Amazing Artisan: Tamsin, Founder of Luponde Tea

Luponde are a great example of a family company who continue to maintain their commitment to their artisan values. It was great to see how passionate founder Tamsin is about the heritage of their tea, and it’s lovely to hear how the Luponde tea estate aims to support small, independent farmers, social welfare projects as well as endeavouring to preserve and improve the natural environment both here in England and in Tanzania. We caught up with Tamsin to find out a little bit more about her company and what makes being an artisan so exciting - read the interview in full here to find out what she said.

Food Photography 101: Showing Off Your Product On a Startup Budget

Last month we drafted in food photographer Zoe to help us take some foodie shots for our new website. Over the past couple of months we’d collected lots of yummy samples from some of the amazing artisans we’ve met with, and wanted some photos to show off their delicious products in all their glory. Having discovered Zoe on Twitter and seen her online portfolio, we liked her natural, bright pictures - a perfect fit with the Kitchen Table Projects brand.

Hiring a food photographer can be a great way to ensure you get some enticing shots of your product, but this can be tricky for time-precious, money-conscious artisans. However, with visual social platforms such as Instagram, Flickr and Pinterest on the rise, there are plenty of quick ways to snap some pictures that pack a punch without busting your startup budget. Before Zoe headed off to edit our pictures, we had a chat with her about her experience as a food photographer and asked her to share some of her top tips for artisans looking to create their own foodie snaps.

“My passion for food photography started whilst I was studying at university. I loved the amount of control and freedom I had over the food compared with taking images of people or landscapes. It's great to be able to tell a story with my images, and foods such as cakes and biscuits are my favourite to work with. They don't deflate as quickly as cooked foods do, so you can take your time with them and be as creative as you like to achieve that perfect shot.”

“My process for a shoot is three stages. Pre-production involves researching; the client, what look they want and what sorts of foods they have for me. The day of the shoot involves preparing the set and making sure I have taken all the images I possibly can (I find a shot list helps). Post-production is kept to a minimum as I like to keep my shots looking natural.”

“Food photography is all around us, but food photographers are not always easy to find. Getting experience in food photography can be difficult, so here are my top tips:

• Find a style that you like, and use it to inspire your own images. In a similar way to how an artist practises drawing using other artists' images, you could use images from recipe books and food magazines. You should find that your own ideas and style begin to develop.

• Borrow props from friends and family or look in local DIY stores for wall paper samples, tiles and lino. Scrap yards or furniture stores are also good for wooden backgrounds.

• It's all about those subtle details. Add icing sugar to a pie/cake to make it look homemade. Read the recipe of the dish you’re photographing and have some of the ingredients in the frame. Add fresh herbs to a dish to add colour.

• Practise using ready meals and shop bought foods. After all, you don’t want to spend ages cooking and baking to then not feel up to photographing it!

• Remember, focus on the photographing and practise lots! It's all about the effort you put into an image.

You can find out more about Zoe’s work and take a look at her portfolio, here. For now, keep your ear to the ground for news of our new website, featuring lots more artisan stories and delicious products...coming very soon!

A big thank you to all the artisans and producers who sent us their products to sample and photograph. We look forward to featuring you all on our website and hope you like the snaps as much as we do!

Amazing Artisans: Cate, Founder of Dine and Dandy

Dine and Dandy started out as Cate’s solution to the lack of wholesome, interesting vegetarian meals on offer in her local supermarket. After positive feedback and encouragement from her friends, she decided to take the next step and turn her solution into a business model. An awesome name, a business mentor and a couple of markets later and Dine and Dandy was born. Having only launched in January this year, it was great to get a peek into the beginnings of a business journey. We wish Cate every success with her big plans - keep your eyes peeled for her nutritious, tasty veggie meals, we think Dine and Dandy is sure to be big business in the veggie world! Read the full interview to find out more about her awesome startup story.

From Exams to Intern to Employee - Why Students Should Consider Starting Out in Startups

June 2014; After what seems like months of late-night essay writing and pre-exam cramming, I finally finish my university exams. Two days later, I had moved back home with my mum, ready for my first day of my first proper post-grad job.

Applying for the internship at KTP made perfect sense. Working in food? Check. Putting to use my OCD grammar skills honed from three years of essay writing at university? Check. Opportunity to be creative and write? Double check. I loved the idea of working for a new company and seeing the business develop right from its very beginning.

