Cambridge Cluster

Image via WikipediaCallestick Farm dairy ice cream was started in 1989 and has grown quickly supplying over 600 customers including Doble Quality Foods – Suppliers to Caterers in Cornwall and South Devon.  One look at the Callestick website and you can taste that delicious ice crea – Oh! the calories!

I like the message on the Callestick website to frozen food distributors “Frozen Food Distributors who are still buying and selling produce on price alone are being left behind. Offering bland, mass-market ice cream just won’t do – end customers are now demanding high quality, pure and natural ice creams in exciting flavours, made with only the finest ingredients and using time-honoured methods. Are you offering what they want?”.  It is quite a call to action.  Doble Quality Food only supplies the best, obviously!

Callestick can produce over 5,000 litres of ice-cream a day so that takes some eating.  However there is a little information on the owners – it is interesting to see how different each website is.  I wonder how this very impressive growth has been funded and how and why they set out to supply the nation rather than keeping to the South West.  Did they use a business plan resource and raise outside funding?  Of course, the disadvantage of the ice-cream business is that the distribution of the product is so costly whereas the best of Cambridge Cluster products can be delivered down an optical cable to the world.

Image via WikipediaThe Cake Tin was “cracked open” from St. Ewe Free Range Eggs by Rebecca Morris starting in their farm kitchen.  The cakes have been so successful that baking has moved to farm buildings converted by husband Andy.

The cakes are supplied to the Catering Trade in Cornwall and South Devon by Doble Quality Foods or you can always go direct but why miss a smile from a Doble Quality Foods driver!

St. Ewe has been producing egss for 25 years and the chickens are free to range during the day with eggs collected twice a day.

So a fascinating story of how one family in the Cornish Cluster is diversifying to keep bring us the best food.  It must all be done with a helpful bank manager.  I wonder if the banks are offering fixed rate loans for ten years at the special rates now available.

It is very easy to sit back and comment on other people’s websites but not so easy to make it happen.  Most web designers like lots of pictures but the top sites rely on text and very clever use of colour.

The Doble Quality Foods, (Suppliers to the Catering Tradein Cornwall and South Devon), website featured a picture of a cow with the cold store in the background and the sea.  We suggested that it concentrated on the products for sale so the latest edition of the site has a picture of fish and chips and text about the products on offer.

We suggested that the phone number is given prominence.  The main text we suggested is below and it will be interesting to see if the customers start to use the website.  So we need to start tracking the numbers and to promoting the site on-line:

Doble Quality Foods is Cornwall’s leading independent wholesale distributor of frozen and chilled food.

Try our Cornish Collection of sausages, hams, beef, chutneys, crab, fish, smoked foods, Callestick Cornish Ice Cream, Trewithen Dairy Cornish Butter and much more.

Use our chilled and frozen food, individual meals, fish & seafood, meat & poultry, vegetables, pizza and pizza products, bread products, savoury products, confectionery and ambient & chilled products.  We sell turnips so you can bake your own pasties – give your guests a special treat!

Delivery to your door.  Doble Quality Foods operates a fleet of temperature controlled vehicles with on-board temperature recording equipment and split areas for frozen and chilled foods. Current customers include local pubs, hotels, and visitor attractions as well as schools, colleges and hospitals.  We deliver to Cornwall and South Devon.

Next time we must get round to discussing the business plan resource they use.