Artisan Food Market Stallholder Stories
Every business that joins us at the Artisan Food Market has a unique and personal story and below are just a few of them.
We bring together a range of independent and local traders with opportunities to try fresh produce and learn from the experts.
Whether you are looking for locally sourced ingredients for a family favourite or searching for something new, the variety of produce means you will find something to suit your taste buds.
An Artisan Food Market success story
‘Thank you Waddesdon for helping small businesses to have a platform to develop and grow, keeping it local and encouraging collaboration.’
Claire Alderton, Bokkie
From as young as she can remember Claire was always experimenting with recipes. This passion led her to always wanting a career in the food industry, but for some reason she lost her way and ended up in Finance!
Claire desperately wanted to get back into doing something with food. One day, whilst serving her family a South African curry, she thought why not serve food and flavours that she had grown up with? Food that her Grandma and Mother would have made.
Bokkie was born! but Claire needed somewhere to trade. When Waddesdon Artisan Food Market gave Claire her first pitch that’s when her dream started to come to life. Bokkie’s first day trading saw customers queuing up until the stall was completely SOLD OUT!
A gin that reflects its adventurous makers
We are so excited to be named England’s Best Contemporary Gin and we are looking forward to sharing it with everyone.
Rachel, Sky Wave Gin
Sky Wave Gin from Bicester is thrilled to be showcasing its award winning gin.
It’s been a whirlwind couple of months for Sky Wave Gin, which is only 15 months old. In November it scooped a Gold Medal at the international Women’s Wine and Spirits Award 2020, judged by women spirit buyers globally. Most recently the premium gin company was awarded a Double Gold Medal in the China Wine and Spirits Award 2020.
As well as offering their other Dry Gin, their Raspberry and Rhubarb edition, Sky Wave Gin will be introducing their Winter Edition Spiced Apple Gin Liqueur which has been described as a hug in a glass.
A Filipino food love story
We take a modern spin on traditional Filipino dishes by reconstructing popular Filipino family favourites and turning them into street food fusion feasts.
Kayleigh, The Pork Shack
Dan and Kayleigh made the ‘cliché’ move to take a year out and travel South East Asia and eat their way through as many different countries as they could afford. The trip was “make it up as we go along” travel plan. They decided to take a detour to the Philippines to visit Kayleigh’s Lola (Grandma) for her 80th birthday party, this was where they fell in love with Filipino food and the idea of The Pork Shack was born!
The Pork Shack’s food is rich and full of flavor. Dan and Kayleigh only use good quality fresh ingredients in their dishes, with pork from British farmer’s free range, rare breed, high welfare pigs and their curry and spice blends are all homemade! Alongside their pork dishes a vegan option is always available.
What started as a hobby became a passion
Our aim is to encourage as many people at they can to get a taste of these inland Crustaceans and get eating.
Mark, Crayfish Capers
Mark Lees is an EA licensed Signal Crayfish trapper and has been catching like mad for the last 11 years. Free mini lobsters, and in the middle of the country, surely not?
Mark started Crayfish Capers to see just what might be happening to our rivers. There are too many crayfish, miles too many, choking the rivers and changing the balance of the waters. However they taste fantastic! You won’t believe just how good these pests taste or understand why we’re not using this great resource. So to help to make the Great British public more familiar with these tasty invaders, Crayfish Capers has created four unique Crayfish fishcakes:
- Crayfish & Smoked Salmon
- Crayfish & Smoked Trout
- Crayfish & Smoked Mackerel
- Crayfish, Salt Cod & Black Pepper
All fishcakes are hand made and prepared in packs of four, ready for you to return home with and cook.
A family love of pickles
Every Christmas a jar of pickled eggs would grace the table
Fiona, Cranston Pickles
Cranston Pickles is a small scale, local, home made Pickle Factory set up by Fiona, a local lass from Oxford.
Her love of pickles came from her grandparents, Rowland and Sylvia, where every Christmas (and Christmas alone even due to popular demand), a jar of pickled eggs would grace the table. Since then, her love for Japan and subsequent trips have reinforced her love for pickles and it has eventually grown into Cranston Pickles.
Cranston Pickles covers all manner of pickling, consisting of fruit & veg, alongside pickled eggs. All of their ingredients are locally sourced around Oxfordshire from farms and markets, so they pickle what is in season and available locally. There is no single use plastic used across the business, and they use fresh herbs and spices in all their pickles.
Currently stocked in a number of establishments across Oxfordshire, Cranston Pickles is bringing back the old tradition of having a pickled egg and a pint, as well as being included within some menus. They are also being stocked in a number of Deli’s and farm shop’s, where you can purchase their pickles off the shelf!
