The skillet takes to feed Britain

Kettleby Foods, where the magic happens

New client Samworth Brothers, one of Britain’s leading producers of chilled foods providing everything from sandwiches to ready meals, has been keeping us busy this month. Each quarter the company produces an internal newsletter, The Samworth Standard, and sends a copy to the homes of each of the 7,500+ employees across 15 sites.

The Samworth Standard is sent to every employee, whether they’re in the heart of the production line, exploring flavours in the development kitchen or based at the Group Centre at Chetwode House. Therefore, we knew it needed to cater for not only the Group Chief Executive, but also a worker on the factory floor who might have English as a second language.

Chris the development chef cooking up a storm...

With these factors in mind, we've introduced colour-coded signposting at the top of each edition, which allows readers to easily navigate their way through the newsletter. We have also introduced the pie-dea (sorry, we couldn’t resist!) of quotes and pullouts to help draw the reader to a key piece of information.

With 100 years of history comes a business rich community spirit, which we knew was important to bring out in The Samworth Standard. We’ve kept the layout very people focused, introducing lots of imagery and interspersing articles with cut out photographs to soften the layout and make it more personable.

After all this thinking about the 7,500 members of the Samworth Brothers family, it was time for Katie to meet them...well some of them!

Then the team take Chris's recipes and turn them into food for the masses

“I made the trip up to Melton Mowbray, along with Emma Foster, the Standard's new copywriter, for a tour of Kettleby Foods, which specialises in ready meals for Tesco. I’d been debriefed that I had to be fully make-up free, and would be required to wear an oh-so-attractive hair net (thankfully I have inner beauty…and no pictures are allowed from inside the site!).

As part of the tour, we met the talented development chefs who are responsible for both creating exciting new dishes and improving the classics. Their inspiration for a new dish can come from anywhere, from a surge in popularity for traditional cuts of meat like beef cheeks, to dishes they find on a global fact finding mission.

Finally it all gets packed and shipped out!

Then it was time for a tour of the nine acre site to see how their recipes are turned into dishes to feed the masses. Contrary to what I've “learnt” from the classic film Chicken Run, each meal is made from scratch with everything marinated, minced, mashed, prepped and packed on site. Not a stretchy arm or Mrs. Tweedy in sight! The team can get through around 50 tonnes of mashed potato and more than a blue whale’s weight in beef a week (that’s 160 tonnes just in case your whale knowledge isn’t up to scratch)!

My eyes have been opened to what goes into each ready meal (both effort and ingredients) and could talk for hours about it, just ask the team here! It’s given me a real insight into Samworth Brothers, which will be invaluable moving forward.”