Looking beyond doorstep for market

Dairy farmers John and Frank Hitchen of Crib Farm, Luddendenfoot, and Neil and Jacqui Briggs, of Far Worts Hill Farm in Pole Moor, near Huddersfield, say that focusing on quality, service and their local credentials has helped them secure new customers in growing local markets, including Asian convenience foods and luxury ice cream.

John and Frank Hitchen work with six milkmen to supply shops and doorsteps across Mytholmroyd and Hebden Bridge.

They keep 190 French Limousin and Holstein Friesian cross-breed milking cows across 500 acres, and they milk and bottle at the farm.

The brothers are aware that the market in nearby Hebden Bridge, a town with lots of independent retailers, is for a local and where possible organic product.

“We tend not to use any chemicals,” John says. “We try to keep it as organic as possible.

“Basically everybody likes to know where their milk comes from. They know the cows they see on the hillside are producing the milk on their doorstep.”

John and Frank do their own marketing and, to complement the milk round trade, they have attracted regular custom in Asian food manufacturing, an industry which is developing quickly in West Yorkshire, and especially the Calder Valley.

Among their customers are Aagrah, a chain of 14 restaurants which now produces sauces for supermarkets including Tesco and Asda, and Mumtaz, a restaurant chain with a large manufacturing facility in neighbouring Mytholmroyd.

Aagrah uses Hitchens’ cream for products like its Hydrabadi and Kashmiri Masala sauces.

Mumtaz, which produces Halal ready meals, baby foods, condiments and sauces for customers including the big four supermarkets, the Co-operative Group, Boots and the NHS, has been using cream from Crib Farm to develop new lines in its sauce range.

The Hitchens also supply kulfi ice manufacturer Anoa, which has just begun supplying Morrisons from its factory in central Halifax.

“As a dairy farmer today you have to go out there and find your market,” John Hitchen explains.

“We prefer to deal direct with the companies that buy our milk. It means we can offer a better, more tailored service with personal contact.

“We’re dealing direct with our customers. As well as dealing with trade customers we have a local milk round in Hebden Bridge and Mytholmroyd. We pride ourselves on being well known and approachable.”

Just a few miles away in the Colne Valley, Neil and Jacqui Briggs keep 100 Holstein Friesian cows on 135 acres at Pole Moor.

They consider themselves “on the large side of small”.

Their herd produces around 4,000 pints a day, and while they used to sell their surplus to a large dairy, now they do their own marketing.

Neil says that during the last five years, their customers have opened their eyes to making the most of their local credentials.

“It isn’t just glass bottles on the doorstep,” he says.

“Twenty years ago we were challenged by the supermarkets, but in the last four or five years it’s become easier to keep business. Ten years ago it was organic, now that doesn’t matter. What people want is local.

“Our experience has also taught us the importance of talking to customers and finding out what they want,’ he adds.

Sometimes they lose out to bigger dairies on price, but trading on quality, service and producing locally is paying off.

“We’ve given up chasing business on price,” Neil says. “Money isn’t the be all and end all.

“Yorkshire people are down to earth. They say what they think and they’re loyal.

“They want local milk from cows they can see in a field.

“To us cream is the icing on the cake. I’d never call it a by-product,” he says. “A lot of our business is skimmed and semi-skimmed.

“Bakeries say our cream is beautiful to work with. If it’s thicker it stands in a cream bun for longer, instead of going flat.”

Samuel Briggs and Sons supplies three local bakery customers; Bolster Moor Farm Shop, Hadfields and Hartleys.

“It’s good working with good businesses,” says Neil.

“For them it’s better paying more for something that does the job.”

The Briggs tailor each of their creams to their customers. They make a bespoke extra-thick cream for ice cream manufacturer Vanilla Bean, which is just two miles away from the farm in Slaithwaite.

Vanilla Bean uses Briggs milk in its cafe too, and the Briggs have two relatively new retail customers for their milk in Slaithwaite’s community-owned grocer the Green Valley Grocer and Bolster Moor Farm Shop, both of which emphasise the milk’s local provenance in their own marketing.

With many farming businesses forced to look to other means of producing revenue, reliance on local provenance has been a winning marketing ploy.

Year-round milk demand

Demand for milk for ice cream and milkshakes helps the Briggs balance fluctuating demand from the 10 milkmen they supply in summer. “November to Easter is busy for milk rounds, but it drops off in the summer,” says Neil, whose father bought the farm and bottling plant at Far Worts Hill in 1976.

“People have more brews and more comfort food in winter. In the summer, custom for ice cream from Vanilla Bean is really worthwhile.”