One man's chocolate mission
My aim is to produce luxury chocolate that's available to everyone, regardless of allergens.
Sean, Sin Azucar Organic Chocolate
Sin Azucar is a one man band, handmaking organic chocolate in nearby Lewknor, Oxfordshire.
Using all organic ingredients and fine Ecuadorian cacao, the chocolate is naturally free of dairy, refined sugars, soy and gluten.
Started in 2018, Sean’s aim is to produce luxury chocolate that is available to everyone, regardless of allergens.
Bringing Colombian sunshine to the UK
By freeze drying our fruit at its ripest, we bring you the fabulous taste of Colombian fruit with nothing added or taken away!
Ruth and Sabina, La Chiva Snacks
Mother and Daughter, Ruth and Sabina Willis, are the faces behind La Chiva Snacks – Freeze Dried Fruit packed full of Colombian sunshine!
The freeze dried process preserves all the goodness and turns their fruit into light and crispy snacks.
La Chiva Freeze Dried Fruit is the perfect healthy snack for when you’re on the go or a great addition to children’s lunchboxes. Each pack contains 100% fruit with nothing added or taken away, is gluten free, suitable for vegans and has less than 40 calories.
Why ‘La Chiva’? In the Colombian countryside, Chiva buses are the only way to travel. They take the workers to the farms, then the fresh fruit to the market. Without these hard working little “donkeys” La Chiva couldn’t bring you their super delicious freeze dried fruit… so they named their brand after them!
Planting the seed for a business
My love of flowers helped floristry quickly become a passion, slipping flower seeds and seedling into every available piece of soil in my garden.
Jaclyn, The Little Flower Plot
Jaclyn’s failure at growing parsnips from seed (one grew out of 20, and it was only about 3 inches long) was what drew her to learning how to grow and garden.
As a gardener she chose plants and flowers to blossom and change with the seasons, but always found it hard to pick the flowers for her house…it would take the colour from the garden.
So she transformed her small vegetable plot at the end of her garden into a little flower plot and took on an allotment so she could continue to grow vegetables as well as trial new flowers.
Her passion as an artisan florist is to help people bring the joy of their garden inside, allowing them to keep their garden a display of their hard work. She also grows flowers for weddings and likes to embrace the gnarliness of garden flowers, rustic foliage and seasonal berries. She dries as many flowers as she sows, sometimes mixing them into fresh arrangements.
A choice for everyone, no matter what diet
I hand make each small batch for maximum flavour, 7 pots at a time, label each one top and bottom and write the date by hand - made with love
Debs, The Creative Kitchen Company
Debs is a keen home cook who loves to feed family and friends delicious dishes, bringing tried and tested ways up to date with new ideas, as well as hosting cookery workshops such as ‘Love Food, Hate Waste’ as part of The Creative Kitchen Company.
When her son returned from university in Brighton with the news that he no longer ate meat and would as far as possible stick to vegan foods out of an already vegetarian diet, Debs saw this as both an opportunity and a challenge; out of which The Plant Based Pate was born!
Affectionately known as Creative Kitchen Company ‘Faux Gras’ by the family, this is a delicious dairy-free, low fat, high fibre alternative to traditional pate.
Greens that are tiny, but packed full of flavour
We are seeing an increased awareness of Microgreens and their health and nutrition benefits
Jen and Richard, Magnificent Microgreens
From their 10 acre farm in Launton, at the heart of the beautiful Oxfordshire countryside, Jenni & Richard Walker grow the finest, tastiest microgreens that pack a nutritional punch way above their weight and size.
Microgreens are the shoots of salad & vegetables picked just after the first leaves have developed. They contain up to 40 times more nutrition than their mature counterparts. Magnificent Microgreens grow in organic soil from organic seeds and are harvested by hand at the farmhouse with the aim to get the freshest produce to customers by endeavouring to deliver on the same day as harvest. Microgreens are packed in fully biodegradable packaging, it actually biodegrades in just 12 weeks.
Microgreens offer consumers an easy means of making a healthier choice in their daily diets, and enable chefs to add a kick of flavour to their dishes.
Three new local cheeses
All the cheeses are handmade in Marlow, all using milk used from Buckinghamshire dairy farmers
Lynda and James, The Marlow Cheese Company Ltd
The Marlow Cheese Company Ltd will be bringing three new hard cheeses to the market in October 2019.
The first is called Father Thames and is a Stilton style cheese, made with milk from Fresian Holston cows.
The second, named Regatta, is a Gouda style cheese made with milk from Guernsey cows.
Chiltern Cloud is the third cheese, manchego style made with milk from Friesian sheep.
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