Speciality-Food-July/August 2025

2 @specialityfood EDITOR’S LETTER 32 8 Oliver Lloyd consultant 24 James Grant No6 Pound Street REGULARS 12 Product News 14 Counterpoint: Making Christmas Count 20 Centre Spread: Cheeseboard 22 FarmShop Focus: LenhamCountryMarket 23 Cheese Uncut 28 TrendWatch: Halloween 38 Last Words FEATURES 16 Cheese Report 26 Taste for Tradition 29 Top Christmas Products 32 Spread the Story 34 The Homewares Opportunity 36 Britain’s Best Delis: Emmett’s W elcome to the July/August issue of Speciality Food, where we're starting to feel festive and excited about the opportunities ahead. You'll find the first of our Christmas-centric features on page 26, including plenty of expert advice to help guide you through this busiest of seasons. In a nutshell, find your own unique balance of tradition and innovation – tailored to your individual customer base, of course – and get started as early as you can. We also dive into the spreads category on page 32, where we hear about the fight for education around better honey and why peanut butter is worth its weight in gold, and the world of homewares on page 34: undoubtedly worth dipping your toe into ahead of the festive season. We explainwhy Halloween is well worth investing in on page 28; if you haven't yet maximised this growing opportunity, read on to find out how and why you should. Plus, we glean invaluable insight fromacross the cheese sector to find out how it's faring in 2025 on page 16; while its players are weathering amountain of challenges, they are standing strong and innovating to survive. HOLLY SHACKLETON | EDITOR holly.shackleton@artichokehq.com 36 29