2013 Farmers Weekly Local Food Farmer finalists revealed

Laura Mounce
Lifton Farm Shop, Lifton, Devon

When it comes to keeping food miles low, there are very few food businesses that can compete with Lifton Farm Shop.

A huge 72% of all the money that passes through the shop’s tills comes from sales of their own produce, and the variety on offer is vast – winter and summer brassicas, soft fruits, orchard fruits, eggs, home-reared lamb, chicken and South Devon beef.

Almost all the produce grown and reared on Jo and Roger Mounce’s 90ha mixed farm finds its way into the farm shop and restaurant, where it is either sold fresh from the field or turned into a range of value-added products, including jams and chutneys, ice cream, apple juice, cakes, quiches, puddings, pies, ready meals, and their all-time bestseller – pasties.

The purpose-built shop, 200-seater restaurant, bar and function room – managed by daughter-in-law Laura Mounce – boasts an annual turnover of £1.3m, but its beginnings were rather more humble.

In the early 1990s, owners Jo and Roger were selling produce from their pick-your-own strawberry fields using a fruit barrow outside their home. When they were having to fill up the barrow several times a day just to keep up with demand they realised they needed a permanent retail space, and in 2002 Lifton Farm Shop was built.

Over the past 22 years, steady expansion and a host of customer activities has truly embedded Lifton into the local community.

The shop offers farm tours for customers and school groups. They hold a popular annual Christmas carol service, a blessing of the plough service, harvest festival and hold fundraisers for BBC’s Children in Need. They build educational displays and provide catering at county shows. And they print regular newsletters educating shoppers about what’s happening on the farm, which fruit and vegetables are in season and what’s available to buy now.

“Seeing is believing” is the ethos that runs through everything at Lifton. “If customers can see it happening in front of them, they believe in us,” says Jo, whose infectious enthusiasm has undoubtedly been a key part in keeping the business innovating and expanding for more than two decades.

“What sets us apart from other retailers is the sheer amount of what we produce on-farm. We’re not a glorified deli – customers are experiencing a real working farm.”

Every opportunity is taken to share the story of their food with every customer who walks through the door. Bright and colourful prints on the walls show herds of their South Devon cattle and the couple’s son Adam out planting in the fields with his tractor. Printed photobooks on every table in the restaurant also tell customers the history of Lifton.

Along with its farming credentials, the business also prides itself on its responsiveness. “If a customer asks for something that we don’t have on the shelf, we can cook one up for them while they wait,” says manager Laura. “If you’re not making it yourself, you just can’t do that.”

Its friendly and attentive service and ultra-fresh produce has won Lifton a firm customer base, so it would be easy to sit back and reap the rewards. But the Mounce family aren’t planning to slow down just yet.

Laura wants the kitchen to become more mechanised to keep up with the 1,500 home-baked pasties sold every week. The family want to upgrade their existing 20kW wind turbine to further reduce energy costs in the shop and restaurant. They also see Lifton’s future online, and have plans to sell high-profit-margin products through a website.

“I love to invest in my business, says Jo. “I’ll buy anything that’s going to drive it forward.”

Colin McKee
McKee’s Country Store and Restaurant, Newtownards, Co Down

Fifteen years ago, Colin McKee was struggling to make a living from the family’s fifth-generation livestock business and was facing the very real possibility of having to take a job off the farm.

Fast forward to 2013 and he is at the helm of a thriving £3m turnover business – comprising a farm, retail shop, restaurant and burgeoning catering venture – which supports him, his wife Linda and their four children.

The turnaround started when Colin began selling local vegetables and his own beef from a converted barn. The enterprise developed quickly and in 2005 some of the farm buildings were transformed into McKee’s Country Store and Restaurant. However, the seating capacity of 60 people was almost instantly too small to cope with the number of customers.

“We couldn’t believe the success of the restaurant,” says Colin. “There were queues every day and people would have to leave because they realised they would never get in.”

After an astonishingly fast six-week rebuild project, the newly expanded farm shop and restaurant opened to the public in 2007 and turnover has been growing year on year ever since.

It’s easy to see why customers keep coming back. A vast butchery counter displays the beef and free-range chickens that are reared on-site. The deli counter is a masterclass in added value – packed with home-made meals, a huge range of veggie options, salads and fantastic-looking pie slices. A colourful display of local vegetables is supplied by farmers in nearby Comber – less than a 10-mile drive from McKee’s. Freezers and cold cabinets complete the local food offering with butter, milk, cheese and ice cream from a range of Northern Ireland farms, dairies and creameries.

