NORFOLK MUSSEL FARMER MOVES MOBILE STREET-FOOD BUSINESS TO KEEP AFLOAT

Norfolk mussel farmer moves mobile street-food business to keep afloat.

Interview with Thomas, owner of The Mussel Pod, Brancaster, Norfolk

In recent months, in order to continue operating during COVID-19, many established food businesses have diversified into food delivery, takeaway or online sales. There has also been an increase in people cooking from home and selling food locally or online.

As part of the Food Standards Agency ‘Here to Help’ campaign, we have spoken to businesses across the UK to find out about the range of challenges facing food businesses and their tips on how to succeed.

What was your business like pre-lockdown?

I’m a mussel farmer and our family have been fishing in Norfolk since the 1700s. We’re passionate about seafood, especially mussels!

We farm and sell our mussels wholesale to pubs and restaurants. We use a mobile street-food unit (The Mussel Pod) to cook, showcase and sell the mussels during the summer months.

We’re a small business – just me and my wife Sarah – and we work hard to sell several tonnes of mussels a week.

We harvest the Brancaster mussels between September and March for wholesale and hold some back to cook in The Pod over the summer.

How did COVID-19 affect your business? What did you change?

Luckily, we were just finishing harvesting the mussels in March, so the impact on the farming side of the business was minimal at that point. However, it soon became apparent that our mobile street-food business would really suffer if we didn’t think fast and adapt.

The summer festival and events season is critical for us, but with all events cancelled or postponed for the foreseeable future, it was a real blow.

At first we needed to understand if we could even trade, as mobile licences are viewed differently to fixed business ones. And whether we were classed as key workers in the pandemic.

Even if we did come up with a solution it was vital we knew how to work safely during COVID-19 [https://www.gov.uk/guidance/working-safely-during-coronavirus-covid-19] and understanding social distancing measures so that we could keep everyone safe and be compliant.

Takeaway mussels from a garden

In a stroke of luck, my mother lives in Brancaster fishing village. Her garden is next to a main road and has high footfall. We decided that this would be The Pod’s new home for the summer.

The location has a lovely connection to the sea and we hoped there would be enough customers for us to stay open.

Customer and staff safety

We decided, for safety reasons, that we would be purely a takeaway model and wouldn’t add any chairs near The Pod. This was so that customers could buy their food from a safe distance and then go and find a space to eat it away from other customers.

We marked out 2 meter spacing on the floor and used lobster pots and a barrier so that customers were also 2 meters from us in The Pod when ordering. We followed the updated government reopening guidance and checklist closely to make sure that The Pod was set up correctly [https://www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/reopening-and-adapting-your-food-business-during-covid-19]. We re-checked anything that we were doing differently due to COVID-19.

 Restocking early

In our spare time, we decided to start restocking the mussels earlier than we normally would. This was so that we could continue to have a good supply and was important to us as we really didn’t know what the future would hold for our business.

This meant I was a mile out at sea on the mussel beds, so I was definitely social distancing!

Communicating with customers

Keeping our followers and customers updated on what we were doing and where we were now based was key for us. They normally follow us around the country to different festivals and events, so social media helped us to share our very different journey this year. We created regular updates on the safety measures we had put in place and photos of The Pod so that our customers could see what we had done and how to find us.

Allergen information

The mussel is itself an allergen, as a mollusc. We have clear signage about that and any of the other 14 allergens we use when cooking the mussels, such as cream or milk [https://www.food.gov.uk/business-guidance/reopening-and-adapting-your-food-business-during-covid-19]

We also checked the ingredients of any new replacement products we had to source due to COVID-19. Checking we were compliant every step of the way was essential as it was a very overwhelming time.

Knowledge sharing

We continued to share our mussel knowledge with our customers as they love to learn about how we purify them using UV treated water and other mussel facts.

We also noticed that customers wanted to know more about the origins of the food they were eating due to the pandemic. Because we farm the mussels ourselves we can talk them through the whole process. This was important to us as it was a chance to reassure them at the same time as serving them delicious mussels.

What did you learn?

We learned that we needed to be flexible and look for every opportunity we could use once we knew that events and festivals were cancelled. This was really important as The Mussel Pod is more profitable than the wholesale part of the business.

We needed to quickly understand what we could do and how to stay compliant with the new COVID-19 guidance to keep everyone safe without compromising on our usual high standards.  The fact that we were a mobile street-food business helped as people wanted to be outside when eating as they felt safer and could find a safe space away from others to eat their mussels.

 What do the next 6-12 months look like for you as a business?

As a business, we’re looking further ahead and investing and restocking the mussel beds much earlier this year. That way they’ll be fully stocked by Autumn. We can also be flexible with our mussels, holding them back in the harbour without compromising the quality, they just grow bigger.

We’ll continue to assess the festivals and events scene and plan and adapt accordingly.

About ‘Here to Help’

Here to Help is a campaign from the Food Standards Agency which provides easy online access to practical information and resources to support food businesses. It features tailored guidance, case studies, industry insight and webinars to help food businesses get back and stay on their feet following the challenges of COVID-19. Support will continue across the summer and will react to the changing needs of food businesses.