Bidfood is focused on going the extra mile for its customers. Being the best is a key part of its ethos, and its focus is on delivering the best customer experience, making life easier and helping customers to grow. Bidfood is serious about service excellence and getting it right first time, and has invested in building an infrastructure that keeps the business close to its customers, offering a truly unique local service.
Bidfood’s Stowmarket depot has a dedicated team working in partnership with local businesses, helping to support them in achieving their goals. The local food service provider employs over 200 local people and services over 2,500 customers across the east from Ipswich to Hunstanton. During the pandemic Bidfood has been busy supporting customers old and new in relaunching their businesses to ensure continued success. The hospitality industry changed and so did Bidfood, helping deliver Government Care packs to the community, and lateral flow testing kits to the education sector. Everyone had to adapt and Bidfood Stowmarket is proud to say it will continue to help any catering business that needs its help.
Ashtons Legal employs over 350 people across East Anglia in its Bury St Edmunds, Cambridge, Ipswich and Norwich offices and in Leeds trading as Heslop & Platt.
The firm meet a full range of business and private client needs both nationally and internationally and boast specialisms in the agriculture sector, French property law, franchising, regulatory and road transport and personal and medical injury services.
Ashtons’ top tier agricultural team have been helping many local agricultural businesses both large and small for a long time. This includes assisting clients looking to diversify their business and undertake imaginative and worthwhile ventures which contribute to the food chain.
Ashtons Legal is delighted to sponsor the Best Product or Producer award category in the Suffolk Food and Drink Awards and are hoping to see entries from a diverse number of organisations all involved in East Anglia’s thriving food and drink community. Here in Suffolk we have one of the best food and drink scenes in the country. Our rolling hills grow some of the best crops, our (mainly) fine weather yealds some of the best produce and we produce some of the finest beer, cider and wine in the UK. Our expansive coastline is a haven for fresh fish and you never have to go far to find a pub with a great view and great pub grub, a stately home or hotel with ex-City chefs, or a town centre restaurant where you can experience fine dining.
Our judges will be looking for entrants who have combined innovation and passion to grow their products which are different and exciting. They are keen to see evidence of ‘blue sky thinking’ and of clever and interesting routes to market.
Bruni Erben is a leading supplier of glass, closures and machinery for the spirits, beverage, food, pharmaceutical and home fragrance markets. Founded in 1951, the company has developed and diversified, and today offers an extensive catalogue of stock items, a design team which delivers world-class expertise to yield extraordinary results on bespoke products, and industry-leading technical support.
Our in-house product design studio, and a partnership with the Bruni Glass Innovation Center in Milan, allow us to bring our unparalleled expertise to your project development! We have a wide range of services, including fully bespoke glass, embossing, decoration and custom closures, through to labels and outer packaging; we will support you from concept to commercialisation. Beyond increasing brand revenues, effective design can also reduce costs and improve productivity.
On-time delivery of the products you need is paramount to your business. At Bruni Erben, we partner with our transport companies to ensure you get the high quality of service you deserve. We have a highly focused and experienced logistics team that manage all aspects of each delivery, whether it’s for just one urgent carton or a container load. Our team can also manage stock holding and fulfil customer requirements whether utilising stock usage forecasts or short notice requests.
With project management, rapid prototyping solutions and UK stock holding facilities, Bruni Erben – in partnership with Bruni Glass and Berlin Packaging – offer many services to streamline your supply chain, boost your profits and enhance your brand recognition.
Castlemeadow Care is an award winning Norfolk based company that owns and operates care homes and a retirement village across Norfolk and Suffolk. Founded in 1999 and celebrating their 21st anniversary they provide Residential, Dementia and Nursing care employing 390 members of staff over six locations. An ethos of maintaining a quality of life by delivering outstanding care with high quality surroundings, extensive activities and wellbeing programmes alongside delicious nutritious home cooked meals has been echoed through various acclaimed awards. These include awards for Outstanding Dementia Care, Activities and Wellbeing and the Mealtime Experience. Extending further into Suffolk with Highfield House Care Home the company is continuing to expand as the chosen healthcare provider to design, build and operate a new healthcare village in Halesworth which will offer a state of the art care home alongside accommodation for retirement living. Woodgate Park Retirement Living in Swanton Morley near Dereham is a spacious development of bungalows for people looking for their own independence whilst at the same time having the reassurance of additional support as and when needed. Work is currently underway for the final phase of the development with previous stages being sold out. Castlemeadow Care is passionate about giving back and being part of the wider community. On a local level actively sponsoring a variety of great causes, charities, and awards. On a world wide level having built six schools across Sierra Leone in Africa.
Access to good ingredients has never seemed so important, which is where Cory Brothers Shipping Agency comes in. The Ipswich based business handles the international supply chain for many food, drink and ingredients companies across the UK and in particular throughout East Anglia; transporting everything from assorted nuts and prawns to tasty fruit rolls, pulses and rise.
Whether perfectly frozen or exotic fruit, the produce on your menu may just have been imported by Cory Brothers. The team support big brand supermarkets and successful family run businesses through to food start-ups, with all of their customers having a bumper crop of differing needs.
