo passionfruit Beenleigh Blue sorbet Vintage Cornish Gouda Hembridge Organics real Driftwood (White Lake ale chutney Cheese) Brian Wogan Sumatra Smoked Somerset Brie coffee Grubworkz pork belly Wriggle Valley Beer ready-meal Hotch Potch gluteniberty o e Coffee free chorizo & tomato Teoni’s stem ginger Scotch eggs cookies

Good Food Catford, London

MUST-STOCKS San Amvrosia houmous

losing local high street shops to residential conversions and wanted a better shopping experience. After costing what it would take to finance the opening, she set up a crowdfunding page.

Within six months, Skingley had reached her target of £33,500 after receiving donations from 350 local residents and businesses. And

by February 2016, Good Food opened its doors on a parade in one of Catford’s suburban areas – a journey Skingley herself describes as a “white knuckle ride”.

“It has been a very steep learning curve, especially in that first year,” she says. “I had no retail experience and was totally winging it.”

Today, Skingley is supported by Julian and Kristen Fuller, who have worked with her since the shop’s inception but came on board as codirectors at the beginning of 2018.

As he gained more of a following, Mårtensson began building relationships with smaller exporters in Italy and Spain, too. The unique cheeses he was bringing in attracted the attention of some restaurants and fellow shop owners also put in orders to squeeze onto the pallets he was already bringing in.

“All of a sudden I had a wholesale business,” he says. “All the others were just aiming for the supermarkets but I found a ‘black hole’ with deli shops. No one was looking after them and still not many do in Sweden.”

When Swedish supermarkets decided to shut their deli counters across their stores 15 years ago, there was a huge opportunity for independent retailers to start up across the country, especially outside of big cities like Stockholm and Gothenburg.

“And I was on that train collecting them as customers,” says Mårtensson.

In order to serve growing wholesale and retail customer bases, Möllans Ost has grown physically too. It switched to another retail unit in the same block after 12 years and spent 5 years there, before that premises became its wholesale office in 2005, and the shop moved to the 150 sq m corner unit next door that it currently occupies. There is a 400 sq m warehouse, which serves both the wholesale and retail parts of the business, in an industrial building five minutes’ walk away.

This set-up benefits every part of the business. While the shop can re-stock quickly at short notice, it also effectively has access to 400 cheeses even when there’s only 150 on the counter.

“It’s good because when people ask for something, I can say we’ve got it in the warehouse,” says retail manager Malin Dahl, who has worked at Möllans Ost for 12 years. “We don’t do it all the time but I can get it for them in

DELI OF THE MONTH

May

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Retailing that's good for everyone MANY RETAILERS on a quiet Thursday afternoon might be checking stock or finally finishing that supplier order form.

But when I arrive at Catford-based Good Food, owner Vicky Skingley and her codirector, Julian Beaumont (pictured below), are just about to deliver two large boxes of fruit and veg to a local pub down the road as part of the shop’s not-for-profit veg box subscription scheme.

“We use the money that we make from this to buy eggs every week for the local food bank,” Skingley tells me.

This might sound unconventional for an urban deli in South East London, but that’s because Good Food isn’t your average independent retailer – it’s a social enterprise.

Skingley decided to start the business after she and other residents grew tired of

Rosie’s Cider Aber Falls gin Peter’s Yard crispbreads Provision Merchant piccalilli Caws Cenarth Welsh Brie Caws Cenarth Perl Wen

Minskip Farm Shop North Yorkshire

Interview by Michael Lane

A chicken and egg situation

Rosie’s Cider Aber Falls gin Peter’s Yard crispbreads Provision Merchant Provision Merchant milk piccalilli Local honey Caws Cenarth Welsh Brie Homegrown asparagus Caws Cenarth Perl Wen Homemade sausage rolls Amaretti Fingers Homemade sausages Winiary Polish Plum Doughnutology Butter Jam

Provision Merchant milk Local honey Homegrown asparagus Homemade sausage rolls Homemade sausages Doughnutology

indie retailers are facing new challenges.

Supermarkets are joining the local food movement and customers’ shopping patterns are changing, which is why farm shops like Hawarden have to be on the front foot with current consumer trends to differentiate themselves from the multiples.

“Once upon a time provenance and great food was people’s destination and there weren’t many places that were doing it,” says Downes, “Now there are many more. And customers have changed how, where and why they spend their money.”

Recent alterations include, expanding its foodservice operation (Hawarden’s cafe and takeaway section makes up 45-50% of the farm shop’s overall takings) and offering more dressed and prepared meals of ready-to-cook stir fries, en croutes and marinated chicken breasts on its butchery counter to cater to the demand for convenience. The fresh meat area also has a grab-and-go section alongside the butchery counter stocking prepared meats that can all be cooked “in half an hour in the oven at 180°C”.

June 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 5

THERE’S BARELY A SILENT moment on the streets when I visit Malmö – Sweden’s thirdlargest and most southerly city. Giant trucks, loaded with booming sound systems and screaming teenagers in white sailor hats, seem to come barrelling through the streets every few minutes. Apparently, I’ve arrived during the week that students graduate from high school and these revelries are very much a normal Swedish custom.

It’s a slightly unexpected sight, given that I landed here with a list of cultural preconceptions to check off.

But when I arrive at my destination, it feels familiar rather than clichéd. The first thing you notice are long serveovers and chillers filled with Continental cheese, bowls of olives sit alongside charcuterie like Parma ham, and the shelves are dressed with crackers, chutneys and oils. Staff exchange pleasantries in fluent English. I’m even

No of cheeses: 400 (warehouse), 150 (in the counter)

April

DELI OF THE MONTH

Hawarden Estate Farm Shop Flintshire, Wales

MUST-STOCKS

– concluding that the supermarket should be offering a dedicated local food aisle in each store – but they rejected it.

“10-15 years on, I’m vindicated it was the right thing to do,” he says, adding that it was the moment he realised that local food was where his passion was.

By August 2007, Downes had met Charles Gladstone, owner of the Hawarden Estate and joined him to set up a farm shop on a 25-acre plot, providing the “nuts and bolts” side of the business like HACCP, environmental health, recruitment and management.

Today, the Hawarden Estate Farm Shop has an annual turnover of £1.25 million and stocks thousands of different lines that are either produced on the estate, like its milk (sold under the shop’s sub-brand ‘Provision Merchant’), or supplied by local producers whom the shop has worked with for years, such as Cheshire Chutney Co and Rosie’s Cider. Speciality food favourites like Peter’s Yard can also be found because “it nails both the branding and product”.

But while championing local artisan food from cottage industries was enough to sustain a farm shop 12 years ago, says Downes, today

Took a chance on cheese

VITAL STATISTICS

Pump Street chocolate Slate Southwold & Aldeburgh, Peter’s Yard crispbread – Suffolk original The Fine Cheese Co Gorgonzola dolce Toast For Cheese – (Carozzi) dates, hazelnuts & Shipcord extra-mature pumpkin seeds (Rodwell Farm Dairy) Foods of Athenry glutenBaron Bigod (Fen Farm free crackers Dairy) Eastgate Larder medlar Suffolk Gold (Suffolk preserves Farmhouse Cheeses) Fruit Magpie fruit Weydeland 1000-daycheeses aged gouda osebud reser es fig Burt’s Blue cheese chutney Bray’s Cottage pork pies Slate own-brand chilli Pump Street bread jam

March

DELI OF THE MONTH

A shop for all reasons IT’S NOT UNCOMMON to spot a motivational slogan pinned up in a shop’s back office but the one that hovers over Kate Forbes’s computer screen really caught my eye.

Not just because the phrase ‘Get s**t done’ is particularly punchy but also because the owner of Trading Post Farm Shop seems to have followed this advice to the letter.

Since she and husband Andy took over the store – a former filling station just off the A303 in South Somerset – in November 2017, Forbes has set about the place with gusto.

By investing in a number of alterations and clever additions to the shopfloor – including a loose chocolate counter and a waste-reducing refill room – she has increased turnover by an impressive 30% according the most recent yearon-year figures. No wonder Trading Post is a finalist in the Guild of Fine Food’s 2019 Shop of

Location: Chester Road, Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales, CH5 3FB Turnover: £1.25m (farm shop only) No. of staff: 40 (farm shop only including management) Average basket spend: £12

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Nifty shades of grey

Published by The Guild of Fine Food Ltd www.gff.co.uk © The Guild of Fine Food Ltd 2019.

Reproduction of whole or part of this magazine without the publisher’s prior permission is prohibited. The opinions expressed in articles and advertisements are not necessarily those of the editor or publisher.

MUST-STOCKS

June

DELI OF THE MONTH

The experience factor

Richard Faulks

EDITORIAL Editor: Michael Lane Art director: Mark Windsor Contributors: Lauren Phillips, Lynda Searby, Nick Baines, Patrick McGuigan

Organic sourdough bread Local organic fruit & veg The Coconut Kitchen curry pastes Stach chocolate Percy’s Delightful Creams Local honey Sauce Shop smoky chipotle ketchup Rubies In The Rubble spicy tomato relish Manomasa tortilla chips ManiLife peanut butter illages afi i ession IPA Organic eggs St. John doughnuts

produce, which the shop sells for £2 a kilo, in exchange for a voucher.

“I didn’t just want to be a shop selling expensive stuff to people that can afford it,” Skingley says. “It had to be supportive of the community.”

She is still involved in the wider regeneration of the local area and is currently trying to get three empty shops on the parade let.

“It’s in my interest to get more people walking down here casually on a Saturday,” she says. “Because if I do well, then we’re all doing well and getting a really vibrant, sexy high street and not just takeaway chicken shops there are enough of those in Catford.”

It’s not just through external activities that the shop follows its mission statement, Good Food’s aim of “connecting people to real local food” influences how it ranges the store.

Products from South East London businesses account for over 200 of the 1,000 lines it carries. ManiLife, Rubies in the Rubble and Husk & Honey Granola are just some of the brands adorning Good Food’s shelves, and the shop regularly puts together beer boxes and hampers celebrating South East London food.

Although, Skingley and her team say they have

yet to find a South East London biscuit.

This extends to its range of British artisan cheese, which co-director Beaumont sources from Neal’s Yard Dairy, citing brand recognition and good customer service.

If not local, then organic is another of the criteria that stock has to meet because, as Beaumont says, “it ticks our social aims of supporting the environment and building healthier communities.”

The shop’s fruit and veg, sourced from Brockmans Farm in Kent and displayed towards the entrance, is organic as is the sourdough bread which sits alongside it. There are also organic grains, pulses and flours situated at the back of the store which the shop gets from Suma and Marigold. While Skingley uses Cotswold Fayre, Diverse Fine Food and The Gorgeous Food Company for its other ambient lines.

Aside from using traditional supplier catalogues to hunt for stock, co-director Kristen Fuller (a former buyer for Debenhams and Jamie Oliver) comes into contact with many local producers through her involvement in the CONTINUED ON PAGE 51

Vol.20 Issue 4 | May 2019

49

San Amvrosia houmous Oatly Barista Edition oat drink Organic sourdough bread Local organic fruit & veg The Coconut Kitchen curry pastes STACH chocolate

Percy’s Delightful Creams Local honey Sauce Shop smoky chipotle ketchup Rubies In The Rubble spicy tomato relish Manomasa tortilla chips ManiLife peanut butter illages afiki Session IPA Organic eggs St. John doughnuts BEST BRANDS 2019-20 57

FINE FOOD DIGEST

Deli of the Month ‘must-stocks’ FFD’s Pick of the Year

BEST BRANDS 2019-20 59

57 63

BEST BRANDS 2019-20 3

HOW DOES IT WORK?

Every brand ranked in this section is here because independent retailers put it here.

We asked buyers in delis, farm shops and food halls around the country to name their top-selling lines in around a dozen categories.

The survey was conducted by email and telephone during September, October and November 2019.

The top scoring brands in each category – in other words, those most mentioned by FFD readers – are revealed here.

Where brands achieved very similar scores we have given them a joint position.

Analysis by Michael Lane Surveys compiled by Jilly Sitch, Stephanie Hare-Winton, Emily Harris and Sophie Brentnall

For the ninth year, Fine Food Digest has surveyed independent retailers to uncover what the best-selling products are in the speciality food sector. Here are the results of our 2019 Best Brands Survey, along with some further detail on our findings this time around.

4 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

FINE FOOD DIGEST

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This category always sees a certain amount of jostling for position among the same names but Peter’s Yard reclaimed first place this year thanks to its Swedish-style sourdough crispbreads.

Overall, the results featured more sweet (or at least sweeter) varieties than the assortment of crackers and biscuits for cheese that have come up in the previous surveys.

Border and its Dark Chocolate Gingers, that are a mainstay for many respondents every year, was followed up by a host of returning names. Cookie brand Teoni’s, Farmhouse Biscuits and teatime specialist Cartwright & Butler have appeared in the survey results before, but were all absent from the top rankings last year.

All that said, another biscuit stalwart The Fine Cheese Co continues to enjoy success with its Toast for Cheese range, as well as other savoury lines.

1st Peter’s Yard 2nd Border Biscuits 3rd Teoni’s Cookies 4th The Fine Cheese Co 5th Farmhouse Biscuits/ Cartwright & Butler

FINE FOOD DIGEST

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Analysis As sure as night follows day, Tracklements will be at the top of this category – and the Wiltshire-based producer did so again by a distance. Chilli jam accounted for a slightly higher percentage of the votes than it normally does but onion marmalade also had a strong showing.

In fact, there was nothing particularly different or anomalous this year.

Mrs Darlington’s and The Bay Tree, which were 2nd and 3rd last year too, both showed that some of their strength lies in the breadth of their offers, as well as the consistency of their products. These two are the only brands to rank in another category (see Jams & Preserves results on page 11) and a wide variety of products were namechecked by respondents.

Flavour-wise, there are no obvious trends with modern and traditional combinations all present.

1st Tracklements 2nd Mrs Darlington’s 3rd The Bay Tree 4th The Cherry Tree/ Bracken Hill Fine Foods

6 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

FINE FOOD DIGEST

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FINE FOOD DIGEST

BEST BRANDS 2019-20 7

BEST PRESERVES BEST BRAND PRESERVES 2016-2017 BRAND Voted for by the readers of Fine Food Digest 2016-2017 Voted for by the readers of Fine Food Digest

Your Favourite Preserves Brand Your Favourite Preserves Brand

BEST PRESERVES BEST BRAND PRESERVES 2017-2018 BRAND Voted for by the readers of Fine Food Digest 2017-2018 Voted for by the readers of Fine Food Digest

A huge thanks to everyone who voted for us for a second year!

A huge thanks to everyone who voted for us for a second year!

For a second year running, we’re celebrating winning Best Preserves Brand; voted for by Fine Food Digest readers.

Marion Darlington began making unique Lemon Curd in 1980 in the farmhouse kitchen we’ve never For a second year running, we’reher celebrating winning Best Preserves Brand; voted for byand Finesince Foodthen Digest readers. looked back. Todaybegan with making over 80her family favourites choose so much more the then Mrs Darlington’s Marion Darlington unique Lemon to Curd in 1980from; in thethere’s farmhouse kitchen andtosince we’ve never family!

In 2018 we’re introducing 6 jar packs, this smaller pack size will allow you to offer your customers an ever looked back. Today with over 80 family favourites to choose from; there’s so much more to the Mrs Darlington’s greater variety of our “double award winning” range! family! In 2018 we’re introducing 6 jar packs, this smaller pack size will allow you to offer your customers an ever greater variety of our “double award winning” range!

To find out more please visit our website at www.mrsdarlingtons.com To find out more please visit our website at www.mrsdarlingtons.com

FINE FOOD DIGEST

     

Search “Mrs Darlington’s” on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram

BEST BRANDS 2019-20 7 Search “Mrs Darlington’s” on Twitter, Facebook & Instagram

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Analysis A traditionally unstable category in the Best Brands survey, chocolate has rendered an unusually steady result this time around.

It’s safe to say that some eyebrows would have been raised – even on our team – at York-based Choc Affair taking the top spot in 2018 but the data clearly doesn’t lie. Here it is again in first place, garnering more than just local votes for a range of different chocolates, including plain milk bars and buttons.

1st Choc Affair 2nd Summerdown Mint 3rd Tony’s Chocolonely/ Divine/Monty Bojangles

Given their wide distribution, the presence of Divine, Monty Bojangles and Tony’s is expected.

But Summerdown Mint, which hasn’t been seen in the top confectionery rankings of Best Brands for quite some time, is a pleasant surprise. Many retailers clearly do well pitching its products as a quality alternative to other more ubiquitous after-dinner chocolate mints.

As always, it’s worth noting that this category throws up a host of local suppliers every year. It is heartening to see so many retailers backing a producer from their own backyard.

Analysis

1st Grumpy Mule 2nd Ethical Addictions 3rd Dark Woods Coffee

Coffee is another category where there hasn’t been a huge amount of change, but the sector still seems healthy from the look of the data.

The field of results reflected independents’ local preference. Lots of retailers are doing very well by working with local roasteries and plenty are developing their own bespoke blends to serve in store and sell in bags.

Last year, the well-established Grumpy Mule came in first, as the only brand with a credible number of votes to be ranked. This year’s top spot was the same but a couple of other brands seem to be gaining traction beyond their regional sphere.

Both Ethical Addictions and Dark Woods have strong brand values in terms of sourcing and they clearly offer the right balance of quality, variety and ethics to get them noticed. That’s no mean feat given the veritable sea of beans and roasteries in the UK at the moment.

FINE FOOD DIGEST

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18 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

191218 Fine Food Advert Full PAGE FFD OUTLINED.indd 1

FINE FOOD DIGEST

18/12/2019 15:33

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Analysis As expected, there is a good deal of regional preference on display in this year’s responses for the sweet preserves category.

The big news is that Mrs Darlington’s has won the tussle with Tiptree that is becoming an annual fixture now. Drill down further and it appears to be a battle between Tiptree’s expertise with strawberry jam and Darlington’s lemon curd, although both received votes for other varieties.

1st Mrs Darlington’s 2nd Tiptree 3rd The Bay Tree

The Bay Tree is back in the rankings this year and it continues to go about its business on both the sweet and savoury side of preserving with a 3rd place that didn’t even account for its own label work, voted for by some.

It’s always interesting to look at the kind of flavour profiles doing well for retailers and traditional strawberry jams and lemon curds are in spread throughout. The trend of boozy preserves, many copying cocktail combinations, isn’t slowing up and many more retailers appear to be happiest with marmalades this time around.

Analysis

1st Seggiano 2nd Honest Toil 3rd Yorkshire Rapeseed Oil 4th Olive Branch

Seggiano is out in front, as it was last year, thanks to its Italian balsamics and its Lunaio extra virgin olive oil.

Honest Toil has established its reputation in the speciality retail market now and that is reflected in a 2nd place finish for the second year in a row. After a hiatus last year, Greek food specialist Olive Branch is back. All of these producers are proof you need strong branding to gain national traction for your EVOO in delis and farm shops.

There are still retailers declaring their local brand of rapeseed oil as the best-seller in this category but last year there wasn’t a single brand that made it into the top three – so Yorkshire Rapeseed Oil’s return to the top table is a welcome sign of life.

