Western Morning News (Saturday)
Ingredients for success all in one place
Martin Hesp visits a unique innovation centre supporting the region’s food and drink industry
For centuries food producers would make an item, put it in their shop or take it to a local market, and sell it. Now, we live in a very different world, as Jeremy Clarkson has been discovering at the Diddly Squat farm shop featured in his popular TV series. If you are making edible items to sell, there are countless hurdles and miles of red tape to negotiate, which is a good thing because the regulations are designed to safeguard and protect consumers.
But there is a conundrum. At a time when most people are becoming more adventurous in their tastes and foodie desires, those who develop new products are increasingly besieged by procedures and guidelines.
Some would argue that the plethora of rules and regulations, as well as the increasing complexity of the marketplace, is in danger of reducing the range of comestibles. But the good news is that help is at hand, and it’s located right here in the South West.
Food WorksSW is a dynamic food and drink innovation centre with state-of-the-art development kitchens where both new and established businesses can create and refine their products.
Not only are these specialist units available for short-term, contract-free hire, the centre also provides hands-on technical support and specialist business advice from a team of highly qualified experts.
Located just a few minutes off the M5 in the Weston-super-Mare Enterprise Area, the centre also offers food and drink sector training and networking. There are conference facilities and meeting rooms for hire, as well as a business lounge and coffee shop. Added to that, there are a dozen specially designed food-grade business units, most of which are presently being rented by firms which have successfully launched products.
So, although the days when you could simply upscale a favourite family recipe and make a good living from your home kitchen may have gone, Food WorksSW offers a thorough and exacting process, which could guide even the most inexperienced to success.
That person wanting to turn their favourite family recipe into a business, for example, will have to address potential allergy issues. They must list every ingredient and their labels will have to carry information on salt and fat content, calorific values, and goodness knows what else. The checklist is seemingly endless.
Devising a recipe, which can be recreated over and over again with consistency, obtaining food safety accreditation, choosing the right kind of container or wrapping, masterminding the branding, overseeing the marketing… the list goes on.
Step back for a moment and you begin to wonder how any first-time or small producer manages to bring any new item to market without the help of a facility like The Food WorksSW. I recently had a tour and met members of the team.
“Working here is exciting,” commented new products and innovation manager Zoe Plant, an experienced development chef who has spent years working in the food industry. “One of the best things about this job is meeting new clients and trying samples of their products. Then we get involved, giving them help and advice, and it is fantastic to watch them grow in confidence and get their products out.
“You see people who started selling at little farmers’ markets, expanding to sell through large retailers. It is very satisfying.
“We work with start-up businesses as well as with established companies, from concept to launch and everything in between. Our specialist kitchens cater for anything from dairy to bakery. We try to cover all areas.
“The customer comes in with an idea and we make sure they are doing everything in the right order, from registering with Environmental Health to checking their insurances. We check recipes and help carry out various trials. We check labels – we can even
help with website design. And if we can’t help with something, we know people who can.”
Zoe mentioned the risks involved with food preparation and explained how producers must pass various health and safety regulations including the all-important HACCP principles (stands for Hazard Analysis and Critical Control Point).
“Say you are making a frozen ready-meal, you have to look at where the ingredients come from, how you are going to prep and cook them, the specific amount of time and temperature the cooking needs to kill off any airborne bacteria or microbes etc. To be frank, you have to make sure your product isn’t going to poison anyone.”
Marketing manager Becky Hale added: “We also look at the kind of retailers our customers are hoping to attract. Certain retailers will require particular levels of certification. You certainly don’t want to have any mistakes once you’ve gone into production.”
The team were handed the keys to facility, which is the only one of its kind in the Westcountry, in April 2020, just a couple of weeks into the first Covid lockdown. It was officially opened by HRH The Princess Royal in October 2021.
“The centre was six years in the
making. North Somerset Council noted demand from food and drink producers as well as the hospitality industry and felt something innovative was called for,” said Zoe. “Having Covid hit so soon after opening was not ideal but we decided to use those first months to our advantage and had a soft start with a skeleton staff. Last year, the centre really took off and we began getting our name out there..”
The facility is operated by the Food and Drink Forum on behalf of North Somerset Council. The forum offers a range of membership and support packages, giving individuals and companies use of the facilities at a discount as well as unique access to the industry for insights, funding opportunities, specialist contacts and much more.
As we toured the building, Zoe told me: “When businesses visit this site they tend to be blown away. It’s a unique place, available to every food and drink business in the South West and beyond.”
I could see why. In fact, my overriding question is: why has no one developed a facility like this before?
Say, for example, you were that person who had an amazing family recipe and you wanted to take it to a wider public. Making a small amount at home to sell at a single monthly market would be straightforward enough, but turning it into a proper business would be an entirely different ball game. Then there’s the 30-mile rule – which means you have to jump through a massive number of extra stipulations and regulations if you’re planning to sell the product beyond a 30-mile radius.
The first thing to do would be to contact The Food WorksSW – they would guide you through the process to book one of the development kitchens along with some time with the on-site experts. They’d then help upscale the recipe into something that could be replicated in bulk as well as help with all those labelling necessities. They’d also advise on things like shelf-life, allergens and calorific content.
And, being part of the Food and Drink Forum with national and local government backing, Food WorksSW would do all this at a surprisingly affordable cost. For example, the specialist kitchen hire starts at around £150 per day.
If all this sounds a bit technical and only of interest to people inside the food industry, think again. How many people are running a fledging food business from their home kitchen – baking cakes for example – that with a bit of scale-up support could be turned into a business in its own right?
Indeed, most people reading these pages will love their food and drink, so it is in our interest to see our Westcountry region become a leader when it comes to new products and ideas.
This is where Food WorksSW holds an ace card. Having spent a day at the facility it’s hard to know how our food and drink industry could hope to grow and flourish without it.