1 year on

Firstly we want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has tried our olives, buys our olives and sells our olives.

We are so proud of how far we have come in just a year, with Covid restrictions not allowing us to market West Country Olives as much as we would have liked, however, it’s still been a successful first year.

Social media and the internet are wonderful tools for business and without them we would have really struggled to launch this new and exciting brand of Olives when we did! 

What we did learn along the way is you just can’t rush perfection. 

Our first consignment of packaging didn’t quite live up to our expectations.

So, we re-jigged it, these are the packs available now. We still thought we could improve them, so…..

Third time lucky with a few more tweaks, the next batch of packaging will be arriving around February time. 

We launched 11 flavours to start with which included Olives and Mature Cheddar, this one was a tricky flavour due to having to be kept chilled and consequential shelf life so this was soon discontinued.

Fortunately as we got rid of one flavour four more came along, Garlic and Chilli, Black Moroccan, Orange and Coriander and Lemon and Tarragon. 

We have now got 14 incredible flavours that we are always working on to make them the very best olives you have ever tasted! 

These recipes are very slightly tweaked during our production to ensure their consistency. (The raw state Olive can differ with flavour and salt content during the seasons)

 

We have attended two trade shows over the past year, both at Westpoint, Exeter.

The Christmas market in 2020 being our very first one and then The Source Trade show, both very different events the Christmas market being more targeted to the General Public. 

The Source show which is a trade event focussed on businesses and was much smaller than it tends to be due to covid restrictions. However that seemed to work in our favour with our stand being visited by a lot of footfall.

We were really busy with lots of genuine enquiries and lots of leads and business from it. Thank you.

We really enjoyed meeting many of you there, and we will be back next year. 

We use Devon’s own Bell & Loxton rapeseed oil in all of the olives. We are really pleased to work with another local family business and to use this fantastic local oil in our blends. 

We are wholesaling these Olives through our parent company ORCHARDLEA FOODS.

All these flavours come in both 175g retail packs, and 1kg bulk bags. 

The 1kg bags are great for deli’s,(serve-overs) farm shops cafes and many other businesses. 

Going forward….

We are currently working on some new flavour ideas, with the possibility of launching a new flavour in the new year. 

Any ideas are always welcome. 

We were hoping to launch our jarred olives as a more premium range for Christmas but with Summer being so busy and staff having to isolate it hasn’t happened in time, so these will be launched next year. Watch this space.

Again going forward….

We are hoping to get out there in the field and meet as many customers as possible over the next few weeks and again after the Christmas peak.

We can bring a few samples of different flavours and point of sale material, if required please message us if you would like to arrange a meeting or we can just post them or one of our drivers can deliver if they are passing. 

So thank you again and here is to an even more positive 2nd year of trading! 

Like this article?

Share on Facebook
Share on Twitter
Share on Linkdin
Share on Pinterest

Leave a comment

Recent Post