I’m typing this on a train on our way to Preston , as we’re off to pick up our two chiller vans.

After a month of trying to work out the best option for chiller vans, we’ve decided to buy one and rent one. Given that the problem was that we didn’t know whether to buy second hand ones or hire vans, and in the absence of a crystal ball, we thought that if we bought one and hired one, we’d get one option right at least.

We’ve discovered that vehicles are simply going to cost us money, there’s no secret way around it. We can’t afford brand new ones that will hopefully never break down and we can’t afford big garage costs when an old one needs parts replaced.

We did 40,000 miles in our first year last year, which was the commuting to the London farmers’ markets twice a weekend mostly, as well as the home deliveries. We have a trusty Vauxhall Vectra estate, which is very economical, can fit two market stalls in the back and is affectionately named, Daisy.

We’ll hang onto this for a bit, for the simple reason that we have it on leasehold  and because we’ve used her so much, we’d have a £1000 balance to pay if we sold her as she’s worth less than we’ve paid off so far. So Daisy and two chiller vans for crying out loud.

It’s a good problem to have, trying to work out how we get two chiller vans though. The reason is because Waitrose are going to launch us in the Oxford Street John Lewis Food Hall as well as the nine Waitrose stores nearest the farm here in the West Midlands. The twice weekly delivery days will be the same for London and the nine stores, Tuesdays and Fridays, so we need one van going one way, and the other off to London.

As we still have lots of lovely online orders from our old farmers’ market regulars in London, the trip to London won’t just be to Oxford Street but will tie in the home deliveries too. It’s a massive coup to be in the Oxford Street store, we will just need to make sure we spread the delivery cost over enough deliveries to make the journey worth it.

Now we’re nearing Birmingham New Street, where we need to change trains here to head to Preston. Roland is happy to change trains because the battery on his old laptop is old and so short now and this train doesn’t have plug sockets. He’s doodling a weekly logistics map to my right at the moment and I think I’m about to get a presentation.

One decision we made very easily about the chiller vans is what to call them… they’re called Nick and Jo, after our amazing TV mentors. Tee hee.

Sunday Telegraph

BEEFING UP THEIR IMAGE

Jul 18, 2010 | by Jonny Beardsall

The beefburger desperately needs a lift. While floury bread buns and obese children too readily spring to mind, the most prepossessing couple behind Muddy Boots Foods - which make burgers on the Ragley Hall Estate, Warwickshire - would urge us to think again.

"We say -- free the burger," exclaims Miranda Ballard, 28, who, with her husband, Roland, 30, will be presenting their dribble- inducing delights in the Food Village at The CLA Game Fair for the first time, where a record number of 80 food and drink producers will urge you to sample their fare.

Rehabilitating ubiquitous lumps of minced beef must have looked an unedifying task. But with fiendish-sounding combinations like goat's cheese and sun-dried tomato, Stilton and cider, leek and mushroom, and caramelised onion and mozzarella -- all recipes created by Miranda - you hope her creations taste as ravishing as they sound.

The cattle are from the family's Aberdeen Angus herd at Church Farm, Shrawley, where Roland's father, John, has farmed for 40 years. Using prime beef, hung on the bone for 21 days, the burgers are sold online, at farmers' markets and delicatessens, and in Waitrose stores in Malvern and Droitwich from November.

Grass-fed and naturally reared - which means calves single- suckle their mothers for the first seven months -- the animals are raised to the highest standards.

"It's a slow farming method but it makes for happier cattle," Miranda says.

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The Times

January 9, 2010

Marriages and engagements: ‘From the city’s bright lights to a muddy boots idyll’

Miranda Gallimore, 28, and Roland Ballard, 29, founders of Muddyboots foods, will be wed on January 16, 2010

The temperature had sunk to minus 4C at half past six on the morning we spoke to Roland and Miranda. There were, they said, five inches of snow on the ground outside their Worcestershire farmhouse, and the cows had “frosticles”.

For the past five months they have worked virtually daily until midnight, on Muddybootsfood, their business supplying Aberdeen Angus beef cuts and burgers to individual homes, local farmers’ markets and delicatessens.

It’s a far cry from their old life in London. Then Miranda would roll out of bed at 8.20am each day and walk or jog to her job as PA to Sir David Frost, for whom she worked for five years, coming into regular contact with celebrities. Roland’s days were longer — with the film company Working Title.

