Kitchen table HEROES taking on the FOOD GIANTS
... by selling their own ketchup, crisps and cereal. So could YOU join them?
FOR years the supermarket shelves have been dominated by the same old big-budget brands. Kellogg’s cereal, Heinz ketchup, Walkers crisps — so ubiquitous are the Goliaths of the industry that no other brand has dared compete . . . until now.
A new and innovative wave of British companies are pitting themselves against the major players.
Each of these small brands has a family story behind it — from the ‘mumpreneur’ taking on Heinz with a healthier ketchup to the best friends whose recyclable and resealable canned water is a hit in Hollywood.
Here, SARAH RAINEY meets some of the foodie fighters shaking things up — and Femail taste tests their creations.
MUM WHOSE HEALTHY KETCHUP RIVALS HEINZ
WHETHER for dunking chips in or squirting over fish fingers, we are a nation of ketchup-lovers, with UK consumers spending £200 million a year on Heinz and Stokes versions.
But for élise Daly, 43, the sugary red sauce was a no-go. élise has heart disease, and her son, now 11, was born with two holes in his heart. So, together with husband Karl, 54, and their 13-year-old daughter, the Daly family focus on healthy eating to keep their conditions in check.
‘In 2014, I started to notice all the fast food available to children,’ explains élise. ‘We had several bereavements and my husband’s sister was diagnosed with breast cancer, and I became conscious of sugar and its role in our health.’
She started by making a batch of sugar-free ketchup for a family BBQ.
‘I used Isle of Wight tomatoes as they’re so sweet, roasted peppers as they’re my son’s favourite, fennel, garlic, onion, rosemary, apple cider vinegar and rapeseed oil,’ says élise. ‘The kids loved it.’
A designer by trade, élise — and Karl, a solicitor — had no experience in food manufacturing, but took the idea to a development chef.
élise located a company producing lycopene, the health-boosting antioxidant in tomatoes, near her home in Kent, and added extra vitamins. The bottles are made in Sussex and every ingredient (bar cinnamon) is grown in Britain.
Wonderchup launched on Amazon this summer and has attracted fans in Australia, the U.S., Peru and Japan.
élise says: ‘It’s still just Karl and me, juggling the business with our other jobs. But it’s all worth it.’ TASTE TEST: You can really smell the fennel and rosemary in this. Wonderchup has a herby, complex flavour that is far more sophisticated than Heinz. We’re not sure it would pass the chip test for some young children at first, but it gets a thumbs-up from the adults. 4/5
BISCUIT WHIZZ WHO TOOK ON McVITIE’S
LISE MADSEN always dreamed of opening her own bakery. In her 20s, she left her native Denmark and trained as a pastry chef in Paris before moving to the UK in 1992 and working for restaurateur Albert Roux in marketing.
Eight years later, having met husband Adrian, she decided to pursue her dream — and Honeyrose Bakery was born.
Lise, 50, said: ‘I decided to make my bakery organic, so everything is made with good, clean ingredients; nothing artificial.’
Based in a warehouse in North-West London, Honeyrose employs 45 staff, batch-baking 25 artisan products including shortbread and chocolate-chip cookies that are taking on McVitie’s. They’re available online at Ocado, in Whole Foods and Harrods and were recently picked up by Sainsbury’s. Every product is rigorously taste-tested by Lise herself. ‘We went through 49 versions of a recent brownie recipe before I was happy,’ she laughs.
Several years ago, Honeyrose was approached by a TV production company looking for a host for a new programme: a baking show in a tent.
‘We passed, as we’d just had our babies and we thought the idea nuts,’ says husband Adrian, with a wry grin about what became the juggernaut success that is The Great British Bake Off.
Still, Lise doesn’t dwell on what might have been.
‘I never feel as though I’m enough to anyone — mum, wife, businesswoman,’ she says. ‘But I suppose I must be a good role model. Recently, my youngest said: “I know what you do, Mummy. You’re the king of the bakery.” That made my day.’ TASTE TEST: We loved the flavour and big chunks of chocolate in the Triple Chocolate Cookies, but they were on the crunchy side, so more biscuit than cookie, which needs some chewiness. The vegan brownies had a very slight sandy texture but a winning flavour and pleasing squidgyness. 4/5
CANNED WATER THAT WENT TO THE OSCARS
WHEN Ariel Booker, Josh White and Perry Alexander-Fielding got a call from Vanity Fair last February, asking for 2,000 of their resealable water cans for Hollywood’s A-listers at its Oscars after-party, they nearly dropped the phone.
