Farm shop extension continues family's proud legacy

Now they have improved their offer further, having just opened a purpose-built extended shop with a café.

Helen Stones is the third generation of her family to supply local people with produce.

“It started with my grandparents who had a milk round in Leconfield, mum and dad built the farm shop and now I have overseen the new build which includes a cafe.”

With the new building comes a name change for the business, from Manor Farm Shop to the Farm Shop at Cranswick.

“We’ve always been called Manor Farm Shop but when we listen to people while they’re on the phone to their friends they’ll say ‘I’m at the farm shop at Cranswick, do you want anything?’

“So while we were doing the new build we conducted a customer survey and only two of the 100 people we asked, actually knew we were called Manor Farm Shop.”

Listening to customers is key, Helen says, to a business like theirs.

“We’re keen to involve the local community and listen to what our customers want. The majority of our business is takeaway lunches, sandwiches and pies and we will still do that but we want to offer customers more so we’ll have a café and an on-site bakery so we can freshly bake our pies and cakes each day.”

When they built the farm shop in 1989, Helen’s parents Christine and Adrian Fry were looking for a way to add value to their Althorpe dairy herd.

The shop was initially a wooden chalet-style building on the farm, facing the main Beverley to Driffield road.

“Dad built the shop himself, the windows came out of a house in the village and he built the rest of it around them.

“We then built a pasteurising machine so we could pasteurise and bottle our own milk on the farm and sell it in the shop. We were selling milk wholesale to retail outlets, nursing homes and restaurants as well as selling local produce.”

The family worked in the shop alongside two members of staff, as well as farming their mixed arable and dairy farm.

In 1993 daughter Helen returned from studying business and rural tourism and began working in the shop.

“I always knew this was what I wanted to do, and my course helped me bring new ideas and new ways of doing things to improve the business.”

In 2002 the family’s herd was hit by disease and the final few cows not affected were sold off in 2006. The move meant the family could focus on the farm shop and developing this as their main business.

“I’ve always known that I wanted a café on the site, but it has been a long process, now we’re finally ready to welcome customers.”

Information boards in the café talk of the farming heritage which has brought the family to this point. What started out as a family-run shop with two members of staff now incudes a team of 30 working full and part-time, including three chefs and bakery staff.

Helen works full-time and her parents both still work there too.

Despite being a grand new building in a small rural village, the Farm Shop at Cranswick is keen to keep things local.

“We will always concentrate on local produce, we have a fantastic relationship with our suppliers and know that locally sourced produce is very important to our customers.

“We’ve also used local builders throughout the process, Colley Farm Buildings put up the steel structure and Harlands builders from Driffield have done the brickwork.”

While the farm shop is now open, it will be officially opened next month.

Helen said: “We’ve asked the children at the local primary school to come along and do the honours. We want them to feel proud of our shop in their community and understand how important it is to support local produce and farmers.”