Usually, you would expect to see at least one cider vinegar brand in the rankings but retailer success with vinegar seems to have broadened to other styles and a wider selection of brands available.

FINE FOOD DIGEST

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Analysis

Fentimans continues to pull off the masterstroke of appealing to consumers and retailers in all channels, which is a testament to the liquid inside those bottles.

Many independents will be pleased to see a boost for Devon-based Luscombe, up from 4th to challenge Nestlé-owned San Pellegrino in joint 2nd.

It is also good to see the game of musical chairs in this category disrupted with some different names. Folkington’s, Cawston Press, Breckland Orchard and Fior Fruit Merchants are all new or previous entrants that didn’t make the cut last year.

Many of these names reflect the continued popularity of fruit juices, especially apple varieties.

Don’t be surprised if a kombucha pops its head above the parapet in the next couple of years, with mentions for the fermented drink (admittedly from an array of producers) continuing to grow.

1st Fentimans 2nd Luscombe/ San Pellegrino 3rd Folkington’s/ Cawston Press 4th Belvoir Fruit Farms/ Breckland Orchard/ Fior Fruit Merchants

The 2017 result that saw us gain a result in this category looks increasingly like an anomaly, as the most recent survey failed again to produce enough votes for any brand in particular.

And again, this result should not be viewed negatively.

Yes, there are plenty of “n/a” because many retailers don’t have a license, but the difference this year was the results were not solely dominated by the myriad of British gins.

Alongside the ubiquitous Mothers’ Ruin, were votes for craft beers, Continental house wines from old school merchants and vineyards, British wines, and even the odd cider.

12 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

FINE FOOD DIGEST

Cocktail Conserves from Tiptree with Love The Wilkin family have been farming at Tiptree, Essex, since 1757, and making quality preserves there since 1885. We grow a wide range of traditional English fruits and use them to make conserves, condiments, and other treats in our nut-free factory by the farm. Our Tiptree

Cocktail Conserves have been inspired by classic cocktail recipes. They’re terrific on toast, and will add a tipsy twist to any cream tea. If you’re feeling particularly adventurous then why not mix with your favourite cocktail for a little extra pizzazz?

The preserve of good taste

WILKIN & SONS LIMITED

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TIPTREE

COLCHESTER

ESSEX

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Proper Strong

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Analysis Pipers may be in 1st place yet again but there is lots of movement in this category, which is becoming increasingly less dominated by the old guard of ‘hand-cooked’ potato crisps.

For a start, Tyrrell’s is the only other one left in the rankings and the new potato brands that have come in this time are a different breed.

Both Brown Bag and Two Farmers have all the requisite provenance and flavour profiles but they also have strong eco credentials. The former places a strong emphasis on the recycling of its packaging, even offering to take old bags on itself, while the latter’s bags are 100% compostable – that includes at home.

1st Pipers Crisps 2nd Torres/Eat Real 3rd Brown Bag Crisps 4th Tyrrell’s/Manomasa/ Two Farmers

As noted last year, Torres (and its famous truffle flavoured crisps), Eat Real veggie snacks and corn chip brand Manomasa continue to take a share of the votes away from the usual names.

Analysis

1st The Cress Co 2nd Cotswold Fayre 3rd Hider 4th Holleys 5th Carron Lodge/ Springvale Foods

There was no movement in the rankings for distributors with The Cress Co coming out on top of the pile.

While buying from catalogues and using distributors is not for every retailer (and the odd one still makes that very clear), there was perhaps a little more positivity from respondents this year.

Some of those that do use them went further than just pitching a name and also cited factors like flexibility of delivery and reasonable minimum orders in their decisionmaking. So, it’s safe to say that all the names here are getting it right for their current customers.

There were also a lot less “n/a” and blank spaces than last year, with lots of retailers opting to nominate individual suppliers in this spot – reflecting their preference for dealing directly with producers.

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Analysis Yorkshire Tea is virtually a brand in its own right.

In fact, Taylor’s of Harrogate consider it to be. And it is those ever-present bags that keep the Yorkshire producer in front of the other competition in the tea category.

It was certainly tight across the rest of these rankings, with plenty even on votes and only the odd vote or two separating each place. Brew Tea and English Tea Shop are new entrants this year but there’s no one in this Top 4 that you could call new to the market.

Although it normally makes the rankings, Somerset-based Miles is this year’s biggest riser and 2nd represents its best-ever placing.

When it comes to the bestselling brew, it is more on the side of traditional everyday and breakfast blends as well as Earl Greys, rather than herbal infusions.

1st 2nd 3rd 4th

Taylors of Harrogate Miles Teapigs Pukka/Joe’s Tea/Brew Tea/English Tea Shop

16 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

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CRISPS AS THEY SHOULD

TASTE

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THANK YOU D ESL T I VO E R TO ALL OUR CU MI NE GR S & S U P P L I E R S E P F P O O O DR T I N 2 0 1 9 F O R Y O U RF I SN U WE LOOK FORWARD TO WORKING WITH YOU AGAIN IN 2020 FROM ALL AT CRESS CO

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Analysis Snowdonia’s Black Bomber continues to transcend all geography and demographics. Almost every independent FFD visits has it in their counter, bearing this result out. It is one of those rare things in cheese, a product with broad appeal and well-executed branding.

Although it is more traditional in every sense, Colston Bassett is just as interesting a case study because it is a well-known name within the sphere of a famous cheese, Stilton. Many makers of protected varieties, especially on the Continent don’t enjoy this level of recognition.

1st Snowdonia Cheese Company 2nd Colston Bassett 3rd Fen Farm Dairy 4th Alsop & Walker

The other two names on this list, Baron Bigod’s maker Fen Farm Dairy and East Sussex-based Alsop & Walker, are a good omen for all producers of modern British artisan cheese.

Analysis As if you needed this survey to tell you, British retailers and their customers cannot get enough of Brie De Meaux.

This year, though, there wasn’t a clear brand name winner (last year Rouzaire had enough votes on its own to take the top spot). It’s a similar story for all of those varieties that racked up votes. The Alpine titans, Switzerland’s Le Gruyère AOP and France’s Comté both received plenty of mentions but often without a specific maker.

The one branded cheese that did come up several times was German producer Kaserei Champignon’s enduring blue (and a former World Champion no less) Montagnolo Affiné but on the whole this is a category where the cheese’s brand trumps the maker’s.

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ALSOP & WALKER page_GREAT BRITISH FOOD 17/03/2017 12:03 Page 1

Artists in Cheese Making

Tel: +44(0)1825 831810 | info@AlsopandWalker.co.uk | AlsopandWalker.co.uk BEST BRANDS 2019-20 7

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Want to know more about foOd and drink’s most coveted awards?

Great Taste 2020 opens for entry: Guild of Fine Food Members’ Fortnight 17-31 January 2020 General Entry 3 February 2020 New to Great Taste? Make sure you receive entry information by contacting greattaste@gff.co.uk in early January.

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Run by the Guild of Fine Food, the Shop of the Year competition puts a host of the UK and Ireland’s top independent shops through their paces. Here are the delis, farm shops and food halls that impressed the judges most of all in the 2019 competition.

Interviews by Lynda Searby

22 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

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Farm Shop

Farmer Copleys Pontefract, West Yorkshire Within five minutes of talking to Rob Copley, it becomes apparent to me that this is a man who thrives on a challenge.

His current project is the creation of an American-style wedding barn large enough to seat 300 people to capitalise on the lucrative functions market.

“We’re going out to Nashville at the end of January to have a look at a barn, and then we’ll put the planning permission in.

We hope to open it in 18 months’ time,” says Copley, who started Farmer Copleys with wife Heather in 2003 to avoid having to sell the family farm.

The business first branched out into weddings in 2016, after building a new extension to house a 157-cover café-by-dayrestaurant-by-night and a 120-seat function room.

“I’d always fancied having a restaurant, so we decided the café would be a bistro by night,” he says.

However, a year or so into the new venture, Copley wasn’t enjoying it.

“We decided it wasn’t working; it wasn’t what we stand for.”

Instead, Farmer Copleys decided to put on special events such as Oompah nights and barn dances, which are more profitable and allow the Copleys to focus on the café, the shop and the PYO fruit and pumpkin business.

“We’re trying to build more experiences into the shop, to make it more of a destination, whether through butchery demos on the block or making ice cream, soup and jam in front of customers,” says Copley.

Even with so many facets to the business, as fourth generation farmers, the Copleys are determined to stay true to their roots.

“Local is what is important to us, knowing where the food is from. When we consider any new product, we look at how it is produced. All our lamb is home-produced and we keep 50 outdoor pigs. What we don’t rear here we buy locally, and we can tell our customers how old the animal is, what it ate and which farm it was produced on,” says Copley.

Home-made steak pies and sausages are the shop’s top selling lines, but sales of these are far outstripped by pumpkins in October, when the farm hosts its annual pumpkin festival.

Sales through the shop are up 20% on last year – growth that, unusually, Copley attributes partly to Brexit.

“I believe Brexit has made people more subconsciously aware of local food, and this is informing their buying choices,” he says.

Let’s hope he’s right. farmercopleys.co.uk FINE FOOD DIGEST

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WORLD CHEESE AWARDS • BERGAMO, ITALY

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Delicatessen & Grocer

Aubrey Allen Leamington Spa, Warwickshire To a family business that started life 80 years ago as a butcher’s shop, the current popularity of veganism and concern around unsustainable meat production could be seen as a major threat.

However, Aubrey Allen has been quick to turn this challenge into an opportunity by “changing the narrative on sustainable meat eating and capitalising on the rise of vegetarianism”.

“We are working with leading authorities to shout about the benefits of British cattle farming and are proud that all of our beef is sustainable and grass-fed,” says Aubrey Allen’s retail marketing manager Sarah Russell. “We also encourage responsible meat consumption – if you are choosing to eat only a few meat dishes a week, make sure you are using ethically and sustainably sourced meat.”

And for those shoppers who want something other than meat, an extensive range of vegetarian dishes and an enviable cheese counter beckon.

“In recent years we have found that it is our cheese shop that has attracted new faces, with the lure of over 70 cheeses all available for tasting, advice on creating cheeseboards and cheese tasting evenings,” says Russell.

The business is also very proactive about marketing itself, regularly taking a pop-up shop on the road and appearing at local markets, businesses and festivals selling cheese, gifts, meat hampers and more.

“This has been a fantastic success at low cost to us,” says Russell.

“Even after 86 years of trading in Warwickshire, there are still people who haven’t heard of us and it is crucial that we don’t rest on our laurels.”

But it is also about getting the basics right, which Aubrey Allen does particularly well; in the judging, the shop was praised for its “balanced retail flow, where shoppers can stock up for a dinner party while also grabbing something for lunch”.

“We do this by welcoming guests with our fresh fruit and veg, through to our meat counters complete with staff who can provide expert advice and provenance info,” says Russell. “They then can move along the counter to see the delicatessen stocked full of chefprepared salads, picnic items, curries and meal accompaniments.

“Drawing people to the end of the shop is our cheese counter, and as they circle back to the till they can browse our floor to ceiling grocery wall featuring sauces, teas, truffles and cooking ingredients from all corners of the world.”

All of this hard work appears to be paying dividends. After a “difficult” 12 months, the retailer reports that average weekly sales are up by 6% and deli sales up by 29% on the same period in 2018/19. aubreyallen.co.uk FINE FOOD DIGEST

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Food Hall

The House of Bruar Perthshire, Scotland Since the House of Bruar opened its food hall in 1995, the emphasis has been on breadth of selection and traditional Scottish produce.

“What attracts people to our food hall is our vast product selection. We have a comprehensive offering of Scottish and British brands that combine value for money and quality,” says Robert Thain, House of Bruar’s Food hall Buying Manager.

Nowhere is this more evident than on the food hall’s impressive smoked salmon display, which showcases the skill of over 12 traditional Scottish smoked fish producers.

“Our target demographic is the hunting, shooting and fishing fraternity – people who appreciate smoked salmon as a luxury item – and our aim is to support the age-old methods of smoking,” says Thain.

The butchery counter, added in 2010, is another example of this marriage of tradition and quality. It has won multiple awards for its homemade pies and sausages, but is best known for its Aberdeen Angus beef, which is brought in on the carcass and butchered on site. The judges commended this department for its ‘‘delightful, attentive and knowledgeable staff”, which Thain attributes to recruiting people who share the retailer’s passion for food.

“Everything we do has to be five-star quality,” he says.

But House of Bruar has been careful to ensure that championing tradition does not preclude innovation and in 2016, invested £750,000 in an extension to its ladieswear hall. This gave the food hall additional space that has been reconfigured as a craft spirit room.

“We now offer in excess of 60 craft gins and represent over 70 Scottish whisky distilleries, as well as carrying a large range of Scottish craft beers,” says Thain.

However, this rapidly changing category demands a different buying strategy.

“There are so many new products coming to market all the time and we are finding that younger consumers like to experiment, so products have a shorter life cycle,” says Thain. “As soon as sales of a product start to tail off, we have to be ready to replace it with something new.”

This is particularly challenging as House of Bruar prides itself on dealing directly with its suppliers, – more than 320 in total – including Shortbread House of Edinburgh and Inverawe who have worked with the store since the beginning.

As House of Bruar approaches its 25th anniversary, food sales are up 8% on last year and the strategy for future growth is very much on driving online sales – a focus that reflects this retailer’s canny ability to celebrate the past and look forward to the future. houseofbruar.com/food-hall/ 26 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

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Dark Woods Coffee is a Yorkshire based coffee roaster, providing the very best retail and wholesale coffee to the independent trade, with equipment and hands-on barista training support.

Panama La Huella (Cafe de Panama)

Stoney Cross suits a very broad section of customer.

Even those that like a strong cheese will enjoy the subtle flavours and the smooth texture of this little cheese.

Image. Crow Tree

Lyburn Lightly Oak Smoked HOLME MILLS . WEST SLAITHWAITE ROAD MARSDEN . WEST YORKSHIRE . UK . HD7 6LS info@darkwoods.co.uk tel . +44 (0)1484 843141

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28 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

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Specialist Cheese Shop

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Sheridans Cheesemongers Cornelscourt, Dublin, Ireland Irish artisan cheese champion Sheridans has shown that good cheese can do ‘mass market’ with its Cornelscourt counter in supermarket chain, Dunnes Stores.

The concept – and Sheridans’ credentials as cheesemongers – saw it crowned this sponsored by year’s Specialist Cheese Shop, proving that if you get people to taste it, they will pay more.

Founders Seamus and Kevin Sheridan have been at the forefront of the Irish cheese renaissance since they first started selling cheese from a market stall in Galway in 1995. Today, the business has grown to include three independent shops as well as eight concession locations in Dunnes Stores, including Cornelscourt – which opened in 2016 in the 4,000 sq m department store and food hall.

Sheridans has complete control over its product range (Dunnes simply takes a percentage of each sale), which is made up of around 100 old and new school Irish cheeses, plus imports such as Colston Bassett Stilton and Cravero Parmigiano Reggiano. This has paid off for the retailer, taking around £24k a week on the counter.

Shop of the Year judges loved the theatre created behind the counter with large floor-to-ceiling fridges and whole cheeses on display. But it was watching cheesemongers breaking open 25kg truckles in a supermarket environment which was most impressive. sheridanscheesemongers.com

Specialist Food or Drink Shop Block & Bottle Gateshead, Tyne and Wear

Beer and meat is a well-known match made in heaven, but Block & Bottle shows it’s also a winning retail combination, too.

The unique mix of craft beer, butchery and charcuterie is played out on a shop floor that is split into butchery counters (carrying a range of sponsored by interesting cuts) on the right and an extensive beer wall on the left. Beef, pork and lamb comes mainly from one farm in Yorkshire, while beers are sourced in the UK and internationally.

It’s a concept that is the brainchild of husband and wife team Steven Warren and Katie Cullen.

Warren had been running Hook & Cleaver’s high-end butchers in West London while Cullen, a beer expert, was working in events, before the pair decided to move back to their home in Newcastle and open Block & Bottle in a Victorian railway arch near Gatehead’s High Level Bridge in April 2017.

The shop has come a long way since then. A lot of this is down to the “hardworking and creative” owners, said judges, who have created this unique shopping experience which is now attracting shoppers to the new area under the arches.

“Stephen is a very talented butcher,” one judge said, “and to watch him was a delight.” blocknbottle.com

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integrity • provenance • quality For nearly a quarter of a century the SEGGIANO & LUNAIO brands have been recognised as the finest selection of artisan Italian food. Available in the UK's leading delis, farmshops & food halls, strong in the US & now found in several key stores around the globe.

info@seggiano.com 30 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

www.seggiano.com

+44 (0)20 7272 5588 FINE FOOD DIGEST

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Newcomer Award

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Slate Southwold, Suffolk

It was Southwold-based Slate’s knowledge, passion and real sense of appreciation of the varieties of cheese which wowed judges and won this year’s Best Newcomer award.

Considering neither of its owners, Clare Jackson and her father John Ormerod, have sponsored by retail backgrounds that’s quite impressive.

Jackson previously worked as an accountant, before the pair took on their first site in Aldeburgh and opening a second in Southwold in November 2017.

They offer a small range of cheese with a great level of detail on the stories centred around provenance. Visuals of cheese on the walls, each with their own story line, are changed monthly to provide interest to new and regular customers, while cheese tastings occur almost hourly. All 45 cheeses (displayed along a back wall) are reviewed quarterly and an EPOS is used to monitor the top 25.

But it was the branding that left the biggest impression on judges, who commended the “very consistent” brand, that was well used in the shop and everything they do. "Even the delivery boxes for online were branded on the outside with brilliant content,” said a judge.

“Receiving one would be a real joy!” slatecheese.co.uk

Innovation Award

Eat 17 Hammersmith, London

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London-retailer Eat17 is doing the business, from breakfast through to dinner, in its Hammersmith store.

The 4,000 sq ft shop is split between retail, food-to-go and hot food offers with sponsored by three street food traders and 35 covers, plus takeaway coffee for its customer base of local workers and residents. But it’s how the store brings small artisan producers to a wider audience (and taking some of the snobbery out of fine food) that judges loved. This is very much influenced by its business model.

Eat17 was set up in 2006 by step brothers James Brundle and Chris O’Connor as a new generation of Spar convenience stores (it has other sites in Hackney and Bishop’s Stortford as well as its flagship Walthamstow shop) focusing on local and speciality products with a hipster vibe.

This means the shop stocks a diverse range of products from Truffle aioli to Spar Yoghurts – at varying price points for different budgets. Spar products account for 10% of the range, much lower than most Spar retailers, leaving managers free to source exciting new local and speciality products which are sampled out to shoppers to try and highlighted with signage. Something for everyone. eat17.co.uk

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100% Home Compostable Packaging Hand-cooked Crisps

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Provenance and savoir-faire

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32 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

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IL BRAND RE TA IN G

WHEN PEOPLE TALK about branding they tend to think more about the products on the shelf, rather than the businesses that house those shelves. But retailers need to be just as conscious of and conscientious about their brand.