As a nation of food lovers, the UK has a truly international palate. Getting these international favourites into the UK and onto the shop shelves and restaurant menus can present some challenges but the team at Cory Brothers uses its years of experience to handle everything with the care and dedication it requires.
Established in 1842, Cory Brothers’ food, drink & ingredients team offers a full menu of services tailored to your needs and wants. For perishables, ambient, frozen, canned, tetra packed or loose; from origin to destination, the team pride themselves on getting it delivered on time and in budget using a global network of offices and agents.
If you have an appetite to learn more, please get in touch; logistics@corybrothers.com
The East of England Co-op, the largest independent retailer in the region, has been serving local communities across Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex for over 150 years.
Renowned for their support of local food and drink producers, the East of England Co-op founded their multi-award winning Sourced Locally initiative in 2007. Working with over a hundred producers, and stocking thousands of products, the scheme has ploughed millions of pounds back into the regional economy.
Alongside its food stores, the East of England Co-op also provides specialist services, including funerals, security and travel. With a significant property portfolio and other businesses, such as security services and an events and conferencing centre, they are a diverse and modern business.
Owned by over 260,000 members – including customers, colleagues and community groups, the East of England Co-op believes in sharing their success and giving back to the people and communities of our region. Launching the East of England Co-op Community Cares Fund, in response to the events of 2020, they’ve provided grants to support unpaid carers, foodbanks, Community Foundations, and more. With a focus on food poverty, the East of England Co-op have increased the value of Healthy Start vouchers to £5 when redeemed in their stores, funding the difference themselves, helping to ensure children get access to nutritional food.
Fisher & Woods was founded on over 50 years’ experience within the fresh produce industry. Ideally situated in Saffron Walden, Essex, housed within new purpose-built refrigerated warehousing, they are able to deliver across the length and breadth of East Anglia, the Home Counties and London. As well as the very finest fresh fruit and vegetables, Fisher & Woods’s customers are able to choose from a variety of quality dairy products and a delicatessen range, plus they will source items that are beyond our core range to suit their client’s needs. With a strong focus on local and UK growers, they also import daily from France and across the Globe. They expect their clients to expect the best, so they always make sure they receive the finest quality produce as standard. This means that each of their clients enjoys a bespoke offering and personal relationship with Fisher & Woods, ensuring that they receive their goods at the right price, when they want them, wherever they are, each day.
o Distilled overlooking Aldeburgh’s iconic shingle beach and handcrafted using only the finest locally foraged wild herbs and botanicals, Fishers distinctive gins and spectacular distillery have quickly become one of Suffolk’s most magnetic attractions. Fishers is the closest gin distillery to the sea in the UK and is open for pre-booked tours daily. Tours can be booked by calling 01728 454201 or visiting fishersgin.com. Fishers produce a range of gins and recently launched the UK’s first ever London Dry Smoked Gin. Fishers Gins are available in pubs, bars and retailers throughout East Anglia and London. They can also be purchased direct from fishersgin.com
Sometimes the spark of an idea can lead to great things. And such was the case for local business businessman Gerald Salter, who started operating the business from home with nothing, to expanding into an East Anglian-wide family business employing 20 people.
Today, based at their impressive showroom in Suffolk, Freshpac is one of the leading business-to-business tea and coffee wholesalers in the East of England.Gerald's son Jason, explains this is down to four things - quality, consistency, service, and knowing the customer.
And it's these four things that have inspired confidence in the brand from cafes, restaurants and hotels across the region, who put their trust in Freshpac to deliver exactly what they need, when they need it.
From the showroom customers are able to see the range of coffee machines, ancillary items (such as creamers and sugars) and other supplies they can deliver, as well as tasting the products. And that's all in the knowledge that by using the retailer they can count on a strong, regular, high quality supply chain, and help when it's needed in the form of their team of six in-house engineers.
The coffee is roasted in-house and tea, is supplied from standard black and fruit tisanes to the house Suffolk blend with its own special serving teapots.
Jason's particularly proud of the business's relationships with Rainforest Alliance growers, Café Femenino in Peru (which supports women in the workplace) and Cameroon Boyo, which he says is fairer than Fairtrade. "We work directly with co-operative farm groups in Cameroon importing directly and paying them directly for the coffee.
This give farms direct access to the value chain and they have control, allowing them to produce higher quality coffee from which they can command more money, therefore earning themselves an income to bring them above the subsistence line. This project we wholeheartedly back as it is allowing the farmers to build a future for their own families whilst still keeping their own land.
Founded in Suffolk, and with offices throughout the East of England, MAD-HR is an award-winning HR Consultancy, delivering expert-led support on all employee, performance and team development issues.
The company’s highly experienced team help businesses of all size and sector achieve productivity, profitability, and people satisfaction.
MAD-HR is at the forefront of delivering HR solutions in the most advanced and agile way. Having curated its own digital toolkit, it serves its clients with an ever evolving library of critical compliance resources, whilst also providing a much valued personal service to cover every client question, query or concern.
Directors Carole Burman and Charlotte Bate ensure clients can pick the perfect working relationship for their needs – be that through the HR Helpline, retained, strategic or training services.
Since its inception, MAD-HR has helped hundreds of owners, leaders and entrepreneurs grow and advance their business, secure in the knowledge they have the support of an exceptional professional consultancy.