The friends started eco-friendly brand CanO Water in 2015, after Ariel, 26 — whose brother Eyal found fame on Love Island — was shocked by the rubbish he saw strewn across beaches while travelling around Thailand. ‘We wanted to do something that would help with this huge global plastic problem,’ he says.
Combining their expertise — Ariel worked in the City as a headhunter, Josh was in the nightlife industry and Perry had a decade’s experience in graphic design — the trio set to work.
They found a company producing resealable and recyclable cans, ordered 500 of them, spraypainted them white and sent them to Selfridges pitching their idea. The next day they got an order for 300,000.
They each contributed £3,000 of their own money, and begged family and friends for the extra investment needed.
Their resealable cans are produced in the Alps, while the water is sourced from natural springs in Austria. The 99p CanO Water tins are now available at Tesco, Ocado and Whole Foods.
Of taking on the major players in the bottled water world, Ariel says: ‘Thankfully, we live in a generation where a tiny start-up can take on big businesses — and, hopefully, win.’
TASTE TEST: A great way to avoid the guilt of buying a plastic bottle of water. We like the matt white can and cool black typography. Available with a standard ring pull or a handy re-sealable lid so you don’t have to drink it all at once (although it’s worth noting that this is plastic). The water tastes, well, like water. 3/5
SUGAR-FREE CEREAL TO BEAT KELLOGG’S
ANNIE MORRIS is a ‘breakfast fanatic’. So when at a family party in 2013 she got talking to her sister’s partner Jonny Shimmin about business ideas, cereal cropped up.
‘I was working in advertising at the time,’ says Annie, 30, ‘and I wanted a change. Jonny, who was
a food and drink analyst, was also looking for a new project.’ Their business spoon cereals — a range of healthy, sugar-free granolas and mueslis — started life as a pop-up, with the duo selling breakfast pots (combining cereal and yoghurt) at markets and festivals.
‘in the beginning we were making everything in my kitchen in West london,’ explains Jonny, 43. ‘We came up with the recipes and tweaked them repeatedly for the first 18 months.’ in 2014, they applied to the TV show Dragons’ Den and scooped £50,000 from Peter Jones and Deborah Meaden, kick-starting deals with Ocado and Waitrose. ‘it was incredibly tough,’ recalls Jonny. ‘We weren’t a fully formed business, so it took 12 months to get manufacturing ramped up.’
They outsourced to producers in london and Peterborough, with a focus on keeping high-quality, British suppliers for their oats, nuts and seeds.
Today, based in south london, spoon cereals still employs just six staff, but is worth an estimated £2.1 million.
‘it’s a really exciting time to be part of the start-up movement,’ says Annie. ‘We’re not competing with one another, but against the big boys. The food industry’s changing from the ground up.’
TASTE TEST: We liked the sour cherry hit and the pumpkin seed crunch in the cherry Bomb flavour, as well as the subtle cinnamon and nutmeg spice. The texture was the only thing that lost it a point — the oats were mostly separated, not in the ‘clusters’ you usually find in granola. 4/5
FAMILY FARM BEHIND A £10.5M CRISP BUSINESS
Best friends Rod Garnham and Ross Taylor were skiing in Austria in 2007 when, after eating a rubbish packet of crisps on holiday, they were inspired to come up with something better.
Rod was in aircraft engineering and Ross in logistics, but back home in cambridgeshire both had grown up around Ross’s family farm, from which his father, Basil, was about to retire. ‘he had this brilliant crop of potatoes, grown in peaty black soil dating from the 1830s,’ explains Rod, 40.
‘We washed a ton of potatoes in Ross’s bath and sent them to a factory in london to be turned into crisps. They said they were the best they’d made in 20 years.’
in 2009, they got a stand at a london food fair and harvey Nichols made its first order for the duo’s corkers crisps.
‘it was terrifying,’ admits Rod. ‘We had to find £70,000 to fulfil the order. We put it all on credit cards.
‘The next step was getting equipment, which we bought on eBay from a factory in cyprus, and shipping it to the farm, where we still make the crisps today.’
Their hand-cooked crisps specialise in patriotic flavours — from sausage and mustard to cheddar and chive — and are sold at National Trust properties, farm shops, airports and other outlets. Their new olive oil range has just launched on Ocado.
‘Today we employ 100 people and have a turnover of £10.5 million,’ says Rod. ‘if you’d told me that ten years ago, i would’ve thought you were mad. And if you’d told me how much work it would take, i might have run in the other direction.’