It might start with just a name and a logo but a shop’s branding is a much broader thing.

“It’s far far more than that,” says Rich Ford, strategy director at Brighton-based retail design consultancy Sherlock Studio. “It runs through everything, from the logo to the colour that you use for your giftwrap, to the way you speak to customers, and the tone of voice on your promotional posters, as well as in your price points.”

Shopkeepers reading this might think, ‘What’s the point?’ but, even for a single premises, well-executed branding offers reassurance to customers – who in time will come to associate it with a certain set of values. For a deli or farm shop, that might be the quality of the food they stock, the level of service they get or value for money. Or all of them.

When he’s advising retailers, Ford draws up a brand guidelines document with them that incorporates all the different physical elements (logos, colours) and behaviours (tone of voice, staff attitude) that make up the brand.

Any business can draft at least a basic version, he says.

Once you have all the elements – aka your brand toolkit – then you can work out what is deployed where.

Sometimes it can just be using the signature colour – perhaps on bags –

or a certain typeface in signage.

“That will immediately say to the customer, ‘that’s the brand’,” says Ford. “You don’t have to spell it out every time.”

One retailer putting this theory in practice is Suffolk cheese retailer Slate, which has two shops and sells online. When the business was set up two years ago, co-founder Clare Jackson worked with Ipswichbased agency What Associates to create the branding. The assets she has at her disposal include a logo, signature colour scheme and a bespoke typeface inspired by the fonts on old Port bottles.

While this level of detail might seem over the top, Jackson tells FFD it has a purpose, even if customers don’t see beyond the colours.

“Because we know there’s such depth in it, it gives a confidence to believe in the brand that is on the website and in the shops. So we have this pride in all of that.”

Jackson uses these physical elements of her branding wherever she can, including on jars of chutney, the cheese wrap, aprons, bags for life and leaflets.

“So it’s in the shop, it’s on people, on things that people will take away from the shop and it gets sent out on orders from the website.”

The other side of a retailer’s brand is the experiences associated with it – an aspect that Stefano Cuomo, MD of Kent-based Macknade Fine Foods, is very aware of.

“Understand what you represent, not just now, not just to one age profile, but make sure that’s across the business,” he says, adding that his brand is about “earnest” Branding retailing, with products and service that make runs through customers feel “safe”.

Cuomo is keen to everything, point out that retailers – from the logo even if they are cynical about marketing or to the colour don’t want to expand with more stores like he that you use does – should be trying for your giftwrap, to the way to develop brand values can be passed on to you speak to customers, and the that all staff.

“It’s about who tone of voice on your promotional we are, what we are posters as well as in your price and trying to keep that consistency of points. experience and where the customers have touch points with it.”

Rich Ford, Strategy Director,

Whether you’re a multisite retailer or a market town deli, your shop’s branding is a vital tool for driving footfall and repeat business. And it is way more than just a name on a logo.

By Michael Lane

Retailers should get their brand on as many items leaving the premises, like Slate’s cheese wrap and flyers (above). But the in-store experience with staff is also a key element of a shop’s brand, like at Macknade FIne Foods (below).

Sherlock Studio FINE FOOD DIGEST

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Every successful brand has a story behind it. It’s not just about explaining the origins of a product, it’s an opportunity to communicate a business’s ethos and give people a reason to pick it up off the shelf. So what makes a compelling narrative for today’s consumers?

By Lauren Phillips

36 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

FINE FOOD DIGEST

UCT BRAND PR OD IN the product.

“We see it in the cheese room of our shop,” says Rosen-Nash. “It’s telling the story of the Trethowan brothers when we’re talking about Pitchfork Cheddar, or Catherine Mead when we’re talking about Cornish Kern.”

The whole experience of imparting knowledge draws foodie customers into our shop and inspires them.”

But what makes a compelling brand story?

Despite the word ‘story’, it is not simply the background to why a producer started the business in the first place, says Taylor. A brand story should encompass the philosophy of the business, too.

“You have to understand first of all what it is your business is trying to achieve in the long run,” he says. “A brand is a set of values that you want to be associated with in consumers’ minds. Those values you want to capture, define and express in whatever way you’re going to communicate with consumers.”

The best way to understand who you are as a brand is to ask yourself five questions, says Taylor. Questions he also asks his own clients.

“What is your long-term ambition, beyond making money? Why have you bothered getting out of bed in the morning? What is your roll in the world? How are you going to make consumers’ lives more rewarding? And, why do you exist as a business?

“By answering those five questions, you can understand what your strengths are, where you can be different and where you are ticking some basic boxes,” he says.

G

UNLIKE THE “ONCE UPON A TIME…” of fairy tales, a story can be a vital tool for any small food business wanting to give consumers an insight into the brand's personality and tone of voice, while setting out the business’s ethos, mission and purpose.

For fine food brands it can also be the reason why customers should invest in your product, especially in the speciality food market where consumers will pay more for premium food brands.

“The difference between a high-end bottle of wine and a supermarket brand is the story of how it’s made,” says Perry Haydn Taylor, creative director of design and branding agency, BigFish.

“If you sit down for a meal where there is good ambience, the meal will taste better. The same can be said for brands. You’re priming people’s synapses to say ‘Look at this. The care with which I produced this product. It is going to taste amazing’.”

Sam Rosen-Nash of Wiltshire retailer Compton McRae agrees. The brand story is often the first thing to pique her interest in a producer, and the ex-Fortnum & Mason buyer says she is more predisposed to like a product before she has even tasted it if it has a good story behind it.

“You can have a good chutney, but there are a lot of good chutney producers,” says Rosen-Nash. “Why should I, as a retailer, talk to you as a producer?”

A good brand story will also give retailers the tools and confidence to sell an item, allowing them to put a face and personality to

With the ethos established, producers can then focus on the second component of a compelling brand story – the narrative. Like all stories, this should have a beginning, middle and end, says Jayne Noblet, founder of agency The Collaborators and The Seed Fund mentoring project.

“If you think in terms of a brand story, the beginning answers the question ‘Why I got here?”’ she says. “Then the middle is an issue followed by the answer to ‘How do I solve it for you?’. The happy ever after, however, continues in the form of new products, ideas and new ventures.”

Despite its linear format, Noblet says there are many different types of narratives that CONTINUED ON PAGE 39

Stories about triumph over adversity that show your vulnerability go down well.

People like an underdog.

- Jayne Noblet, founder, The Collaborators and The Seed Fund

Brands with great stories Two Farmers

Crisp packets are notoriously bad for the environment and many consumers are now pressuring big brands, like Walkers, to find a sustainable solution. So, when Herefordshire-based Two Farmers – set up by potato farming friends Sean Mason and Mark Green – entered the market with its crisps in 100% compostable packaging they were presenting a solution to a very big problem.

This has paid off hugely for the brand which has seen rapid growth since its launch.

Now the business is investing in renewable energy on its farm and its own electric delivery vehicles to continue its ethos as an eco-conscious crisp brand. twofarmers.co.uk FINE FOOD DIGEST

The Artisan Kitchen

Made for Drink

A brand story so simple the solution is in the name. Made for Drink’s mission is to bring upmarket bar snacks to pair with drinks to pubs and bars around the world with the strapline, “Good drinks need good snacks”.

The back story is interesting, too. Founder Dan Featherstone developed the snacks and trialled them at Heston Blumenthal’s The Crown at Bray to get customer feedback.

Each premium snack is made with highquality ingredients with stories in their own right, including free-range Devonshire duck from Creedy Carver and traditional Hungarian salamis with 150-year-old recipes. madefordrink.com

When Sarah Churchill launched The Artisan Kitchen, she was on a mission to challenge the highly competitive jam market. Seeing a gap for a contemporary jam brand that challenged the traditional, overly sweet varieties, Churchill created a range of simple preserves packaged in clean, bright modern branding.

New flavours the producer launches are influenced by what seasonal, rare fruits she can find in her local market often producing and bottling the products that very same day. A story which further enforces the brand’s ethos to create different, interestingly flavoured preserves. theartisankitchen.co.uk BEST BRANDS 2019-20 37

Meant to Bean to Dream Indigenous Taiwanese Species All our soy sauces are tested Gluten-Free Iodine Free

The founder of Doyoubo, Mr Antian Lee, was one of the few certified soy sauce brewers in his time He started the business in 1972 and has worked tirelessly ever since to make “Doyoubo”a household brand name in Taiwan.

We use non-GMO Taiwan grown soybeans, black beans and wheat exclusively which all tested negative of pesticide residual. Using whole beans and left fermented patiently for 120-180 days, quality soy sauce is made.

Proud winner of 4 medals at the World Cheese Awards 2019

Artisan Golden Naturally Golden Smile Naturally B KALTBACH Le Gruyère AOP

KALTBACH Creamy and our new KALTBACH Gouda

KALTBACH Emmentaler AOP

For more information on our award winning range of Kaltbach cheeses go to www.emmi-kaltbach.com/international or email info.uk@emmi.com

38 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

Golden Black Naturally Brewed Soy Sauce (No sugar added)

Artisan Golden Naturally Brewed Soy Sauce

Representatives call :+886-800-256-866 or +886-8-771-1116

Golden Smile Naturally Brewed Soy Sauce (No sugar added)

Golden Black Naturally B

Mail:ssales@mitdub.com.tw

FINE FOOD DIGEST

UCT BRAND PR OD IN myself to be allergic to nuts or gluten or intolerant to dairy and I couldn’t find a snack in the market that satisfied me’,” she says.

“These days that is not enough. That problem has been solved, so it has to be better than that.”

Taylor calls these functional benefits, like ‘low-in salt’, ‘gluten-free’ or ‘vegan’, hygiene factors. “They need to be communicated but quite often brands make the mistake of overemphasising those non-differentiating rational benefits.

“Being gluten-free is great, but it’s not the most exciting message and a consumer could buy another product that does the same thing,” he adds.

But how does a brand avoid rehashing a story that consumers may have seen before?

Noblet says brands should keep asking themselves why they’re running their business and then ask why again. “And if you’re still struggling, that’s when you need to employ a good agency or get some marketing help,” she says.

Sharing stories with customers, whether through in-store tastings or farmers’ markets, is also an important way to gauge public responses to your brand story. Noblet says producers should tell their story in different ways to consumers and see which version gets the best response. “See if it starts a conversation or cuts it short,” she says.

Once a food business has its story nailed down (along with a shortened twoline version) it can be played out on every touchpoint of the brand, whether that is in the

G

make up an interesting brand story, citing a new solution to an old problem as one example.

“Developing your narrative is about finding a way to make your story interesting to other people and that’s normally explaining what you’re going to do for them,” she says.

“What problems are you solving and how can that be your brand story? Because that is what people want to read, ‘What’s in it for me?’”

Other narrative types include a story about a quest, such as a producer delivering what’s not been delivered yet or doing more environmentally. It might focus on culture and international cuisines inspired by parental and culinary heritage, or it could centre around a skill or a challenge. “Stories about triumph over adversity that show your vulnerability go down well,” says Noblet. “People like an underdog.”

Even with these different formats, there are still some clichéd brand stories that appear again and again in categories. One such example is the story of the “grandmother’s recipe” which has been found in attics, old homes or hand-me-down cookery books. This line has been rehashed by numerous brands over the years. “A lot of fine food brands talk about their story with a self-referential excitement and forget their markets,” he says.

But the newest offender is in the free-from and vegan category, where a lot of start-ups have emerged to capitalise on the growing vegan and flexitarian trends. And Noblet has noticed this, too.

“The story I see too often now is ‘I found

strapline, the packaging, on social media, the website or verbally.

“Your packaging design, in particular, should play back to your story which will play back to your mission and purpose as a brand,” says Noblet. “If you are briefing a designer, your story should be the brief and the designer would pick that up when choosing typefaces, colour, illustrations and graphics.”

“There is fodder in your brand story, which all links back to the narrative. Just remember to keep it simple, keep it straightforward, look backwards and forwards, find the real meaning and then keep repeating it.”

Now, that’s a happily ever after.

If you sit down for a meal where there is good ambience, the meal will taste better. The same can be said for brands. You’re priming people’s synapses to say ‘Look at this. The care with which I produced this product. It is going to taste amazing’.

– Perry Haydn Taylor, founder and creative director, Big Fish

Brands with great stories

Rubies in the Rubble

Aside from plastic waste, another huge problem facing today’s industry is food waste in households and the supply chain.

London-based Rubies in the Rubbles was one of the first brands of its kind to offer a solution to this when it launched in 2012 with a mayonnaise made from aquafaba; a protein-rich water leftover from cooking chickpeas which normally would be thrown away. Since then the company has made huge waves in the market, continuing its mission and story by launching a range of ketchups and relishes made from surplus fruit and veg sourced directly from farms. rubiesintherubble.com

FINE FOOD DIGEST

Tiba Tempeh

A lot of plant-based brands are entering the category these days, so it’s a tough market for producers to find a way to differentiate themselves from their competitors. But startup Tiba Tempeh – which produces Tempeh, an Indonesian protein-rich product made with soybeans - has launched to market presenting itself as an exciting new brand with products that “will change the world for the better”. A strapline that reads: “It’s time to grab life by the plants” also suggests a brand ethos of living life to the full on a plant-based diet. “That’s an attitude,” says Taylor. “They don’t just say it’s soy. Their philosophy is life is great and you shouldn’t compromise.” tibatempeh.com

Dorset Sea Salt Company

Provenance and history are the themes in The Dorset Sea Salt Company’s brand story.

The business was founded in 2017 by Jethro Tennant who had read about the history of Dorset's salt production in his local library.

After visiting the natural salt pans of Portland, Tennant decided to bring back this local industry by marrying traditional and modern production methods. “He reinvented salt production by doing it in a really modern fashion, but where does that take him?” says Noblet. “He’s teamed up with lots of Dorset chefs to create new recipes for his products.

So now he’s reinvented an old tradition for today’s chef.” dorsetseasalt.co.uk BEST BRANDS 2019-20 39

VINEGAR SHED

A fine food business with the UK’s largest selection of artisan vinegars, speciality olive oils, rare spices, wild peppers, hand-harvested salts, Cantabrian anchovies & tuna, other exciting pantry items for savvy chefs and home cooks.

For more info & trade prices, contact Andy Harris on 07854892065 or info@vinegarshed.com

www.vinegarshed.com Winner of 56 Great Taste awards - 2017-2018-2019

40 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

FINE FOOD DIGEST

BISCUITS FOR CHEESE

BESPOKE PRIVATE LABELLING Recyclable PLA Containers Polylactic acid (PLA) is made from corn starch which is made from carbon dioxide and water.

FROM THE ISLE OF LEWIS Made to traditional recipes passed down for generations by our team of skilled craft bakers, our Water Biscuits and Oatcakes are ideal for creating cheeseboards or canapĂŠs as they work delightfully well with a wide range of toppings.

Corn starch products look and feel like traditional petroleum-based plastic, but they are recyclable, completely compostable and commercially biodegradable.

As a business, it is our ambition to reduce our impact on the environment as much as possible, constantly making small steps in the right direction.

Tel: 01851 702733 sales@stagbakeries.co.uk www.stagbakeries.co.uk

2 Star Winner, 2019

At Shire Foods East Anglia we can now offer a full range of bespoke labelled products in addition to our wide range of branded goods such as Belvoir, Border Biscuits, Cawston Press, Fentimans, Tiptree, Garofalo, Wessex Mill & many more.

For further information please call 01366 381250

www.sfea.co.uk sales@sfea.co.uk FINE FOOD DIGEST

BEST BRANDS 2019-20 41

Visit us at stand D28

Since 2014 we have been awarded 35 Stars at Great Taste for our outstanding products

Visit us at stand L80

Our range of unique products Include: Extra Virgin Olive Oils and Balsamic Vinegars Gluten Free, Fresh and Dried Pastas Pasta Sauces Antipasti and Charcuterie Prosecco Artisan Craft Beers Limoncello Confectionery NEW Italian Cannoli NEW Lobster Tail cakes NEW Ambient Salamis

For more Information on our full range; www.tenutamarmorelle.com or call: 01189 29 84 80 42 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

FINE FOOD DIGEST

GING BRA ND EMER S

Laura Bradley Indie Füde Comber, Northern Ireland

FFD canvassed some top buyers across the UK to find out what new products and brands had caught their keen eyes this year, with the potential to do great things in 2020

The Proper Chocolate Co

The Bucha’s Dog

This Dublin-based bean-to-bar chocolate company is run by Kelli and Patrick Marjolet, originally from Seattle and Brittany respectively.

Almost everything they use is organic – beans, cocoa solids, sugar – and these ingredients are high quality, sustainable and ethically sourced. It’s all vegan too, which is a real plus. Aside from the excellent bars, they also do a hazelnut spread which is amazing. properchocolatecompany.com

We’re seeing more and more products coming to market and the branding is already on point and this is one of them. It’s kombucha from Belfast and we cannot keep it on the shelves for very long even though it’s £3 a bottle. It’s great that we have a local one and they are about to team up with Suki Tea, which could be interesting. thebuchas.dog

Galway Goat Farm Larry Maguire makes a range of goats’ milk cheeses but it is one of his more recent creations – the ashcoated Cnoc Dubh (Black Mountain) – that has really established itself on our counter this year. It looks like a French Valençay with its pyramid shape and it’s got a really velvety texture and lemony tang, too. galwaygoatfarm@gmail.com

Early Birds We met Amrit and Rory before their official launch, and we were taken aback by their fast-forward thinking: even the cane sugar bottle is plantbased. The drinks are breakfast/ snacks that provide a daily source of protein and contain no added sugar, but they’re also good for you and the planet, too. earlybirds.co

Emma Murphy Commercial & Innovation Director Sourced Market London

Heyday Maté This drink is a hybrid of cold brewed tea and a soda, with plenty of caffeine to satisfy your daily needs. Founders Beth and Janus took matters into their own hands after tasting the South American drink maté and decided to create this smooth, naturally caffeine-rich drink. It’s 100% vegan and there are no nasties, just a little bit of cane sugar added to make a drink we’ll be sipping all year round. heydaymate.com FINE FOOD DIGEST

Ima’s vegan sushi We loved that this company was run by a daughter-father duo, and they also happen to be the first in the world to create a vegan salmon sushi. Each piece (they make ‘duck’, ‘crab’ and ‘tuna’ sushi, too) is handrolled, then packaged in 100% degradable boxes that are shipped weekly to our stores. Oh, and they fly off the shelves the moment they land. instagram.com/weareima BEST BRANDS 2019-20 43

Hawksheadrelish.com

The perfect adult soft drink or mixer, made with real fruit juices and our own natural spring water from our farm!

We hope you enjoy them!

5 flavours available including: Elderflower PressĂŠ, Blackcurrant Crush, Fiery Ginger Beer, Raspberry Lemonade & Traditional Lemonade.

