Wednesday 26 January 2011

Its been a while!!

Hello

I can't believe my last blog was in March! A lot has happened since then, the Baked to Taste brand seems to be fully established, we are working with lots of new companies and trying to get our products more accessible through new outlets. A very exciting new customer was Saga Cruises. We sent our first order off at the start of this year- now our products will be travelling around the world- how I wish that was me!! Although I will be in Bolivia soon so I can't complain.

Its that time of the year where we are introducing new products. I can pretty much confirm that they will be a Ham and Turkey Pie, Coconut and Cranberry Cake and Chocolate Fudge Cake. All are exceptionally nice. I tested the Chocolate Fudge cake warm yesterday with lashings of cream, it was gorgeous. Well someones go to do it! Its hard to choose which cake is my favourite, I'm just going to have to eat both. I just hope they will be as popular as the Lemon Drizzle we introduced last year. It has been a massive success. Our third most popular cake after the Rich Fruit cake and the Double Choc brownie.

We were delighted to be awarded the highest mark possible in our Food Safety and Hygiene score (5 stars). I would be gutted if we hadn't because our premises are spotless.

Follow us on Twitter and Facebook for more regular updates, I promise they are more regular than my blog.

Adam

Tuesday 23 March 2010

A Busy Month

Hello

Justin decided to travel around Thailand for a month, and you might guess that we were all very jealous. Luckily he is now back, freezing cold like the rest of us!! He had a great time and has come back with loads of stories, although I am getting slightly bored of hearing how wonderful Thailand is.

So adding to the fact that we have been short staffed, we have also been incredibly busy, which is brilliant but also very tiring, especially when you put a couple of 14 hour days into the week.

You might have seen on our Facebook and Twitter pages that I have done a couple of sampling days; Salisbury Health Foods and Apple Tree Farm Shop. Both of which were greatly supported by our fantastic customers.

It is the 4th time I have sampled our products at Apple Tree, and once again we had a brilliant turnout. It was their 3rd Birthday, so there were lots of other suppliers sampling, including Lyme Bay Wines and a local Cider company- one opposite me and one next to me, I couldn’t believe my luck! Although, Cider brandy for breakfast has a bit more of a kick to it than Apple juice! Apparently Cider brandy is illegal at the moment, so lets hope that this ridiculous mistake/ law is amended!! Back to subject, a big thanks to Cath, Apple Tree manager, for once again giving our company fantastic promotion and organising a great day.

Our new products have been available for about a month now, and we can not make enough of the Lemon Drizzle. I predicted an instant hit, but I did not expect it to be this instant!! They are incredibly tasty and moist though, so if you have not tried one yet, be sure to get one…. or ten! The Raspberry cupcake is also going very nicely, and seems more popular than the cappuccino cupcake, so it looks like a good decision to replace it. We have had great feedback on our Butternut Squash Pie and the Scones, they are picking up nicely.

We are always getting great feedback on our products which we really appreciate, and makes all our hard work worth it. In what I may make a regular feature in my blog, here are a couple of compliments which we have received this month:

“I thought that I must pass on to you a comment from one of our regular customers. Last week she bought one of your cheese and onion quiches. She came in today and was in absolute raptures about this product. "Absolutely delicious and one of the nicest things I have ever eaten," was one of her complimentary comments. As someone who does not normally buy ready-made products, she stated that she will be trying the other G-Free products in this range on a regular basis. Keep up the good work!”
Best wishes. John Barber
Lantern Foods

This is a letter written to Crossed Grian and passed on to us, so hopefully this will also be published in their next magazine:

“After reading the article in your News and Reviews feature in the spring edition of Crossed Grain I feel I must let other coeliac sufferers know what they are missing if they haven't tried GFree's range of products. I had a selection of their pies and quiches which are all absolutely delicious with pastry that tasted good and melted in the mouth. The staff at GFree were extremely helpful and pleasant. It was good to have a successful ready made product and I shall certainly be trying other items from the range”.

Daphne Long.
Wem, Shropshire.

Remember to keep the compliments coming!!! And be sure to follow us on Facebook and Twitter.

I will be doing another sampling day at Prockters Farm Shop, 27th March, so if you are in the area it will be great if you can come and visit us. (Prockters Farm, West Monkton, Taunton, Somerset TA2 8QN)

Don’t forget about our Hot Cross Buns, they are available now and until Easter.

Adam

Tuesday 16 February 2010

Welcome to our first blog.

Hello,

A quick intro, I’m Adam and I will be the Chief Blog Correspondent! I also deal with all sales issues, business development and what I like to call slavery! You might guess by now, I’m also son to the Managing Director, Paula. We are very much a family run business, with my elder bro Justin looking after our accounts and website activity (all the boring bits!).

I am sure that our regular customers will be aware that we have been very busy over the past year creating our new brand Baked to Taste, with the fantastic help of Jonathan Alder. The Baked to Taste brand has now been applied to all our ‘ready to go’ cake and pastry ranges. There is so much to say about our new brand, but I will try and keep it short and sweet. Baked to Taste is designed to be more visually welcoming, and give a sophistication to our range which is on a par with the quality of our products. We hope it will communicate our values of sourcing our ingredients locally, being hand crafted and freshly baked. I must say that we are really looking forward to the journey ahead of us with the Baked to Taste brand.

Despite being so busy, we have still made time for some product development- most definitely one of my favourite times of year. I love tasting new products (a great excuse for stuffing my face!). Its so exciting to hear all the great feedback, and I think we have come up with some instant hits this year. So good that we can’t stop our driver Mike raving about how good the products are to our local customers.

So what’s new I hear you say? On the pastry side, we have a Butternut Squash and Cannellini Bean Pie (a creamy Cannellini Bean and Mushroom sauce topped with Butternut Squash and Potato). Over to the indulgent cakes- a Lemon Drizzle Cake and a Raspberry Twist Cupcake. The Lemon Drizzle was introduced after numerous requests from our valued customers, and I am so glad they asked. The cake is moist and lemony (using real lemon juice) with a great crunchy topping, definitely one of my favourites! With the Raspberry Cupcake, we wanted to create a flavour using an English Summer fruit. The twist is that its on a chocolate base, Raspberry’s and Chocolate, you must be tempted!

Last but not least, being Devon based and suppliers to the National Trust, we just had to bring out a scone containing no wheat or gluten! Good old fashioned cream teas, the old ones are always the best. So if you are heading to a National Trust property, you may be in luck and be served a gluten free Cream Tea.

A couple of dates for your diary’s, we will be sampling our products at Woodys Farm shop (Bath) on the 27th Feb, starting 10:30am, and Sailsbury Health Foods on the 6th March, also starting at 10:30am.

Adam