TASTE TEST: super-crunchy, we like that they are unpeeled (unlike Walkers) so you can see the skin, making them more natural. The Pork sausage flavour came in second place to the simply sea salt which lets the flavour of the potatoes shine through. 4/5
months, until now finally I’m free of them, but I’m still living with withdrawal symptoms. I’m agitated, irritable and can’t sleep. I’m sweating a lot and the anxiety is back. Physically, I’m suffering, yet I find my mind is much clearer. Without these wretched drugs, I have more self-respect. It is like I have woken up from a long sleep.
Well-meaning friends say if I feel so rotten, I should start taking them again, but that’s not very helpful. Neither are ignorant people who tell you to get a grip. But I won’t give up. Like you, Sarah, I’m determined to stay free.
BIRDS SEEMED TO BE FLYING IN MY HEAD
Samantha Brook, 43, is a blogger from Suffolk. She says: I was 17 when I was first prescribed antidepressants. With hindsight, 26 years later, I suspect there were better ways to deal with an unhappy, wayward teen.
I tried to stop taking them, off and on, for the next two decades but the withdrawal was so frightening, I always ended up going back to them.
The most disturbing symptom when cutting down or even missing a single dose was dizziness and noise. It was like birds flying inside my head. In November last year — after a quarter of a century on antidepressants — I decided to try again.
I did it slowly, by tapering down half a tablet a week. My GP has been no use — they’re just too busy — and I’ve done this with my boyfriend’s support.
There have been very low moments — but I took my last half tablet in June this year.
I WANTED TO RIP THE WALLS DOWN
Karen Olah, 57, is a retired nursing sister from Hemel Hempstead. She says: My depression really kicked in about 12 years ago. I had a job with a lot of responsibility as a nursing sister in a pre-operative assessment clinic, and there was no way I could do it.
My two children were still living at home at that point — my husband did most of the work.
I was put on a high dose of venlafaxine and got better enough to go back to work in fits and starts, but I really didn’t want to be on them for ever. I felt so lethargic I was hardly moving, and went from a slim 9st to a size 16.
Getting off them was hellish. every time I tried to lower the dose, I’d suffer terrible symptoms and the doctor would just put it back up again. It got to 2016 and I decided I’d do it myself.
There were times when it felt so dark, I honestly felt I was going to die.
one five-day period sticks out. I’d cut back the dose and was feeling so agitated. It felt like I wanted to rip the walls down. one of the keys to getting off these pills was finding a private therapist. Now, I’m two weeks into freedom from them.
12 YEARS TO GET OFF THE TABLETS
Rachel Wheatley is a journalist in her mid-30s from Chester. She says: I was first prescribed paroxetine in 2006, thinking it would only be short term. Twelve years on, and I’ve just got off it.
My first attempt to stop was in 2015, after I’d been to see my GP to discuss taking SSRIS during pregnancy. The GP and I both agreed I should try to wean off paroxetine completely.
at first, I did well — I got it down to 10mg from 20mg. I lived comfortably on that dose for two years. But then I lowered to 5mg a day and that’s when my mental health rapidly went downhill.
In a matter of weeks, I was overwhelmed with depression and anxiety. My GP advised me to go back up to 20mg, but having come so far, I was devastated.
In august this year, I felt ready to try again, but this time decided to cross-taper onto a different SSRI, sertraline, which is easier to wean off.
I’ve had to deal with new sideeffects, including chronic headaches and gastrointestinal upset. I couldn’t be prouder of myself for quitting my old regime.
WITHOUT PROZAC I’M UNBEARABLY SAD
Louise C is a mother. She says: when I was first prescribed antidepressant fluoxetine — known as Prozac — I was suffering postnatal depression, which included suicidal thoughts. I was told I’d be on it for six months at most.
That was more than 25 years ago. I would tell anyone thinking of going onto this drug that it’s like being in a glass bowl, where you can never scramble up the sides. It is not just a case of take it till you get well. In my experience, Prozac has you in its grip for ever.
IT WAS AS IF SLUGS WERE IN MY BRAIN
Lucy Shirt, 48, is a care worker from Sheffield. She says: Nine years ago, aged 39, I couldn’t face the world and felt so lethargic. a year later, my GP prescribed antidepressants. I felt better quickly, but didn’t like the sideeffects. I put on weight, felt tired, and didn’t feel in control. after six years, I said: ‘enough’s enough.’
But I never imagined how difficult it would be to come off them and it’s taken three attempts. The first time, I’d tapered to my minimum dosage, but I felt dreadful.
It was as if slugs had invaded my head and everything was moving at such a slow pace. In august 2017, I tried again. I have been free for over a year and won’t go near antidepressants again.