But neither regrets swapping a life of gym memberships and Starbucks lattes for their daily routine now on a 180-acre farm with a herd of 120 cattle.

“We’ve been ripped out of our past life,” says Miranda, who grew up in Tenbury Wells, 20 minutes up the road. Their farm belongs to Roland’s father and he grew up there. They went to neighbouring schools and their parents had also been to school together.

So they shared plenty of acquaintances when they met first, in 2001, at university in Bristol. Roland first spotted Miranda at the freshers ball. “I thought she was a ball of energy and she hasn’t diminished in any way, shape or form since then,” he says. Instantly attracted, he did not act immediately. “I was an awkward first-year student.” It took another year, a “cheesy” nightclub and a couple of beers to give Roland the courage to tell Miranda he liked her. She, on first seeing him, thought he looked like Patrick Swayze.

A first date, to see the vampire action film Blade 2, was not a success. The second, to the pub with mutual friends, was more relaxed.

They fell in love that summer. “We realised that we could not live without each other,” says Roland.

“One of my housemates said, ‘You have found a male version of you’,” says Miranda. Despite this, they split up a year after graduating.

“I had dismissed this as a puppy uni love,” says Roland. Daily chats and texts followed — “but we were strict and didn’t see each other,” recalls Miranda.

Then Roland covered for her at work for two weeks while she was on holiday. One morning Miranda walked through the door and “the rest, as they say, is history,” says Roland. Once they had moved in, they discovered they enjoyed organising projects together — such as charity fundraising events.

Setting up a business was a natural next step. “Both our parents are self-employed and have worked together,” says Miranda. “We wanted to do something we were both passionate about.”

Roland realised he wanted to propose the day they set up their first stall at a local farmers’ market. “It was obvious we were a couple and I said, ‘This is my girlfriend,’ but thought I should be saying ‘my fiancée’.”

Planning the proposal was tricky. “If your business partner is also your girlfriend it is very hard to get to Bond Street to check a ring without her noticing.”

Luckily, Miranda’s friend Sophie, a jeweller, knew her ring size. On June 30, 2009, Roland proposed on an evening walk along the Pembrokeshire coast, where his family has owned a cottage for three generations.

“He got me to suggest a nice evening walk and then said, ‘We could bring a bottle of wine’. I said, ‘What about champagne?’, as my sister had married the week before,” recalls Miranda. Initially, she was surprised. “We shouted, ‘We are going to get married’ to the sea.”

They are to be married on January 16 at St Mary’s, the Norman church in Burford where Miranda was christened. It’s just across the road from the house where she grew up and as a child she would give tours to visitors, and play at weddings with her older sister who “always made me the groom”.

On the day they are wed, the church will be decked with ivy and candles, and the guests will feast on beef and cider cup at the marquee reception that follows. They will have their honeymoon in Courmayeur, in the Italian Alps, where they will learn to ski.

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Worcester News

Seen on TV – now everyone wants to buy our burgers

6:10pm Friday 14th May 2010

By Alicia Kelly »

THE Worcestershire couple behind a gourmet burger company have been inundated with orders since their bid to turn their brand into a household name was featured on a television programme on Monday night.

Miranda and Roland Ballard starred in the first episode of High Street Dreams, a new BBC series, which sees businesspeople offered advice to help transform small brands into major sales successes.

Viewers watched them successfully pitch their idea to buyers from Waitrose, which has now agreed to stock their Muddy Boots burgers in its Droitwich and Malvern stores.

Mrs Ballard said: “It has been amazing, completely incredible.”

She said the business, based at Church Farm, Shrawley, near Worcester, had had 145 orders in a few hours after the programme was screened.

The couple, who had previously sold their burgers at farmers’ markets, are currently in talks with Waitrose as to which products they will stock and, if they are successful, they hope to expand into other stores.

They took part in the programme after responding to an advert for businesses to take part.

During the programme, they were given advice on their branding and packaging and told to outsource their manufacturing processes so they could front the company’s marketing campaign.

Mrs Ballard said: “It was quite hard to hear it but we would be fools not to take the advice of these experts.

“Our adviser, William Kendall of Green & Blacks and the New Covent Garden food company, was just wonderful, so straight talking and no-nonsense, which we responded to really well.