Available in 330ml, 750ml glass & 425ml PET bottles

/radnorhills

@heartseasefm

www.radnorhills.co.uk 44 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

heartsease_farm

W W W.W I C K E DWO L F G I N . CO M P LE A S E D R I N K R E S P O N S I B LY

FINE FOOD DIGEST

GING BRA ND EMER S

Adrian Boswell Buyer – Cheese & Deli and Health & Wellbeing Selfridges London

Alan Downes

Specialising in rice paper rolls, this start-up says it is on a mission to make healthy playful. I think it has a bright future. They tick all the boxes in regards to the latest health trends and offer products that cater to vegetarians, vegans and those seeking dairy- glutenor nut-free foods. Varieties include Parma ham, melon & basil pesto and chicory, Stilton, apple & walnuts. kaleidorolls.com

General manager Hawarden Estate Farm Shop Flintshire, North Wales

Barti Ddu Rum Barti Ddu is the only rum we have on our shelves and we really don’t think we need another.

The authentic, vibrant notes of vanilla and laver seaweed from Pembrokeshire really make it stand out from the crowd. bartirum.wales

Hafod Brewing Co. Nearly all of our beers, wines and spirits here at the Farm Shop are made in Wales. This is a conscious decision for us and we feel proud to have such an abundance to choose from – especially when beer from just down the road tastes as good at Hafod Brewing Co’s. These guys really know their beer and have focussed on incorporating iconic local, foraged flavours into brews, which is a great way to add story to a product and connect the consumer with a sense of place.

Kaleido

London Fermentary Gut health will be an even bigger thing in 2020 and these guys, based in Bermondsey, are leading the way. They make a range of krauts, kimchis and fermented chilli sauces but they also make water kefir – naturally carbonated and sweetened with raw organic sugar – that are an alternative to the usual fizzy drinks and sodas. londonfermentary.com

SesamMe SesaMe has a great range of halva.

It’s 60% tahini, which is produced using ground Ethiopian sesame seeds, and is only mixed with natural flavours. Another product that is suitable for vegans, it comes in a wide range of flavours, including pistachio, chocolate chip, and poppy seed. They also make sugar-free versions of this sweet dessert. sesamme.com

welshbeer.com

Sharon McGill General Manager Craigie’s Farm Shop Nr Edinburgh

Hard Lines Coffee We spotted this Cardiff-based coffee shop and roastery on Instagram and instantly fell in love with their cool, fresh and fun packaging. We love independent products that have a great story, stand out on our shelves and taste good, so Hard Lines really does tick all of our boxes. hard-lines.co.uk

FINE FOOD DIGEST

This small family business started by supplying local farmer markets.

We love founders John and Sarah’s passion for their products and the focus on top quality ingredients. All of their sticky toffee puddings are a melt in the mouth delight, and it’s brilliant that it also comes in glutenfree and ginger versions. saucydesserts.co.uk

Edinburgh Food Social Spring Gin Edinburgh Food Social and Edinburgh Gin launched this exciting new spirit in May 2019, having searched the city to find seasonal foraged ingredients to create it. This gin features wood sorrel, gorse flower and yarrow and has a fresh balanced flavour, which works well with tonic, a slice of apple and a sprig of thyme. edinburghfoodsocial.org

Saucy Desserts

The Drinks Bakery This brand has been a success thanks to its owner’s obsession with food and his firm belief that people deserve much more than a mediocre snack with their drinks.

All of the varieties match fabulously well with beers, wines and spirits. thedrinksbakery.com BEST BRANDS 2019-20 45

PROMOTIONAL FEATURE Highlands and Islands Enterprise

Celebrating food and drink from the Highlands and Islands of Scotland AT HIGHLANDS AND ISLANDS ENTERPRISE (HIE), we work with ambitious businesses, offering both one-to-one and sectorwide support to create new opportunities and tackle challenges. Companies are embracing technology and innovation with a view to developing new products with a point of uniqueness, increasing competitiveness and reaching new markets and customers.

The Highlands and Islands Food and Drink Awards, now in their 15th year, showcase and celebrate excellence in the food and drink industry in the region. They bring businesses together to celebrate their achievements and provide an excellent networking opportunity. Here is a flavour of the award-winners from the region.

SCOTTISH SALMON COMPANY www.scottishsalmon.com • Winner of the Best Marketing Campaign Award • Winner of the Export (Large) Award • Winner of the Food & Drink Business Growth Award EIGHT LANDS ORGANIC SPEYSIDE GIN – GLENRINNES DISTILLERY www.eight-lands.com • Winner of The Best Distilled Award Eight Lands produces authentic, award-winning, organic spirits with Speyside spring water, distilled and bottled at the family-owned Glenrinnes Distillery. The two-stage fermentation process gives the product a smoother taste and rates highly on taste and packaging. The name ‘Eight Lands’ was inspired by the eight counties that can be seen from the top of Ben Rinnes.

The company has ambitious plans for both domestic and international markets.

LOCH NESS SPIRITS - LOCH NESS ABSINTHE wearelochness.com/ • Winner of the Excellence Award Loch Ness Spirits is a micro distillery on the banks of Loch Ness. It produces Loch Ness Gin Original, Loch Ness Legends Gin and a variety of limitededition liqueurs and cocktail bitters. Captivated by the history of absinthe, Loch Ness Absinthe was born. It is believed the product is the first absinthe in the world to be made with woodworm grown in Scotland. The product stands apart from competitors as it is clear as opposed to green, it is made with botanicals, including anise, fennel and the famous Loch Ness juniper and is a lower ABV (53% as opposed to 64%).

46 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

Farming on the remote west coast of Scotland and Hebrides, the Scottish Salmon Company exports finest Scottish Salmon to worldwide markets, while creating and retaining as much value as possible in the remote and rural communities where they operate.

Building upon their reputation at home and abroad, they recently launched Lochlander, a naturally raised premium salmon which takes approximately 3 years to grow lean and strong in sea lochs.

GLEN SPEAN BREWING CO. 'SNOWGOOSE' CRAFT PREMIUM LAGER www.glenspeanbrewing.com • Winner of The Best Brewed Award Glen Spean Brewing Co. take inspiration from the Highland environment, community and way to life, and locality shines through in the provenance of their products. Snowgoose was created in the summer of 2018 and is a complex, rounded malty lager, with a rich full flavour. This winning product is named after the famous ‘goose’ shape of the snowed corrie on Aonach Mòr – as seen from the brewery. The business is currently supplying the Scottish market and are making plans to expand their offering to the rest of the UK soon.

GREEN GROW - AURORA SUSTAINABILITY GROUP www.auroracons.org • Winner of the Innovation Award • Winner of the Sustainability Award Aurora Sustainability are an excellent example of food innovation and of demonstrating the circular economy in action. They use by-products from the whisky and coffee industries to create unique growing conditions to produce gourmet mushrooms, which are presented to customers in a range of options including ready to cook meals through The Scottish Gourmet Mushroom Meal Box.

HIGHLAND WALKING STICK AND HIGHLAND SHOOTING STICK – HIGHLAND CHARCUTERIE AND SMOKEHOUSE LTD www.facebook.com/highlandcharcuterie/ • Winner of the New Product (Food) Award Although these entrepreneurs have been making charcuterie from local meats and smoking food for their hotel’s restaurant since 2004, Highland Charcutiers and Smokehouse was only established in 2014. This new air dried and ready to eat charcuterie stick is made from locally sourced Highland free-range pork and pepper dulse seaweed collected from remote local coves.

FINE FOOD DIGEST

The food and drink industry is one of the largest growth sectors in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland.

Products from the region are recognised for their quality, authenticity and provenance.

BEN CRUACHAN INN www.bencruachaninn.com • Winner of the New Business Award Ben Cruachan Inn is at the centre of village life in Loch Awe. The business occupies historic buildings that date back to Victorian times and were originally the stable buildings for the Lochawe Hotel. Driven by their passion for the village and ambition to create economic growth in the region, the Inn aims to attract locals and visitors with their well-stocked bar which boasts whisky, gins and beers from around the Highlands and Islands, and their seasonal menus which demonstrate a commitment to local ingredients.

It is very encouraging to see new businesses coming forward alongside new products and initiatives from businesses who entered before. For the first time, we have an award that recognises the contribution of primary agriculture producers, highlighting the appreciation for the whole supply chain through from field to fork. The Awards recognise some of the best natural produce in the world and continue to demonstrate the commitment, dedication and entrepreneurship that is flourishing in a sector that faces many challenges. We are delighted to support these Awards once again.

Our region has so much to be proud of when it comes to food and drink and it’s no surprise that we have an enviable reputation associated to provenance, people, place and culture.

Elaine Jamieson, Head of Food and Drink at HIE

THE REALLY GARLICKY COMPANY www.reallygarlickycompany.co.uk • Winner of the Primary Agricultural Producer of the Year Award A Nairn based company was launched in 2001 by farmers Glen and Gilli Allingham who were looking to diversify their arable activity. The Really Garlicky Company are now one of the largest garlic growers in the UK and supply a range of garlicky products to retail outlets across the UK. Their Porcelain Hardneck garlic thrives in the Highland climate and has a sweeter flavour than conventional varieties. Their use of drone technology to track crop quality and health is very innovative, and video software means that followers can trace the garlic journey from planting to harvest.

FINE FOOD DIGEST

CORNER ON THE SQUARE www.corneronthesquare.co.uk • Winner of the Independent Food and Drink Retailer of the Year Award Corner on the Square is a licensed delicatessen and eatery overlooking the square in the historic village of Beauly, 12 miles west of Inverness and on the popular North Coast 500 route. Local produce takes centre stage along with a plethora of regional national and international products. In addition to a delicatessen they have a dedicated fruit shop which stocks the best of local produce and are known for their bespoke gift hampers.

MUCKRACH COUNTRY HOUSE HOTEL www.muckrach.com/ • The Restaurant of the Year Award This restaurant is set within a luxury 16-bedroom hotel in the Cairngorms National Park and has a relaxed and romantic atmosphere, with tables set with candlelight at the large window overlooking the gardens.

The seasonal menu is brimming with tastes of Scotland, with produce including Highland venison, Balliefurth steak, hand dived scallops and Scottish cheeses.

THE KALE AT BOATH www.boath-house.com/the-kaleyard/ • Winner of the Best Eatery Award Situated in Auldern, near Nairn, The Kale at Boath has a garden to plate ethos, welcoming hospitality, with a relaxed vibe and stylish interior. The menu is full of local and seasonal produce, and not only changes daily but also throughout the day depending on availably of produce .

Truly a hidden gem immersed within a secret garden.

KIRKJUVAGR BEYLA - HONEY AND RASPBERRY OLD TOM GIN - ORKNEY DISTILLING www.orkneydistilling.com • Winner of the New Product (Drink) Award The distillery on Orkney marks its fifth product by launching this new full-strength raspberry and honey pink gin. Using rare Orkney honey, the product is named after the Norse Goddess of bees, drawing inspiration from the Viking and seafaring heritage of the islands. Beyla is the distillery’s first step into the fruit gin market and this new addition is a great compliment to their range of hand-crafted London dry gins.

www.hie.co.uk/

www.facebook.com/highlandsandislandsenterprise

www.linkedin.com/company/ highlands-&-islands-enterprise

DORNOCH DISTILLERY www.thompsonbrosdistillers.com • Winner of the Export (SME) Award Established two years ago by brothers Phil and Simon Thompson, this micro distillery produces hand distilled gin and whisky on-site at Dornoch Castle Hotel. The brothers are renowned in the whisky world having built up a wide international following online and by running the whisky bar at the Dornoch Castle Hotel. Their gin is performing very well overseas and is now sold in export markets across the globe including Japan, Australia, Singapore and Germany.

BEST BRANDS 2019-20 47

The Leader in Bake at Home Innovation The only way to enjoy the true indulgence of real artisan breads and pastries fresh from the oven.

Contact us now for details of the latest new product release and concept support packages.

For further information please call us on 01989 741010 Hazelnut Crunch Fine de Champagne Almond Salted Caramel Chocolate Truffles

48 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

www.hedonistbakery.co.uk

FINE FOOD DIGEST

Longueville Mór Cider Longueville House Beverages longueville beverages.ie

Supreme Champion Nocciola Gelato Swoon Gelato swoononaspoon.co.uk

Startisan of the Year

RS NNE WI

Golden Fork from Ireland

gff.co.uk/gta

RD

GREAT TASTE 2019

NA TIONAL & REGIONAL AW A

Matthew’s Preserves matthews-preserves.co.uk

Small Artisan Producer of the Year Artisan Kitchen theartisankitchen.co.uk

Given the volume of products out there, it might be an idea to narrow your search for new stock by checking out some items with decent accreditation. To make that job even easier, Fine Food Digest has assembled a host of this year’s national and regional award winners – starting with Great Taste 2019

Golden Fork from Northern Ireland

Golden Fork from the South West Nocciola Gelato Swoon Gelato swoononaspoon.co.uk

Kreme dela Kremlin Whitewater Brewery Co whitewater brewery. com

Golden Fork for Best Imported Food

El Abuelo Maragato – Halal The Ojos Foods theojosfoods.com

Golden Fork from the North of England Panama La Huella “Café de Panama” (Natural) Dark Woods Coffee darkwoodscoffee.co.uk

Golden Fork from Scotland

Pea Green Boat Cheese Sablés – Fennel and Chilli Shortbread House of Edinburgh shortbreadhouse.co.uk

Nigel Barden Heritage Award

Special Reserve Keeved Somerset Cider Worley’s Cider worleyscider.co.uk

Golden Fork from the Midlands Free Range Shoulder of Pork Redhill Farm Free Range Pork redhillfarm.com

Ambient Product of the Year

Fermented Fresh Green Kampot Peppercorns Kadode Kampot

Golden Fork from London & South East

Pepper UK kadodepepper.co.uk

Golden Fork from East Anglia Burnt Honey Ice Cream Hadley’s Dairy hadleysdairy.co.uk

Salted Caramel & Liquorice Gelato Gelato Gusto gelatogusto. com

Golden Fork from Wales

Afon Mêl Heather Mead New Quay Honey Farm / Afon Mêl afonmel.com FINE FOOD DIGEST

Charcuterie Product of the Year Guanciale Capreolus Fine Foods capreolusfinefoods.co.uk

Golden Fork from Greece

Anise and Fennel Honey BeeWell beewell.gr BEST BRANDS 2019-20 49

Introducing Welsh Lady’s individual portions of award winning products.

Jams, marmalades, mustards, sauces and chutney in mini glass jars.

Talk to us about small production runs and bespoke by brand

Another year of Great Taste success!

For details, please contact Tel: 01766 810496 E-mail: sales@welshladypreserves.com www.welshladypreserves.com

50 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

01851 702 445 | sales@charlesmacleod.co.uk

www.charlesmacleod.co.uk

FINE FOOD DIGEST

WORLD CHEESE AWARDS 2019-20

tasteofthewest.co.uk

camra.org.uk

gff.co.uk/wca

RS NNE WI

REAL ALE & CIDER AWARDS

RD

TASTE OF THE WEST AWARDS

NA TIONAL & REGIONAL AW A

World Champion 2019

Champion Beer of Britain Shere Drop Surrey Hills Brewery surreyhills.co.uk

Champion Cider Gold Award Supreme Champion Product 2019

Mixed Salad Bag Natural Branscombe naturalbranscombe.co.uk

Best Newcomer 2019 Sea Spoon seaspoon. com

Best Branding 2019

Cornish Moo facebook.com/ CornishMoo/

Champion Confectionery

Roly's Salted Maple & Pecan Fudge Roly's Fudge rolysfudge.co.uk

Champion Cheese Cornish Blue Nanny Cornish Cheese Co. cornishcheese.co.uk

Champion Cured Meat Tuscan Salami Good Game good-game.co.uk

Champion Sauce/ Accompaniment

Mayfayre’s cider Mayfayre Cider & Perry facebook.com/ Mayfayreciderandperry

Champion Perry Gold Award Cleeve’s Orchard Perry Cleeve Orchard Cider and Perry

THE INTERNATIONAL CHOCOLATE AWARDS – BRITISH CHOCOLATIER COMPETITION 2019 international chocolateawards.com

Milk chocolate enrobed caramels

Gingerbread Caramel Chococo chococo.co.uk

Nut based pralines with dark chocolate

Maple & Pecan Praline Baravelli baravellis.com and Vegan Raspberry Praline Rococo Chocolates rococochocolates.com

NATIONAL TRUST FINE FARM PRODUCE AWARDS

Wasabi Mustard The Wasabi Company thewasabi company. co.uk

nationaltrust.org.uk

Champion of Wines, Spirits & Liqueurs

Overall Drinks Winner

Papillon Gin Papillon Dartmoor Distillery papillongin.co.uk

Champion Cider

Special Reserve Worley's Cider worleyscider. c o.uk

FINE FOOD DIGEST

Overall Food Winner

Aberdeen Angus Beningbrough Farm homefarmbeningbrough. co.uk Barrington Court Cider Barrington Court nationaltrust.org.uk/ barrington-court

Organic Blue Cheese Rogue River Blue Rogue Creamery, USA roguecreamery.com

Best Mature Traditional Cheddar

Pitchfork Organic Cheddar Trethowan’s Dairy, UK trethowansdairy.co.uk

Best Extra Mature Cheddar

Pitchfork Organic Cheddar Trethowan’s Dairy, UK trethowansdairy.co.uk

Best New Cheese

Miješani sir u orahovom lišću Agrolaguna, Croatia agrolaguna.hr

Best Italian

Nazionale del Parmigiano Reggiano Latteria Sociale Santo Stefano Consorzio Conva – Nazionale del Parmigiano Reggiano, Italy conva.it

Best British Cheese

Pitchfork Organic Cheddar Trethowan’s Dairy, UK trethowansdairy.co.uk

Best Australian Cheese

Best Unpasteurised Quintano Lavialattea, Italy caseificiolavialattea.it

Best French Cheese

Epoisses PDO Laiteries H Triballat, France rians.com/fr

Best Smoked

Azkarra CRDOP Queso Idiazabal, Spain quesoidiazabal.eus

Best Central & Eastern European Etyek Snow White Etyeki Kecskesajt Manufaktúra, Hungary etyekikecskesajt.hu

Best American Cow’s Milk Organic Blue Cheese Rogue River Blue Rogue Creamery, USA roguecreamery.com

Barambah Organics Labna with Fennel and Sea Salt Barambah Organics Dairy, Australia barambahorganics.com.au

Best Japanese

Best Le Gruyère Cheese

Best Spanish

Mori No Cheese Home Made Cheese Nasu No Mori, Japan nasunomori.jp

Le Gruyère AOP Premier Cru Cremo – von Mühlenen, Switzerland cremo.ch/en/

Torta del Casar DOP Virgen del Prado Queseria Doñaf Fancisca, Spain queseriadonafrancisca. com/en/

Best Greek Cheese

Best Scottish

Feta Cheese PDO Greek Family Farm, Greece familyfarm.gr

Corra Linn Errington Cheese, UK erringtoncheese.co.uk

THE WORLD’S ORIGINAL MARMALADE AWARDS dalemain.com

Artisan Double Gold Winners Spiced Seville Orange & Pumpkin Preserve Cakebole Orchard cakeboleorchard.co.uk

