Higgidy Supplier Story: Barfoots

Our Supplier Story with Barfoots

Choosing locally sourced, British ingredients is important to us when it comes to creating our pies – packing them full of top-notch ingredients and bold flavours, supporting our mission to bake glorious, veggie-led food that makes a difference to both people and the planet.

One of our suppliers is Barfoots who we’ve worked with since 2015 and which is based down the road from us in Sussex. They grow all sorts of vegetables, from courgettes, to corn, to asparagus. They also supply us with the finest butternut squash and sweet potatoes which can be found in a number of our recipes, including our new Spinach & Red Pepper Mini Vegan Muffins.

At Higgidy, Odair, our Procurement Manager, regularly visits suppliers to ensure that their ethos and focus on quality matches ours before we choose to work with them. Knowing that a supplier shares the same values is important and something we look for in every business that supplies ingredients to the Higgidy Kitchen. Once we’ve brought a new supplier on board, our Technical and Food teams are constantly taste testing our ingredients to ensure that they’re of the highest quality before going into our pies, quiches, rolls, and tortillas. Odair has visited Barfoots on numerous occasions and is always impressed by their projects and produce on each trip.

Barfoots’ story began back in 1976 when founder Peter Barfoot started growing courgettes in a small town in Hampshire. He then bought Sefter Farm in West Sussex in 1994 which is still their main site to this day. They farm over 8,000 acres across Sussex, Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight. They also farm in 25 countries across the world such as Spain, Senegal and South America.

Barfoot’s philosophy is something that resonates with us: ‘look after the land like you are going to farm forever’ as we strive to leave the world a little better than when we found it. The team at Barfoots work continuously to nurture their land with this philosophy being at the heart of who they are and what they do.

Something we love about Barfoot’s is their on-going sustainability work. Since 2010, they’ve been a carbon neutral business, turning every single bit of waste into green energy using anaerobic digesters. This energy runs all machinery at Barfoots and surplus goes back to the National Grid. It’s amazing to think that their sweetcorn husks could be powering the very equipment they use to harvest their produce.

As mentioned, we source a huge amount of sweet potato from Barfoots which is used in recipes such as our Roasted Sweet Potato & Feta Pie. In this pie we roast the vibrant sweet potato with chilli to give the sweet flavour a bit of punch. We then combine this with mature Cheddar and Greek Feta for a creamy and indulgent sauce, wrapped in our seeded shortcrust pastry.

We also use their butternut squash in one our newest vegan recipes, our Spinach & Red Pepper Mini Vegan Muffins. Powered by plants, this tasty snack is packed full of red peppers, spinach and basil along with butternut squash purée and pine nuts for some added oomph!

We’re proud to call Barfoots a trusted Higgidy supplier and can’t wait to see how their sustainability efforts grow in the future. Their passion for farming, the planet, and for all things veg inspires us daily.
If you’d like to read a bit more about Barfoot’s and the delicious vegetables that they grow, then do check out their website here.