Ashlyns, named after one of our three farms, began life in 1999. As part of the bigger farming operation we grew organic vegetables for local customers as well as the supermarkets but it soon became clear that our future would be both varied and colourful.

In 2003 Gary asked the question "where are our next customers and what are they eating now?" This question lead to the start of  "Feeding Our Future",  a project that was set up to help improve school meals. This idea came about before Jamie Olivers' campaign to do likewise and in many ways the ethos behind both initiatives is very similar. The passion within our project is driven by a desire to have school meals cooked in all schools using fresh local ingredients, prepared by a confident well motivated catering team and enjoyed by children from all walks of life whilst gaining an understanding of where their food has come from and how it was produced.

This sounds easy enough on paper but in reality there are many hurdles to overcome. Increasingly tight budgets, the economy, local sourcing, an understanding of school catering, adequate training and food awareness are just a few of the reasons why we now offer a broad range of services to meet our customers needs. We have our own butchers, pack house, delivery vans, training kitchen and dedicated experienced team to offer support from in-house catering through to managing your service for you in the form of our "Catering Partnerships".

Although the majority of our work is school focused we do have many other exciting projects such as hospitals where we feed the patients and our brand of Ashlyns Cafes that operate in partnership with both the Public and Private sectors. To find out more then please click here or contact us.