The Spicery is an award-winning recipe kit business based in Bristol. It was started in 2003 by James Ransome, who was inspired by the spice markets of Marrakech, and then opened his own stall at a local market. He could quickly see there’s huge enthusiasm in the UK for cooking with spices, but as a former chef he also knew they can be a bit intimidating, complicated to use, and potentially disastrous if added in the wrong proportions (plus you never seem to have the right one to hand when you need it!).
From that moment, our aim at the Spicery has always been to make it easy for everyone to create fantastic food from around the world using our special bespoke spice blends and simple recipes. Nothing gives us more satisfaction than our customers discovering something new and delicious, then saying... “WOW, I can’t believe I made that!”.
From inventing the world’s first recipe kit subscription way back in 2005, to creating unique cookbook kits with recipes from around India, Mexico and the Middle East, we’re always experimenting and developing exciting new products to make it easier for everyone to cook fabulous spicy food at home.
We also try to reflect that sense of fun and excitement by using the colours, fabrics and textures you see when travelling around the spice-producing countries - all those bright yellows, blues and reds painted on buildings with lots of hand-drawn illustrations full of energy and character. We hope you join us, and share some of that colour, joy and fantastic flavour in your own homes!
Happy Spicing!
Timeline
2003
James starts the business in his bedroom (he was sleeping on the living room floor at the time) with £5000 of his own money which went on a few sacks of spices, some gripseal bags and a little electric grinder. Sambava Spices (as we were called then) is born! He wrote a simple mail order list - his first customer was his mum, then over time started to build up a reputation for his freshly ground spice mixes with some of the leading chefs in the country (the Fat Duck, Sat Bains, Ottolenghi and Rick Stein were all early customers)
2004-2006
James takes the plunge and commits full-time to the business. He moves out of his bedroom to our first ‘warehouse’ (a 500 sq ft garage in Bath). He starts the first market stall on a Saturday in Green Park market using manilla wage envelopes and brown parcel paper as packaging because he didn’t have enough money for ‘proper’ packaging but nobody seemed to mind too much… It was at the market where he realised he could use his letterbox-sized spice blends combined with recipes for the seasonal produce available at the market to make the world’s first recipe kit subscription!
2009-2013
We take on our first full-time member of staff and become Living Wage certified. We slowly add more of the tiny units in our estate until finally we’re operating out of 4 garages with 2 additional shipping containers out in the car park. Spice Travels blog is launched where we pay bonuses to staff to travel and learn something interesting and new that we can use to help guide our product development, and we have a huge hit with our curry subscription on notonthehighstreet.com. All hands on deck working double shifts to pack and send the orders in time!
2014-2016
We move to our current premises in Bristol and host Open Days and dinners on-site. We have our first Jobswap week (where all the staff swap roles for a day to learn about each others jobs), become SALSA certified (to guarantee the highest level of food safety), and also start a partnership with Refugee Action where refugee volunteers come in and cook dishes from home with us in return for our donations to the charity (over £20,000 donated to date).
2017-2018
We link up with Mencap and Workfit (a charity that helps find work placements for young people with Downs Syndrome for which we won a national award from BASE), and launch our first book - How to be a Curry Legend. The concept of 4 spice blends being combined to make any recipe is one that James had many years before when noticing that so many of the spice blends he was making had similar component ingredients, just in different proportions, so 4 base blends could be combined to have a similar effect
2020-2024
The Covid years… with everyone being stuck at home we had a huge increase of orders through this period but 7 day working weeks kept everything running smoothly and all your orders still going out on time! We expanded our range of cookbook kits with the launch of Taco Legend and Mezze Legend cookbook kits, and had 4 of our staff hit an incredible 10 year milestone!
Recent Travels
Georgia in Malta
Christian in the Philippines
James in Sichuan
Jude in Vietnam
James in Melaka
Georgia in Sweden
James in Bangkok
Testimonials
'Best subscription boxes for gifting' 2023
'Explore some of the world's most exotic foods with these colourful kits'
Runner up - 'Best Independent Retailer'
'Best Curry Kit Subscription'
'The ideal gift for anyone looking to expand their culinary horizons'
