Staff from Grasmere Gingerbread® came face to face with the company’s local suppliers on a working tour across Cumbria and Lancashire.
They included Wild & Fruitful, Mr Duffin’s Coffee, Huttons Chocolates, The Little St Cloud Company, The Blind Chocolatier and Bentham Pottery.
“As we sell and promote products which they make especially for us, I believe it is important that our team understand and appreciate what motivates the highly-skilled people behind these fellow small businesses,” explained Joanne Hunter, co-owner of Grasmere Gingerbread®.
The business-to-business familiarisation visit drew enthusiastic responses from Grasmere Gingerbread® staff.
“It was a real eye opener to see the behind the scenes and discover just how passionate and dedicated our suppliers really are,” said Dianne Gallagher, Dispatch Manager.
“It was heartening to see how they are working as ethically and eco-friendly as possible despite all the constraints bearing down on them.
Grasmere Gingerbread® uses its website to promote suppliers on its ‘Working Together’ page with hyperlinks to their websites.
“By working together we help to overcome our remote geography and it also stimulates lots of mutually beneficial collaborations,” said Matthew Park, Stock & Procurement Manager.
“I was struck by how technically precise and scientific our suppliers have to be to meet our demands.”
Jake Winter, Production Director for Wild & Fruitful which supplies conserves to Grasmere Gingerbread® was delighted to meet people from all areas of the historic 169-year-old business.
“It was great to have the opportunity to be able to demonstrate to them the care and attention that goes into making the high-quality products that we supply to Grasmere Gingerbread®,” he said.
Matthew Park organised the trip using Mountain Goat transport.
“Joanne has always instilled in us the value of working with other local producers and now I can speak authoritatively about them and their products with our customers,” he said.
“We received a warm welcome everywhere we went and the day exceeded my expectations,” he added.
