Annual Report 2025/26

It’s been a year of rediscovery for us at the Spicery, as I went back to where it all started over 20 years ago, and we reintroduced something important to our brand identity that in recent years we’d almost forgotten about! 

I’m talking about the use of hand-drawn illustrations, which is something you see used so widely all across the spice-producing regions. Buildings, vehicles and signs in rural India, Mexico, South-East Asia and Africa, are often painted in gloriously bright colours with hand-drawn text and graphics. 

I’m guessing it’s an aesthetic that originated through necessity as it’s very cheap, customisable, and can be used to show off a distinctive personality and sense of pride. I always think it’s really joyful, unpretentious and I love the slightly wonky imperfection of it, so it’s long been something I really wanted to represent in our own packaging. 

In our first few years, I begged a favour from my friend Charlotte Farmer (a brilliant illustrator from Bath) to design some of our first packs. At the time I hadn’t really got my head around the use of colour in the way we do now, but this year Georgia has brilliantly combined some of the sense of fun and dynamism from Charlotte’s work, together with the fantastic colours we’ve introduced over the years and created something new.  

We’ve now produced a range of illustrated magnets, postcards plus our new storage tins, and it’s something we definitely want to do more with this year, so we hope you like them and keep an eye out for whatever might come next!

Later in the year, I had a trip to Morocco which was the place I originally had the idea that eventually became this business. It was in the spice markets of Marrakech way back in 2003 where I’d realised how special all these mysterious dried herbs and spices really were, and perhaps I might be able to use my experience working as a chef to reveal some of their secrets and share them with the rest of the world.

Of course, as it turned out I didn’t know quite as much about the subject as I thought I did, so it took many, many years of trial and error before we hit on a winning formula! That long process of exploration and experimentation is something our most longstanding customers will be very familiar with, as it’s still how we tend to work now by continuously testing new ideas and then refining them. Spices and how they’re used around the world is such a huge subject with infinite variation, that even 20+ years later it seems as though we’re still in the foothills of the journey and I’m sure there’s lots more innovation and exciting new Spicery products to come!

This trip (plus Samer’s visit back home to Lebanon) formed the basis for our next big project - Mezze Legend Chef’s Specials, due to be launched in autumn 2026. The book features over 90 brand new recipes from across the Middle East and North Africa ranging from borek to bazargan, fesenjan to filfelchuma, all made using the existing Mezze Legend blends so there will be loads more to discover and enjoy as you expand your Mezze Legend repertoire!

Other major events this year included:

• We’ve just finished producing our first products for retail
• The ever-expanding fabrics and photo props section has taken over even more space
• Our annual canoe round Bristol harbour was back on one of the hottest nights of the summer
• More Ultimate Legends
• We’re now on TikTok!
• And what must be our most far-flung Curry Legend photo so far, taken on a yacht off the coast of Madagascar!