In the student world, the word ‘intern’ is bandied around in a negative way far too often. Despite the fact that students are told that ‘having a degree is not enough’, thousands of students every year leave University without the right kind of skills and experience that make them attractive to employers. Internships are a great way of gaining some of these skills. I can’t speak for all interns, but gone are the days of making the tea and filling; instead, I was offered a chance to gain practical experience in a professional environment and have a real input into the company.

Working in startups and SMEs is an opportunity passed up by far too many graduates. At university, it was never suggested to me that I should consider working for a smaller company; instead, I spent three years attending career fairs dedicated to big name brands and corporate companies, feeling pressured into applying for top grad schemes that offer a handful of places and yet receive thousands of applicants. Whilst I’m not going to deny that these offer fantastic opportunities for the right person, students should know that this isn’t the only route. After all, big doesn’t always means best.

Far from ‘making the tea’, my internship was interesting, varied and, most importantly, enjoyable. Trusted with the mammoth task of building up KTP’s artisan community, I found it rewarding to see tangible results of my work and learn some new practical skills away from the ‘classroom’. What’s more, I got to attend industry events, learn about the food industry and countless opportunities to network and build contacts with a variety of people. In just three months, I got a unique insight into the food industry and the fast paced world of startups.

The opportunity to work for Kitchen Table Projects full-time was a bit of a no-brainer. You’ll still find me tweeting about our foodie musings or blogging about all the new goings on in the food world, but being full time has given me the opportunity (and confidence) to make some of the ideas I developed during my three month internship a reality. Being an employee let me directly implement my ideas on our strategy and share my ideas on our plans for the future.  

I think this is what I like the most about working for a small company; I’m able to carry out tasks that I wouldn’t ever think of being assigned to in a larger company with dedicated employees for that particular job. That’s the other great thing about working for a small company - you know everyone in your team personally and your fingers are in every pie. Unlike working for a big name brand with thousands of employees, you build relationships with your co-workers, make an impact and get noticed by the people who matter.

Working in our office at Impact Hub Brixton has been another highlight. Working in the Hub has given me exposure to a vibrant and exciting slice of startup culture, meeting and discovering new, innovative enterprises on a weekly, if not daily basis. It’s such an inspirational environment to work in, and the sense of community that the Hub fosters really fits in with everything we do at KTP. Plus we have tea and cake spread on Wednesdays (yup, that sold us too.) Working in an awesome office doing a job I genuinely enjoy - I’m pretty sure those aren’t the kind of words that a graduate utters very often.

For now, I’m looking forward to working on some really exciting projects leading up to our launch (keep your eyes peeled!), as well as meeting some more exciting people, expanding our team and, of course, our launch!

I would urge any students thinking about working in startups to give it a go - and don’t be put off by the ‘i’ word, either. Internships are a great career springboard: a chance to open those all important doors, make a difference within a company and focus your mind on what you really want to do with your life. Remember, everyone has to start somewhere and starting small doesn’t mean insignificant. Don’t forget the little guy!

Photo by Flickr User Brunel University.

Amazing Artisans: Dan, Founder of BananaBerry

Food Waste is a conversation that all businesses need to be having. Seeing the  potential to capitalise on the 15 million tonnes of food thrown away each year, Dan set up BananaBerry, a smoothie startup that uses non-displayable fruit and veg to create delicious drinks, freshly made to order, for offices around London. BananaBerry’s mission is simple: to reduce food waste, encourage a more healthy, sustainable lifestyle, and contribute towards a worthy cause (10p from each bottle sold goes to Cancer Research). Read the interview in full to find out more about how BananaBerry's big social idea came to fruition (sorry, couldn’t resist!)

Reap Rewards from your Rubbish - Waste in Food Businesses

We need to talk about food waste.

Sustainability is a conversation that all businesses, particularly in the food industry, need to be having. In the UK we produce an average of 15 million tonnes of food waste every year. Relatively speaking, that’s around the weight of 8,250,825 new cars. Enough cars, lined up bumper to bumper, to line the circumference of the earth a whopping 3.7 times.

What’s even more shocking is that 60% of that waste (worth around £12bn) could have been consumed. Instead it is quite literally being thrown in the bin.

Graphic from Feed the 5K Webpage

No longer can businesses afford to be ignorant of waste issues.

Businesses need to be making sure that the sustainability is high up on their agenda. There’s plenty of things businesses large and small can do to utilise their environmental agenda to increase the value of their business.

There’s loads of people who want to help you to improve the environmental value of your business.

