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Cumbria is blessed with wonderful produce and some of the UK’s most innovative food and drink businesses.

It’s a sector with huge potential, which is why Cumbria Chamber of Commerce and its business-support arm, Cumbria Business Growth Hub, are pulling out all the stops to help food businesses flourish.

Here’s a taste – if you’ll excuse the pun – of the support available.

The Growth Hub’s Supply Chain Gateway has a wealth of tools to help SME food and drink businesses get their products listed with larger retailers.

Earlier this year our Supply Chain Opportunity Club hosted an event with supermarket Booths. 

It was a chance for potential suppliers to meet Booths’ buyers and learn about its procurement criteria.

Following the event we recorded a podcast  How to Supply Booths with Booths’ Innovation Manager Matt Bruno.

Very often, smaller businesses perceive technical issues around packaging and labelling as obstacles to supplying larger retailers.

One again, the Growth Hub can help. We have advisers with the specialist knowledge and expertise to overcome these barriers.

Listen to our podcast with Malcolm Laidlaw, an expert in food safety and labelling, discussing quality systems and accreditations for food businesses.

Sometimes, SMEs need to buy-in consultancy services.

The Growth Hub’s Consultancy Subsidy offers grants of up to £4,000 to cover 40 per cent of the cost of buying-in consultancy (eligibility criteria apply).

We also run a Placement Scheme that allows staff from family businesses to spend time in other businesses to learn from them.

Click here to find out more and watch a video showing what happened when Chocolate Cottage of Grasmere spent a day with Ginger Bakers near Kendal.

The chamber’s Made in Cumbria initiative offers a route to market for food, drink and craft businesses.

We relaunched it in the spring with a new website using stunning imagery to tell the stories behind member businesses.

Its main aim is to drive traffic to members’ own websites.

Members can also sell their products through our Made in Cumbria hampers and the Made in Cumbria shop in Kendal, which now hosts tastings and product demonstrations for member businesses to interact with their customers – there are plans to stream some of these live on Facebook.

You can hear more about our plans for Made in Cumbria in this podcast. 

To find out more about how Cumbria Business Growth Hub can help food and drink businesses, visit our website or call us on 0844 257 84 50.