Speciality Food Magazine June 2024

26 @specialityfood Dan Shearman THE WILDERKITCHEN Dan is the eco-chef founder of The WilderKitchen, home of Wilderbee Hot Honey – the chilli-infused honey condiment creating a real buzz in the UK. Dan introduced the UK to the hot honey trend after discovering the sweet and spicy condiment in a New York pizza restaurant. On returning to London, he created a version for his food truck menu using the highest quality, ethically-produced honey infused with sustainably grown chillies. After years of selling in unbranded pots from the hatch of his truck, he ventured into retailers and restaurants, and is now stocked in Marks & Spencer, Co-op, Whole Foods and Harrods, as well as restaurant menus across the UK - even making the cocktail menu at Tom Kerridge’s Michelin starred Hand & Flowers. Focused on disrupting the honey category with a fusion of sustainability and spice, The WilderKitchen offers a bee-friendly, organic wildflower honey farmed in the most natural way possible, with respect for our planet’s pollinators, along with chillies that support farmers in Rwanda by paying above living wage, providing free education to employees’ children, and planting crops that promote carbon sequestration - counterbalancing their carbon footprint. wilderkitchenfood.com Ella McKay FATSO Ella is the co-creator of super chunky, disruptor dark chocolate brand, FATSO. Self-proclaimed as food obsessed, she scrapped the big corp life and leant into her entrepreneurial instincts to take on the saturated world of chocolate, with a truly unserious and uncompromising brand. After graduating with a business and marketing degree, Ella bounced into a marketing role with a blue chip employer. Working across leading oral care brands, she quickly learned that a successful marketer can make anything sexy (even dentures). A hop over to a major telco company where her focus was in e-commerce/online marketing, was followed by a jump over the pond to Vancouver where she landed herself in the work-hard-play-hard world of advertising. After three years hiking mountains, skiing and sunbathing in the same weekend, eating a lot of kale-based smoothies, and meeting ‘the one’, she and her partner returned to London, taking a role at a leading brand strategy and design agency. A great breadth of roles, and yet she couldn’t shake the entrepreneurial itch. So, when Ella and her partners-in-chocolate started to ask the question: “why is dark chocolate so boring, and why does milk chocolate have all the fun?”, she couldn’t resist urge to solve the problem. Three years on, and 18 months since launching FATSO, driven by values and integrity, Ella and her team of chocoholics are well on their way to show the world that dark chocolate can have just as much fun as milk, without compromising on taste, quality, ethics or size. sofatso.com Kirsty Miller and Alex Higham EXHALE After 20 years together, 15 years of those working in the corporate world, Alex and Kirsty quit their hectic London jobs to launch Exhale in 2020. Their first hires were Kirsty’s brother, Tom and his girlfriend, Laura (still with them in customer services) followed by their neighbour, Kaspar (now heading up operations). The brand grew quickly as people followed the crazy journey of this start-up, with up to 250kg of coffee passing across their kitchen table each week. Four years later, with nearly 20,000 subscribers, roasting over 10 tonnes of coffee a month, Kirsty and Al still have huge ambitions to promote health, sustainability and fairness in the coffee supply chain. Together, they combine their passions and skills to bring the healthiest coffee imaginable, sourced responsibly (Exhale is a B-Corp and Soil Association accredited), with a true love of the craft. Exhale coffee is some of the purest available in the UK, being lab tested nine times to ensure it’s free of moulds and pesticides, and optimised for antioxidants. exhalecoffee.com Karen Robinson THREE ROBINS Driven by her son’s lactose intolerance and a lack of healthy, low-sugar snacks and drinks for children, Karen identified a market gap for a family-oriented oat milk brand. Launched in May 2022, Three Robins’ original and chocolate oat milks are barista-standard, low in sugar, and fully fortified, designed for the whole family to enjoy from breakfast to bedtime. Last year saw Three Robins win five product awards, including a prestigious Great Taste Award, and Karen was a finalist in the Women’s Enterprise Scotland awards, securing vital growth funding through Scottish Edge. Three Robins products are now available in Selfridges as well as more than 80 independent shops and cafes across the UK. The team is gearing up for a big summer with the recent launch of the brand’s innovative Little Smoothies range for kids, which offer a healthier on-the-go option for nursery and primary school aged children designed to revolutionise the snacking category. Committed to quality and healthy options for kids, Karen is driving positive change in the food and drink industry. Before Three Robins, she had a successful career in international development. Karen holds a PhD in international relations, and spent 15 years working to support women’s rights in conflict-affected countries on behalf of organisations including the United Nations and the UK government. threerobins.co.uk Natalie Wood SOUL FRUIT Coming from a mixed background, with a Singaporean mum and English dad, Natalie has always been exposed to a wide variety of foods. But, having a strong sweet tooth, there was a time when she couldn’t be found without a pack of sweeties in her handbag. In 2018 she decided to make changes in her life, quitting her corporate marketing job in Hong Kong to train as a Yoga teacher in Bali and learn more about nutrition. This made her realise how much she needed to cut out artificial sugary snacks. Living in Asia, Natalie found she had access to lots of delicious tropical fruits, which made her wonder, with so many amazing fruits in the world, why don’t we have more varieties of dried fruit snacks? They are nature’s candy, after all. She’s particularly addicted to a chew, while her husband is a crisp cruncher. That’s why Soul Fruit dries its fruit in two unique ways, ensuring its snacks don’t just taste great, but they also have the most satisfying textures too. Natalie is on a journey to make snacking simple again with Soul Fruit, using the whole fruit, and nothing but the fruit. soulfruit.co.uk