Orange Blossom, Kumquat & Yellow Lemon Preserve Ke Ya Jam keyajam.com

The Royal Delicacy Preserve A&E Gourmet aegourmet.com

The Ann-Marie Dyas Award For Best Artisan Quintano Lavialattea, Italy caseificiolavialattea.it

Best Norwegian

Nidelven Blå Gangstad Gårdsteri, Norway ysteri.no

Best Portuguese

Artisanal Soft Ewe’s Cheese Monte da Vinha Queijo Artesanal Amanteigado Monte da Vinha, Portugal

Best Latin American Queijo Quark Lac Lélo Lac Lélo – Laticínios São João, Brazil laclelo.com.br

Best German

Baldauf 1862 - unser Meisterstück Gebr. Baldauf GmbH & Co. KG, Germany baldauf-kaese.de

Best Welsh

Tysul Blue Jones’ Cheese Co, UK

Best Irish

Cashel Blue Organic Bio Cashel Farmhouse Cheesemakers, Ireland cashelblue.com

Best Austrian

Weinkäse Obersteirische Molkerei, Austria oml.at

FREE FROM FOOD AWARDS freefromfoodawards. co.uk

FAIR trophy for the Best FreeFrom Food 2019 The Wonder Box Booja-Booja boojabooja. com

BEST BRANDS 2019-20 51

N ATIO

NA

L&

BEST BRANDS SURVEY IONAL A WARD WINNERS G RE

DELICIOUSLYORKSHIRE TASTE AWARDS deliciouslyorkshire.co.uk

Supreme Champion Whole Milk Hollin House Farm facebook.com/ hollinhousefarm

Best Wholesaler Shepcote shepcote.co.uk

Best Bakery

Salmon, Broccoli & Dill quiche Toppings Pies toppingspies.co.uk

Best Flavoured Spirit Damson & Gin Isaac Poad Brewing isaacpoadbrewing.co.uk

Best Savoury Condiment

TASTE OF KENT AWARDS

tasteofkentawards.co.uk

BRITISH CHEESE AWARDS

britishcheeseawards.com

academyofchocolate. org.uk

Cider or Perry of the Year High Diver Kentish Pip kentishpip.co.uk

Scotch Bonnet Chilli Jam The Chilli Jam Man thechillijamman.com

The Golden Bean Award Supreme Champion English Pecorino White Lake Cheese whitelake.co.uk

Best Sweet Preserve Blackberry, Rhubarb & Liquorice Jam Rosalind’s Larder facebook.com/ rosalindslarder

ACADEMY OF CHOCOLATE AWARDS

Sierra Nevada Dark Milk 63% Castronovo Chocolate castronovochocolate.com

Reserve Champion

Isle of Wight Soft The Isle of Wight Cheese Company isleofwightcheese.co.uk

Best English Cheese Wine of the Year

Kits Coty Chardonnay Chapel Down chapeldown.com

Best Cheese

Buffalo Blue Shepherds Purse Cheeses shepherdspurse.co.uk

Best Fresh Meat

Bath Pig Traditional Italian Porchetta British Premium Sausage Co britishpremiumsausages. co.uk

SCOTLAND FOOD & DRINK EXCELLENCE AWARDS foodanddrink.scot

Best Spirit

Best Confectionery Scarborough Salted Caramel Chocolates Crofts Chocolates croftschocolates.com

NORTH EAST SCOTLAND FOOD & DRINK AWARDS

nesfoodanddrinkawards. co.uk

Artisanal Product

Lancashire Cheese & Spring Onion Drinks Biscuits The Drinks Bakery thedrinksbakery.com

Fish & Seafood Kinglas Fillet Loch Fyne Oysters lochfyne.com

Scotch Product

McCaskie Unsmoked Back Bacon McCaskie Butchers mccaskiebutcher.co.uk 52 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

Cais na Tire Gouda Cais Na Tire caisnatire.ie

Best Retail Product (Small Businesses)

Scottish Blueberry Yogurt Rora Dairy roradairy.co.uk

Best Retail Product (Medium Businesses)

Walter Gregor’s Mixers Gift Pack Summerhouse Drinks summerhousedrinks.com

Best Retail Product (Large Businesses)

Steven Brown Art All Butter Shortbread Gift Tins Dean’s Shortbread deans.co.uk

The UK Rising Star 2019

Luisa’s Vegan Chocolates luisasveganchocolates. co.uk

Best Goat Cheese Specialist Drinks

Pineapple, Beetroot & Parsnip Edible Tea Nim’s Fruit Crisps nimsfruitcrisps.com

Tastiest Juice of the Year

Red Love Apple Juice Biddenden Vineyards biddendenvineyards.com

Farmhouse Butter Plurenden Manor Farm plurendenmilk.co.uk

Confectionery, Drinks & Snacking

Best Irish Cheese

The Original Masons Yorkshire Gin masonsyorkshiregin.com

Food Product of the Year

Porcini & Truffle Salami East Coast Cured eastcoastcured.com

Whole Stilton Long Clawson Dairy clawson.co.uk

BLAS NA HEIREANN IRISH FOOD AWARDS

Rachel White Lake Cheese whitelake.co.uk

Best Scottish Cheese

international cheeseawards.co.uk

Connage Aged Gouda Connage Highland Dairy connage.co.uk

Best Welsh Cheese Teifi Mature Caws Teifi Cheese teificheese.co.uk

Best Organic Cheese Bix Nettlebed Creamery nettlebedcreamery.com

Best PDO / PGI Cheese Whole Stilton Long Clawson Dairy clawson.co.uk

irishfoodawards.com

Supreme Champion Wyfe of Bath The Bath Soft Cheese Company parkfarm.co.uk

Reserve Supreme Champion Bayley Hazen Blue Cellars at Jasper Hill jasperhillfarm.com

Supreme Champion

Green Pastures Donegal Soft Cheese Green Pastures Donegal greenpasturesdonegal.com

BBC FOOD & FARMING AWARDS bbc.co.uk

Best New Product

The Origins Collection The Truffle Fairy trufflefairy.ie

NANTWICH INTERNATIONAL CHEESE AWARDS

Best Food Producer Best Traditional Cheddar

Pitchfork Trethowan's Dairy trethowansdairy.co.uk

The Cornish Duck Company cornishduck.com

Best Drinks Producer

Ross On Wye Cider & Perry Company rosscider.com FINE FOOD DIGEST

Haynes Gourmet

Award-Winning

The Candied Jalapeno people

Organic & Free Range

Organic Charcuterie, Salamis and Air-dried Meats including Chorizo, Nduja, Droewors, Prosciutto, Pancetta, Bresaola, Smoked Juniper Mutton from our farm in the Scottish Borders

018907 81328 info@peelham.co.uk

www.peelham.co.uk Candied Jalapenos (Green Rings)

Sweet & Spicy - the perfect accompaniment to:

Brie • Camembert • Cheddar • Goats Cheese

For wholesale orders please contact:

info@haynesfoods.com • www.HaynesGourmet.com

2018 FINALIST British Cured Meat Awards (Nduja); 2017 WINNERS e Scotland Food & Drink Excellence Awards (Smoked Juniper Mutton) & RUNNER UP (Bresaola); 2017 RUNNERS-UP UK Paleo Awards (Beef Droewors); 2015 WINNERS e Scotland Food & Drink Excellence Awards (Red Wine Salami, Fennel Salami & Chorizo); Great Taste 1-Star (Prosciutto)

Sustainability • Integrity • Traceability • Taste

cOtTaGeDeLiGhT.cO.uK FINE FOOD DIGEST

BEST BRANDS 2019-20 53

• 170+ Taste Of The West and Great Taste Awards.

• 70+ delicious foods across jams, chutneys, curds, marmalades, condiments, dressings, cheeses and savoury biscuits.

H E RB FE D For A Bird With Taste

• 250,000+ happy consumers every year nationwide, actively looking for our brand.

• Crafted using the finest natural ingredients.

• Hand-made in small stirable batches.

Proud producers of award winning free range chicken uniquely fed on a fresh herb diet.

• Steam-cooked quickly, perfectly preserving the vibrant flavours, colours and textures. @ctpreserves

/cherrytreepreserves

@cherrytreepreserves

www.cherrytreepreserves.co.uk

Stocking the best farm shops and independent butchers, or find out more online.

Free range christmas rooster Free range chicken Free range bronze turkey

T: 01347 823155

54 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

www.herbfedpoultry.co.uk

For more information on ranging our foods and trade pricing, please contact chris@cherrytreepreserves.co.uk 01308 458604

FINE FOOD DIGEST

Award -Winning Cornish Ice Cream Contact us for a tasting now: enquiries@treleavens.co.uk 01503 262499 www.treleavens.co.uk

NOT YOUR AVERAGE PASTA

NOT YOUR AVERAGE PESTO

NOT YOUR AVERAGE PASTA SAUCE

NOT YOUR AVERAGE OLIVE OIL Contact Garofalo UK for your local distributor 01438 813 444 info@garofalo.co.uk www.pasta-garofalo.com

FINE FOOD DIGEST

BEST BRANDS 2019-20 55

Winner of 21 awards at Great Taste

Choi Time, Award Winning Chinese speciality teas that unfurl and blossom in your cup. Hailed as “the Dom Perignon of the tea world� by the Sunday Times Style Magazine.

Phone: 0845 0533269 Email: wholesale@choitime.com Visit: www.choitime.co.uk

ƒ „ … †  ‡ ˆ ˆ ‰

I’m proud to introduce my traditional blend of Thai Herb and Spices, bringing authentic Southern Thai avours and aromas to the UK.

 � �� ��

Darren

56 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

★★★★★

VeriďŹ ed

 ­ €  ­ ‚ �

Mike Blair

★★★★★

VeriďŹ ed

âœŞ REVIEWS FINE FOOD DIGEST

MUST-STOCKS

All independent retailers will tell you that some items are more important and crucial to business than others.

Here’s a rundown of every must-stocks list from each of Fine Food Digest’s 2019 Deli of the Month interviewees.

January-February

DELI OF THE MONTH From its contemporary-styled store fronts and polished steel ‘walls of cheese’ to its newly launched online store, Clare Jackson’s Slate proves that grey – in all its shades – can be a retail turn-on

Nifty shades of grey

MUST-STOCKS Gorgonzola dolce (Carozzi) Shipcord extra-mature (Rodwell Farm Dairy) Baron Bigod (Fen Farm Dairy)

THERE ARE THREE kinds of shop name, Clare Jackson tells me. There’s the “surname name” (think Candice Fonseca’s Delifonseca in Liverpool). There’s the “place name” (Neal’s Yard Dairy and a thousand others). And then there’s the “random word associated with the product”.

“One that I love,” Jackson says, “is Pong. You know? Pongcheese.co.uk? I just love that. It sticks in the mind.”

We’re sitting in a quiet corner of a striking café and beer shop created by brewer Adnams in its home town of Southwold, Suffolk, and we’re talking about Slate, the brand that Jackson and her father John Ormerod dreamt up long before they had a cheese shop to stick the name on.

Like cheese, Jackson expains, slate is a natural product. It also gets better with age. And while the colour grey, she admits, can be “a bit dull”, when you put it in the hands of a decent branding

and design agency – she and Ormerod chose What Associates in Ipswich - it’s transformed into something cool and contemporary.

The Slate brand now sits above the door of two Suffolk cheese shops, which both opened under that name in November 2017. One is in Southwold, almost next door to the Adnams’ café that has been Jackson’s unofficial office since she first found premises here. The other is in Aldeburgh, half an hour’s drive down the coast, in what was once Lawson’s Deli.

And now there’s an online shop too, grafted on to Slate’s website a few weeks before Christmas 2018 and already picking up orders.

Considering neither Jackson nor her father have retail backgrounds, that’s not a bad start. But then, they’re not exactly low achievers. Before taking a career break to have kids, Jackson worked in London for PricewaterhouseCoopers, one of

Suffolk Gold (Suffolk Farmhouse Cheeses)

the world’s biggest accounting firms. Ormerod was a UK senior partner at the biggest, Deloitte, and spent 30 successful years with another professional services giant, Arthur Anderson.

Although 70 this year, he still has fingers in many business pies, says Jackson. Yet often, at weekends, he can be found on the pavement outside Slate Southwold, luring shoppers into the tiny 400 sq ft store with tasters. “They call him the ‘Pied Piper of Cheese’,” she says.

And Jackson too gives the lie to the image of accountants as a bit dull and, er, grey. She’s zesty, knowledgeable and laughs a lot, but still has that sharp edge that ensures, for example, that FFD’s camera doesn’t pick up anything in the shop that she’s not proud of. When I rib her about this, she says quickly: “Do you know any small business owner that isn’t a bit controlling?”

Jackson’s family had been coming to this

Weydeland 1000-day-aged gouda Burt’s Blue cheese Bray’s Cottage pork pies Pump Street bread Pump Street chocolate Peter’s Yard crispbread – original The Fine Cheese Co Toast For Cheese – dates, hazlenuts & pumpkin seeds Foods of Athenry gluten-free crackers Eastgate Larder medlar preserves Fruit Magpie fruit cheeses Rosebud Preserves fig chutney Slate own-brand chilli jam Bracey Bees honey

prosperous area of Suffolk for decades – part of that weekend and summer exodus from the Capital that made this East Anglia’s first “London-on-Sea”. Then in 2016, with one of their children at boarding school in Suffolk, she and her husband moved home permanently to Woodbridge, north of Ipswich.

It was here that, with her father, she began mulling her next business move.

“We had the idea for Slate – the name and concept – the summer I was moving up,” she recalls. “We thought it could work in Southwold, and started looking at this shop, but then we saw Lawson’s was on the market and thought that would be a good option to start with.”

They took over from long-time owners Richard Lawson and Claire Bruce-Clayton in January 2017 and ran the Aldeburgh shop under its old name for 10 months – “We sort of slipped in under the radar” – while learning the ropes.

One big bonus of moving into an existing shop was inheriting the staff, most of whom had worked at the high street store for several years.

“So that gave us a jump-start, particularly as they were very experienced in the Aldeburgh market – what customers like, and the pattern of the year, which is so seasonal.”

VITAL STATISTICS

Locations: 6 Victoria Street, Southwold, Suffolk, IP18 6HZ and 138 High St, Aldeburgh, Suffolk, IP15 5AQ Floor space: Southwold: 400 sq ft, Aldeburgh: 600 sq ft Turnover: £500,000 (combined) No of employees: 8 full-time equivalent (varying seasonally), plus the owners 52

Aldeburgh was rebranded and – after a flurry of building work at both sites – opened in unison with the new Southwold Slate store in November 2017. But there was still plenty to learn. “A lot of people come at running their own food business through the chef route and knowing about food,” says Jackson, “and find things like VAT returns and payroll the big learning curve.

“For us, if the VAT people want to do a spotcheck on our records, that sort of plays to our strengths. Our learning curve was round things like managing stock.

“We had lots of ideas, but it’s the practicalities of keeping the show on the road – like not ordering too much on the first day. I just love big wheels of cheese but they’re too big to cut in our shop. I didn’t realise you get the supplier to cut them into halves or quarters!”

While FFD originally reported on the “takeover” of Lawson’s deli, and even how father and daughter planned to open “a second branch of Lawson’s”, Jackson is quick to quash that idea.

“We don’t call this a deli,” she says. “We took over Lawson’s premises, but Slate is a cheese shop. To me, it’s a different mindset.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 55

January-February 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 1

Vol.20 Issue 1 | January-February 2019

53

March

DELI OF THE MONTH Although it began life as an outlet for its founders’ organic produce, Somerset’s Trading Post Farm Shop has grown into a specialist food store that covers all the bases. Now under the stewardship of former shop manager Kate Forbes, it is reaping the rewards of some bold retailing decisions.

Interview by Michael Lane

A shop for all reasons IT’S NOT UNCOMMON to spot a motivational slogan pinned up in a shop’s back office but the one that hovers over Kate Forbes’s computer screen really caught my eye.

Not just because the phrase ‘Get s**t done’ is particularly punchy but also because the owner of Trading Post Farm Shop seems to have followed this advice to the letter.

Since she and husband Andy took over the store – a former filling station just off the A303 in South Somerset – in November 2017, Forbes has set about the place with gusto.

By investing in a number of alterations and clever additions to the shopfloor – including a loose chocolate counter and a waste-reducing refill room – she has increased turnover by an impressive 30% according the most recent yearon-year figures. No wonder Trading Post is a finalist in the Guild of Fine Food’s 2019 Shop of

the Year competition.

“Interestingly the average basket spend has not gone up since we took over,” Forbes tells FFD, analysing the shop’s financial performance.

“Footfall of customers, that’s what gone up – which is a brilliant place to be. Because a lot of people spending the same amount of money is better than a few people spending more.”

It doesn’t diminish her achievements but Forbes already had a solid base to build from.

She had worked in the shop for the best part of a decade before buying the goodwill, stock, fixtures and fittings from previous owners Sue Hasell and Steve Friend. They set up the business 20 years ago – as an organic farm with the shop as an outlet for its produce. That supply relationship continues today and they retain the site, renting it to Forbes. There is also an extra footfall magnet in the form of The Railway Carriage Café next door

MUST-STOCKS Beenleigh Blue Vintage Cornish Gouda

that shares a back door with the shop but, again, is a separate business.

Having been manager for the last couple of years and constantly pondering what she would do if the shop was hers, Forbes still saw plenty of scope to boost customer numbers and takings.

And the new owner really hit the ground running.

“We closed for a day, changed the entire shop around and then reopened the next day. People came in and they thought we’d extended because there was so much more space.”

Forbes estimates that there are some 5,000 different lines across the shop’s two main rooms – plus a couple of adjoining nooks and crannies – but it truthfully doesn’t feel crammed. This is made more remarkable when you consider that there is no stockroom. Any extras are stored under tables but the majority is ordered on a just-in-time basis, both from wholesalers like

Driftwood (White Lake Cheese) Smoked Somerset Brie Grubworkz pork belly ready-meal Liberty Love Coffee Teoni’s stem ginger cookies Newton House Gin Conker Cold Brew Bower Bakery sourdough Baboo passionfruit sorbet Hembridge Organics real ale chutney Brian Wogan Sumatra coffee Wriggle Valley Beer Hotch Potch gluten-free chorizo & tomato Scotch eggs

Cotswold Fayre, Holleys and Diverse and direct from over 80 local suppliers.

Although she admits that the wealth of brands and categories can seem like “organised chaos”, Forbes is adamant that the approach puts customers at ease with browsing.

“You go to some farm shops and it’s all very same-y because they’ve branded everything.

“No one wants to walk into a wall of the same label. You actually end up not looking at anything.”

Encompassing gluten-free biscuits, the latest British gins and spirits (which I’m told are Andy’s department), vegan Scotch eggs, high quality balsamic, and even cannabis-derived CBD oil, the broad range reflects Trading Post’s ethos of “being everything to everybody”, and makes the shop hard to pigeonhole. But the sourcing philosophy is relatively simple.

“It’s local, it’s organic, it’s fresh – we get the fresh pick from the field every morning – or it’s delicious. Those are my four things.”

Those may be the criteria but Forbes also seems to have a knack for sussing out what her varied customer base wants. Some of her more major changes are cases in point.

