It’s been a while since my last blog post, and whilst I still don’t have a lot to show for my vision, that vision is becoming clearer all the time. Earlier this week Nick, my fellow director and I had a really interesting morning at our inspirational neighbours, Simon and Tim Jones. Simon and Tim make Lincolnshire Poacher on their fourth generation family farm, just up the road from us. Lincolnshire Poacher is a hard, cheddar style cheese. It is a high-ish end artisan made cheese, and round here it is absolutely ubiquitous – you can tell if a shop or deli within 100 miles is any good by whether it stocks Lincolnshire Poacher! They have also made fantastic market saturation in all the places you would want it, with Neals Yard and La Fromargerie (2 of the top cheese shops in London) also stockists. Simon and Tim’s offices are in a beautiful converted brick farm building, overlooking their cow sheds. The offices are heated by a wood burner (timber supplied from our estate!) and a groundsource heat pump, just two examples of the £1m investment they have made in renewable energy. We sat and chatted about things they had learnt and what their opinions were about what we want to do. Simon also took us on a tour of the premises and introduced us to some of his staff. The maturing shed was probably the most impressive, filled with rack after rack of gorgeous round cheeses. Probably the most helpful to see was the cutting room. Cheeses are bought from the maturing shed to an area just outside the cutting shed where they are washed, before being taken into the cutting shed where they are prepared for sale. Some of the cheese is sold retail, mainly through farmers markets, but a growing minority by mail order. The rest is sold wholesale, to various independent shops and some wholesalers. Waitrose is also a customer, and some restaurants are supplied directly. Other restaurants and small shops will purchase their supplies of Poacher through the wholesalers supplied. In the cutting room some of the cheeses are cut and vac-packed, from small slices destined for the farmers markets, to quarter cheeses for the smaller shops and whole cheeses for clients who get through plenty of Poacher! Once vac-packed the cheeses are labelled and then packed into cardboard boxes and addressed prior to daily dispatch by Parcel Force. Simon was able to point us in the right direction for washable floor and ceiling panels and resin flooring, and it was good to get a feel of the flow of produce through a process and how the clean to very clean chain worked!
Whilst cheese is clearly a different commodity to meat, what Simon and Tim have achieved does have parallels with what I am setiing out hoping to achieve, albeit perhaps not the scale they are doing. They have their own herd of high welfare cattle, and all the milk from their cows goes into their cheese. The vast majority of the farm is geared to feeding the cows, with clover rich grass leys for the cattle to graze in the summer, and from which silage is made to feed the cattle in winter. The majority of arable crops are grown to provide additional winter feed, with just some mineral supplements and some non-GM soya bought in to provide for the cows complete nutritional needs. A visit to the farm really bought home just how far a business like this is built on the back of passionate individuals with a clear vision of what they are setting out to achieve and unshakable principals of how the business should be run. This is a venture where all the bases are covered, all the controllables are controlled, but where this is far more than just jargon. Lincolnshire Poacher is the physical product of the ethos, ethics, skills and dedication of two brothers, made of course with the help of their cows and their staff. Each day they produce just one rack of 20kg cheeses, the distillation of hundreds of acres, hundreds of cows and ten permeant staff.
Simon and Tim emphasised that the slick operation they showed us was a far cry from the humble beginnings of the business, when Simon was cow man, cheese maker, marketer and stall holder, and the facilities were a couple of tiny sheds, converted on a shoe string. They advised me to start very small, test the market and see whether we had got our offering right. To evolve organically, so we make the worst of our mistakes (hopefully!) whilst we are small, and hone what we do as we grow. What they truly exemplified to me, both in discussion and in example was that however the business evolves it is imperative to hold onto your values and your vision, and others will buy into that.