07 October 2009, 12:25 PM
  • Steve Croot, of Croots Farm Shop & Kitchen in Duffield, Derbyshire, receives more good news and also tackles social networking as a marketing tool.

We’ve taken the plunge and started a Facebook page for Croots Farm Shop. Social networking seems to be all the rage at the moment, so we’ve created a fans page. It’s early days, but it’s proving to be a quick and simple way to share details of offers and other news with our customers who are on Facebook.

Talking of news…the big news for us this month is that we learn we’ve reached the finals of the prestigious Farm Retail Awards from the National Farmers’ Retail & Markets Association (FARMA).  Croots has been nominated for the prestigious title of the UK’s Best New Farm Shop. We’re obviously delighted to hear this. The winners will be announced on 26 January 2010 at Farm & More, the sector’s national conference.

During British Food Fortnight we ran a competition asking our customers to create a new sausage flavour for Croots, so I’ve been spending a bit of time going through the entries with our in-house butchers to see which ones are likely to work, and picking two winners. We then organize a prize-giving handover to announce the lucky pair. Our butchers have got plenty of time to get the recipes just right before the new sausages go on sale during British Sausage Week in November.

One interesting thing that occurred to me during British Food Fortnight, which also included the Great British Cheese Festival, was just how many British cheeses there are. At Croots, we have about 60 cheeses on our deli counter, approximately 45 of which are British cheeses. When I looked closely I realised that we had one from virtually every county – that’s what you call a selection!