ON WEDNESDAY July 27 in the heart of West Sussex, a giant inflatable corn on the cob graced the skies, signifying Barfoots md Graham Young’s favourite time of year. “The balloon goes up at Barfoots to lift off the UK season, to mark the onset of significant, commercial volumes of Barfoots corn-on-the-cob in the major retailers,” he says. “It’s a celebration of the end of the French season and a chance to tell people it is the start of ours.”
This year the company has plenty to shout about. “We are doubling our volume output approximately every three years,” Young says. And, in technical terms, everything is happily on course for this season, according to supply chain executive, Peter Atkins. “It is going to be a normal start,” he says. “We were running behind in the early part of the season but we have been working hard to catch up and will be starting on time.”
After years of experimentation, the company believes it has perfected a winning formula, and is now in a very strong position to serve consumers with the tastiest field-fresh sweetcorn available in the country. The recipe for such success starts with breeding, Atkins explains. “We are now using about eight varieties which takes us right the way through the season. These are chosen for their quality and capability of continuing to perform well throughout. They are all supersweet varieties - the best development the industry has seen in recent times.”
Breeding is a constant, evolutionary process, says Atkins. The company operates three-year trials of approximately 20 to 30 lines of new varieties and those that look promising are taken forward after the first year to be grown in more substantial amounts.
However, it is thanks to a combination of horticultural expertise and post-harvest treatment, that the company succeeds in maximising the UK cropping season, providing consistently fresh supersweet corn. “We blend the varieties and modern technology and maintain techniques for producing the crops to give us consistency of supply, for 13 weeks through to end of September or the start of October,” says Atkins.
Sweetcorn production has come a long way since the days of purchasing the cobs in their inconvenient natural state. “We have taken things on from the husk, which is very consumer and quality unfriendly, with a poor shelf-life, we have developed a process which has been patented,” says Young. “What the patented process has allowed us to do is to increase the shelf-life and to reduce stock, which is one of the reasons why our growth has been so dynamic and why consumption is going up so massively.”
As part of this process, at its base in Pagham, West Sussex, Barfoots has introduced state-of-the art packing facilities to ensure maximum efficiency in moving the corn along the supply chain from field to store. In addition, the company has recently entered a £4 million year-long phase of development which will double the size of its sweetcorn production facilities. “The new building should be ready for next year’s balloon raising, which will incorporate new elements to provide least-cost production and increased differentiation of new product development,” Young claims.
With the advantage afforded by the optimum light-levels enjoyed by England’s south coast, Barfoots is ideally situated to cultivate the popular supersweet varieties, says Atkins. And can now happily consider itself the largest global producer outside of the US. However, while the consumption per capita is 10 times higher in the US, its producers have been overwhelmed by the superior level of technical expertise at work in the UK. “Nobody is growing third generation sweetcorn on the scale we are, with our low-cost strategy and world-class system of farming,” says Atkins. “The US has a very mature market but they don’t have anything like the post-harvest new product development that we have,” Young adds.
Attaining this kind of quality is dependent on a huge degree of support from those on the next rung of the ladder, Young says. “This achievement is the result of us having the best supermarkets in the world which have encouraged us to develop the kind of range in sweetcorn that isn’t available anywhere else in the world.”
However, producing sweetcorn that is world-class in terms of taste and appearance is not enough when it comes to increasing consumer demand, Young claims, which is why the company has devoted so much of its energy to innovation in recent years. While sweetcorn has been a fixture in the market, many have neglected it as time pressure has become the priority for many when it comes to food preparation. Yet, the market is ready and waiting to be tapped into, and it is up to the industry to adapt itself to changing consumer needs, he suggests.
In this guise, Barfoots is radically steering the way in introducing the next generation of corn products to appeal to a whole spectrum of consumers, young and old alike. The company still produces corn complete with its husk for several weeks at the height of the summer barbecuing season. However, these have given way in importance to a whole host of innovations, with superior shelf-life and appeal. The company produces a range of cob and pack sizes for three of the major multiples, and has recently started including butter and sauce supplements to highlight the versatility of the product. Its latest retail product launch consists of four small corn pieces in a microwavable plastic dish, complete with wooden skewers and chilli butter pots, all designed and commissioned by Barfoots. “The corn stands up on its own but when you add the butter there is that element of a real treat,” says company commercial manager Chris Moreman. “The whole point is sheer convenience. Everything is extremely accessible and is ideal in the warm weather because it has got connotations of being very summer-orientated.” Yet, the company is hoping such NPD will enable it to move beyond this association. “We want to test the reception during the summer months and then look at the possibility of making it a winter product as well.”
However, the innovation does not stop there. Not content with simply making the product more enjoyable by broadening the range of sweetcorn options available, Young says it is in the industry’s interest to raise its profile as much as possible by literally bringing it straight to the end user.
To this end, Barfoots is seizing the opportunity to play an increasingly prominent role in foodservice. This has seen the introduction of a variety of corn products into catering outlets, including one of the UK’s most regularly-frequented chicken-based restaurants. “The NPD as a whole has led Barfoots to regenerate its part in foodservice which is now the fastest growing leg of our business, says Young. Moreman agrees that by making fresh corn widely available in restaurants, consumers should be more easily drawn towards the retail products to recreate the enjoyable experience at home. “A lot of restaurants are now taking on fresh products rather than frozen and that is something we hope to build on more and more.”
In addition, as a spearhead for its NPD, the company has been developing its own mobile catering concept, Cornutopia. This year, the mobile units will be visiting various participating supermarkets in the vicinity to entice shoppers to try chunks of freshly-cooked corn, as well as attending an increasing number of summer festivals and exhibitions.
The concept behind the catering units is to give consumers the choice of fresh, healthy alternatives to the usual fare offered at outdoor events. The idea has been called ‘Bob’s Cornutopia field café’ and features the strapline ‘tasty food that tells a story’. “The idea is that we use all locally-grown or made products, from Taste of Sussex and Hampshire Fayre, as well as Fairtrade and organic sources for the items that are travelling from further afield,” says account manager Jon Barfoot. “We carried out concept tests last year for 10 weeks, which had excellent results and that inspired us to take the idea forward.” The company is now looking at the possibility of franchising the initiative, given the staggering interest from a variety of different sources. This year it has two sleek vehicles waiting to hit the open road, complete with custom-built steaming ovens capable of cooking 300 cobs in 15 minutes.
Young emphasises the importance of embracing the local community, especially the next generation of consumers, and says the company takes great pleasure in opening its doors to the local public for its summer Cornfest festival. The occasion provides a great opportunity to try out new products and gauge customer interest first hand, he says. It was following research into children’s preferences that the company launched its selection of ‘cobettes’, the mini cobs which have become a significant component of its overall sales, and is seeing exponential growth, he explains.
And there is room for growth in consumption in all areas of the market, he says. “Of course it is in our interest to get children into eating sweetcorn because it’s so good for you but older people often tell us they haven’t eaten sweetcorn for ages and they have forgotten how good it could taste,” he says. “And we offer it to them in a bespoke plastic dish with a bevelled bottom, and wooden handles making it so convenient.”
The true glory days for sweetcorn are yet to come, Young concludes. “We’ve got a great product here and a definite market for it so we will look at every possibility for developing that. If we do our job properly it really will become a must have part of everybody’s weekly shop.”
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