Although installing a proper cheese counter

VITAL STATISTICS

Location: Trading Post Farm Shop, Lopenhead, Somerset TA13 5JH Turnover: £606,000 (Feb 18 - Feb 19) Total annual footfall: 43,800 customers Average daily sales: £1,674 Average basket spend: £13.83 Staff: 7 (part-time) 54

was one of her long-held dreams for the shop, it was accelerated by the proposed closure of a nearby deli.

Trading Post introduced a tight range of West Country cheeses in May – including Westcombe and Montgomery cheddars, Cornish Yarg and a variety of ewes’ and goats’ milk creations from White Lake – and this line-up has served the shop well thus far.

Cornish Gouda works as an alternative to Parmesan, while the West’s strong blue contingent (Bath, Beenleigh, Dorset Blue Vinney) covers off the Stilton conundrum.

That said, Forbes has permitted the introduction of a monthly “guest cheese”.

Given the disappointing performance of loose olives behind the glass (Forbes wants to move them to a self-service station elsewhere), there are going to be more counter inches available soon for a more permanent range of cheese from further afield.

That is, if the other new counter speciality doesn’t take them first.

“It was a massive gamble,” says Forbes of the loose chocolate selection that was introduced at CONTINUED ON PAGE 57

March 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 2

Vol.20 Issue 2 | March 2019

55

With only two years of trading under their belts you might think Emma and Ben Mosey are relative farm shop novices. But they are picking up accolades and increasing sales all the time with a business plan that revolves around their small flock of hens and home-grown veg rather than meat.

Minskip Farm Shop North Yorkshire

Interview by Michael Lane

A chicken and egg situation breakfast table should.

This most humble of products is at the heart of their business and looks set to be its future, as turnover increases rapidly and they embark on a long-term plan to expand and diversify – with their eggs remaining the centrepiece.

The Moseys are still relative novices when it comes to this game. Although Ben had plenty of practical knowhow from growing up on his family’s sheep and pig farm, the couple had no prior retail experience two years ago when they took over a farm with 6,000 laying hens and its own shop, 20 minutes north west of Harrogate.

At first glance, the shop is more “farm gate” than a rural retailing marvel – there is no butchery, no deli counter and it’s closer in size to an urban shop. The fact that they are in an area of the UK that is rich in farm shops (there are three within 5 miles of Minskip alone) and

Purple sprouting broccoli, kale, spinach and chard (all from Minskip’s market garden) Very large eggs (Minskip’s own) Bear & Mouse Chocolate Acorn Dairy Milk Yorkshire Mayo Herb-fed poultry Whittakers Gin Vanoras Bakery sourdough Cartright & Butler biscuits and preserves Bessie’s Yorkshire Preserves Lishman’s ‘Nduja Bad Co Brewery beers Spellow Farm Bakery

Richard Faulks

Location: Minskip Farm Shop, Minskip Road, Boroughbridge, YO519HY Turnover: £400,000 (incl. wholesale eggs) Total Annual Footfall: 30,138 (2018) Average basket spend: £11 Staff: 7 (part-time) 56

MUST-STOCKS

have a supermarket five minutes up the road, should see the odds stacked further against them.

Yet, the shop pops up regularly on awards shortlists and they have been invited to join a Farm Retail Association board meeting the day after FFD visits. Their numbers back up these endorsements.

The farm is turning over £400,000 (up 38% since January 2017), of which 70% is retail revenue. Remarkably, those super fresh eggs along with a strikingly merchandised array of vegetables – quite a few of which are grown in the Moseys’ own market garden – account for half of all sales. In total, 96% of the lines stocked are sourced from within 20 miles.

With meat sales from a small multi-deck accounting for just 5% of sales, you might think they have hamstrung their growth potential but

VITAL STATISTICS

keeping this category to a minimum is Minskip’s major point of difference.

“When we first looked round the shop, we actually thought that was a weakness and we should be meat-based because most are,” says Emma Mosey. “But what we’ve learnt – especially with the kind of trends that are going on at the moment – is the hens are the most unique thing about our business.”

The relatively small scale of the operation is also something Mosey sees as a boon rather than a negative.

“Because we are smaller, we’re very transparent. You can see the veg as you drive in, you can see the hens from the car park.”

She adds: “As farm shops get bigger, some lose that and become more café-based than anything. It’s not a negative thing but we found, when we were first starting, that you can’t tell the difference between some shops, what their USP is or what the original farm was.”

After a couple of years getting to grips with the business, Emma Mosey says they are now looking to upgrade on the single building inherited from the previous owners with a caférestaurant. This is just the first phase of a bigger project.

“We’ve got a 10-year plan, it’s taken us two years to make it!”

Eventually, Minskip will evolve into a destination for visitors to learn about food and farming. While further phases remain a closely guarded secret, Mosey says they have taken inspiration from the foodie attractions they saw while living in Perth, Western Australia, especially those in the nearby wine region of Margaret River.

“We’ve weighed up other options in terms of growth,” she says. “Those have gone along the lines of more generic food & beverage or a play offering for kids. But both of those things are very replicable, and not just by farm shops but by all sorts of people in the leisure industry.”

The chosen direction is also informed by Mosey’s own “townie” fascination and love of the rural way of life.

“Through meeting Ben I’ve become addicted to the farming life and reconnecting with our food. We are really passionate about trying to find a way for people to see their food growing or the hens lay the eggs, in a way that’s really exciting and educational.”

CONTINUED ON PAGE 59

April 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 3

Vol.20 Issue 3 | April 2019

57

It was while trying to save her local high street that Vicky Skingley decided to become a part of it when she opened Good Food – a South East London deli and social enterprise on a mission to give back to its local community Interview by Lauren Phillips

Retailing that's good for everyone

Good Food Catford, London

MUST-STOCKS San Amvrosia houmous

losing local high street shops to residential conversions and wanted a better shopping experience. After costing what it would take to finance the opening, she set up a crowdfunding page.

Within six months, Skingley had reached her target of £33,500 after receiving donations from 350 local residents and businesses. And

by February 2016, Good Food opened its doors on a parade in one of Catford’s suburban areas – a journey Skingley herself describes as a “white knuckle ride”.

“It has been a very steep learning curve, especially in that first year,” she says. “I had no retail experience and was totally winging it.”

Today, Skingley is supported by Julian and Kristen Fuller, who have worked with her since the shop’s inception but came on board as codirectors at the beginning of 2018.

Location: 7 Sandhurst Market, Catford, London, SE6 1DL Turnover: £280,000 approx.

No of staff: 7 (part-time) Average basket spend: £7.80 No. of retail lines: 1,467 (1,000 lines currently on the shop floor) 48

Oatly Barista Edition mylk

They might have been winging the retailing element but Skingley and her team knew the end goal: all the money made in-store would be reinvested into the business and go to pay its employees the London Living Wage (£10.55 per hour).

But the shop still needed to have an official mission statement that would outline what Good Food was trying to achieve as a social enterprise and which the team could refer to to help inform their business decisions.

On paper, it is “To inspire healthier communities by connecting people to real local food, employing responsibly, engaging with the local area positively and considering the environmental impact of everything we do”.

In practice, this means running its veg box subscription scheme or encouraging Catford allotment holders to exchange their surplus

VITAL STATISTICS

May 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 4

FINE FOOD DIGEST

Yorkshire Mayo Herb-fed poultry Whittakers Gin Purple sprouting Vanoras Bakery broccoli, kale, spinach sourdough and chard (all from Cartwright & Butler Minskip’s market biscuits and preserves garden) Bessie’s Yorkshire Very large eggs Preserves (Minskip’s own) Lishman’s ‘Nduja Bear & Mouse Chocolate BAD Co Brewery beers Acorn Dairy Milk Spellow Farm Bakery

May

DELI OF THE MONTH

MANY RETAILERS on a quiet Thursday afternoon might be checking stock or finally finishing that supplier order form.

But when I arrive at Catford-based Good Food, owner Vicky Skingley and her codirector, Julian Beaumont (pictured below), are just about to deliver two large boxes of fruit and veg to a local pub down the road as part of the shop’s not-for-profit veg box subscription scheme.

“We use the money that we make from this to buy eggs every week for the local food bank,” Skingley tells me.

This might sound unconventional for an urban deli in South East London, but that’s because Good Food isn’t your average independent retailer – it’s a social enterprise.

Skingley decided to start the business after she and other residents grew tired of

Trading Post Farm Shop Newton House Gin Conker Cold Brew South Somerset Bower Bakery sourdough Baboo passionfruit Beenleigh Blue sorbet Vintage Cornish Gouda Hembridge Organics real Driftwood (White Lake ale chutney Cheese) Brian Wogan Sumatra Smoked Somerset Brie coffee Grubworkz pork belly Wriggle Valley Beer ready-meal Hotch Potch glutenLiberty Love Coffee free chorizo & tomato Teoni’s stem ginger Scotch eggs cookies

April

DELI OF THE MONTH

FOR ALL OF YOU OUT there whose weekend breakfast preparations are filled with dread, FFD can bring you some comfort via North Yorkshire.

“People blame themselves for not being able to poach eggs but it’s actually all to do with freshness,” says Emma Mosey, co-owner of Minskip Farm Shop. “It’s impossible to get the eggs to supermarkets in 10 days or less, so they’re unpoachable by the time they get there.”

It’s hard to imagine that Mosey, a novelist (under her maiden name Chapman), and her husband Ben, a geologist, could bore anyone at a social gathering. But she insists that they have been earmarked by friends as the people who talk endlessly about eggs at dinner parties.

Even if their assertion that you shouldn’t even need a drop of vinegar or a whirlpool (yes, really) in the pan doesn’t make you sit up and listen, then the couple’s success far beyond the

Slate Pump Street chocolate Southwold & Aldeburgh, Peter’s Yard crispbread – Suffolk original The Fine Cheese Co Gorgonzola dolce Toast For Cheese – (Carozzi) dates, hazelnuts & Shipcord extra-mature pumpkin seeds (Rodwell Farm Dairy) Foods of Athenry glutenBaron Bigod (Fen Farm free crackers Dairy) Eastgate Larder medlar Suffolk Gold (Suffolk preserves Farmhouse Cheeses) Fruit Magpie fruit Weydeland 1000-daycheeses aged gouda Rosebud Preserves fig Burt’s Blue cheese chutney Bray’s Cottage pork pies Slate own-brand chilli Pump Street bread jam

Organic sourdough bread Local organic fruit & veg The Coconut Kitchen curry pastes Stach chocolate Percy’s Delightful Creams Local honey Sauce Shop smoky chipotle ketchup Rubies In The Rubble spicy tomato relish Manomasa tortilla chips ManiLife peanut butter Villages Rafiki Session IPA Organic eggs St. John doughnuts

produce, which the shop sells for £2 a kilo, in exchange for a voucher.

“I didn’t just want to be a shop selling expensive stuff to people that can afford it,” Skingley says. “It had to be supportive of the community.”

She is still involved in the wider regeneration of the local area and is currently trying to get three empty shops on the parade let.

“It’s in my interest to get more people walking down here casually on a Saturday,” she says. “Because if I do well, then we’re all doing well and getting a really vibrant, sexy high street and not just takeaway chicken shops there are enough of those in Catford.”

It’s not just through external activities that the shop follows its mission statement, Good Food’s aim of “connecting people to real local food” influences how it ranges the store.

Products from South East London businesses account for over 200 of the 1,000 lines it carries. ManiLife, Rubies in the Rubble and Husk & Honey Granola are just some of the brands adorning Good Food’s shelves, and the shop regularly puts together beer boxes and hampers celebrating South East London food.

Although, Skingley and her team say they have

yet to find a South East London biscuit.

This extends to its range of British artisan cheese, which co-director Beaumont sources from Neal’s Yard Dairy, citing brand recognition and good customer service.

If not local, then organic is another of the criteria that stock has to meet because, as Beaumont says, “it ticks our social aims of supporting the environment and building healthier communities.”

The shop’s fruit and veg, sourced from Brockmans Farm in Kent and displayed towards the entrance, is organic as is the sourdough bread which sits alongside it. There are also organic grains, pulses and flours situated at the back of the store which the shop gets from Suma and Marigold. While Skingley uses Cotswold Fayre, Diverse Fine Food and The Gorgeous Food Company for its other ambient lines.

Aside from using traditional supplier catalogues to hunt for stock, co-director Kristen Fuller (a former buyer for Debenhams and Jamie Oliver) comes into contact with many local producers through her involvement in the CONTINUED ON PAGE 51

Vol.20 Issue 4 | May 2019

49

San Amvrosia houmous Oatly Barista Edition oat drink Organic sourdough bread Local organic fruit & veg The Coconut Kitchen curry pastes STACH chocolate

Percy’s Delightful Creams Local honey Sauce Shop smoky chipotle ketchup Rubies In The Rubble spicy tomato relish Manomasa tortilla chips ManiLife peanut butter Villages Rafiki Session IPA Organic eggs St. John doughnuts BEST BRANDS 2019-20 57

Specialists in Speciality Quality Yorkshire Preserves

Bracken Hill Fine Foods Bracken Hill Yorkshire Preserves aims to provide the finest quality Yorkshire Preserves with an emphasis on Great Taste and providing a reliable and friendly service we strive to be the best supplier of traditional preserves in the North of England and we value ALL our customers. We have won numerous awards for their wonderful taste and pride ourselves on their quality.Own label available for specialty shops and delis we offer our products in their own branded packaging. Contact us for details.

Trade enquiries welcome we offer competitive terms across the UK. Call: 01904 608811

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58 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

Multi-Award-Winning Free Range Eggs Ethically Produced Husband and wife team from County Fermanagh in Northern Ireland, producing free range eggs since 2002 and launched the Cavanagh brand in 2012 to satisfy consumer demand for a quality artisan free range egg ethically produced. We grade and pack multi-award-winning free range eggs from 75,000 birds in 7 flocks across 4 separate sites. Our flocks and Packing Centre are all British Lion Accredited and are rotated to ensure a constant supply of the various sizes all year round for foodservice and retail. Awards include Great Taste, Blas na hEireann, Irish Quality Food Awards, Family Business of the Year 2018, Poultry Farmer of the Year 2017 and 2018, Delicious Produce Award Winner 2018 and Made in Northern Ireland Food and Drink Producer of the Year 2018.

For enquiries email eileen@cavanagheggs.com www.awardwinningeggs.com

FINE FOOD DIGEST

MUST-STOCKS

June

DELI OF THE MONTH Led by general manager Alan Downes with his supermarket background, Hawarden Estate Farm Shop has cast off the gingham-clad image of yesteryear’s farm shops. Instead, offering a contemporary ‘Instagrammable’ destination that’s all about the experience Interview by Lauren Phillips

The experience factor THE WELL-KNOWN SAYING ‘never judge a book by its cover’ comes to mind when I arrive at Hawarden Estate Farm Shop.

From the outside, the modest rectangularshaped building resembles a shipping container that’s been clad in weather-beaten wooden planks. The inside, however, tells a different story.

Neon pinks, greens and oranges pop out

from the contemporary fixtures and fittings of the high ceiling and shop floor. Framed vintage posters adorn the walls too, while an enthusiastic ‘Hello’ emblazoned on an orange sign is a welcoming beacon at the back of the shop. You’d sooner see all this in a London deli or eatery than a farm shop four miles from the Dee Estuary in Flintshire, North Wales.

In fact, I can’t help but think this aesthetic

is the perfect backdrop for an Instagram photograph, which is exactly what the general manager of Hawarden Estate Farm Shop, Alan Downes, had in mind.

“The world is becoming more ‘Instagrammable’,” he tells me. “People are taking pictures of their food and their environment for social media, so it’s about creating more of an experience and that’s what we want to show.”

‘Experience’ is a word Downes uses a lot, but everything from the contemporary, colourful decor to the choice of background music (a current mix including The Beatles, Bob Marley and Taylor Swift) does make visiting Hawarden an experience.

“We’ve realised that you have to create an experience of exceeding people's’ expectations,” says Downes. “So that they want to come, sit here and enjoy our food. It’s modern, gives the people what they want and that’s what we want.”

Current consumer behaviours and trends, like experience-led retailing, drive a lot of the decisions made by Downes and the staff at the shop and makes up a huge part of its business model. If this sounds a little more ‘supermarket-y’ than your average independent retailer, it’s no surprise given Downes’ background.

A trainee butcher at 14 and shop manager of his local supermarket at 21, Downes spent the best part of 12 years working his way up from the fresh meat counter to ambient grocery lines at Asda until becoming general manager for the Walmart supercentre in Queensferry.

He decided to swap the system and process of the supermarkets for the flexible and artisan food world of the farm shop after completing a dissertation on local food sourcing for an Open University course in business management.

Downes even pitched this work to Asda

Location: Chester Road, Hawarden, Flintshire, Wales, CH5 3FB Turnover: £1.25m (farm shop only) No. of staff: 40 (farm shop only including management) Average basket spend: £12

48

Rosie’s Cider Aber Falls gin Peter’s Yard crispbreads Provision Merchant Provision Merchant milk piccalilli Local honey Caws Cenarth Welsh Brie Homegrown asparagus Caws Cenarth Perl Wen Homemade sausage rolls Amaretti Fingers Homemade sausages Winiary Polish Plum Doughnutology Butter Jam

MUST-STOCKS Provision Merchant milk Local honey Homegrown asparagus Homemade sausage rolls Homemade sausages Doughnutology Rosie’s Cider Aber Falls gin Peter’s Yard crispbreads Provision Merchant piccalilli Caws Cenarth Welsh Brie Caws Cenarth Perl Wen

– concluding that the supermarket should be offering a dedicated local food aisle in each store – but they rejected it.

“10-15 years on, I’m vindicated it was the right thing to do,” he says, adding that it was the moment he realised that local food was where his passion was.

By August 2007, Downes had met Charles Gladstone, owner of the Hawarden Estate and joined him to set up a farm shop on a 25-acre plot, providing the “nuts and bolts” side of the business like HACCP, environmental health, recruitment and management.

Today, the Hawarden Estate Farm Shop has an annual turnover of £1.25 million and stocks thousands of different lines that are either produced on the estate, like its milk (sold under the shop’s sub-brand ‘Provision Merchant’), or supplied by local producers whom the shop has worked with for years, such as Cheshire Chutney Co and Rosie’s Cider. Speciality food favourites like Peter’s Yard can also be found because “it nails both the branding and product”.

But while championing local artisan food from cottage industries was enough to sustain a farm shop 12 years ago, says Downes, today

VITAL STATISTICS

Hawarden Estate Farm Shop Flintshire, Wales

indie retailers are facing new challenges.

Supermarkets are joining the local food movement and customers’ shopping patterns are changing, which is why farm shops like Hawarden have to be on the front foot with current consumer trends to differentiate themselves from the multiples.

“Once upon a time provenance and great food was people’s destination and there weren’t many places that were doing it,” says Downes, “Now there are many more. And customers have changed how, where and why they spend their money.”

