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£100,000 investment boost for local produce retailer

A local online food and drink market place is set for expansion thanks to a £100,000 investment from Northstar Ventures.

Loveyourlarder.com stocks a vast range of local produce, from heritage potatoes and craft beers to artisan chocolates and rare cheeses, as well as a range of hard-to-find products and ingredients.

Products are all sold directly by their manufacturer through the site, which helps local artisan producers reach a global audience.

Tristan Watson founded Love Your Larder to help people like himself who love making unusual dishes, but find obscure ingredients often unavailable in supermarkets.

He commented: “I wanted to make it easier for people to cook great food at home – and support small businesses at the same time.

“Love Your Larder offers an easy, economical way to buy this lovely food and drink and a better way for the producers to sell it – its like a farmers’ market but warmer and drier and you don’t need to worry about parking!”

The website also helps to cut down on food miles, by getting producers to shop orders directly to the customer.

70 producers selling over 500 products are already signed up to the site, with many more registering an interest in getting involved.

The investment was made of behalf of Northstar’s Finance for Business Proof of Concept Fund, and will help Tristan to develop new features for the website.

Richard Exley, Head of Proof of Concept Funds at Northstar Ventures said: “While Love Your Larder is a really exciting opportunity in itself, the key factor in making it compelling for us what Tristan himself.

“He has all the entrepreneurial attributes we look for in a start up founder, and our investment helps to round out the team.”

Tristan will now take on two new members of the team – Polly Randall, who will work on PR and marketing, and web developer Andrew Seymour.

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