“We got to meet Waitrose years before we could have met them ourselves and the programme opened that door for us, which was amazing.”

The couple left careers in London in 2008 to follow their dream of making meals and burgers from pure-bred, traceable Aberdeen Angus beef.

Since then they have run the business from Church Farm, which is owned by Mr Ballard’s father.

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Worcester News

Cream of the crop

1:59pm Monday 14th June 2010

FOUR Worcestershire food and drink producers have proved they are the cream of the crop at the Heart of England Fine Foods (Heff) Diamond Awards.

Muddy Boots Real Foods of Shrawley, near Worcester; Kit’s Kitchen of Egdon, near Drakes Broughton; Hobsons Brewery of Cleobury Mortimer; and Oxsprings, of Pershore all won Heff diamond awards at a gala dinner held at Aston Villa Football Club in Birmingham.

The awards celebrate the top food and drink available in the Heart of England region, which includes Worcestershire, Herefordshire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Birmingham and the Black Country.

There were nine product categories with a special diamond for taste and three special diamond awards which recognised business achievement in the food industry, categorised as grow, innovate and excel.

Hobsons Brewery won the special diamond award for excel and Muddy Boots Real Foods won the special diamond award for innovate.

Miranda Callimore, of Muddy Boots, said: “Winning this award means a massive amount to us. We’ve had to learn a lot about the food and drink industry and Heff has helped us with this, so to get a business award from Heff is fantastic.”

Kit’s Kitchen triumphed in the condiments and preserves category for its pickled shallots, a follow-up to its success two years ago.

Kit Bamford, of Kit’s Kitchen, said: “It’s an outstanding achievement to have won this award twice for the pickled shallots. It underpins a lot of hard work from the staff and we know it’s a good product but winning the award means we can really shout about it.”

Oxsprings was celebrated for its air-dried ham in the meat category.

Alex Oxspring said: “This is the first award I’ve won so I’m thrilled. It’s been a lot of hard work with a pioneering product so it’s great to get the recognition from Heff and the professional judges.”

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Worcester News

Country News latest - Getting back to our roots

Worcester News

Features

Here is the second installment (see Part One below) of my blog for www.heartfood.co.uk

Step By Step for Setting Up – Part Two

After getting all the food regulations and Trading Standards requirements in place (see part one), we suddenly realised that we didn’t have someone holding our hand anymore... now we had to sell our product ourselves.

The single most important bit of advice I can give anyone is simply to ask people for their advice. People and companies that have been up and running for longer than you, who have learned from mistakes and have incredibly helpful tips to share with you. Anything from where to get packaging printed and which food shows are worth the money and which aren’t, to local press contacts for marketing or suppliers of ingredients you’re using.

I think we’ve discovered that there is unfortunately no way to avoid making expensive mistakes entirely but if you can ask people for their advice, you’ll definitely find that you’re able to avoid some. Some which might have been just round the corner or some that were potential timebombs for your second or third year.

We called up companies in the area, went along to farmers’ markets and local fayres and got chatting to stallholders. We went to visit farmers and we picked the brains of businessmen and women all over the country; some who had been trading for only a bit longer than us and some legends in the industry like Judy Goodman of Goodman’s Geese.

The amazing thing you’ll find is that people really do give you a lot of time to help you. They know that advice was one of the most important things that they gathered when they started and they know that they still rely on it so much still. Humans are inherently kind, we reckon. They really do want to help others succeed in this world, and particularly when you’ll be strengthening their industry too, they’ll benefit from helping you.

You have to be quite gutsy to call up people or send them an email and don’t be offended if they don’t reply or say that they don’t have time. It’s nothing personal, it’s true that they don’t have time.

Something that we would definitely recommend doing is joining your regional food organisations. We’re in Worcestershire so we joined Heart of England Fine Food. I cannot recommend them enough, if you’re in the area. They are an endless resource for information, Mintel reports (for market research) and – most importantly – a network of food producers like yourself. They work with producers and retails all around the Midlands and will know just the person to contact to help you with something, whatever it is you need to know. They also hold food events and conferences and set up introductions between producers and retailers (farmshops or restaurants etc).

