Souper idea proves to be growth industry for a farmer’s daughter

AS a farmer’s daughter, it was perhaps inevitable that Belinda Williams would spend her working life in the food industry.

What was not guaranteed, however, was that her latest venture – making seasonal soups for supermarkets and specialist stores around the country – would achieve a rate of growth that would be the envy of countless firms in the grocery sector.

Yorkshire Provender is on course to hit retail sales of £5.5m this year, up 44 per cent on 2010. The firm was set up in 2004 after Mrs Williams, a chef, sold the gastropub she had transformed.

Now Yorkshire Provender has launched a range of chunky single-serve soups, described as a meal-in-a-soup, which are being sold in Sainsbury’s.

Mrs Williams, who runs the business with her husband, Terry, said: “We have grown by producing a very good quality product, and there are not many others like it.”

One of the challenges to have faced the firm, based in Melmerby, in North Yorkshire, has been to persuade buyers to take a risk on a new product, but it has ultimately been successful with Sainsbury’s as well as Waitrose, Tesco, the Co-op, Leeds-based Asda and Bradford-based Morrisons.

“I may not be a saleswoman but I am pretty savvy and I believe in my product. When I walk in, it is a bit refreshing for them to have someone who is not a professional sales person,” Mrs Williams said.

The firm has achieved growth around the 40 per cent mark for the last three years. Its soups are made only from seasonable vegetables and include recipes such as pea and fresh spinach with coriander, the firm’s best-selling product and available throughout the year, and summer beetroot with lime, ginger and wasabi.

The summer soups can be served as an aperitif or with cold meats and salad. They can be eaten hot or cold.

Mrs Williams said: “I like to arouse the nostalgia of a classic summer experience and put it in a pot. It is about conjuring up atmospheric dishes.”

She created the recipes based on her lifelong involvement in the food industry, beginning on her parents’ farm in Masham before going on to cook for private clients on yachts and jets in Britain, Europe and the Caribbean, re-inventing the Foresters Arms pub, in Coverdale, in North Yorkshire, as a gastropub and setting up the Yorkshire Party Company, an upmarket catering firm, which has been trading for 15 years.

She also trained at the cordon bleu school at Eggleston Hall, a Georgian country house south of the Dales village of Eggleston.

Mrs Williams said there was “no question” she would spend her life in the food industry but that does not mean progress has been easy.

“In any start-up business where you don’t know the rules, you learn things on a daily basis. We have got a fantastic base but need to move into a bigger facility. That is another leap and another expense.

“The only thing you have to do is stick to your principles.”

THE SECRET OF SUCCESS

BELINDA Williams said Yorkshire Provender had also been successful because its staff have an understanding of manufacturing and of the contribution made by rural communities to the general economy.

“We understand how agriculture works. The weather is not about whether it is time to wear a T-shirt but the country and whether it means rain.”

Mrs Williams and her husband, Terry, are owners and co-directors of Yorkshire Provender.