Cheshire family ice-cream business booms after landing cool deal with top wholesaler

A Chester-based family ice cream business is seeing its business boom thanks to a partnership with one of the UK’s fastest-growing food wholesalers.

Cheshire Farm Ice Cream signed a distribution deal with Harlech Foodservice 12 months ago and as they head into a second year, their sales are forecast to rise to more than 65,000 litres.

In the first 10 months of the partnership they have gained 153 new stockists of their 50-plus flavours of real dairy ice cream, sorbets and plant based ice cream.

The business was founded in 1986 when dairy farmers Tom and Margaret Fell looked to diversify into ice cream after cuts to their milk quota.

They set up an ice-cream shop on their tenant farm on the Bolesworth Estate, near Chester, and the business went from strength to strength and soon started supplying local hotels, shops, restaurants and pubs – they now have nine vans that deliver to those customers.

Nearly 40 years on, sons Graeme and Jonathan are in charge of the operation with Graeme running the ice-cream manufacture and wholesale business and Jonathan The Ice Cream Farm visitor attraction, which brings in three-quarters of a million visitors a year.

Their success encouraged them to move out of farming, but the milk to produce up to 10,000 litres of ice cream a day still comes from 500-plus Friesian cows grazing in the surrounding fields.

Ed Warrington, Wholesale Manager for the ice-cream business, said: “It takes us 24 hours to pick up the milk from the local milking parlour, pasteurise it and turn it into ice cream. We have been supplying ice cream parlours, pubs, restaurants and hotels for over 30 years via our own fleet of temperature-controlled vehicles.

“Then Harlech called us to talk about a partnership and it made perfect sense – both of our brands have good recognition locally and we share the same values as we are both family businesses.”

He added: “Getting our products onto Harlech’s wheels has opened up much bigger markets as they supply to a much wider area taking in all of Wales, the North West and the West Midlands.”

Chris Gregson, Harlech’s Head of Sales, said: “Our sales in the first year have been amazing and it has opened up new markets in areas which they weren’t previously reaching.

“Cheshire Farm Ice Cream have nine vans, but with us they now have another 65 vehicles delivering their products six days a week and they now have the potential for hundreds of new customers across the whole of Wales.”

He added: “This year we are expecting an increase in sales of over 300% and we are training our 30-strong sales team in selling over 20 varieties of Cheshire Farm Ice Cream which we see as a top quality product with a wide appeal.”

Cheshire Farm Managing Director, Graeme Fell, said: “I’m very much looking forward to 2025. We have a symbiotic relationship with Harlech and work together to our mutual benefit.”

Harlech’s expansion over the past three years has seen its sales increase from £32m to a record turnover of around £50m, with profit at an all-time high of more than £2m.

The company has a core customer base in the tourism and hospitality sectors which aligns perfectly with that of Cheshire Farm Ice Cream. Harlech Managing Director, David Cattrall, said: “We’re having a record year for sales and a record year for profit, even though we are reinvesting heavily in making the business fit for the future and making sure our prices are aggressively competitive.”

The current £6m expansion plan, announced last year, has enabled the company to create 75 jobs, with that number expected to double this year, while it has added depots in three Welsh locations.

The company employs 250 staff and runs a fleet of 65 vehicles to deliver up to 5,000 product lines to cafés, restaurants, pubs and public sector customers.