Doddington Dairy has been a working farm in Northumberland for the last 50 years. You may think this makes it a bit too old to be featured in On The Up, a section for young suppliers.
But it's only in the last few years that the ice cream business has started, and taken off, and it's this side of the operation that we think is going to get the country smacking its lips.
Run by husband and wife Neill and Jackie Maxwell, Doddington Dairy is one of the few remaining dairy farms in Northumberland. In 1993 they started making farmhouse cheeses to try to squeeze a bit more profit out of the business, and it worked. Their cheeses are now available at selected outlets around the UK and in the US through Neal's Yard in London.
But it was in 2000, the year they launched their first ice cream, that things really started to take off. We wanted to diversify a bit. No one else in the area was making ice cream so there was a niche to be exploited, and it played along our lines of wanting to manufacture food. It has steadily developed over the last six years and the ice cream business is now bigger than our cheese operation, says Neill Maxwell.
The ice creams are available mainly in the north-east of England and south Scotland, through Asda and Waitrose and around 70 specialist stores, and the flavours are very much locally inspired. The Newcastle Brown Ale and Alnwick Rum Truffle lines are proving particularly popular.
It's a new range called From A Flower that has generated the most interest though. Finding its inspiration from, not surprisingly, flowers, the new range comprises flavours including Rose, Saffron & Cardamom, Orchid Vanilla and Heather Honey. Each is packaged in a blue box that look like a luxurious gift. My personal favourite is the Heather Honey line, says Maxwell.
The hills up here look magnificent when the heather's out, and we buy the honey from a local honey farm that has several hundred bee hives all over the area. It's as if we're getting a taste of the land through our ice cream.
There are plans to increase the availability further south, and already the From A Flower range is available in Harrods and Harvey Nichols. It recently won the Sial d'Or 2006 award for best food product from the UK too.
With the nation1s preoccupation about health and wellness in recent years, luxury food manufacturers will be encouraged to see a full fat, indulgence product doing well. The ice cream is made from the full cream milk of Doddington Dairy's 250 Ayrshire and Friesian cows, which is mixed with double cream, sugar and egg yolks, as well as whatever ingredients make up the flavours, to create an extremely elegant ice cream that is very real and natural according to Italian chef and ice cream enthusiast Gennaro Contaldo.
It's the freshness of the end product that Maxwell particularly enjoys. A lot of our produce is made within six hours of the milk coming from the cow, he says.
The operation involves input from every member of the Maxwell family, and this again is something Maxwell is proud of. Along with myself and my wife, my two elder brothers run the dairy and arable parts of the farm, my sister is a cheese maker and my father is the general overseer. It's something we value a great deal, particularly when it comes to developing new flavours.
Every member of the farm, including the van drivers and production staff, gets involved in flavour development. This sense of community that the business brings to its products, complemented by its dedication to locality, has served it well in the absence of a big marketing budget.
Maxwell says that both these factors have been successful selling points so far, and with no plans yet to experiment with advertising the hope is that the website, through which you can buy product, and word of mouth will continue to drive sales going forward. We use local flavours wherever possible, and the regionality of our product is very important. We have a good following up here. We now want to head south too, Maxwell says.
Maxwell won1t be compromising the luxuriousness of the product by launching a low-fat or healthy option either. But you can be sure several new flavours will be launched in the near future. I don't want to give too much away, but we1re always on the go when it comes to NPD, We1re always developing and always taking suggestions from retailers and consumers, so creating new flavours is very important.
The only concern that Maxwell has is that this need for innovation can become a strain financially. We're only a small company and we don't want to stretch ourselves too much. Already we have to buy thousands and thousands of tubs, and just because you have more lines doesn1t mean you will definitely sell more volume, so we have to be careful. Nevertheless if the momentum continues to build as it has, it won't be too long before From A Flower blossoms into a highly fruitful brand.
But it's only in the last few years that the ice cream business has started, and taken off, and it's this side of the operation that we think is going to get the country smacking its lips.
Run by husband and wife Neill and Jackie Maxwell, Doddington Dairy is one of the few remaining dairy farms in Northumberland. In 1993 they started making farmhouse cheeses to try to squeeze a bit more profit out of the business, and it worked. Their cheeses are now available at selected outlets around the UK and in the US through Neal's Yard in London.
But it was in 2000, the year they launched their first ice cream, that things really started to take off. We wanted to diversify a bit. No one else in the area was making ice cream so there was a niche to be exploited, and it played along our lines of wanting to manufacture food. It has steadily developed over the last six years and the ice cream business is now bigger than our cheese operation, says Neill Maxwell.
The ice creams are available mainly in the north-east of England and south Scotland, through Asda and Waitrose and around 70 specialist stores, and the flavours are very much locally inspired. The Newcastle Brown Ale and Alnwick Rum Truffle lines are proving particularly popular.
It's a new range called From A Flower that has generated the most interest though. Finding its inspiration from, not surprisingly, flowers, the new range comprises flavours including Rose, Saffron & Cardamom, Orchid Vanilla and Heather Honey. Each is packaged in a blue box that look like a luxurious gift. My personal favourite is the Heather Honey line, says Maxwell.
The hills up here look magnificent when the heather's out, and we buy the honey from a local honey farm that has several hundred bee hives all over the area. It's as if we're getting a taste of the land through our ice cream.
There are plans to increase the availability further south, and already the From A Flower range is available in Harrods and Harvey Nichols. It recently won the Sial d'Or 2006 award for best food product from the UK too.
With the nation1s preoccupation about health and wellness in recent years, luxury food manufacturers will be encouraged to see a full fat, indulgence product doing well. The ice cream is made from the full cream milk of Doddington Dairy's 250 Ayrshire and Friesian cows, which is mixed with double cream, sugar and egg yolks, as well as whatever ingredients make up the flavours, to create an extremely elegant ice cream that is very real and natural according to Italian chef and ice cream enthusiast Gennaro Contaldo.
It's the freshness of the end product that Maxwell particularly enjoys. A lot of our produce is made within six hours of the milk coming from the cow, he says.
The operation involves input from every member of the Maxwell family, and this again is something Maxwell is proud of. Along with myself and my wife, my two elder brothers run the dairy and arable parts of the farm, my sister is a cheese maker and my father is the general overseer. It's something we value a great deal, particularly when it comes to developing new flavours.
Every member of the farm, including the van drivers and production staff, gets involved in flavour development. This sense of community that the business brings to its products, complemented by its dedication to locality, has served it well in the absence of a big marketing budget.
Maxwell says that both these factors have been successful selling points so far, and with no plans yet to experiment with advertising the hope is that the website, through which you can buy product, and word of mouth will continue to drive sales going forward. We use local flavours wherever possible, and the regionality of our product is very important. We have a good following up here. We now want to head south too, Maxwell says.
Maxwell won1t be compromising the luxuriousness of the product by launching a low-fat or healthy option either. But you can be sure several new flavours will be launched in the near future. I don't want to give too much away, but we1re always on the go when it comes to NPD, We1re always developing and always taking suggestions from retailers and consumers, so creating new flavours is very important.
The only concern that Maxwell has is that this need for innovation can become a strain financially. We're only a small company and we don't want to stretch ourselves too much. Already we have to buy thousands and thousands of tubs, and just because you have more lines doesn1t mean you will definitely sell more volume, so we have to be careful. Nevertheless if the momentum continues to build as it has, it won't be too long before From A Flower blossoms into a highly fruitful brand.
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