As we found out when attended the MAS food waste workshop at the British Library, there’s plenty of organisations who are committed to making food business cleaner business. Melissa Addey, the specialist food advisor who spoke at the event, suggested that we need to turn our thinking away from waste as an expense and towards a way of generating new revenues. MAS is a manufacturing business support service that aims to help improve processes within manufacturing businesses, reduce waste, and put into place long term strategies to ensure continued sustainability. They provide match funded grants for SMEs - something that might be worth looking into if you would like some advice about utilising your waste in your business.

FoodSave is another initiative for SMEs which aims to reduce small businesses’ food waste as much as possible. They divert surplus food to feed people in need, before directing food unfit for human consumption to feed livestock where legally permissible. With any remaining food that cannot be redistributed, FoodSave supports composting and renewable energy generation. The aim is that, by 2015, 150 tonnes of food waste will have been prevented, making demonstrable savings to the local London businesses involved.

Other companies such as Giraffe Innovation, Sustain and Wrap also offer great practical advice and guidance on making your business more sustainable.

We need to start revolutionising the ways we think about waste.

At the event, Thomasina Miers, co-founder of the Wahaca restaurant chain, also spoke about their initiative, The Pig Idea. Wahaca has already proven itself to be a key player in sustainable business, winning a number of prestigious sustainability awards since opening in 2007.

The aim of The Pig Idea is to lift the EU ban on feeding catering waste, or swill, to pigs, reducing the amount of waste produced across the food industry. The initiative looks to introduce a robust legal framework for the safe processing of catering waste, including preventative measures to prevent disease spreading. In turn, this would lower the cost of feed for pig farmers, reduce the economic and environmental costs of disposing food waste, create jobs in the new eco-industry and liberate grain supplies to help feed people across the EU. If you’d like to take the pledge, or want to donate money to help the campaign, you can find all the details on The Pig Idea website.

Other events focusing on sustainability are popping all the time across London.
A couple of weekends ago we attended the Wasted! Brunch Club, hosted by our friends at Maida Hill Place. The event gave us the chance to chat with other foodies and discuss the plight of food waste with other business owners committed to sustainability. Over a delicious brunch provided by the West London People’s Kitchen, we heard from different initiatives from across London, including Feeding the 5K and Kensal to Kilburn Fruit Harvesters. Keep you eyes peeled for more events like this popping up in the next couple of months.

Some businesses have gone one step further and reuse food waste to create a delicious new product.
Rubies in the Rubble create delicious jams, chutneys and pickles packed with fruit and vegetables which are branded either surplus or ‘outgrade’ (products not fitting with the aesthetic criteria of supermarkets). In this, Rubies in the Rubble not only aims to contribute towards cutting food waste, but also sees its products as symbolic vehicles of their message: to consume less and think more about being sustainable.

Bananaberry - similar to RITR, BananaBerry use non-displayable fruit and veg to make smoothies which are delivered to offices around London. 10p from every bottle goes to Cancer research, and they offer a bottle-back discount for every one of their smoothie bottles you return to them.

Brixton People’s Kitchen aims to bring people together through learning about waste food, whilst at the same time gaining new skills in the kitchen and eating some delicious new dishes. Using waste food from local Brixton businesses, the People’s Kitchen invites people to cook in a local kitchen, sharing skills and making new friendships. The scheme has so far prevented nearly 720kg of food waste from being sent to landfill.

Kitchen Table Projects care about waste and are committed to becoming as environmentally sustainable as we possibly can.

Attending the event opened our eyes to the kinds of opportunities available to turn profit on your waste, and inspired us to continue working towards a more environmentally sustainable business model.

If you’re a small business and you don’t know about the British Library and their small business center, then check it out, pronto.

They run some great workshops (many of which are free to attend) and have hundreds of useful resources for small businesses and startups. Take a look at their website to find out more.

Amazing Artisan: Hilary, Co-founder of Choctails

London Cocktail Week sees everyone from budding amateur bartenders through to expert mixologists come together to share their passion for their favourite tipple. So what better time to feature the artisan who brings together two of Kitchen Table Projects’ foodie loves;  innovative cocktails and decadent chocolate? Founded by husband and wife team Simon and Hilary Delamare in 2012, Choctails was borne from Simon’s suggestion of putting cocktail flavours into chocolate.  The result?  Praise from family and friends for her concoctions, giving Hilary the motivation to turn her chocolate-making hobby into a full-time business. Turning her domestic kitchen into a production factory by day and giving up the dining room to become a chocolate store, Choctails was born. Read the interview in full here, where Hilary talks to Kitchen Table Projects about her startup story so far, and explains why running your own business is so awesome.

