Well it wouldn’t be right to not do a blog about this very surreal year we have had, the year of toilet roll wars, virtual quizzes, face masks, being 2 metres apart, queing to get into a supermarket, not being able to get a home delivery slot, cancelled weddings and events, no fans in stadiums, but thankfully no shortage on cheese – phew!!

Who would have thought that a virus would have caused so much disruption to this year and still continues to 9 months on!
For us as a business we have been very fortunate to be able to remain open, with our amazing suppliers carrying on supplying us throughout this year, the staff have worked extremely hard, put in some long hours to ensure that all of our Customers orders have been met throughout the busiest times of this year.

We are very lucky that we supply the farm shops, delis, local convenient stores , garages, butchers and cafes which have remained opened during this pandemic, more and more people have started to and continue to shop local which is so important in these times to support the smaller businesses.

For us in the grand scheme of things this year has actually been a very successful one and one we definitely wont forget, we’d really like to share our achievements from this year and we strongly believe that we are going to go from strength to strength as a business in 2021 with more exciting things to come.

Lets rewind back to January 2020 and start with our building work that has taken place.

January 2020 – Time for an extension

In January 2020 work began on the extension which has given us a much larger fridge and warehouse area another production room, and above this area we now have 2 offices, kitchen/staff room, male and female toilets (no more sharing!) and a waiting area with a new entrance and staircase which will give us access directly from the car park.

We are very nearly there with the work, the car park area needs completing and signage for the building needs to be done but the majority is now in place and is really was something that needed doing, we would have struggled to remain open during this pandemic if we didn’t have the extra space we have got now, Christmas last year our fridge space was over flowing, so this year it has been much easier to manage (although still rather full!)

We were planning to have an open day this year but due to Covid-19 and building works this hasn’t been able to happen, but this is something in the pipeline hopefully for next year so look out for news on this maybe mid/late 2021?

Orchardlea Occasion Foods and Westcountry Olives

This year we have launched 2 Sister Businesses which if you don’t already know about you will  hopefully see crop up on social media now.

Orchardlea Occasion Foods launched in January this year just before Covid-19 came along, the idea is to supply local high quality buffet food for weddings, parties and events of any size.

We launched the Facebook page and website, had weddings, parties and events booked in the diary but none of them have been able to go ahead and everything is currently postponed until next year.

We have like many other companies diversified and been doing some hampers this year instead, which have been a lot of cheese hampers and smaller adapted versions of our buffet packages (Devon Picnic package for instance)
For Father’s Day we did a couple of Pub lunch hampers which were incredibly popular, we did over 60 in the end so we may do these again next year.

Visit www.orchardleaoccasionfoods.co.uk for more details and there is also a Facebook and Instagram page.

Westcountry Olives was an idea of Tim’s (my Father in Law) who owns the business with Liam (my Husband) his desire is to produce and subsequently eat great tasting olives and to experiment with new flavour combinations. The olives are sourced from around the Mediterranean and they are mixed using Bell and Loxton Oils another local company also based in Devon.

Will created the website and is currently working on the branding to have some new and much better packaging in the near future, he manages the Social Media, correspondence and any orders that are made. Will joined us earlier in the year and is another Family Member to our ever growing Family business!
We sell Westcountry Olives to our Wholesale Customers which are sold in 200g Retail packs and we also do larger bulk packets – 1kg for example. We currently have 14 flavours and are always thinking of new flavour combinations.

As well as wholesale our olives are also available to purchase online via the website www.westcountryolives.co.uk Instagram shop and even on ebay!It was really exciting to finally launch our very own brand of olives and we think that 2021 is going to be a very exciting year for us and our Olive’s! We will have a complete brand design once the new packaging has been done which will really compliment the olives and make this a brand to remember!

New Van designs and branding (Orchardlea Foods)

We will be completely re branding to Orchardlea Foods in the very near future once we have time to get the website finished. The company has been known as Isca Foods for around 30 years but ever since we took on the retail/pre pack side under Orchardlea we have wanted to re brand to Orchardlea Foods but like everything with a small business it all takes time.

We have had 2 of our new vans re designed using Orchardlea Foods, we are really pleased with the design and they certainly stand out in the crowd.

We are hoping this year to have a new website up and running, and hopefully some new systems in place including order forms online, and a much improved invoice system so we can really get the business running more smoothly this is really needed more than ever as the business is growing all the time and we have had taken on alot of new customers this year which is great we just don’t want to let customers down, actually the complete opposite we want to be the best we can be!

New Staff 

We have 20 employees now, of which 5 are new just this year!

I (Hannah, Liam’s Wife) joined in January this year, I had previously worked as a Civil Servant for 12 years at Exeter Crown and County Court but after our 2 girls and in need of a change I felt it was time to join Liam and the Isca team!

As above the plan was to pursue Orchardlea Occasion Foods but instead I helped for quite a while picking orders when we were in the heat of the first lockdown.
I now am still doing Orchardlea Occasion Foods aswell as covering Bethany whilst she is on maternity leave, you have probably spoken to me on the phone (thank you for your patience with me if you have!)

Followed shortly by Will who is the Step Brother to Liam (who runs the business) Will had to unfortunately cut his travelling trip short due to covid-19, when he returned he had no job to go back to so came to join us! It was only going to be a short term job but I think we have probably stolen Will for long term (hopefully anyway) he started off helping in the cutting room and out as a delivery driver to help cover the routes whilst we were in the first lockdown, he then started to come into his own by taking on design work and our websites he had done a lot of this in his previous job so we are very grateful for his knowledge.

Will is also the designer and Manages Westcontry Olives, he is doing a sterling job and will be pushing the olives forward when we return to work next week.

Andy then joined us, his role is in one of the production rooms slicing meats such as hams, cured meats and then packing them into retail size packs, he also does any bulk orders of meats that are required too.

We then employed Dan, he was employed to work through the busy summer period and as we are getting busier needed an extra staff member to pick orders, he has since become the face and voice of Westcountry Olives you may have seen him on the Westcountry Olives social media platforms! Dan is a actually a budding Actor who is waiting for his big break, so we know we haven’t got him for that long which is a real shame he is a real hard worker and a really lovely chap.

We have just employed Bea who is helping us with our banking one day a week to try and keep on top of it, as we get busier and gain more customers the banking becomes a much bigger job which needs more attention so this is a massive help while Bethany is on maternity leave. Bea is also going to be helping with getting some new systems in place, and with the bank reconcile too which is always a hard job.

Going forward into 2021 we have got the car park area and signage to do, we are also going to be making use of some roof space for more storage which is next on the agenda, a hard push for Westcountry Olives to our Wholesale customers, general public and to the Restaurant/pub trade and new packaging to finish the branding to come this year too.

We are possibly going to be adding some more products to our Olive range, more to come on this later in the year.

New and up to date systems will be put in place to assist in running the business more smoothly and getting how we work up to speed and up to date with modern technology, a new website and an online order system.

It is safe to say we have got a busy year ahead, hopefully with not too much more disruption from dreaded Coronavirus!