Recent alterations include, expanding its foodservice operation (Hawarden’s cafe and takeaway section makes up 45-50% of the farm shop’s overall takings) and offering more dressed and prepared meals of ready-to-cook stir fries, en croutes and marinated chicken breasts on its butchery counter to cater to the demand for convenience. The fresh meat area also has a grab-and-go section alongside the butchery counter stocking prepared meats that can all be cooked “in half an hour in the oven at 180°C”.

CONTINUED ON PAGE 51

June 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 5

Vol.20 Issue 5 | June 2019

49

July

DELI OF THE MONTH Sweden has its fair share of stereotypes – especially when it comes to cuisine. But you won’t encounter them at Möllans Ost in Malmö. Set up more than 30 years ago, this is a cheese-led business that has embraced food from around the world.

Möllans Ost Malmö, Sweden

Interview by Michael Lane

Took a chance on cheese THERE’S BARELY A SILENT moment on the streets when I visit Malmö – Sweden’s thirdlargest and most southerly city. Giant trucks, loaded with booming sound systems and screaming teenagers in white sailor hats, seem to come barrelling through the streets every few minutes. Apparently, I’ve arrived during the week that students graduate from high school and these revelries are very much a normal Swedish custom.

It’s a slightly unexpected sight, given that I landed here with a list of cultural preconceptions to check off.

But when I arrive at my destination, it feels familiar rather than clichéd. The first thing you notice are long serveovers and chillers filled with Continental cheese, bowls of olives sit alongside charcuterie like Parma ham, and the shelves are dressed with crackers, chutneys and oils. Staff exchange pleasantries in fluent English. I’m even

informed that, at Christmas, customers will queue around the corner for an hour to get their hands on a piece of Colton Bassett Stilton.

There’s not a smörgåsbord, meatball or rotten herring in sight.

This is Möllans Ost, a cheesemonger and deli that sits at the heart of the city’s Möllvången neighbourhood – an area renowned for food thanks to its daily produce market. The shop is also at the core of a €6m operation which includes a nationwide import and wholesale business, as well as a second retail unit in Malmö’s trendy Saluhall food market.

It hasn’t always been such a serene beacon of food retailing, though.

Owner Peter Mårtensson – who some readers may recognise from recent Supreme judging panels at the World Cheese Awards – set his heart on opening a shop seling “ost” (Swedish for “cheese”) after a wine-filled evening while

travelling in Spain during the mid-80s. He realised this dream in 1988 in a tiny 43sq m unit around the corner from the current premises.

“The first customer I ever had was an old lady,” he says. “She looked around and said ‘Do you maybe have some old pieces of cheese to sell to me cheap?’

“I thought ‘Oh, this is how my life’s going to be.’”

Mårtensson stuck with it, though. And he quickly decided to seek his own suppliers abroad to differentiate his shop from the supermarkets that were all buying cheese from larger wholesalers.

At the exact moment he was unwrapping his first ever pallet from a small Parisian exporter loaded with €1,000 of small French goats’ cheeses – and telling himself he was going to go bankrupt – a curious food journalist happened to walk in and Möllans Ost had the exposure it needed.

VITAL STATISTICS

Location: Möllans Ost, Bergsgatan 32, 214 22 Malmö, Sweden Turnover: €6m (overall), €1.1m (retail) No. of shops: 2 Average basket: €20-€25 Average margin: 50% No of cheeses: 400 (warehouse), 150 (in the counter) Retail staff: 22 (3 full-time) 52

Peter Mårtensson

As he gained more of a following, Mårtensson began building relationships with smaller exporters in Italy and Spain, too. The unique cheeses he was bringing in attracted the attention of some restaurants and fellow shop owners also put in orders to squeeze onto the pallets he was already bringing in.

“All of a sudden I had a wholesale business,” he says. “All the others were just aiming for the supermarkets but I found a ‘black hole’ with deli shops. No one was looking after them and still not many do in Sweden.”

When Swedish supermarkets decided to shut their deli counters across their stores 15 years ago, there was a huge opportunity for independent retailers to start up across the country, especially outside of big cities like Stockholm and Gothenburg.

“And I was on that train collecting them as customers,” says Mårtensson.

In order to serve growing wholesale and retail customer bases, Möllans Ost has grown physically too. It switched to another retail unit in the same block after 12 years and spent 5 years there, before that premises became its wholesale office in 2005, and the shop moved to the 150 sq m corner unit next door that it currently occupies. There is a 400 sq m warehouse, which serves both the wholesale and retail parts of the business, in an industrial building five minutes’ walk away.

This set-up benefits every part of the business. While the shop can re-stock quickly at short notice, it also effectively has access to 400 cheeses even when there’s only 150 on the counter.

“It’s good because when people ask for something, I can say we’ve got it in the warehouse,” says retail manager Malin Dahl, who has worked at Möllans Ost for 12 years. “We don’t do it all the time but I can get it for them in

20 minutes.”

This flexibility proves useful given the broadness of the shop’s customer base. When I visit on a Tuesday morning, there is a steady trickle of retired women picking up a few bits but Dahl says there is a group of big-spending men in their 60s who frequent the other shop in the Saluhall on a Friday, spending €70 at a time.

There are younger customers, too, but I get a blank look from both Mårtensson and Dahl when I mention the dreaded Millennial. The term might be lost in translation but they both laugh knowingly when I ask whether they have trendier “hipster” customers.

“We’ve got something for everybody here,” says Dahl. “There’s a group of hipsters in Malmö moving around to all the new food places but they come back here when they are looking for something they can’t get at the others. We can always say ‘I haven’t got it now. Give me two weeks.’”

Mårtensson says that taking the time to encourage younger visitors to spend a little in the shop, “even if their wallets are not so thick”, will result in them becoming regular customers.

He adds that generally the clientele is interested in food “but maybe not in such an Instagram way”. Lots of them come in looking to track down something they have encountered on their travels across Europe. Again, the wholesale business comes into play because Möllans Ost’s connections across Europe mean they can add an extra case of something to a pallet that’s already coming from another country.

Additionally, the shop is a great testing ground for products and Mårtensson and his wholesale team can speak from experience about how to merchandise items and what to upsell alongside them.

MUST-STOCKS Von Mühlenen – Gruyère Onetik- Coeur de Basque Emmi – Kaltbach Creamy Käserei Champignon- Montagnolo Affiné Almnäs Bruk – Almnäs Tegel Ford Farm- Farmhouse cheddar Lincet – Delice de Bourgogne Fine Cheese Co Toast for Cheese Skånemejerier – Sandwich cheeses Corsica Gastronomia marmalades Colston Basset- Stilton Boni – Pamiggiano Reggiano DOP Queserias del Tietar– Monte Enebro Dongé – Brie de Meaux Central Formaggi – Moliterno Truffle Pecorino

CONTINUED ON PAGE 55

July 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 6

Vol.20 Issue 6 | July 2019

53

Regardless of success, so many food businesses face the problem of what to do when it’s time to hand over the reins. Luckily for one busy Cotswold deli-café, the management team was ready and willing. Meet the new owners of Broadway Deli.

Interview by Michael Lane

And the quartet played on... inhabit this part of the UK. When I try to assemble the deli’s four co-owners into posing together for a single photo, they wryly suggest that it may end up looking like a boyband shoot – but this group is certainly not a bunch of tuneless amateurs.

“There’s over 30 years’ deli experience here between the four of us,” says one of them, George Courts. “We’re all under 30 as well, so that’s quite a lot of time committed to one place between us.”

Not only is this shop a fine example of a bustling deli-café, it is also a bit of a pioneering study into a problem that affects so many at the smaller end of food: succession.

The young owners have only been in charge of Broadway Deli a few weeks but, like all good boybands, they have been mentored well. All of them have worked for years under the previous owners Louise Hunt and Alan Frimley, who set

up and ran the shop for 17 years across a couple of locations in the village, before eventually settling in its current home five years ago.

Until two months ago, none of the foursome had any idea that Frimley and Hunt were planning to retire and hand the reins over to them.

“There’s a few things that happened in the last three years but, at the time, no bells were ringing,” says Will Doyle, who at 24 is the youngest of the four and has worked in the deli for eight years. “But when you look back you think ‘Actually, you’ve got me to do that now so I’m comfortable with this’.”

Alongside Courts and Doyle, the selfprofessed “deli family” is completed by Shane Brotherton and Billy Powell, who is the longest-serving team member having joined initially as a Saturday boy 14 years ago. All four have bought an equal share in a business that is

VITAL STATISTICS

Location: 29 High Street, Broadway, Worcestershire, WR12 7DP Average basket spend: £15-20 Floor area: (retail) 1,330 sq ft, (café) 1,164 sq ft No. of staff: 5 full-time (plus 4 owners)

58

Broadway Deli Broadway, Worcs

MUST-STOCKS Cotswold Bees honey Ozone Coffee Empire Blend Holmeleigh Dairy Gold Top milk Cotswold Gold rapeseed oil Cotswold Raw dog treats Billy’s Woodland eggs Peter Cooks bread Local vegetables (Drinkwaters) George Courts

Will Doyle

seemingly thriving.

When FFD arrives on a sunny Tuesday, there are customers all over the shop browsing the nooks and crannies of the building that are stuffed with all manner of ambient goods.

In what you might call the shop’s two front rooms are the deli counter and a fully stocked greengrocer’s display. And where there aren’t products for sale, there are tables – some 60 covers are packed in across the two floors and the rear patio.

“The whole point of the café is to showcase the shop,” says Court. “That’s always been the rule ever since I’ve been here. The café is hard work and takes a lot of staff but the shop massively benefits.”

This is borne out by a turnover that is split roughly 70:30 in favour of retail. He adds: “We’ve never had a day when the café’s more than the retail till.”

A prime example of this theory in action is the Seggiano green pesto that Broadway Deli counts as one of its bestsellers. The café kitchen ploughs through 4-litre jars of it in various recipes, including the pesto salad on the counter. As a result of getting customers to sample it this way, the deli is selling as many as two dozen 1kg jars (at £20 each) every fortnight.

The café menu changes daily. It contains a soup of the day, soufflé, Ploughman’s, sandwiches (available to takeway from the counter too) and a Goodness Bowl made with cauliflower rice but there are regular variations on all of these, as well as seasonal dishes like Serrano ham, roasted nectarines and burrata.

This approach allows Broadway to account for short-dated produce and deli items from retail and to promote new lines, but it also keeps things interesting for everyone.

Courts says: “It would be a lot easier to

Shane Brotherton

Billy Powell

keep the menu the same for a period of time but we’ve got a massive amount of locals that come here three or four times a week so we need to do it for them as much as anything.”

Despite the location and a recently revived steam railway between Broadway and Cheltenham Racecourse boosting the already hefty tourist footfall, these visitors are still outnumbered by regulars. On busy days in the height of summer, the café will serve 300 covers (or their full capacity five times over), between opening for breakfast and closing.

While Powell has recently become the primary chef and the other three patrol the shop floor and café areas constantly alongside other staff, the four owners are experienced enough to be able to work in any part of the business that needs the most help.

“I don’t think any of us would enjoy being an office person,” says Doyle, “because we like being busy and juggling serving tables with placing an order, or thinking ‘That table needs a dust’, or coming up with a sandwich for the next day.”

None of the quartet has entered into this venture thinking it will be an easy ride and they have to laugh behind the scenes at customers who come in and whimsically suggest they will open delis when they retire.

“It is hard work and is a career. I don’t want to work anywhere else and I don’t want to do anything else,” says Doyle, adding that his old school was dismayed he was the only pupil in his class not applying for university. “There is the outside opinion of ‘Oh, you work in a shop?’ which can be really derogatory and it’s a bad thing that has developed in society.”

“We always joke that we have degrees in Deli-ology,” says Court, highlighting that all

Branded hessian bags Two Farmers crisps Merrylegs apple juice Kingstone Dairy - Rollright Macneill’s smoked salmon Homemade sausage rolls Seggiano green pesto

CONTINUED ON PAGE 61

August 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 7

Vol.20 Issue 7 | August 2019

59

The Seasons in Forest Row has been championing natural and organic products since the 1970s. But it has transformed into a modern, thriving business since director Robin Walden took the helm five years ago.

The Seasons Forest Row, East Sussex

San Amvrosia houmous Brush with Bamboo toothbrushes Apples & bananas Flax Farm Flaxjacks The Sussex Kitchen Berkeley Farm salted seeded sourdough loaf Guernsey butter Conscious Chocolate – Infinity Wholefoods nuts Citrus Zest & seeds Orchard Eggs Plaw Hatch Farm yoghurt

Interview by Lauren Phillips

Changing at The Seasons The shop has evolved immensely since it was first opened by a Quaker farmer from Kent in 1971. In the early '80s, the Walden family joined the business through Robin’s dad, John Walden, who soon became a director and then bought the shop in 2012.

Walden junior - who recalls spending his youth helping in the shop during the school holidays - came on board five years ago with the aim of taking the shop into the 21st Century.

In the last two years, he has overseen the restructuring of the shop to shed the “small, stuffy and higgledy-piggledy” layout of a traditional wholefoods store and added new outdoor signage to “smarten up the shop front and stand out a bit more”.

This timely upgrade is also a reaction to the huge consumer appetite for wholefoods, vegan alternatives and organic products which has emerged in the last few years – and to other

businesses that now want a slice of this lucrative market.

“People are jumping on the bandwagon a bit,” says Walden. “But we know what we’re talking about. We know what our products are, what the ingredients are, and what they can be good for.”

This revamp has paid off, too. The shop has experienced huge spikes in sales in the last two years from a wider demographic who, traditionally, wouldn’t have visited an organic shop for their groceries.

“We’ve seen more younger people visiting and we’ve taken on more of the high-end market as well,” he says. “Especially since the shop looks more attractive, people are happier to come in here than when it looked a bit scruffy.”

The shop still has a loyal “socks-and-sandals” customer base, as well as the young mums who have always bought organic produce for their children on the school run.

VITAL STATISTICS

Location: Medway House, Lower Road, Forest Row, RH18 5HE Turnover: £2m Average basket spend: £20-40 Floor area: 155m2 Number of staff: 24 total (5 full-time) 78

This is helped by a local Steiner school in Forest Row (an alternative private school that encourages learning through creativity) which means there are a lot of consumers following a holistic lifestyle in the area.

“That’s been a core part of our customer base,” says Walden. “Caring for the environment goes hand-in-hand with organic and biodynamic farming, so that’s helped the business grow and sustain here.”

The shop also attracts young professionals coming in for their organic fruit & veg, homogenised milk or nut mylk, sourdough loaf and premium dark chocolate on a weekday lunch hour or evening commute.

This varied trade isn’t just local, either. The shop draws customers from within a 20-mile radius, reaching as far as Reigate in Surrey and Royal Tunbridge Wells in Kent. Walden attributes this to the strong and large product range. “There is no shop like us in this area” says Walden. “We’ve seen a few farm shops come and go but nothing substantial. It would be difficult for another shop to even catch up or open something of this size.”

The shop’s offering has grown and evolved from bran, brown rice and standard fruit & veg of the ‘80s and ‘90s. It now covers a wide range of categories across its two floors – fresh and chilled everyday essentials downstairs and dried goods and non-food products upstairs.

“We try and aim for all sorts of markets and products that could please everyone and if you get the range right you will attract those markets,” he says, adding: “We try not to be pretentious or too expensive, but still have good quality products that people are willing to spend extra on.”

That doesn’t mean every product in the wholefoods’ category makes it on shelf and

Walden’s stringent checklist for sourcing products only offers a small window for brands.

The shop prides itself on being a retailer of organic and biodynamic foods, with 90% of its 4,200 lines in store classed as organic.

Many items in the shop come from local organic suppliers. High Weald Dairy in Haywards Heath and Plaw Hatch Farm in East Grinstead supply the shop’s cheeses and yoghurts, Conscious Chocolate provides raw, organic chocolate bars, while The Sussex Kitchen, a bakery five miles down the road, delivers fresh organic sourdough bread daily. The shop relies on two farms for its organic eggs including the village’s Orchard Eggs farm.

There are two specialist distributors that Walden uses, which adds another layer to the vetting process for products that don’t meet the brief. Marigold tops up chilled goods like juices and vegan cheeses, while Infinity Foods supplies most of its dried and ambient lines.

“We know if they’re listing a product they’ve gone through and checked where it’s come from, how it’s made, how it’s sourced and if it’s sustainable or ecological,” he says.

While the director has little issue with a stocked brand appearing in supermarkets, he refuses to deal with brands or products from multinational companies and isn’t afraid to drop a best-selling line that gets taken over. One wellknown tea brand was recently dropped by the shop after it was bought out by Unilever.

“They were brilliant products, available everywhere but we still sold a lot of them,” he says. “But for them to jump into bed with Unilever just seemed absolutely crazy. One of the worst, most polluting, unethical, disgusting food

MUST-STOCKS Apples & bananas The Sussex Kitchen seeded sourdough loaf Conscious Chocolate – Citrus Zest Orchard Eggs San Amvrosia hummus Brush with bamboo toothbrushes Flax Farm Flaxjacks Berkeley Farm salted Guernsey butter Infinity Wholefoods nuts & seeds Plaw Hatch Farm yoghurt

CONTINUED ON PAGE 81

September 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 8

Vol.20 Issue 8 | September 2019

79

October-November

DELI OF THE MONTH When it comes to retailing, The Mainstreet Trading Company – a bookshop, café, deli and homewares shop – in the Scottish Borders is a real page turner. Bill and Rosamund de la Hey tell FFD the story behind creating a brand and destination.

Interview by Lauren Phillips

Retailing, chapter by chapter WHEN BILL AND ROSAMUND DE LA HEY decided they wanted to open a bookshop with a café in St. Boswells, a village in the Scottish Borders, the locals all thought they were mad.

“Everybody laughed at us,” Rosamund tells me over coffee with husband Bill. “They told us, ‘What are you thinking? Do you know the population here is under 1,000?’”

They were right to be doubtful. On paper, opening a bookshop-cum-café in June 2008 as the global economy was on the verge of a crisis and Amazon was beginning to kill off the independent book trade sounds completely nuts and doomed to fail.

Eleven years on and, thankfully, those locals were wrong and they even make up much of the business’s customer base today.

During my visit to the shop on a weekday morning in September, all of the café’s 50 seats

are occupied and many visitors can be seen perusing the shelves in the bookshop, which shares the same space.

The business has now matured into more than a bookshop and café since its inception, fashioning itself as a brand and destination with more than one retail offering – something the pair vehemently say they had to do in order to ensure its success.

“It’s very simple,” says Bill, “either we’re a destination or we don’t survive. That’s why the retail combination is what it is. From day one, that has always been our ambition.”

Hence the deliberately ambiguous name (The Mainstreet Trading Company was inspired by former London department store, the General Trading Company) and brand logo: a hare carrying a different item depending on the department.

“We always conceived the whole business as a brand,” says Rosamund. “Albeit, a mini brand but I think if you can see something in the round then you start with an organised approach to your endgame.”

When it first opened, the shop’s retail combination included the bookshop and café, plus a small gift range and antiques concession, thereby creating four sections – or reasons – for people to visit. “The theory was that if you look at a road sign and you see those four words [bookshop, café, gifts, antiques] most people will stop for one of them,” says Rosamund.