By appointing general managers in each section, Colin has been able to hand over much of the day-to-day running of the business, giving him more time to focus on driving it forward. Many of the staff have been with McKee’s from the start and they all have a loyalty card and are incentivised by bonus schemes when the business performs well.

One of the biggest testaments to McKee’s success is the number of other farm shops that have opened in the area. But the couple are confident their position as leaders, not followers, leaves them more than capable of weathering some local competition.

“Competition sharpens you up and makes you and your staff up your game,” says Colin. “The key is having the farm, shop and restaurant all on the same site,” he adds. “I can say to customers ‘that’s my rib-eye steak on your table’, but our competitors can’t do that. It works so well.”

To make sure customers continue to understand McKee’s unique farm credentials, £30,000-40,000 a year is spent on a professional marketer, who has created a clear identity for the business. Smart signage behind the butchery counter boasts about their home-reared beef, and super-sized in-store graphics tell the story of the family farm’s 91-year history.

Regular investments are well balanced by the business’s cost-cutting measures. A reconditioned 150kW wind turbine has more than halved their electricity bill, a borehole supplies water for the shop and they’re planning to install a biomass boiler for their waste cardboard.

Although McKee’s recorded an impressive growth rate of more than 7% in 2012, Colin is aiming for a long-term growth of 3.5%, and he’s not short of ideas for how he’s going to achieve that. The business already has planning permission for an extension to the restaurant and improved signage on the entrance to the building. They’re also hoping to grow the number of orders through their online shop and expand their relatively new catering operation.

Colin believes that the growth they’ve seen at McKee’s is all part of a wider renaissance in the market for local food, and is he’s full of optimism for the future.

“The government in Northern Ireland has recognised the importance of local food and is putting money into small, artisan producers,” he says.” There’s only one way it can go at the moment, and that’s up.”

Edward Jewson
Knitsley Farm Shop and Granary Café, Consett, County Durham

If there’s one thing Edward Jewson hates it’s waste. Every last piece of the pigs, cows and sheep that are reared, butchered and sold on the family’s 89ha farm is used – and that means everything.

Pigs heads are saved, cooked down and turned into award-winning pork brawn. Beef and pork fat is rendered down to make pastry for Knitsley Farm Shop’s award-winning pies and provide chip fat in the café. Even the bones are boiled down to create gravies and jelly for pork pies.

Cost-conscious Edward and his wife Rachael run Knitsley Farm Shop and Granary Café on Edward’s family’s sixth-generation mixed livestock farm. The business opened its doors four years ago when Edward, keen for a new challenge, converted a set of redundant farm buildings on East Knitsley Grange Farm, which he runs with his father.

Incredibly, the whole enterprise was completely self-financed during a recession. Self-taught Ed “took the pain out of start-up costs” by doing a lot of the construction work himself, building window frames and shopfittings from timber sourced from the farm’s own woodland.

Since day one the heart of the business has been home-reared meat, with butchery accounting for about half of turnover. Behind the shop is a full on-site butchery and production facility where they create value-added products such as terrines, patés, pastrami and their bestselling meat pies.

Every year, 52,000 hot and cold pies are sold, helping the young business achieve an impressive turnover of £1.3m.

The shop and café take all the meat Edward and his dad produce and at peak times you’ll find up to five butchery staff serving behind the beautifully presented counter to cope with the queues. When demand does outstrip what their small family farm can supply, Edward turns to trusted local suppliers to meet the shortfall.

The couple have also built strong relationships with other local suppliers to offer customers a range of fresh fruit and vegetables, poultry, jams, drinks and dairy products. Most of what you see on the shelves is sourced within a few miles of the shop, from the ice cream made two miles down the road to the honey produced by Edward’s cousin on the farm.

Keen to keep the business moving forward, and to increase their self-sufficiency even further, last year Edward and Rachael invested £50,000 in an on-site bakery, run by a full-time artisan baker.

“Bread has a big following,” explains Rachael. “It brings people in – they travel for miles and when they’re here they buy other things.”

In the immediate future, the couple are looking to consolidate the business after four years of heavy investment, but the business shows no signs of standing still. They’ve recently taken on an apprentice on the farm, they’re looking at the possibility of introducing an in-house loyalty scheme for customers and have clear plans to expand their range of value-added meat products into curing and charcuterie.

Edward’s drive and passion for this business is evident at every stage along the supply chain, and undoubtedly underpins its impressive growth record.

The result of his hands-on approach is consistent quality across the board and a loyal following of customers whose word-of-mouth recommendations do almost all of his advertising for him.

“When you produce something, process it and sell it with pride, it’s a fantastic feeling,” says Edward. “To achieve that and get your product through the food chain with minimum wastage fills me with pride.”