Rare Breed beef gets recognition
A NORTH Yorkshire rare breed and traditional meat company has won the best beef product award in the industry Oscars.
Taste Tradition directors (cntr L & R ) Charles Ashbridge and James Wright receive award from former England rugby player Martin Bayfield
Taste Tradition, of Thirsk, beat fellow finalists Asda, Marks & Spencer and Tesco in the Meat Management Industry Awards 2012.
Joyce Ashbridge and her son, Charles, founded Taste Tradition on new year’s day seven years ago.
It was a small farmgate business at Cold Kirby, at the top of Sutton Bank, near Thirsk.
The family has farmed there for three generations using traditional methods of breeding, rearing and finishing livestock.
There was such demand for their outdoor-reared rare breed and traditional pigs, cattle and sheep that they realised they needed to expand their business in a serious way and developed another farm only two miles from their butchery at Thirsk.
The farms are well stocked with a variety of animals, including Longhorn, Shorthorn, Aberdeen Angus, Red Poll, Dexter, Hereford, Galloway, Belted Galloway, Welsh and Irish Moiled cattle; Saddleback, Gloucester Old Spot and Welsh pigs; and Texel and Suffolk sheep.
The business operates from two modern factory premises in Thirsk, only a few miles from the farms.
To support their expansion, Charles and Joyce joined forces four years ago with James Wright, who is now a director of the company.
Charles looks after the farming, butcher’s and wholesale side of the business, while James handles the restaurants, hotels and customer service.
Today the company has customers nationwide, with the majority in London and the South-East, and including many leading restaurateurs and TV celebrity chefs.
Customers include Nigel Haworth’s Northcote Manor and Ribble Valley Inns; Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen; Andrew Pern’s Star Inn, Harome, near Helmsley; Gordon Ramsey; St John’s Restaurant; Kew Gardens; the British Library; the National Gallery; the Royal Academy of Arts; and P&O Cruises.
James said: “It’s a real tribute to Taste Tradition and to our region to be putting Yorkshire produce on the menus of some of London’s most prestigious venues.
“We treat celebrity chefs in exactly the same way we treat our local customers, and I believe they appreciate our honest, no nonsense, Yorkshire approach.”
The company has won 24 awards over the past five years, but the most recent was probably the most satisfying.
Charles said: “It is such an accolade. We have always received such positive feedback from our customers, but this is huge recognition and an endorsement for our traditionally- run business.”
Taste Tradition employs a skilled team of local butchers, packers, drivers and office staff and will recruit more this month when they have completed their new production unit.
darlingtompost
Farming News Daily Supporting British Pig Farmers
Source: Argentine Beef Packers S.A.