Spreading the good news: Why is Yorkshire such a hot-bed for producing jam?

The sweet aroma of chilli blended jam wafts down a street in Leeds. Friends of Simon Barrett catch this scent and outside his house in Leeds he ends up with a queue wanting to pinch a jar of his special spice blended home-made jam.
All of York-based Fruity Kitchens products are hand-filled and hand-made using trditional methods.All of York-based Fruity Kitchens products are hand-filled and hand-made using trditional methods.
All of York-based Fruity Kitchens products are hand-filled and hand-made using trditional methods.

It was at this point a few years ago that Mr Barrett realised he could potentially turn this into a business. Yet the mortgage broker, like so many other would-be entrepreneurs, was unsure. It wasn’t until the market crashed and the industry he was in collapsed that he was spurred into action.

“I worked in personal finance. I was self employed as a mortgage broker in 2008,” he says.

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“Obviously the credit crunch hit at the end of 2008 so my industry disappeared. In 2009 I had to reinvent myself.”

When he lost his job he tried everything to find work. He even ended up doing a stint, in the run-up to Christmas 2008, working in a gravy factory on minimum wage.

“Then in January, February there was just no work at all. Everything had really contracted. I went for a job interview to cut the grass for the council, but I couldn’t even get that.”

It was at this point that Mr Barrett decided to strike out on his own. He adds: “That’s when I thought ‘I really need to sort this out’. I always had it in my head that it would be a brilliant business but your self-esteem is a little bit low at times like that.

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“It took me a bit of time to get going but I decided to get some jars and made some.”

The jam-maker took those 40 jars down to Pudsey Farmers’ Market and sold every single one.

Today, Mr Barrett is known as Chilli Jam Man – the name his business has taken on. “It’s got to a point now where when I walk through York I get recognised,” he says of the venture’s success.

But where does this passion for jam come from?

The Welshman came to Leeds in 1989 to study at university. In 1995 he left for Australia and it was down under where he discovered his love for flavour.

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“I’d lived in Australia for five years, between 1995 and 2000, and I totally fell in love with the blends of flavours over there. There’s a real strong South-East Asian influence,” he says.

“When I came back to the UK in 2000 it was like someone had chopped my right arm off. So I started making them for myself.”

The scents of Mr Barrett cooking jam attracted his friends and led to the seeds of Chilli Jam Man being planted.

The art of making preserves, though, seems to be woven into the cloth of the region.

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Hannah Stacey, head of business operations at the Fruity Kitchen, thinks this could be down to the supply chain in Yorkshire.

“We’re quite blessed with good suppliers in Yorkshire and it’s quite easy to get local fruit around here. A lot of producers work quite closely together in terms of supplying the ingredients that we need,” she says.

York-based Fruity Kitchen was established in 2008 by Hannah’s mother Julia Colebatch, after she was made redundant from her job at a similar business.

Coming at the peak of the recession Ms Stacey says it was a “brave decision” to make at the time but adds that her mother had a lot of contacts from the business that she had worked in.

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Ms Stacey then joined her mother, bringing with her a focus on customer service, “which wasn’t Mum’s strong point”, she says.

The Fruity Kitchen has just bagged its biggest contract, supplying 12,000 jars to Virgin Trains East Coast. “It has definitely changed things for us,” Ms Stacey adds.

Despite this success the Fruity Kitchen insists it will continue to do things traditionally, although the Virgin Trains deal may see the business introduce a filling machine. “We’re still hand-filling and hand-making the products. We’ve got no machines in the kitchen, it’s still all traditionally made,” says Ms Stacey.

She adds: “We hope to continue hand-making the products.

“They’re still made in traditional pans, using traditional methods. We may have to look at introducing filling machines but the actual cook method will still be the same.”

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Another preserves business that is experiencing growth is Raydale Preserves. The business was set up by Andrew Kettlewell’s parents, Derek and Lesley.

Mr Kettlewell, who used to help out his parents from an early age to exhibit at markets and events, says he has enjoyed watching the business grow.

“We’ve grown year on year – it’s snowballing in the right way,” he adds.

The countryside of Yorkshire plays a part in giving us such a vibrant preserves industry.

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There are very few people more in tune with nature than Elspeth Biltoft, who runs Rosebud Preserves in Masham.

Her passion for nature comes from her father, who was an engineering surveyor.

“He just had a massive love of nature,” she says. “I’m told that I went many, many miles on his shoulders before I was about three years old, hanging onto his head, taking in the surroundings subconsciously.”

They would pick watercress, mushrooms and berries on their nature walks and Ms Biltoft and her mother would then make preserves using the fruit they had collected.

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Ms Biltoft, who has been running Rosebud for over 25 years, puts the popularity of preserves down to the region’s straightforwardness.

“There’s also a legacy of using what we grow and appreciating what we grow,” she adds.

But Ms Biltoft says there is a great need to protect the natural environment that is crucial to the food industry and she believes that there is a disconnect between the younger generations and nature.

“On the planet we are the most fearsome predator. We’re the most destructive,” she says.

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Ms Biltoft, who is a member of the Bumblebee Conservation Trust, said more needs to be done to protect pollinators. “What we need to do is take charge of our own patch,” she says.

“In a way, there is probably far better nectar in urban sites, in towns and cities like London, than there is in the heart of the countryside, where we have forgotten that we need to provide rough pastures.”

In the kitchen Ms Biltoft has added John Barley, a former chef from the award-winning Wensleydale Heifer, and is spending less time cooking, focusing more instead on the business as a whole.

“He really has taken the recipes and products, of which there are now nearly 65, to another level,” she adds.

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“I’ve been able to hand over the baton after 25 years of being almost constantly in my kitchen – and I feel quite relaxed.”

The Masham-based food producer has strong views on ensuring movement of labour and fair pay for fruit-pickers. Ms Biltoft hopes Yorkshire can be at the forefront of this sustainable future.

Back at the Fruity Kitchen, despite the success, Ms Colebatch still plays a hands-on role in the kitchen.

“She likes to stick to the cooker and do the cooking side of it and I can complement the rest,” Ms Stacey said.

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“I think it’s important to do that so that you can keep an eye on what’s going out and who it’s going to and making sure everything is right when it goes.”

For Mr Barrett, the Chilli Jam Man has provided more than just a livelihood.

“I met my wife through the business,” he says. “She was on the market stall next to me and we got to know each other.

“She lived in Bridlington and I lived in Leeds and we’ve kind of joined up together in the middle in the Yorkshire Wolds.”

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Bonnie was a salt-maker and the couple met at a craft market at Castle Howard. Today she helps out with the jam business.

Mr Barrett says that when it comes to the popularity of preserves the “Yorkshire brand, full-stop, has a big part in it”.

The Jam Chilli Man sells around 5,000 jars and bottles a month and Mr Barrett hopes to extend the company’s reach nationwide.

“We supply quite a lot into the food service industry as well. It is going through quite an upward curve at the moment.

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“This year I’m really trying to stretch it so that it has more of a national presence.”

One of the aspects that he enjoys most is interacting with customers. “I can’t put it into words what it feels like,” he adds.

“To see so many people really enjoying something that I’ve created – I still make everything in-house – it’s such a buzz to get that feedback directly.”

So how does it compare with his previous life as a mortgage broker?

“Nobody ever said to me, ‘oh that’s an amazing mortgage’,” he says with a chuckle.

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