'Best New Product' award

Celebrity chef, Ross Burden, presented the 'Best New Product' award to Sarah Hunter of Hunter’s Puddings at Lowther Horse Driving Trials and Country Fair on Friday 4 August 2006.

Hunter’s Puddings, a new business set up by Sarah Hunter and based in Kendal, won this year’s Distinctly Cumbrian New Product Award at last Friday’s (4 August) Meet the Buyers event. Hunter’s Puddings specialises in gluten-free treats such as sticky toffee and chocolate fudge puddings and a survey of the 50 or so buyers at the event gave Sarah’s sticky toffee pudding top marks for taste, presentation and value for money.

“I set up the business in April,” said Sarah Hunter, “and I have been really encouraged by the response locally and via mail order. I had some very promising conversations with potential buyers at Friday’s event and the samples seemed to go down well.


It was great for people to be able to taste the puddings – with gluten-free foods there are all sorts of preconceived ideas and this was a good chance for people to taste and find out for themselves how enjoyable gluten-free food can be. Small companies like mine struggle to get out and visit people individually so Distinctly Cumbrian’s event was a huge opportunity.”

Sarah has been a client of Distinctly Cumbrian from the start, receiving advice and support on distribution initially and currently working with a Shap company, Rural Web Design, on a website, partly funded with a Distinctly Cumbrian grant.


This is the second year that Distinctly Cumbrian has organised a Meet the Buyer event as part of Lowther Horse Driving Trials and Country Fair and it forms part of the organisation’s support to rural manufacturers on distribution and procurement. Over 20 Cumbrian food producers took the opportunity to display their wares, offer samples and meet buyers face to face.

“We wanted to build on the success of last year’s event,” explained Jon Reed, responsible for procurement and sourcing at Distinctly Cumbrian, “and this year’s was bigger and better than ever according to the feedback from everyone who took part. It is a great chance to put names to faces and establish new links and I know that our client producers find it useful to get to know each other and build networks too.”

Pauline Herbert, Programme Manager for Distinctly Cumbrian, was also encouraged by the response to the event: “Meet the Buyer is all about giving retailers a chance to try local produce and to talk to the producers face to face. The direct feedback alone is usually worth the effort for our clients and I am confident that at least some of the new contacts made on Friday will develop into sales and contracts for Cumbrian producers in the coming months.”