On my way down to Devon on Friday morning I popped in to see John at his Veggie Farm in Barrington Somerset. A bit bleary eyed - John had only got back from Covent Garden at 3 the previous morning and was already up supervising the picking of the Veg for the days deliveries.
Fantastic mixed salad leaves, green and yellow beans, runner beans, courgettes of all different types and colours, pink and puple beetroots, elephant garlic, delicious carrot bunches and the first New Season Yokon Gold potatoes. John is delivering 300kg of mixed leaves every week to top restaurants in the West Country - all hand picked/cut - backbreaking work as all is planted in the earth. It is his passion that maintains his strength in this gruelling time of year when the mix of cropping means that John is at his busiest. As a 'natural' farm - no use of pesticides or chemicals the weeding alone is a full time job for many of the workers. Why do his crops taste so good? Well, John only uses traditional varieties grown for flavour and then grows them in the ground - you will see many pick your own growers having grown the likes of strawberries in grow bags off the ground - while this helps the weeding issue it does have a corresponding effect on the taste - veggies and fruit - in much the same way as wine, rely on 'terroir' for their depth of flavour.
Monday, 30 July 2007
Sunday, 24 June 2007
Things you should know about our Scoff.
Scoff is all about great tasting food, professionally cooked using the best traditionally farmed ingredients.
We opened our first site on the Fulham Road in May 2007, near to Parsons Green Tube.
The Journey
We have a passion for real food and own two dining pubs in the West Country, taking full advantage of the abundance of good, local produce available. Suppliers have been personally selected for the quality of their produce and the traditional methods by which it is farmed.
We have applied exactly the same principles to the food at Scoff, so for the first time it is possible to enjoy the convenience of a take away meal with out compromising on the quality of the food. At the very heart of the whole business and the whole process is the relationship with producers. Buying directly from the farm gate has the double benefit of full traceability and the farmer being paid a fair price for his quality product.
All our meals are prepared from scratch by our own chefs, including all the stocks and sauces.
We only use real, natural ingredients. We never use artificial colourings, flavour enhancers, preservatives or cheap bulking agents.
All our meat comes from farms in the West Country. We have personally selected producers who farm in the traditional way to produce a better quality, healthier product. This means animals that are reared in a non-intensive environment and allowed to grow at their natural pace. They are not subjected to growth hormones or routine administration of antibiotics. This makes for a healthier animal which we believe is healthier for us.
Our main vegetable supplier is based in Somerset and farms without the use of chemicals or pesticides and chooses his varieties based on flavour.
Our eggs are from a free-range poultry farm in East Devon
We only use organic milk and butter.
Our dry goods come from essential trading.
We opened our first site on the Fulham Road in May 2007, near to Parsons Green Tube.
The Journey
We have a passion for real food and own two dining pubs in the West Country, taking full advantage of the abundance of good, local produce available. Suppliers have been personally selected for the quality of their produce and the traditional methods by which it is farmed.
We have applied exactly the same principles to the food at Scoff, so for the first time it is possible to enjoy the convenience of a take away meal with out compromising on the quality of the food. At the very heart of the whole business and the whole process is the relationship with producers. Buying directly from the farm gate has the double benefit of full traceability and the farmer being paid a fair price for his quality product.
All our meals are prepared from scratch by our own chefs, including all the stocks and sauces.
We only use real, natural ingredients. We never use artificial colourings, flavour enhancers, preservatives or cheap bulking agents.
All our meat comes from farms in the West Country. We have personally selected producers who farm in the traditional way to produce a better quality, healthier product. This means animals that are reared in a non-intensive environment and allowed to grow at their natural pace. They are not subjected to growth hormones or routine administration of antibiotics. This makes for a healthier animal which we believe is healthier for us.
Our main vegetable supplier is based in Somerset and farms without the use of chemicals or pesticides and chooses his varieties based on flavour.
Our eggs are from a free-range poultry farm in East Devon
We only use organic milk and butter.
Our dry goods come from essential trading.
Friday, 22 June 2007
Technology - online ordering and the rest!
Oh the joys of setting up a business. Having watched the latest Gordon Ramsey advert where he is depicted trying to fix a computer with some company saying he should stick to what he knows and let them take care of everything else - if only it was that easy!
Online Ordering
Nearly there! Our online ordering facility was supposed to go live at launch. However, it has proved far more difficult to be able to get the software to accurately work and enable users to be able to order over the net. Our friends at Ordertalk have been working hard to make this happen and we really should be able to have a site up and running very soon!
Having had a meeting with our till supplier yesterday (to move along the errors we keep getting that stop our ste from going live) I have now discovered exactly how they program dishes into their system (the system that Ordertalk software 'talks to' to be be able to facilitate web ordering). I now understand that on the ordering page on the website the fact that the dish says Thai Chicken Curry but the description says Dublin Bay Prawns is a Till system programmer error rather than the online software code error, and only affected the look rather than the actual ordering - confused - I was, but hopefully not anymore and means that I am able to sort this out as the techie guys don't seem to know the problem.
TELEPHONES
It seems that that modern phone systems have now outstripped certain software so that now new phone systems (that cost many thousands of pounds) can't work with old software systems (i.e. customer tills in shops)that are not TAPI compliant. So - the really exciting bit of my computer system that was supposed to enable any phone call to be recognised and automatically bring up the customer details - does not work! No doubt there will be a monetary solution to this but for the time being it is very frustrating.
So - who thought we were just about cooking. In order to have a modern gourmet food delivery business - that we hope to grow we have online ordering software, delivery software in store, an online stock control program. Who said chefs only know about cooking!
Steve R
Online Ordering
Nearly there! Our online ordering facility was supposed to go live at launch. However, it has proved far more difficult to be able to get the software to accurately work and enable users to be able to order over the net. Our friends at Ordertalk have been working hard to make this happen and we really should be able to have a site up and running very soon!
Having had a meeting with our till supplier yesterday (to move along the errors we keep getting that stop our ste from going live) I have now discovered exactly how they program dishes into their system (the system that Ordertalk software 'talks to' to be be able to facilitate web ordering). I now understand that on the ordering page on the website the fact that the dish says Thai Chicken Curry but the description says Dublin Bay Prawns is a Till system programmer error rather than the online software code error, and only affected the look rather than the actual ordering - confused - I was, but hopefully not anymore and means that I am able to sort this out as the techie guys don't seem to know the problem.
TELEPHONES
It seems that that modern phone systems have now outstripped certain software so that now new phone systems (that cost many thousands of pounds) can't work with old software systems (i.e. customer tills in shops)that are not TAPI compliant. So - the really exciting bit of my computer system that was supposed to enable any phone call to be recognised and automatically bring up the customer details - does not work! No doubt there will be a monetary solution to this but for the time being it is very frustrating.
So - who thought we were just about cooking. In order to have a modern gourmet food delivery business - that we hope to grow we have online ordering software, delivery software in store, an online stock control program. Who said chefs only know about cooking!
Steve R
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