CVSC - Clwydian Range Food and Drink Group

In 2021 Clwydian Range Food and Drink group received £24,000 through the Clocaenog Forest Wind Farm Fund towards their Food and Drink – Action Collaboration Enterprise (ACE), which is a partnership project with Llangollen & Dee Valley Food and Drink Group.

This Project was aimed at helping Food and Drink businesses to recover following the Covid-19 crisis. Their aim was to research and develop new ways of collaboration including ‘remote selling’ eg. online and to identify examples of good practice in how to make products easily accessible within the local communities.

Through this project they were able to employ 1 part time co-ordinator for the project and arrange Food and Drink events - TASTE and trade focus events. The aim is to assist 30 Denbighshire micro food and drink enterprises to grow over the time of the project.

One of the micro businesses that have benefited by the project is Chilly Cow, which is located in the Vale of Clwyd. It’s an award-winning Ice Cream producer using the family’s farm fresh Welsh milk for their delicious home-made ice cream.

In May 2020 due to the pandemic, Chilly Cow set up an honesty box at the farms gate to make it easy for ice cream lovers to buy their products, whilst also complying with Covid 19 rules. It has been a huge hit.

As a member of the Clwydian Range Food and Drink Group, Chilly Cow has worked hard at supporting other small producers and their products are in stock within the Cow Shed honesty box. So, customers can choose their ice-cream and also buy jams and chutneys from Mostyn Kitchen Garden and Ffynnon Beuno, Coffee from Owen and Edwards – either to take home or served fresh from the Cow Shed, Sudd Afal fresh apple juice to take home and Black Mountain Honey from just over the other side of the Clwydian Range.

By being part of the Food and Drink – Action Collaboration Enterprise, Anna Taylor, creator and founder of Chilly Cow says:

Collaborating with other producers is also the way forward. We are able to share our experiences with others as part of the ACE project to show them that working together offers real potential.

Although finding time has been the biggest challenge for collaborations, we are keen to continue to work with others where viable, using lessons learnt such as factoring in development time, cost of printing, labels, quantities of ingredients, marketing and promotion. We are seeing value in working with like-minded others.

We have learnt to have a dynamic business approach – always seeing the next opportunity, keeping up our high-quality standards and listening to customer feedback whilst using social media to let everyone know where we are, what we stand for and what we are up to!”

Facebook / Instagram / Twitter:

@ClwydianRangeFoodandDrink @chillycowicecream

@tastenortheastwales @TasteDeeValley