I’m very proud to be a Sage Business Expert and was recently asked for my top business tip.  It’s hard to hone things down to one, but the Tip I wanted to share was about sharing plans with suppliers.  That’s always been my way of working at Breckland Orchard – I want to share all [...]

We do quite a few of the local food festivals and events – selling our Posh Pop of course! I get asked lots of times for advice on what to sell at Food  Festivals and events, so thought I would do a little blog piece with some thoughts. If you are thinking of  selling food [...]

I do quite a few food festivals through the year with Breckland Orchard , as well as the local county shows [Norfolk and Suffolk Shows]. There are LOTS of events, markets, shows, festivals etc out there and the trend seems to be growing.  My inbox is always scattered with emails from event companies selling ‘space’ [...]

I can’t remember how many new product launches I was involved with at Mars [probably about a hundred]. Some of the more memorable launches I helped take to market at the large supermarkets were: Whiskas Pouch Catfood, Uncle Bens Pouch [readycook] Rice and Galaxy Bitesize.  All the product launches were so well thought through, so [...]

There was a brilliant article in the Independent over the weekend entitled ‘Gourmet Gamble: Could you make it as a Food Entrepreneur‘, written by Charlotte Philby.  It gave an honest insight into the world of being a start up food and drink entrepreneur.  Must-read for any would-be start up entrepreneur. With the recession, and many [...]

If I am asked for my advice on how to start a food business then one of the first things I bang on about is to pour lots of thought into how you are going to get the product to the consumer right at the start! Yeap, that’s right before you’ve even designed a scrap [...]

I started Breckland Orchard last year in the midst of the credit crunch, and perhaps that’s not thought by most folk to be the most austipicious time to start a business. For me I’ve loved the discipline of starting a business when times are tight……it forces you to think differently, to be creative and to [...]

I shared my Top Tips for Food Shows a few weeks back, so thought that I should share similar tips on doing Trade Shows.  Being in the food and drink industry, these are the type of trade shows that I do, but the tips should be equally applicable to any kind of trade show! DO [...]

Following on from my Blog piece about Top Tips for Food Shows I wanted to introduce you to three of the new ‘additions’ to the Breckland Orchard armoury over the past few months.  They’ve made our life easier at Food Shows for sure! A VAN Yeap, it’s offical we now have a Breckland Orchard van, [...]

I thought it was time to share the lessons learned from doing food festivals and shows over the past few years!  We don’t do many farmers markets [weekends are usually but not always the domain of the mini-Martinsens] – but they would be just as applicable to farmers markets too! Here goes! ARRIVE EARLY – [...]

Just been catching up with Radio 4′s Food Programme via Podcast.  Fabulous edition entitled New Food Entrepeneurs by Tim Heyward [first broadcast 27th June 2011] .  The programme was all about the surge of entrepreneurs starting food businesses having come from a corporate/professional background – all in all a really fascinating programme. One of Tim’s [...]

I was asked by the Business Editor of the EDP if I had any tips or pointers for a start up Food Business………the tips were printed in the EDP May 2011 . I am by no means an expert [and still learning all the time] but these are a combination of my time in big [...]