We also joined Slow Food Worcestershire. Once again, this is a fantastic network of regional producers with an incredible passion for quality food. Anyone can apply to be member of this (producers and consumers) so you’ll benefit as much from talking to other producers as you will meeting wonderfully helpful ‘foodies’, ready to give you such helpful feedback and advice about what they look for in food that they buy.

We were also incredibly lucky to win a bursary through Slow Food for a stall at the BBC Good Food Show at the NEC in November last year. This was worth nearly £1000 – money we simply wouldn’t have been able to raise – and gave us our first taste of a big, national show.

After gathering all this amazing advice and support, we knew we were only going to be as good as the number of people to whom we could actually sell our product, and we simply had to get out there and sell.

We really can’t recommend farmers’ markets enough. Granted, the bubble has ‘burst’ a bit due to the 73% increase in farmshops and delis and supermarkets ‘buying local’ but as a market research tool, you can’t get better. You’re selling to a really helpful demographic and they will be incredibly generous with feedback… sometimes brutally so but it’s the best thing you can hear to help you improve.

We joined the London farmers’ markets first www.lfm.org.uk. It’s a bit of a commute from Shrawley (4.15am start on a Saturday to drive back on Saturday afternoon and then 5.15am start on Sundays and back again Sunday afternoon) but it was really worth it to have a weekly market and to be at markets with a high footfall. We did Pimlico and Notting Hill on a Saturday and Marylebone and Islington on a Sunday. Even though it was a 2hr drive each time, the markets were only 15mins from each other so taking one each, it was only the equivalent to a one hour drive per person (if you see what I mean). I think it’s worth remembering that – keeping your travel costs down by not heading off in different directions and it definitely pays to take a separate market each, if there’s more than one of you, because if you’re making the produce for one, you might as well make it for two markets and have two stalls.

If you don’t take a lot of money, don’t worry. A lovely friend – Sarah-Jane from Ludlow Jam Pan – gave me an excellent tip to keep in mind, “The fee for the stall is still cheaper than an advert in the local paper” and you’ll realise what a great PR opportunity it is for your company. Just raising that profile and giving out tasters, telling people you sell online (if you do) or where else you’re stocked. You’ll find it really is worth it.

We joined Hereford, Worcester and Ludlow Farmers’ Markets as well as London. All are brilliant and so well organised. What they really have in common is that they’re all created out of a genuine passion for quality food and it’s another arena to meet with other producers and learn from them.

Personally, I wish that the marketing for farmers’ markets wasn’t as much ‘support your local farmer’ (which I think makes farmers sound like a charity and burdens the shoppers with a responsibility) but ‘buy this food… it is simply a lot tastier than mass-produced, compromised rubbish that you can find in budget food lines in supermarkets’. I wish that it challenged the public more to find out about quality food and ethical farming themselves, though it’s up the producers to brand and market their product well too. Tasters are by the far the most effective form of selling we know. Someone told us, when we started the markets, “taster taster taster until it kills you. You’ll work out how much you’ve given away in tasters and it’ll seem ridiculous but you have to do it until you’re well known.” We will still give away up to four burgers an hour on stalls, sometimes it’ll be 10% of the stock we take and not far off the profit we could have made that day but it’s the only way to prove to people that your product is really good and get them to buy into your brand.

You’ll start to find that they’ll buy from you regularly and repeat custom is the best feeling in the whole wide world.

Next up is branding and design. We got this wrong in the first year and are now having to raise the funds to start again – ouch! – but we’ve discovered this is actually very common. We’re still learning so much and can totally believe that we’ll always be learning. We love learning… starting to wish that the valuable lessons didn’t carry such a actual value (in £s) but it’s out of our control. You just have to suck it up, learn the lesson and improve.

I would definitely advise everyone to use a designer or design agency. I know that it’s expensive but I have never seen a home-designed logo or any homemade packaging that doesn’t instantly scream that it’s homemade.

If you want to have the ‘home-printed’ appearance, that’s absolutely fine. Though to go any further, I truly cannot see that you can do that without professionally designed or printed packaging. Also, you need your nutritional contents and trading standards regulations ticked off if you want to start supplying retailers (see part one).

When you meet a design agency, tell them that you’re on a budget. Set limits yourselves and ask them to be totally upfront about how much it’s going to cost.

