Our suppliers
We offer our customers high-quality local foods and produce that has been responsibly farmed with everybody’s best interest at heart. This includes the land, the animals and the customer. What we can’t source directly from our own farm comes from carefully selected suppliers, which include:
Packington Free Range
We’re delighted to be selling free-range chicken from this Staffordshire family-run farm. Packington Free Range is incredibly passionate about animal welfare and the environment, and as a result of their sustainable farming methods, their award-winning produce is richly flavoured and premium in every way.
When born, their chicks are housed in warm and well-ventilated sheds. When the chicks are about three weeks old, the shed doors are opened, allowing the birds to roam free on established pasture during the daytime. At night, they’re brought back in to safety, to protect them from foxes, for example.
Bidlea Dairy
The Bidlea team have been raising their Bidlea girls for three generations. Their herd of over 900 Holstein-Friesian cows lives outside for the majority of the year. The Cheshire farm has a strict non-GMO policy, ensuring that their cows only eat natural, home-grown feed, resulting in the tastiest and highest-quality milk.
Bidlea Dairy cultivates its farmland for smaller ecosystems to flourish. Their cows roam free and happily graze on tasty grass, surrounded by beautiful scenery and fresh country air. All the milk from the farm is processed on-site too, in a state-of-the-art dairy barn, which was built in 2018. This ensures that the milk is as fresh as possible, and free from any nasty additives or preservatives.
Joseph Heler
Joseph Heler set up the company in 1957 and just three years later, his cheeses won eight championships in national cheese shows. In 2001 the business was decorated with the Queen’s Award for Enterprise for its work developing the very first low-fat cheese.
Today, the business is in the hands of Joseph’s son, Mike, and grandson, George, and they still hold the same values, traditions and cheese-making principles that Joseph applied. They only use the finest local milk sourced from specially selected farms – located within a 45-mile radius of the dairy – to make the best-quality cheese, which continues to be produced by hand, on open tables.
Snapes Bakers
The award-winning Snapes Bakers, now in their third generation, have been making artisan breads for over 80 years. Their traditional breads are made with natural, high-quality ingredients (e.g. non-bleached flour only) and boast one of the lowest salt contents in the country.
The bakery is now run by twin brothers Alistair and Robbie Snape who are both trained real bakers. They’re proud to continue their father’s tradition of baking real bread – a healthy alternative to processed supermarket bread, which is high in salt, artificial additives and chemicals for leavening.
Powells Pies
Our range of local foods also includes incredibly tasty pork pies, made by by the Powell family following a recipe that has been handed down through four generations.
The pies are ‘hand-raised’ using wooden dollies and with only locally sourced prime pork. Powells also make delicious pickles and mustards, to perfectly complement their pies.
Mrs Darlington’s
A surplus of produce in 1980 led Marion Darlington to start making batches of homemade curds, marmalades, chutneys and jams. Initially, Mrs Darlington sold her jars in the local towns and villages on her egg round. Just three years after her first production, she started supplying to some fine-food wholesalers and by 2011, her products were being shipped from Crewe to all over the world. Mrs Darlington’s products are packed full of delicious fruit and made to traditional recipes that remain unchanged after all these years.
Woore Fruit Farm
We’re pleased that our range of local foods also includes fruit and vegetables from local farmers.
Woore Fruit Farm was established in 1981 and has been a family-run business ever since. Their farm is on the same road as our shop, so we’re practically neighbours. They supply Shropshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire with the finest seasonal fruits; their produce is available from May to October.