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Chilli grower gets fired up with supermarket deal

A North East chilli farmer is proving he can handle the heat after signing a deal with Tesco.

Dan May’s range of sauces are now on sale in more than 50 Tesco stores across the country, with the supermarket giant keen to hear more business ideas from the 40-year-old.

Dan and his team at Trees Can’t Dance grow more than 70 types of chilli at the farm near Haltwhistle, making them the northernmost chilli producers in the world.

Dan set up the business three years ago after turning his back on a career in travel and advertising photography.

His work has taken him to the southern United States where, already having an interest in food, his fascination with the chilli developed.

When he returned home he realised the range of flavours he experienced across the Atlantic were not available in the UK, so Trees Can’t Dance was born.

He said: “I used to be a photographer travelling all over the world. I used to gather all sorts of recipes, but often found I couldn’t reproduce them back here due to a lack of ingredients.

“So I started growing chillies as a hobby to make some sauces and I quickly won fans with people wanting to buy the sauces.”

The chillies at Trees Can’t Dance are grown from seed with the cropping season running from July through until as late as Christmas.

Dan said: “The opportunity to work with a company like Tesco gives us a great deal of confidence in our product and allows us to deliver the value of turnover to our business.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Ruth Mitchell .