Field Fare - what’s the scoop?

Fine Food with

Charles Campion

Food writer and critic

• It’s time to go left field rather than safety-first
• “Fashion or for keeps?”
• “New year and new possibilities”
• “What is in a name?”
• “The art of shopping”

field fare is an independent business with over 35 years of experience supplying frozen foods to independent retailers throughout the UK.

The idea? It’s simple, really. It all began with quality loose frozen fruits and veg.  Customers serve themselves and scoop as much or as little produce as they like from glass topped freezers.  All the taste, no waste, great quality and great value.

The idea caught on quickly and local farmers began to ask if they could offer the products in their own farmshops. Over the years, bakery, fish and ready meals have been introduced and today the range can be found in farmshops, garden centres, food halls, butchers and delicatessens across the UK.

Why stock frozen?

Freezing fruit locks in nutritional qualities, fresh flavours and natural textures, preserving it in its freshest state. And with less waste and great value too, offering customers a range of frozen goods alongside the fresh and ambient categories makes sound business sense.

A field fare stockist in the South West explains how field fare works for them:“field fare runs particularly well alongside our fresh produce as there will always be times when fresh, seasonal, local produce isn’t available. In our opinion, field fare fills that gap perfectly.”

And with the recent introduction of their upright freezer, requiring minimal floor space, the opportunity to maximise sales from every square inch of the store is even greater.

Bampton Fruit & Veg couldn’t be happier with their new upright freezer unit…

“We have been successfully selling frozen fruit, veg, patisserie and fish lines from 2 chest freezers for some time now and wanted to extend our range of field fare products. Not having a lot of floor space in our shop, their new upright freezer seemed the right solution,” says Steph Rodney Baker of Bampton Fruit & Veg, Devon.

“Now only a few weeks in, adding a range of Ready Meals in an upright has already proved to be the right decision. The range is becoming very popular and we are already seeing a lot of repeat purchases,” Steph adds. “The field fare team were really helpful suggesting lines to stock and assisting with the installation and marketing too.”

The field fare range

field fare offers frozen fruit and veg mixes, bakery, fish and a wide range of award winning ready meals too.

From Antiguan Fruit Salad to Country Soup Veg, the ‘scoop your own’ fruit and veg range offers a variety of single fruits and blends (with lots of great recipe ideas provided for consumers on the field fare website, via email and on Facebook and Twitter too).

The fish range offers everything from Scampi and Fishcakes to Shetland Salmon Fillets and Paella, perfect for quick and easy suppers after work.

The bakery range consists of ‘ready to bake’ pastries and Danishes, Cornish pasties made to an ancient family recipe and a selection of delicious, cookie dough ‘pucks’ that bake to perfection in a matter of minutes, straight from frozen.

Ready meals are a more recent and hugely successful addition to the field fare range.

Karen Deans, Managing Director, explains: “we developed our range of ready meals in response to customer demand, and have spent a lot of time tasting and tweaking the recipes to get them just right; we’re delighted to have won Great Taste Awards for a number of lines in this range as we take great pride in offering our customers the best.”

For more information on the field fare product range, visit the field fare website.

Working with field fare

Last year, field fare re-launched its brand with a new logo and packaging, as well as supporting retailers with new freezer livery, point of sale labels and backboards to help drive sales and brand awareness across the UK.

In addition, the team are now rolling out in store sampling sessions, a consumer campaign around Facebook, Twitter, email and PR, to drive consumers into store too.