Ice cream makers on dairy farm scoop deal with Asda

Yummy Yorkshire, set up in 2007, will supply the vanilla and caramel fudge flavours as well as its award-winning Lou's Liquorice ice cream to stores in Huddersfield, Halifax and Wakefield. Jeremy Holmes, founder of the firm, said that they did not want to grow too quickly, however, because it could pose a risk to the quality of the ice-cream. Yummy Yorkshire expects to turn over about 265,000 for 2009-10.

Mr Holmes is the third generation of the family to run Delph House Dairy Farm, based on the edge of Huddersfield, and added an ice-cream parlour in July 2008. The deal with Leeds-based Asda comes after Yummy Yorkshire won a contract with independent hotel group Cedar Court to supply catering packs for use in five of its restaurants.

Mr Holmes said of the Asda deal: "This is a substantial amount of business which takes production of our ice cream on to a new level.

"We know that British shoppers want to buy more locally produced food and are interested in a product's provenance. This can only be positive for artisan producers like ourselves who focus on quality."

Mr Holmes said Yummy Yorkshire, which has seven staff and is located on the A629 between High Flatts and Ingbirchworth, has not been hit by the recession or the poor weather, as shoppers have continued to buy affordable luxuries, such as ice-cream. It has also been boosted by new business and award wins, including best dairy product and supreme product at last year's deliciouslyorkshire awards, and was a finalist in the Yorkshire Post Taste Yorkshire Awards in 2008

"People knew about us but did not know how good we were. When we started winning the awards it made a difference. People's minds have been opened.

"I don't think the recession has affected us. Ice-cream is a low spend – a small luxury. (But) I would not say that since we started making ice-cream we have had a blazing hot year – it can get very cold up here."

Mr Holmes, who runs the business with his wife, Louise, said they may buy another ice-cream making machine next year but would continue to chase business with shops, delicatessens and restaurants rather than supermarkets. The firm also sells in its ice-cream parlour and coffee shop and at Wentworth Garden Centre.

"I don't want to go mass market. I want to keep the quality of the ice-cream. Sometimes when you go big you can lose the quality with larger machines. We are still very conscious of being a small ice-cream company so I am not going to go out with all guns blazing. We will see how we go with the Asda contracts."

Paul Dover, local marketing manager for Asda, said: "We scour the country looking for the best local products and when I tasted it at the 2009 deliciouslyorkshire Food and Drink Awards dinner I knew we'd found another."

FARM THAT CAME IN FROM THE COLD

Yummy Yorkshire, set up in April 2007, uses fresh milk and cream from Delph House Dairy Farm's herd of 150 Friesian Holstein cows.

The milk goes from herd to bottle within just 90 minutes and the firm produces more than 50 flavours including traditional tastes like vanilla and strawberry as well as Marmalade cheesecake, Lou's Liquorice, Real Lemon Curd and banoffee pie made with butterscotch.

Delph House is a 250 acre grassland farm where members of the Holmes

family have been producing milk since the 1960s. The ice-cream business was established after Jeremy Holmes went on a two-day ice-cream making course in Warwickshire.