A frozen vegetable consortium has taken its lead from the trend in fresh produce for regionally branded produce to secure a supermarket contract for local frozen peas and broad beans.
Swaythorpe Growers in Yorkshire is the UK’s first fully grower-owned brand of fine peas and it has just succeeded in signing a major deal with independent retail chain Booths.
The contract will put the consortium’s brand of frozen peas and frozen broad beans into all Booths' 28 stores across the north of England by the end of October.
The Swaythorpe Growers consortium of 40 Yorkshire pea farmers launched the Yorkshire Pea brand last year.
One of the group’s directors, Matthew Hayward, said: “It’s a huge coup for us to sign this deal with Booths. We’d spotted the rise in demand for locally produced food and thought that trend could easily extend to the freezer. So far, most brands that trumpet their local status are specialist and expensive - we wanted to take the local message to the everyday foods that the shopper can find in the freezer.”
The farmers that make up the consortium had been growing peas for several retail and foodservice outlets, but shared a wish to move away from commodity farming into something they had more control over.
Adam Whalley, Booths’s chilled buying manager, said: “We are delighted to be stocking Yorkshire peas, petit-pois and broad beans. At Booths we are always looking to protect quality, provenance and innovation. Our customers have a strong demand for quality products from our home counties and these products tick all the boxes.”
Swaythorpe Growers’ crops are all grown on family farms based on the Yorkshire Wolds and then processed locally at a factory owned by one of the growers, giving the producers direct control over every step of the process.
Hayward added: “We know that shoppers are keen to support British farmers - but we also know that those same people will always have a bag of generic frozen peas in their freezer - there’s very little in this category that’s clearly British.
“We firmly believe that local food needn’t be confined to a few muddy carrots at the local farm shop. This is real life and we want to give consumers the chance to support small-scale family farming directly.
“We’ve always been proud of what we grow, but selling peas with our name on the packet has genuinely taken farming to a new level for us.”
