Cotswold Fayre top speciality food wholesaler at Grocer Gold Awards

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Cotswold Fayre

Winner: Cotswold Fayre

Founded in 1999 by Paul Hargreaves, Cotswold Fayre built its business on a simple promise to farm shops and delis: “one delivery, one order, one invoice”. That founding principle now underpins the UK’s leading speciality fine food wholesaler, supply more than 2,250 retail sites from its Berkshire hub.

The past year is on course to be one of the strongest in its 26-year history. Against an 18% wholesale growth target, Cotswold Fayre delivered 23.1%, taking wholesale revenue past £30m. Growth was driven by a deliberate push into national accounts, including Waitrose, M&S, Ocado and two national garden centre chains, with garden centres up 97% and national grocers up 141%.

Innovation played its part too. The Dual Temp initiative, combined chilled and frozen into a single delivery, cut minimum order barriers and admin for retailers, while CoFI, a data platform giving suppliers channel-level sales visibility, is a rarity in a historically data-poor sector. An exclusive tie-up with Clarkson’s Farm’s Diddly Squat brand generated more than £1.5m in combined sales in its first year, while its Flourish farm shop division is on track to turn its first profit (£62k on £5.6m revenue).

Sustainability remains central to the model. One of the first UK B Corps, Cotswold Fayre has been carbon neutral since 2019, redistributed more than £150k of surplus food and saved 47.3 tonnes of CO2 through waste diversion.

Our judges were impressed by the growth story, with one noting the entry stood out for “not just what Cotswold Fayre does, but for how deliberately and coherently it has scaled a specialist model without losing credibility, trust or purpose.”

With strong double-digit growth, a sales target outperformance, expanded national reach and greater ESG influence, Cotswold Fayre is proof that a business can scale while deepending its impact.