Week-long celebrations of jam, jam buttie battles and imaginative ingredients – one small producer is looking to change perceptions of our preserves. Sue Scott reports
Single-handedly adding 5% to the value of your category in just three years would be a big ask for any producer.
When you're a soon to be married couple with just one national listing to your name (at Ocado won this summer), such ambition is dizzying. But that's what Manchester's Clippy's Apples is hoping to achieve.
Co-founders Michelle McKenna and Paul Gorman are out to prove there's more to jam than the WI and cream teas.
The business was born in a bizarre "eureka" moment when McKenna who'd been inspired by researching orchards while studying for a PhD in sustainability and food networks was casting around for something meaningful to do with her doctorate. Coming away from a farmers' market in 2002, it hit her: "I was driving home and realised, it's all about apples."
At home, she gathered up the fruit from her own and neighbours' back gardens and began developing recipes including the now bestselling Apple Pie. As demand grew from niche food halls and farmers' markets, she ran out of apples from the neighbourhood and moved production out of their garage, choosing a third-party operator to increase production while they concentrated on building the brand. "We support the British apple, and we hope to become known as the spokesman for the industry," says Gorman.
Jam, believes McKenna aka Clippy has been in a fix ever since Premier bought Robertson's jam owner RHM in 2007, unceremoniously binning the brand (but keeping Robertson's marmalade) to focus on Hartley's instead.
"There's been no innovation in the past five years," claims McKenna, who has been touring the country with her Preserving the Nation tour in recent years. The company rattled out 100,000 jars of jam-based preserves this year using a contract manufacturer, producing inventive varieties such as Figgy Apple and Apple, Rudebarb & Ginger.
It's not just the jam that's different (the only constant is that each jam is apple-based). The marketing also shows flair. Last year the pair organised the world's first-ever Jam Week, for which they own the domain name, and brought together more than 250 people for a jam buttie battle that saw amateur preservers putting forward hundreds of jams for judging in June.
Next year the event will be bigger, they promise, as there is a major sponsorship deal in the offing.
"It's one of the vehicles we'll build the brand on," says Gorman. The others are provenance (only English and Irish apples), health (they've commissioned their own soon-to-be-released study on the health properties of apples), and versatility.
To reverse what Gorman calls "stagnation" in jam the value of the jams and marmalades category slipped 0.9% last year [52w/e 7 August] there's still a long way to go, however. Apart from Ocado, so far Clippy's just has listings with a handful of exclusive outlets, the National Trust, John Lewis and five fine food distributors.
From little apple pips, big ambitions grow.
Single-handedly adding 5% to the value of your category in just three years would be a big ask for any producer.
When you're a soon to be married couple with just one national listing to your name (at Ocado won this summer), such ambition is dizzying. But that's what Manchester's Clippy's Apples is hoping to achieve.
Co-founders Michelle McKenna and Paul Gorman are out to prove there's more to jam than the WI and cream teas.
The business was born in a bizarre "eureka" moment when McKenna who'd been inspired by researching orchards while studying for a PhD in sustainability and food networks was casting around for something meaningful to do with her doctorate. Coming away from a farmers' market in 2002, it hit her: "I was driving home and realised, it's all about apples."
At home, she gathered up the fruit from her own and neighbours' back gardens and began developing recipes including the now bestselling Apple Pie. As demand grew from niche food halls and farmers' markets, she ran out of apples from the neighbourhood and moved production out of their garage, choosing a third-party operator to increase production while they concentrated on building the brand. "We support the British apple, and we hope to become known as the spokesman for the industry," says Gorman.
Jam, believes McKenna aka Clippy has been in a fix ever since Premier bought Robertson's jam owner RHM in 2007, unceremoniously binning the brand (but keeping Robertson's marmalade) to focus on Hartley's instead.
"There's been no innovation in the past five years," claims McKenna, who has been touring the country with her Preserving the Nation tour in recent years. The company rattled out 100,000 jars of jam-based preserves this year using a contract manufacturer, producing inventive varieties such as Figgy Apple and Apple, Rudebarb & Ginger.
It's not just the jam that's different (the only constant is that each jam is apple-based). The marketing also shows flair. Last year the pair organised the world's first-ever Jam Week, for which they own the domain name, and brought together more than 250 people for a jam buttie battle that saw amateur preservers putting forward hundreds of jams for judging in June.
Next year the event will be bigger, they promise, as there is a major sponsorship deal in the offing.
"It's one of the vehicles we'll build the brand on," says Gorman. The others are provenance (only English and Irish apples), health (they've commissioned their own soon-to-be-released study on the health properties of apples), and versatility.
To reverse what Gorman calls "stagnation" in jam the value of the jams and marmalades category slipped 0.9% last year [52w/e 7 August] there's still a long way to go, however. Apart from Ocado, so far Clippy's just has listings with a handful of exclusive outlets, the National Trust, John Lewis and five fine food distributors.
From little apple pips, big ambitions grow.
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