Last month we were very proud to be awarded more gold stars at the 2014 Great Taste Awards – arguably the most recognised Fine Food awards scheme in the UK open to all food producers, big and small.

This year we won Gold stars for both our Twice Smoked Gressingham Duck Breast and Twice Smoked Chicken Crown.

This year’s awards are a very welcome addition to the Great Taste gold stars we’ve received in previous years (2010,2011 and 2013!) and our recent Pig & Poultry Marketing award.

The EDP food awards will also be announced in the next few weeks – entry into this competition is by nomination only, so hopefully this year’s successes will result in being put forward next year (hopefully we get that Norfolk luck!)

Expect to be canvassed soon. 

Has being a Great Taste Award winner affected your business?

Winning an award is a great boost to morale for any food producer, especially a small one like us.  Most of our time is spent working hard, perfecting our Artisan foods so it’s brilliant when all that toil is recognised!

The Great Taste Awards has over 400 very demanding judges – to have that much attention on the food you’ve been slaving over is quite intimidating, but all worth it when they show their approval.

Over 10,000 products were entered into the competition, from producers ranging in size from small guys like us to the big supermarkets like Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Aldi.

Two thirds of the entries received no award whatsoever, so it’s far from a done deal!

Indeed, we haven’t necessarily won a prize every year we’ve entered, but even if we left empty-handed we’ve always come away with some constructive criticism to help us improve our products.

Obviously, winning an award can affect sales too (we’re not only doing this for fun!) – being able to display the Great Taste Award logo on our products is a fantastic seal of approval which will hopefully convince more people to try our foods.

After all, it’s much better to have somebody other than yourself saying great things about you!

Will we continue entering Artisan food award competitions?

As we introduce more foods into our range of Artisan products will definitely be entering them into more competitions.

Even if we fail to win, they provide invaluable feedback to help us head in the right direction.

If our products come back one year and we don’t win anything you have to start thinking to yourself “Is this good enough? Do we need to change the recipe?”

And besides, there’s always lots of interesting people to meet at the awards ceremonies and great connections to make in the industry.

We just need to work on getting that nomination for next year’s EDP food awards – all votes welcome so don’t be shy!

Enter our competition to win a free Hamper stuffed with Artisan goodies!

We’ve got one hamper containing some delicious artisan foods from our favourite local producers.

To enter simply fill out the entry form
The entry deadline is 5pm 12/09/14 and we’ll announce the winner on 16/09/14

Good luck!