The food element was quickly embedded into the business by the café which the owners thought was a better way of drawing people in than a deli. “It was implausible enough to open a bookshop in a village,” says Rosamund.

VITAL STATISTICS

Turnover: £900,000 Sales split: Books 40%/Café 24%/Deli 22%/Home 14% Average spend: Deli £25/Books £26/ Café £10 Number of staff: 22 total (13 full-time) 48

“We couldn’t have opened without a café. That would have been a suicide mission.

“By the same token you could not have opened a deli first and built from there.

You have to be realistic because delis, like bookshops, can come and go.”

By 2012, the business had shed the antiques concession and added the deli and home department by converting a barn behind the original shop. But the premises’ history has helped the de la Heys create this multi-retail offering. Between 1838 and 1978, the building was a general store of Walter Ballantyne & Son; consisting of grocers, wine merchants and Italian Warehousemen.

“Ballantyne’s sold everything from shoes to food,” says Bill. “It’s that glamourous idea of going to a nice shopping space. It was an event to go shopping in one of those places.”

The pair have tried to preserve as many of the shop’s original features as possible, including the very first front doors which are now reused in the café. Three large windows on the shop front have also become an attraction in themselves through regular creative displays dictated by new book launches and decorated by children’s book illustrators and some of Mainstreet’s staff.

“It’s about creating theatre,” says Rosamund. “It’s creating a mood and getting customers immersed into the theatre of the shop. We aspire to the window displays of Harvey Nichols, Selfridges or Liberty. We neither have the budget or time but we aspire to that creativity.”

They may be inspired by the major department stores of London but, geographically, the shop couldn’t be further away, situated in the village of St. Boswells on the south side of the river Tweed. A location which contributes to Mainstreet’s diverse customer base. Residents of nearby towns Kelso, Jedburgh and Melrose are all just a 15-minute drive away, while retirees and young families may travel up to an hour for a day out at Mainstreet (there are two reading dens in the bookshop which occupy children while parents can enjoy a coffee).

The village is also on a crossroads and experiences a lot of traffic passing through between Edinburgh and Newcastle. A Mainstreet sign on the thoroughfare pulls in

some of those travellers looking for a coffee and a pitstop, as well as walkers on St. Cuthbert’s Way. The couple reckon a third of their trade is tourists, although this fluctuates with holidays and seasonal oddities brought in by annual shooting, fishing and cycling events. “Either way we’re a meeting point or a passing place,” says Rosamund.

More recently, Mainstreet has pulled in visitors from further afield with book groups, author events and cookery demonstrations held in a well-sized room above the deli and homeware department. Over the years, the shop has bagged major names at its author events – helped by Rosamund’s background as marketing director at Bloomsbury Children’s Books – including Margaret Atwood and Victoria Hislop and celebrity authors like Clare Balding and Jeremy Paxman.

The de la Heys are no strangers to press coverage either, with the shop featuring in numerous magazines, newspapers and web articles because of the awards it has won, including runner-up in the delicatessen & grocer category of the Guild of Fine Food’s Shop of the Year 2019. But being named Britain’s Best Small Shop last year has had the biggest impact, the pair say, making Mainstreet a national news story. Now people travel to St. Boswells purely to visit the shop.

All these factors certainly drive footfall, but that doesn’t mean it is distributed equally.

According to the pair, Mainstreet is only known as the bookshop and café to some, while the deli, when it opened, attracted new customers who only visit for fresh bread, artisan cheese and other deli items.

“Even years down the line, we’ve put signage everywhere but people still find it difficult to navigate the shop,” says Bill. “People have a blindness to signage and we are a complex place too.”

There is still a symbiosis between each department though, even if its customers don’t use it as such, and this connection is food.

Initially, it’s the deli which acts as a larder for the kitchen and feeds the café, but it is more overtly done through cross-merchandising cookery and recipe books across the whole business.

MUST-STOCKS Montgomery's Cheddar (Neal's Yard Dairy) Lanark Blue ewes cheese (I.J. Mellis) Comté (Mons Fromager) Peelham Farm organic fennel salami Belhaven Smokehouse bass rock cured Peter’s Yard sourdough crispbread selection box The Fat Batard oat porridge sourdough Eildon and other local honey Seggiano raw basil pesto Ouseburn Coffee Company Foundry No.1 beans Suki Tea Earl Grey Blue Flower Left Field sencha green kombucha Tempest Brewing Co Pale Armadillo session IPA Burrow Hill sparkling cider Baglio Gibellina U. Passimiento red wine Bill De La Hey

Location: Mainstreet, St Boswells, Scottish Borders TD6 0AT

CONTINUED ON PAGE 51

October-November 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 9

Vol.20 Issue 9 | October-November 2019

49

Four Seasons has been serving the Cherryvalley neighbourhood in East Belfast for 40 years, but in the last two decades it has evolved into a speciality retailer that caters to both modern and traditional tastes in an unfussy yet very effective way Interview by Michael Lane

Practicality perfected

Four Seasons Belfast

MUST-STOCKS Young Buck blue cheese Brie Le Mariotte 60%

tells FFD. “At the start we sold it just cold, to take home and heat but then people were in at lunchtime and saying ‘Do you not have it warm?’”

“It’s just developed from customer needs.”

Although he’s talking about soup in this instance, you could take McNally’s last statement and apply it to Four Seasons generally. Under his stewardship over the last 20 years, the shop has evolved from a pure greengrocer into a food store with a much broader offer. Today the split between produce and deli sales is 50:50.

It’s not the most beautiful shop you’ll see – set in a small strip of retail units next to a petrol station – but it is doing the business thanks to a combination of McNally’s interest in good food and his knack for giving his

customers what they want.

He learned his trade working in a supermarket produce department and ran another greengrocery in Finaghy, in the south of Belfast, for 15 years before hearing via a wholesaler that Four Seasons was up for sale.

McNally bought it in 1999 and, although it had a good reputation and the Cherryvalley neighbourhood is one of the city’s most desirable areas, the shop was not what it is now.

“It was quite traditional, quite poorly lit and maybe showed it’s age,” he says. “The shop’s 40 years old this year so it was going 20 years at that stage.”

While it is still a prominent feature, the fruit and veg has conceded some space to allow for a multideck that houses chilled lines, including Four Seasons’ own ready-meals, deli

VITAL STATISTICS

Location: Gilnahirk Road, Belfast, Northern Ireland BT5 7DG Turnover: £620,000 Average basket spend: £10 Average margin: 30% No. of staff: 12 52

December 2019 | Vol.20 Issue 10

FINE FOOD DIGEST

The Mainstreet Trading Co St Boswell’s, Scottish Borders Montgomery's Cheddar (Neal's Yard Dairy) Lanark Blue ewes cheese (I.J. Mellis) Comté (Mons Fromager) Peelham Farm organic fennel salami

December

DELI OF THE MONTH

AN OLD ADVERTISING CAMPAIGN used to proclaim ‘soup is good food’ and it seems the customers of one retailer in East Belfast would agree.

Even in the height of summer, this shop sells 30 pots (500ml each) of its homemade vegetable soup a day.

The day I visit, I brave some cold November winds and driving rain to get to Four Seasons – so-called because of its origins as a greengrocer rather than in tribute to Northern Ireland’s famously changeable weather – and its owner informs me that he might shift up to 90 pots of soup on a such a day.

“When we started making soup, we thought we would maybe do it up to Easter time, and then stop and, at Halloween time, we would start again but it just kept going,” Gary McNally

Peter Cooks bread Local vegetables (Drinkwaters) Cotswold Bees honey Branded hessian bags Ozone Coffee Empire Two Farmers crisps Blend Merrylegs apple juice Holmeleigh Dairy Gold King Stone Dairy Top milk Rollright Cotswold Gold rapeseed Macneil’s smoked oil salmon Cotswold Raw dog treats Homemade sausage rolls Billy’s Woodland eggs Seggiano green pesto

September

DELI OF THE MONTH

EVERY GOOD RETAILER would say they have a discerning customer base, but the shoppers at The Seasons, situated in the East Sussex village of Forest Row, take “eagle-eyed” to another level.

“If we put a product out there that didn’t fit in with our ethos, my customers would be pretty quick off the mark to say ‘What the hell is this doing here? Have you looked at that ingredient?’,” says director Robin Walden.

Thankfully, the second-generation owner of the shop is just as astute as his customers. The Seasons is a fine example of a modern wholefoods retailing business, but that’s because everything – from its sourcing policy down to the building’s newly fitted eco-cladding – is underpinned by its desire: to be a sustainable and ethical retailer.

This has fuelled its success as a business turning over £2 million a year and the runner-up in the specialist food shop category at the 2019 Guild of Fine Food’s Shop of the Year.

Boni – Pamiggiano Reggiano DOP Queserias del Tietar – Monte Enebro Dongé – Brie de Meaux Central Formaggi – Moliterno Truffle Pecorino

August

DELI OF THE MONTH

MOST INDEPENDENT RETAILERS have their quirks but they are in abundance at the Broadway Deli, tucked away on the northern edge of The Cotswolds.

Its grand double-fronted premises is a bit of a warren inside and has plenty of historical features – centuries-old wooden beams, flagstone floors and the upstairs loo still contains the bath from the building’s previous residential use.

Then there’s the vintage Piaggio threewheeler parked out the front, heaving with produce, that attracts plenty of tourists and their cameras. Look closer and you’ll notice another vehicle – a cross-sectioned Fiat 500 – that doubles as a bread shelf in one of the front windows.

Yet perhaps the most curious thing about this establishment is its custodians – not the typical moneyed early retirees that tend to

Ford Farm – Farmhouse cheddar Lincet – Delice de Von Mühlenen – Gruyère Bourgogne Onetik – Coeur de Fine Cheese Co Toast for Basque Cheese Emmi – Kaltbach Creamy Skånemejerier – Käserei ChampignonSandwich cheeses Montagnolo Affiné Corsica Gastronomia Almnäs Bruk – Almnäs marmalades Tegel Colston Basset Stilton

Barber’s 1833 cheddar Four Seasons coleslaw Massey’s pies Ditty’s oatcakes Broighter Gold rapeseed oil Our Daily Bread wheaten bread kit Mrs Darlington’s lemon curd Ballymaloe Original Relish Four Seasons lasagne Four Seasons Irish stew Four Seasons veg soup

salads and very popular soups. There is also ambient shelving to hold both local rapeseed oils and baked goods alongside bigger national brands like Mrs Darlington’s and Cottage Delight.

McNally started off with a 6ft deli counter but this has grown into a serveover that runs along one whole wall. Roughly a third of it is dedicated to cheese, which has grown from a selection of five to around 50, and this lineup reveals a lot about the demographics Four Seasons serves and how it keeps them all happy.

Mature cheddar is the best-seller given its obvious appeal to traditional tastes but McNally ruefully admits that Belfast loves its flavoured cheeses, especially Wensleydale with Cranberries. It may not be to his taste but McNally would be crazy not to sell it, given he gets through 3kg of it weekly. At the other end of the spectrum, he is also selling a half-wheel of the local raw milk blue Young Buck in the same timeframe.

“People would know their cheeses a lot more now,” he says. “We’ve a couple of local cheese producers that have started in the last few years and that has really put interest into the market. They’d be selling cheeses maybe themselves at St George’s Market [in the city centre] so people have tried them.

“Some of the local restaurants are serving them, too. A cheese like Young Buck – an

unpasteurised cheese – is one of our bestselling blue cheeses.”

McNally adds that sales even outstrip Stilton at Christmas and that has been driven by the changes in Belfast and its food scene in the last 10-15 years.

“Years ago, Belfast was closed in the evenings because of the security situation.

People would get home at night and wouldn’t have really ventured back into town whereas now it’s really changed. It’s open for business.”

The restaurant scene and nightlife is also beginning to extend outwards, notably in the Ballyhackamore area, which is roughly halfway between Cherryvalley and the city centre.

McNally sees this influencing his customers, who will often come in looking to replicate their dining experiences at home with ingredients or cheeses they have tried.

But consumers in modern Belfast also seem to like convenience, too. Since Four Seasons first started offering soups and stews five years ago, sales of its ready-meals have grown exponentially. Now the chef behind the serveover is turning out simple-but-popular dishes like lasagne, cottage pie and curries regularly, with customers picking them up from both the counter and pre-packed from the chiller.

These dishes appeal to both the older CONTINUED ON PAGE 55

Vol.20 Issue 10 | December 2019

53

Young Buck blue cheese Brie Le Mariotte 60% Barber’s 1833 cheddar Four Seasons coleslaw Massey’s pies Ditty’s oatcakes Broighter Gold rapeseed oil

Belhaven Smokehouse bass rock cured Peter’s Yard sourdough crispbread selection box The Fat Batard oat porridge sourdough Eildon and other local honey Seggiano raw basil pesto

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Our Daily Bread wheaten bread kit Mrs Darlington’s lemon curd Ballymaloe Original Relish Four Seasons lasagne Four Seasons Irish stew Four Seasons veg soup

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FINE FOOD DIGEST

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All our produce is gluten free and vegan made by hand in small artisan batches, using the finest organic ingredients.

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FINE FOOD DIGEST

STAFF PICKS Lauren Phillips Freelance reporter

Seaweed Seasoning Seaspoon

Many products pass our desks and lips here at FFD but here are a few that really caught our attention...

Seaweed has never really been fully embraced by UK consumers (with the exception of the laverbread-loving Welsh). But it’s fast becoming the musthave superfood for the health conscious and start-up brand Seaspoon’s smart and contemporary repackaging of the sea vegetable is spot on. Its new seaweed seasoning pot – pitched as an alternative to salt – will appeal to any customer looking to reduce their salt intake without compromising on flavour. seaspoon.com

Michael Lane

FINE FOOD DIGEST

2019 has most definitely been the year of the vegan. So much so that alternatives to meat, egg and dairy are now being judged on their own merit and not as a substitute.

Forget that this garlic mayonnaise from Brighton restaurant BeFries is vegan. The flavour is strong, with a good whack of garlic, and the consistency is excellent: creamy and glossy like an egg-based mayo.

Halfway through eating I forgot it was vegan – a good sign that this product can hold its own in a tough category. befries.com

Monsoon Estates

Serrano Condiment Recommended to me by a serious chilli-head at some hot sauce judging during the summer, this Texan creation is my favourite things of 2019.

I eat a lot of chilli products and find it’s easy to be distracted by the oranges and reds and even yellow tonguenumbing condiments made with “big” chillies like Scotch Bonnet, Carolina Reaper, Habanero. But this one is an appealing shade of green and combines the lesser-used Serrano chilli with cucumber.

Don’t be fooled, though. It’s got a kick that won’t be too much for ordinary humans while still placating heat-seekers with a serious amount of natural flavour. You won’t go back to green tabasco after this. yellowbirdsauce.com hot-headz.com

BeFries

Ethiopian Guji Derikocha

Editor Yellowbird Foods

Vegan Garlic Mayo

Chicha Morada Amaize Drinks You’ll often here me complaining about soft drink NPD and how so much of it ends up being rubbish but this still drink, made using purple corn, really caught my attention.

It has been around since 2018 but the branding, featuring some of the designs from Peru’s famous Nazca Lines, is new and fits nicely with the South American roots of this kind of drink.

Despite its colour, it’s not sickly and there’s a slight spiciness of cinnamon that works well with the sweetness and other notes from the pineapple juice.

Very pleasant served cold and it has mixer potential, too. amaizedrinks.com

I’m always trying to convert people to black coffee and this would be my tool of choice at the moment.

I expect these attractive, lightly roasted beans might work as an espresso or with milk but I’ve been enjoying this coffee longer and straight up.

The complexity of flavour makes it enjoyable but it’s not so subtle that you feel you’re taking part in some kind of delicate reverential ritual.

There’s plenty of tropical fruit in the cup and the perfect level of sweetness to boot. No wonder it got a Great Taste three-star this year. monsoonestates.co.uk BEST BRANDS 2019-20 63

Baked with extra mature cheddar for an intense cheese flavour, our savoury bites are perfect to enjoy with a glass of wine.

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“I try to eat well but it’s hard when you’re always on the go. I need quick solutions for my busy lifestyle.

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“I like to get my nutrition from food not pills.

Canned fish is one of the most incredible superfoods and I trust Fish4Ever not to add any dirty ingredients.”

www.fish4ever.eu 64 BEST BRANDS 2019-20

FINE FOOD DIGEST

STAFF PICKS Nick Baines Lynda Searby

FFD trends columnist

Feature writer

Shaka blend Bad Hand Coffee Shaka is Bad Hand’s signature espresso blend, with a thick hit of chocolate. Don't be fooled into thinking this is only for baristas, though. As well as pulling it through a La Marzocco or Aeropress, you’ll also find it works incredibly well as a filter coffee. Plus, it’s packaged in bags that will break down in home composting environments.

Keen supporters of Surfers Against Sewage and Offset Earth, Bad Hand also delivers its coffee to local coffee shops and restaurants by bicycle in reusable tubs. badhandcoffee.com

Herefordshire hand-cooked crisps Two Farmers

This new challenger in the hand-cooked crisp space captures the zeitgeist perfectly with its provenance story and 100% biodegradable packs. The brainchild of potato farmers Mark Green and Sean Mason, the Herefordshire start-up focuses on local ingredients, such as Droitwich salt, and pledges to cause minimal environmental impact. twofarmers.co.uk

Brownie Bites Nibble Protein Bites

Strawberry & Black Pepper Kombucha LA Brewery

Suffolk’s LA Brewery makes a range of refreshing kombuchas that don't pack too much of a funky punch, yet deliver flavours with a boatload of intensity. The strawberry & black pepper kombucha is a standout from the brand, pitching the pungent peppery heat against the sweet, juiciness of the fruit perfectly. The branding is also a pleasure to look at whether in the chiller cabinet, or my home fridge. labrewery.co.uk

As sports nutrition becomes mainstream, fine food retailers may find themselves moving further into this area. Good texture and taste are hard to achieve with high protein products, but Nibble Brownie Bites deliver depth of chocolate flavour while packing a high protein punch.

They’re also deceptively filling. My favourite flavour – gingerbread – was launched for Christmas and will be adopted year-round in the New Year. nibbleprotein.com

Patrick McGuigan FFD cheese specialist

Trufflyn Cheese Cellar

I’m not normally a big fan of truffles. Their flavour tends to drown out everything else. But Trufflyn, made by the Cheese Cellar in Worcestershire, is an exception. A wrinkly rinded raw milk goats’ cheese, it has a thin layer of black truffles running through the centre, which brings perfume and pungency to the lemony, earthy cheese without overpowering it. harveyandbrockless.co.uk/cheese-cellar

Highmoor Nettlebed Creamery Nettlebed Creamery in Oxfordshire has had a busy year developing several new products, but it’s the square, washed rind Highmoor that was my favourite. Made with organic cows’ milk, the cheese has an interesting bouncy texture and savoury flavour, which takes in brothy and smoked bacon notes. nettlebedcreamery.com FINE FOOD DIGEST

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16/12/2019 09:58