We spent £700 on design and production for stickers to go on our brown paper carrier bags. We got all excited by the idea when we were with our designer but we so wish that we’d actually thought about it properly and realised it was a total waste of money. We wish that our designer had have questioned it but that’s not their job to do that.

I would definitely recommend going to an agency or designer with experience in food packaging as they will know the competition, what the retailers will want as standard, colours that will work in shop lighting, how important the front panel is (as most places side stack, rather than front to back stacking with the front facing out) and so on.

Take your prototypes to stores. They won’t mind if you just ask nicely, “may I put this on your shelf, to see how it stands out?” or “would you mind if I asked your shelf-stackers how easy this would be to display – will it fall over?, does it need to be in a shelf box?”. We didn’t do this and we really wish we had. When the tv crew put our packaging on a shop shelf for the market research scene we shot for the television episode, Roland and I walked passed it ourselves – cringe! We were so embarassed that we did that but the colours just weren’t strong enough, they were even weaker under the flurescent lighting in the supermarket. We also instantly saw that you couldn’t stack it on the shelves; it just fell backwards. As soon as you took the one in front, they sort of flumped to the side and all got mixed up with each other.

And then the eternal problem of ‘economies of scale’. This is all very well - “buy more and it’ll cost you less per unit” but completely useless when you don’t have the capital up front or the space to store pallet loads of packaging. It’s just a scale you have to work out yourself inline with what you can afford but I’d definitely recommend a small order to begin with, even though they’ll tell you it’s ‘crazy’ because it’s at the highest price but, if it turns out it needs an improvement, that’s a saving you’ll be thankful to have made.

Coming next…

Part Three: Accounting, Staff, Marketing, Food Shows,

Part Four: Selling Food Online, Trade Shows and Wholesale

 A friend of mine runs a terrific website called Heart Food - www.heartfood.co.uk.

She kindly invited me to write a blog about my experiences of setting up a food company and I thought I'd post it here too:

Now that we're fully outsourcing production, we have some brilliant equipment for sale.

Details are below and contact me for any further information or photos.

(actually, this is posted by me - Miranda - but I don't know how to change the name on the website system yet...)

Roland and I have had the most incredible fortnight since the television show.

The response was just amazing and we admit that we were utterly unprepared. I remember this conversation:

"I'll do a batch to have a good stock in the freezer, Ro, just in case anyone orders some Home Delivery after the show, shall I?"

"Good idea, Miranda. I wonder if we will get any."

"It would be lovely if we did."

...well, we did! A wonderful, overwhelming amount and we're so grateful to you all for trying our burgers and, now, the biggest compliment in the world, repeat orders too.

We've been delivering them as fast as we could get the beef and I could make the burgers and we loved visiting a lot of you ourselves. We realised that it was easier and more cost-effective for a few geographical 'bundles' to be delivered by Roland or myself in the last two weeks, so we've been on a tour of the UK and really loved meeting you.

Here's a photo from when I met Peter and Carole Harris, who were terrific and so kind.

Now we are on top of the orders and we're back to using Citylink for our deliveries. We have a quicker response time, within three days of the order, and a stock of burgers again in our freezer. We still feel terrible about those of you who had to wait longer than we'd like for your order; I promise it's not the Muddy Boots way and we won't allow that delay to happen again.

And huge thank you again for all of you who have tried our burgers

Miranda x

A Note for 2010
Calling all croquet fans…
We will be very excited to tell you about the Muddy Boots Croquet Tournament 2011 but there will not be a Tournament 2010. We have a few events happening this Summer (email your email address to rolandandmiranda@muddybootsfoods.co.uk to join our mailing list and receive the details) and we are waiting until next year to host the Croquet again. After that, we hope that it will become an annual event, rather than bi-annual, but forgive us for already taking on a few too many things for this Summmer to be able to do it again this year.

To have a look at last years, see below… It was terrific fun and we can’t wait to have it again.

On Saturday 20 June 2009, we held our first Muddy Boots Croquet Tournament. It was in the stunning grounds of Fulham Palace in London and was a terrific day.

We had beginners and experienced croquet players competing. There were also lessons for anyone who wanted to learn and a raffle with great prizes, kindly donated by our other sponsors.

Join our mailing list to be updated on 2010’s croquet tournament. We’ll be back at Fulham Palace and have plans with to try the day in other locations around the UK as well.