H&C News speaks with suppliers regularly to keep up to date with the latest product and service innovations, aiming to get the inside track on what companies offer to the market and how it is delivered.
This week, we were pleased to speak with ‘Claire Kelly’, ‘Owner’ of ‘Passion Preserved’ at their offices in ‘Ballinderry, Northern Ireland’ to gain a better understanding of the business.
Passion Preserved manufactures and sells savoury preserves -relishes, chutneys and dips from its base in the countryside in Northern Ireland.
How did Passion Preserved start?
I was originally a chartered accountant with my own practice but decided to take a complete change in direction in 2012. I was passionate about growing fruit and vegetables organically and then turning them into preserves. It was a leap of faith to try to turn a hobby into a business but 5 years later Passion Preserved has become a well-respected prestige brand in NI.
How does your product/service proposition work?
We make only savoury preserves and now have a range of about 13 products. We supply these in both jars and 1 litre and 2 litre deli buckets. This appeals to the coffee shop/restaurant which has a deli attached as customers who like the product they have eaten then make a purchase.
Our range is very versatile and many of our products can be used for cooking, marinating etc. as well as a condiment. In these days of food waste consciousness this has been something which customers have embraced often interacting with us on social media to share a new use they have found for a product.
We still grow about 70% of the fruit and vegetables used in our products and these are entirely made by hand in exactly the same way they were when we started. Investment in a full production kitchen and a 100 litre boiling pan enables us to produce a consistent premium product in larger quantities without losing that small batch fresh taste.
We aim to be as sustainable in our production as possible and all of our organic waste is composted for use in the garden with packaging being recycled or composted. Our entire range is vegan friendly and we find that nowadays this resonates with customers who often seek a vegan product because of dietary issues.
How do coffee shops and restaurateurs begin the process of selecting a specific product or service?
We have a website and this contains a full product list with quite a bit of information on our products because as our strapline says we are “deliciously different” and therefore customers are not always familiar with what we offer. Ideally we like to meet with potential customers to see if we will be a good fit together – we find that once they taste our products they are hooked but we are not hard sell and want to develop long term relationships.
We appreciate that a new product range is a risk for a shop so we work hard to ensure our customers know about new stockists. We also supply tasting notes and samples to make it as easy as possible for our shop partners to introduce the product. If it is possible we hold tasting sessions in store to introduce the products.
We try to keep a low minimum order quantity and allow new customers to mix and match the range to suit.
What new developments are you looking at in the near future?
When we started the business we soon realised that there were many competitors and we needed to differentiate our offering. We concentrated on fine tuning our recipes and to ensure that our product range worked we spent considerable time at food events and farmers markets getting feedback.
We made a conscious decision not to grow at a frantic pace but rather to establish a solid network of happy stockists who like our products and more importantly profit from having them in their shop/café/restaurant. So far we have been incredibly fortunate in that our social media presence and wins in competitions such as Great Taste Awards and Irish Food Awards has led many stockists to us.
We aim to build on that foundation and increase our stockists focusing on those who want a niche product with great taste, customer appeal and versatility.
H & C News comment
It was a pleasure speaking with Claire, her passion for the business translated through the conversation and we suspect the products too.
Contact Claire….
Tel: 07845 216 939
E-mail: claire@passionpreserved.co.uk
Visit our website here