Bowhouse food markets bring customers and makers face-to-face

TOBY ANSTRUTHER OWNER, BALCASKIE ESTATE Fife has some of the finest raw materials, whether from the land or sea, and for centuries we have used these as the basis for a thriving local and export trade in food and drink.

Bowhouse sits within this tradition, and its growing community of food and drink makers takes full advantage of what the East Neuk has to offer.

I set up Bowhouse on Balcaskie Estate as a collection of dedicated spaces for food and drink businesses, as well as a huge covered market hall for food markets and other community activities.

For example, our newest maker, Scotland The Bread, takes organic heritage grains grown by Balcaskie and mills these into nutritious fresh, local flour which is sold online and at Bowhouse Food Weekends – our enormously-popular monthly covered food markets.

Alongside Scotland The Bread is a community of other makers, all passionate about what they are doing and working together with local farmers and fishermen to add value to the bounty of our fields and waters.

We’ve built a collection of production units at Bowhouse, designed to encourage and promote new and existing SME food and drink businesses.

Grouped together, they naturally benefit from pooled energy, experience and collective investment in shared equipment, while remaining rooted close to their primary production.

If you want to know about provenance, you simply need to look out at the fields or across the farm to the sea.

Futtle, the organic brewery at Bowhouse, will source its water from the Bowhouse borehole, its barley from Balcaskie’s surrounding fields and its passion from its makers – Crail-based Stephen Marshall and Lucy Hine.

They are excited about working with another Bowhouse maker, Sarah Hunter of Keeping The Plot, to source herbs and other botanicals for their ales.

Established local businesses have also come to Bowhouse.

Stuart Minick is one of Fife’s most successful butchers.

His decision to take a unit at Bowhouse reflects the importance he places on quality and, in particular, the key process of maturation of the meat.

Dedicated hanging and maturation space at Bowhouse allows Stuart to enhance his product and frees up space in his retail units.

Sustainable business needs customers as well as producers, of course.

At Bowhouse, our monthly food weekends attract more than 5,000 people. Customers can meet producers and learn more about the product.

Our markets bring customers and makers face-to-face and are a chance to introduce products and recruit clients.

Subsequent internet sales allow makers to develop the relationship with their customer and help keep supply chains short and transparent.

Mara Seaweed, also part of Bowhouse, is a wonderful example of this.

As well as the makers’ market, we also have street food and live music, because the social side of business is as important as the financial, especially in the thriving communities of the East Neuk of Fife.

In this way, Bowhouse is helping to reshape the local food economy.

Beyond financial capital, I see the importance of social and natural capital.

Our Bowhouse Food Weekends bring our communities together.

On the natural capital side, Balcaskie’s transition to organic farming and work with conservation partners has already enhanced our local wildlife and encouraged others to build on this.

The development of Bowhouse has been a huge learning curve for me and the Balcaskie team.

Bowhouse opened its doors for the first time in July 2017, but the journey didn’t start there.

Food and drink is a sector Fife can truly feel proud of and I’ve always known there’s great potential here.

In 2010, I helped found Food from Fife to foster this sense of pride and bring the industry together.

Bowhouse is an extension of this and does it in a really practical way.

I have also drawn inspiration from other local food and drink businesses in Fife and I am grateful for the support of Fife Council and Business Gateway who allow us to support new businesses working with Bowhouse with a grant.

Next year will see the continued development of Bowhouse with new spaces and new ventures.

Top: A young food fan at Bowhouse. Above middle: Customers talk with a trader. Right: Butcher Stuart Minick and Clement Boucherin with a box of langoustines.