Food and drink innovation centre The Food WorksSW announces competition winner

Published by

Peter Davison

Alex Williams (left) and Ben Kaye (right)

Food and drink innovation centre The Food WorksSW in Weston-super-Mare has announced Well Fruited as the winner of a start-up competition with a prize worth £3,000.

The duo behind the drinks brand, Alex Williams, based in London but originally from Weston-super-Mare, and Ben Kaye, based in Wiltshire, win five days’ free use of a state-of-the-art development kitchen, up to five days of technical support, and a year’s free business membership.

The duo said: “We’re over the moon to have won this fantastic opportunity, which will provide invaluable support to our business.

"Until now, our products have all been developed in our kitchens at home, and we’ve sold our products locally at markets to get customer feedback.

"We’re looking forward to using the state-of-the-art equipment in The Drinks Kitchen and gaining experience in product development to further hone our flavours and improve our production methods.

"We’re really aiming to get as much benefit as possible from the experience and the expertise available to us at the centre.”

The competition saw 13 entries from businesses and individuals from across the UK. It was judged by a panel of experts consisting of the President of the Guild of Food Writers and author of the cookbook ‘Two’s Company: Simple’ Orlando Murrin, journalist Martin Hesp, and the centre’s New Product Development and Innovation Manager, Zoe Plant.

Orlando Murrin said: “This was one of the most interesting competitions I have had the honour of judging, with so many entries showing flair and creativity. Whittling it down to a winner and two runners-up was a truly nail-biting challenge, and I'm looking forward to seeing the resulting products popping up in shops in the future.”

The runners-up included Jaz Sky, owner of Jivee, a Weston-super-Mare-based business that uses sea moss as a main ingredient to make jellies, fruit cider vinegar and sports drinks.

Another runner-up was Gregory Davies, co-founder of Auntie’s, an Indian-inspired condiments company from Coventry.

Both received two days’ free use of a development kitchen, two days of technical support and a year’s free business membership.

Due to the high calibre of entries, The Food WorksSW also offered a year’s free business membership to Roly’s Fudge (Devon), Love Bug Foods (Shropshire), Eversfield Organic (Devon), Veg Life (Worcestershire) and Habits That Heal (Bristol).

Zoe Plant, New Product Development and Innovation Manager at The Food WorksSW, said: “I thoroughly enjoyed judging the entries and was delighted to see such a wide variety of ideas put forward.

"I’m very much looking forward to working closely with the passionate pair behind Well Fruited during their free five-day trial to help them develop their products further.”

The only centre of its kind in the south west, The Food WorksSW has state-of-the-art facilities for food and drink businesses of all sizes to test, develop and manufacture their products.

Peter Davison

Peter Davison is deputy editor of The Business Magazine. He has spent his life in journalism – doing work experience in newsrooms in and around Bristol while still at school, and landing his first job on a local newspaper aged 19. By 28 he was the youngest newspaper editor in the country. An early advocate of online news, he spent the first years of the 2000s telling his bosses that the internet posed both the biggest opportunity and greatest threat to the newspaper industry and the art of journalism. He was right on both counts. Since 2006 he has enjoyed a career as a freelance journalist. He lives in rural Wiltshire with one wife, two children, and three cats.