Wholesaling company Cumbrian Fellbred has been a family business since 1903. Today, sourcing local meats and promoting the benefits of traceability and provenance, are key to success, as are diversification and seasonality.
The company recently launched Cumbrian suckling Swaledale lamb. Available from June to September, it resembles light Pyrenean mountain lamb, and has found favour with chefs such as Antony Worrall Thompson.
The company supplies 25 to 33 lambs per week to local butchers and restaurants, chefs in London and directly through its web site. It is also talking to large supermarkets.
Also offering sausages and burgers, the Milnthorpe-based company, which employs 24, has diversified into pies.
Its mutton and ale offering combines Cumbrian Herdwick mutton with Dent Brewery ale, and is in Booths now and Asda in October. Organic mutton pies and steak and ale pies will be produced for Duchy Originals from October.
Turning its hand to pies encouraged Cumbrian Fellbred to add sweet pastries to its list of products, and now it has a small bakery company and a hand-made dessert company.
The outbreak of foot-and-mouth in 2001 forced Cumbrian Fellbred to diversify.
“We were hit very badly in this part of the world,” says Dudley Carruthers, director of Cumbrian Fellbred’s parent company Udale Speciality Foods, who quotes group turnover now as £5.5m.
“It took a long time for things to pick up again, which is when we started diversification.
“Products such as our mutton and ale pie came about as a way of trying to spread the risk factor for farmers for the future. A lot of lessons have been learnt and we are in better shape now than before.”
The company recently launched Cumbrian suckling Swaledale lamb. Available from June to September, it resembles light Pyrenean mountain lamb, and has found favour with chefs such as Antony Worrall Thompson.
The company supplies 25 to 33 lambs per week to local butchers and restaurants, chefs in London and directly through its web site. It is also talking to large supermarkets.
Also offering sausages and burgers, the Milnthorpe-based company, which employs 24, has diversified into pies.
Its mutton and ale offering combines Cumbrian Herdwick mutton with Dent Brewery ale, and is in Booths now and Asda in October. Organic mutton pies and steak and ale pies will be produced for Duchy Originals from October.
Turning its hand to pies encouraged Cumbrian Fellbred to add sweet pastries to its list of products, and now it has a small bakery company and a hand-made dessert company.
The outbreak of foot-and-mouth in 2001 forced Cumbrian Fellbred to diversify.
“We were hit very badly in this part of the world,” says Dudley Carruthers, director of Cumbrian Fellbred’s parent company Udale Speciality Foods, who quotes group turnover now as £5.5m.
“It took a long time for things to pick up again, which is when we started diversification.
“Products such as our mutton and ale pie came about as a way of trying to spread the risk factor for farmers for the future. A lot of lessons have been learnt and we are in better shape now than before.”
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