September at Kitchen Table Projects

Kitchen Table Projects is buzzing after yet another busy month (this startup lark is pretty hectic, don't you know?!) We attended a couple of key industry events, tried new products, and, best of all, met loads of lovely new people. We also got to add some fab new artisans and insiders to our foodie phone book and celebrated amazing local food during British Food Fortnight. Like we say, busy, busy, busy!

We started September with a bang - spending three very exciting (but equally as tiring!) days at the Speciality and Fine Food Fair at Olympia. We’ve already spoken about how fab this event was, and we certainly walked away feeling full of inspiration and motivation (and food!) to continue forth on our startup journey. For now, we can’t wait for next year.

Food Waste continues to be high on the agenda for many businesses across the UK, so it was really interesting to hear from some of the top sustainable businesses in London at the British Library event we attended earlier this month. Organised by MAS, the event included talks by various restaurateurs and sustainable businesses and discussed the the opportunities there are for small food businesses to make their waste a resource rather than an expense.

Small businesses from across Lambeth came together to find out more about Local Enterprise Uprise, at an event held at Impact Hub Brixton. The evening, organised by Transition Town Brixton, showcased some of the amazing social projects that are happening across Brixton, including talks from the Brixton Pound, Remakery, Brixton Energy and Makerhood, as well as a pledge session to encourage collaboration between businesses in Brixton. It was fascinating to attend and find out more about the social scene in Brixton, and really inspiring to hear from so many successful local projects.

Next in the calendar was a visit to Lunch, also at Olympia. On the hunt for catering suppliers for our Hub cafe, we got exposure to whole host of different products and picked up some yummy samples - but our favourite had to Mr Sherick's Shakes. They've just won the Grocer’s ‘New Product of the Year’ award for their indulgent milkshakes - but don’t just take our word for it, take a look for yourself here!

Then we were up bright and early to attend a breakfast panel discussion on ‘The Art of Food’ at Hub Westminster. Part of London Social Media Week, the panel spent the morning discussing the power of #FoodPorn and how this can be utilised by food businesses both large and small. The panel covered a breadth of expertise from across the food industry, featuring chefs, including Michelin star chef Andreas Antona, Marketing experts such as Oli Ingham (Marketing Manager at Wahaca) and Caroline Kenyon, Director of Pink Lady Food Photographer of the Year Award. With just about everyone and anyone instagramming last night’s dinner, it was fascinating to hear an expert opinion on the visual power of food, and the effect this has had on the increasing accessibility of high quality food to the general public.

Next, we jumped on a train out of London for a Grub Club Cambridge Supper Club. It was another great opportunity to network, network, network and meet lots of new foodies! It was a fantastic event (not to mention the food - amazing!) which offered lots of different people from across the food industry a chance to meet, build relationships and collaborate. Keep your eyes peeled for their next event.

We had some new visitors in our office for the Hub Brixton open day, including Julian from The Haggerston Times who came to write a piece on collaborative working spaces and the kinds of businesses that use them. We were thrilled to be featured in his article alongside some of the other fantastic startup businesses that we work with at the Hub.

We finished off the month by heading to Herne Hill Market to catch the Blue Patch launch event. These guys are doing some great stuff at the moment; they’re an ethical business directory of UK based sustainable and fair trade businesses, products and services. What’s more, in line with their social mission they invest half of their profits back into renewable energy sources, as well as putting the other 50% towards community projects across the UK. Find out more about the work they’re doing here, or have a browse of their fantastic ethical business directory.

Bring on October!

Amazing Artisans: Raw Foodies featuring Haughton Honey and Moral Fibre

British Food Fortnight continues to run until the 5th of October, and in celebration this week we thought we’d celebrate two Amazing Artisans who are dedicated to using delicious British ingredients. Haughton Honey and Moral Fibre are committed to keeping nasties out of their food. Both brands opt for raw, unprocessed ingredients, making for a more natural and healthy (yet equally delicious) product. What’s more, both Cris (Haughton Honey) and Jenny (Moral Fibre) have a great start up story to tell and we were really pleased to have the opportunity to chat to them about their business journeys so far. Check out the interviews in full to read more about their trials and tribulations, the ups and the downs of a food startup and their motivations.