The Spicery Annual Report 2018/19
Hello Spicerers!
It’s been a bit of a (Curry) Legendary year for us at The Spicery.
In case you’d somehow missed the big announcement last year….. you may not know that we’d written our first cookbook - How to be a Curry Legend.
The book was created together with 4 special spice blends that can be used to make ANY of the recipes inside, so it’s really easy to knock up fantastic curries any night of the week.
We had a lot of fun this year working on the follow-up - Curry Legend World Curries (with recipes from the Caribbean, Southeast Asia and more), while Christmas saw us introduce the World's First Curry Advent Calendar, with Curry Legend twists on all your festive favourites
(Brussels Sprouts and leftover turkey will never be the same again!).
There are now over 16,000 Curry Legends out there, and we’re loving seeing your creations on the Wall of Fame - special shout out to anybody who’s been pictured in action whilst wearing a Curry Legend apron!
We’ve got lots of exciting plans for you this year -
the Curry Legend Veg book is due Autumn 2019 (80 fantastic new recipes that are all vegetarian or vegan), a Curry Legend Roulette game is coming soon to randomly mix and match all the 300+ possible dishes you can now cook at home, Curry Legend serving mats to bring some colour to your dining table… and much more, so keep an eye on your spicemails for more details.
When it comes to our subscriptions
it’s always interesting to see all the various places around the country they’re being sent to (spice-related places or names are a big favourite here - Curry Rivel, Herbs End, Cinnamon Close...), but recently I noticed one of our subscription boxes being sent to Guam.
It made us look up how many countries we’ve sent subscription boxes to (as well as checking where on earth Guam is!). I was amazed to discover that we’ve now sent spiceboxes to more than 60 different countries around the world - from Qatar to Vanuatu, French Guiana to the Falkland Islands, Lithuania to Guadeloupe. Unfortunately for those of you with friends and relatives in Australia, unless an unexpectedly generous post-Brexit trade deal allows dried herbs, seeds and spices into Australia, that’s still the one place we’re unable to send our boxes, I’m afraid!
2018 spicery hq highlights
Robyn’s team dominated the Jobswap week staff lunch competition (again!) by recreating and spicing-up an entire McDonalds (including the ordering system) in the Spicery canteen
And some of the worst canoeing Bristol had ever seen during our annual summer canoe round the harbour!
Curry Legend World Curries was launched - if you don’t yet have a copy, grab one now!
Our One Pot Wonders are now listed on Ocado!
Guest cooks from our partnership with Bristol Refugee Rights this year included Lila from Mexico, Sule from Iran and Refat from Bangladesh
And finally,
we know that concerns about plastic packaginghas become a big issue for many of you and it’s something we’ve been keen to tackle this year. We’re currently trialling a compostable pouch made from wood pulp for Curry Legend blend refills, and ideally hope to make this entire product range single-use plastic free very soon.
The sachets that go into our recipe kits and spiceboxes are proving rather more complex however, as the current material has a range of properties that compostable or recyclable materials all seem to lack… plastic - why are you so useful, but so difficult to recycle!?! You can read more about our packaging on the blog, and also see any updates on our progress.
All in all then, it’s been a good year for us and it’s given us all a great deal of pleasure to see and hear how much you’ve been enjoying cooking our recipes. If you’re not yet in our community of Curry Legends or subscribers - please join us as there’s lots more to come for you this year!
HAPPY SPICING!
James (Spicery Owner and Founder)
Read our previous annual reports!