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.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=2adaa2ee-c7f2-4811-9ff5-adf791353fdc)
With happy memories of a wonderful family Christmas with the proprietors of Doble Quality Foods, Suppliers to the Catering Trade in Cornwall and South Devon, I am enthused to look at some of their suppliers.
This cluster of food manufacturers is quite different from companies in the Cambridge Cluster. They are family run and controlled companies and many in their second and earlier generations. It is interesting to think about the equity structures of each business as they pass down the generations. All the companies are closely linked to the farming world which has similar problems of passing down ownership of the business.
Whilst Cambridge Cluster companies have ideas which they hope to sell to the world, the products of the Cornish Cluster companies are mainly for local consumption and rely on the customers coming to the South West of England. Transport links have improved over the years but avoid travel on change-over Saturdays in the very busy summer school holidays. The development of Newquay Airport (remember to pay the local tax or you cannot get out) has made it more accessible. You can always take the Cornish Riviera and sleep on the way down in your bunk. It is better for returning to London as you do not have to worry about getting off at your station.
There is a market for the people from the South West who are now scattered round the world and want a Taste of the West for a celebration when the cost of the goods is dwarfed by the cost of transport – but who cares for a precious moment! Logistics can be difficult as it is not good for perishable food to be stuck or lost in transit for a few days.
Cornwall needs to develop other industries and to do so will require a business plan resource.
Of course, the ego of Rich Stein will insist that he put Cornwall on the gormet map and it was just gormand before him. At least you can be sure of a warm and generous welcome from the members of Taste of the West whereas Jasper Gerard, writing in his Your Table is Ready on “Padstein”, comments about the “accusation of arrogance that sniffs the air”. Gerard also comments that Stein “fired the first shot in the Cornish food revolution” – not sure if the people of Kernow agree with that.
![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=192c4513-24cb-485d-aff6-4f660541d3d3)
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!