Annual Report 2016 - 2017
Hello,
The end of the financial year is time for our annual review, and looking back it seemed like we were in a bit of an experimental mood this year….. We trialled lots of new products, explored 10 different countries, went through many(!) iterations of our new packaging, opened an on-site shop and launched our first cooking courses at Spicery HQ.
We’re now up to 30 staff and over 150,000 customers on the mailing list so things have really grown over the last year or two. What seemed originally to be a huge echoey space is rapidly filling up so let us know if you spot any big empty warehouses near the centre of Bristol!
Spice Travels
This was the year that our Spice Travels really took off (literally and metaphorically). We pay bonuses towards our staff researching and tasting fantastic food from around the world as that’s ultimately what guides our recipe development.
Alice made sausages in Thailand, Robyn ate Korean tacos in LA, Tung bought baguettes in Marseilles, Toby diced with chilli death in Peru, Gifty introduced the food of Ghana, Suze discovered incredible roast pork in Bali and I picked cardamon in Kerala - read all about it on our Spice Travels blog!
What to drink with our meals has been a regular question over the years, but working with Moor Beer on the menu of our Craft Beer & Food dinners (it’s thirsty work but someone has to do it) led to the realisation that Craft Beer works brilliantly with our recipes and has led to a joint product with Beer Hawk and hopefully much more to come.
We hosted our first cookery courses at Spicery HQ as our intrepid would-be Curry Legends watched chef Matt knock up 5 curries (with sides and chutneys) in front of their eyes in only 20 minutes. It was great fun so we’ll be hosting more over the next few months and look out for our first book - “How to be a Curry Legend” coming very soon together with 4 special Curry Legend blends to make everything in the book.
Hiccups
We’ve also had a few hiccups along the way this year with our new packaging but don’t be alarmed if each of your boxes seems to have been slightly different every month - we have now solved the colour contrast problem, the text is now readable(!) and the final results look great.
Certainly we’ve had some really positive feedback about how bright and colourful everything looks now which is great to hear.
For about 3 years I’ve been promising a new website and after a few false starts you’ll all be very relieved to know that it’s actually happening. We’ve started with the subscription management pages and you’ll see the rest of the site updated gradually over the next few months.
Please feel free to get in touch with your observations and suggestions as we really value those. Thanks again for your interest over the last year and Happy Spicing - we’ve got a lot to look forward to!
James
(The Spicery founder and owner)
.jpg)