The Fine Art of Drying - Business Profile

The Fine Art of Drying

When Firepot started in 2017, it occupied a seventeenth-century barn deep inside the Marshwood Vale, where you could look out from the door to the Golden Cap. Within a year, the business had outgrown its first premises, moving into the three-storey mill at Pymore. This spring, the business expanded again, opening new flagship premises in the iconic Marshwood farm, Denhay, 3.5 miles outside Bridport, where the bacon factory used to be. For a business that makes dehydrated expedition food going to the world’s most distant extremes — from the top of Everest to the South Pole, from Yosemite to the Sahara — Firepot’s roots remain firmly local, from the sourcing of its ingredients to the people the business employs.

The company founder, John Fisher, is himself a keen expeditioner. He has spent time hiking in remote territory, including Greenland, Siberia, the Arctic and Himalayas. A passionate home cook, he wanted to make food he could take with him: healthy dehydrated meals, using fresh meat and vegetables, which you can cook up in extreme environments by just adding hot water.

‘It’s not been an easy ride,’ says Fisher — a serial entrepreneur who within six months of starting Firepot, won the UK 2017 Food Innovation Award. ‘In the beginning, I worried it didn’t make financial sense to operate the business from the place I’ve called home for the last twenty years. In this part of the world, tourism and second homes create premium rental rates. I knew there were much cheaper parts of the country to start up a manufacturing business. But I stuck by a hunch I’d find the right people to help me, and that with that as a strength, I’d balance out the other risks. I was right. I struck lucky in this community. The Marshwood Vale premises are just one part of what makes us ‘us’, which is proudly Dorset. Most of all, we are defined by our local team, who are as committed to Firepot’s success as the climbers and expeditioners breaking world records with our products in their backpacks. Nature, and treating it right, is in the roots of this farming landscape — and at Fireport, that ethic is the baseline of everything we do.’

The company’s executive chef, Tim Joy, used to work at The Bottle Inn in Marshwood. The head of packing logistics, Mike Cotterill, came to Firepot from Waitrose, and has stuck by Fisher’s expanding business through some of the most difficult times for small companies — not just as a result of the pandemic, but because of a slew of hurdles thrown in the way by Brexit laws. Yet the demand for Firepot endures. The company has recently expanded its distribution into the USA, Scandinavia and the EU. You just have to have a quick Google search to

see how fast Firepot’s reputation is moving. It’s being used on record-breaking expeditions to the North and South Poles, ascents on the world’s highest mountains, by ocean rowers, ultra-runners, round-the-world cyclists and sailors, family camping holidays, DofE and Ten Tors events across the South West. It has been endorsed by TV celebrities, Levison Wood and Bruce Parry. It’s made it onto Top Gear and Countryfile. The company is working with NASA and the European Space Agency. Most recently, it provided the food for team GB at the 2022 Winter Olympics and ParaOlympics. Right now, it’s on its way to the Ukraine, to help support volunteers and emergency medical crews working in the field.

Over the last couple of years, it has been challenging keeping the show on the road, but when you have a team who work together — ‘pulling equal weight,’ says Fisher, ‘because there are no hierarchies when it comes to graft’ — you have to keep on believing that anything is possible: ‘The Firepot crew have stuck by me through thick and thin. My biggest challenge now is building on that foundation — to find more people like the core team I started out with, who have believed in this business from the get-go. I need to find the right match with the right jobs as we grow, including a rapidly expanding kitchen staff.’

As the delivery drivers always remark out when they open up the door to find Firepot’s hustling, ‘space-age’ factory: ‘Who would have thought you’d find this here?’

Read more at www.firepotfood.com

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