There’s a new name in foodservice, and thanks to the backing of one of the cheffing industry’s most revered figures, the chances are its brands will be coming to a restaurant near you soon.
The Food Heroes was started a year and a half ago by fresh produce veterans Simon Martin and his sister Claire, and her partner, the acclaimed chef Pierre Koffmann. It is the latter who is fronting a branded range called Koffmann’s Speciality Foods, and there are lofty ambitions for the future growth of the business.
The Koffmann’s range is all about giving chefs access to the best-quality ingredients, but its raison d’etre goes deeper than that: Food Heroes want them to understand what the right products are to use for the right occasion. “I developed the first fit-for-purpose product years ago and I was laughed at, but at the time you couldn’t recommend a Maris Piper all the time because you didn’t understand how it had been grown and stored,” explains Claire Koffmann. “At different times of the year a different potato would produce a different chip. It makes sense – fundamentally it’s a living organism and it changes throughout the season. If you think about a chef, there are so many ingredients in his larder, so how can he know everything about all of them? It’s our job to help with that.”
Thus the range, which is set to be bolstered by a number of new rollouts over the coming months, will include lines such as Chef’s Mashing & Boiling Potatoes, Chipping & Roasting Potatoes, Salad Potatoes and Baking Potatoes, among others. It’s about putting the emphasis squarely on the usage requirement rather than the individual variety.
“Everything is about usage,” Martin affirms. “For stage one, purely and simply we want to serve the chef market. But, as Claire said, even top chefs don’t understand the differential [between potato varieties], so we wanted to make it really easy for them.”
For a fledgling brand, Koffmann’s has already got a pretty impressive client list that includes restaurants such as The Berkeley, The Ivy and Marco Pierre White, the Gordon Ramsay Group, foodservice giant Brakes, Costco Wholesale and upmarket stores Selfridges and Harrods.
The company has some ambitious plans too: they want all the top chefs to use and recognise the brand, and for it to feature in pubs, restaurants and delis. While not setting out to target retail, it is a natural extension that they should eventually levy the owners’ contacts and look for opportunities in the supermarkets as well. “The intention was not really to target retail,” Martin agrees. “Yes, I’ve got lots of relationships with retail, but that was never the intention. Having said that I think retailers would really enjoy the look and the feel of the brand, the culture, the concept, and of course Pierre on top.”
The vision isn’t limited to fresh produce, and Martin reveals that a range of extra virgin olive oils for dressing will be launched this summer, targeting both restaurants and home users. There will also be a range of unwashed baby leaf salads in variants such as peppery, superfood, garden and mild, and there’s even talk of moving into wine.
The brand’s fortunes, one suspects, rest in the first instance on the popularity of Koffmann, a man dubbed the ‘chef’s chef’ for the respect he garners in professional kitchens across the country. “I didn’t realise the power that Pierre possesses, his reputation,” Martin admits, “and to be able to work alongside that is very exciting.”
Koffmann’s image can only do so much though, as the quality of the produce also has to be right. The potatoes are being exclusively supplied by Linwood Crops, a business established in 2016 by Chris Marshall along with experienced hands such as Steve Morton, Matt Thory and James Ragg, and Martin explains that having close links to the farm and agronomic know-how is vital to the company’s prospects. “There was a market for a brand to give the chef and the consumer a simpler way of buying a great-tasting product,” he says. “What people don’t realise is there’s a real science behind what we do. Chris has got a strong agronomic background, so we used that skillset. Joining up with Linwood as a key partner was so important.” With a new purpose-built facility in Cambridgeshire, the company looks well set for its mission.
The focus is on Koffmann’s right now, but The Food Heroes hopes it can establish a stable of brands – it already has another one called From The Farm – and it seems quite clear that this is just the start.
For Koffmann himself, it’s an opportunity to try something new, adding yet another string to a considerably well-stocked bow. For Martin, The Food Heroes represents something of a reinvention for a man who says he is feeling revitalised from having a break. And you can sense the enthusiasm that comes from working on a new project with friends and family: “I get up at five in the morning and I’m aching to get to work, and I haven’t had that feeling in a long time – to have a purpose, to have a real passion again. Finally we’ve all been able to earn the opportunity to have the platform we want.”
With one of the biggest names in foodservice in its corner, The Food Heroes certainly looks like it has the recipe to cook up a successful future for itself.
