There’s no doubt that last year’s political uncertainty has had an effect on many of Cornwall’s businesses, but luckily here at Callestick we only import a small quantity of raw materials from Europe so we have been able to minimise the impact. On the flip side, the historical weakness of the pound saw more people holidaying in Cornwall than ever before, making last summer a very successful one for us. In fact 2019, our 30th anniversary year, was our best business year to date!
Not only did we achieve a 24.8% increase in turnover, we also secured a major five-year export contract to China, agreed a collaboration with celebrity culinary entrepreneur Levi Roots, launched a new ice-cream in partnership with the Saint Piran pro-cycling team, and won a raft of awards. These included prestigious product accolades in the Great Taste, Great British Food, Chef’s Choice and Taste of the West awards and being named ‘Family Business of the Year’ in the Western Morning News Business Awards.
Owners Angela and Sebastian Parker started making ice-cream on the farm in 1989 as a way of counteracting the negative commercial effects brought about by the introduction of milk quotas. Thirty years later, the Callestick brand has established a reputation that has seen a continual and significant growth in its market share. As part of our expansion plans, highly experienced Sales Director, David Jeffs, joined the company board as its first non-family member in 2018. In 2020, we are looking to expand our Callestick brand to more customers, creating more flavours and developing product in the dairy free/vegan market. We are looking to expand our co-pack production which has been really successful in the latter part of 2019, with 2020 looking really positive.
Our provenance, our foresight in new product and flavour development, flexibility and long term sustainable partnerships have helped us to keep ahead of the game. We also like to keep things as local as possible, our sorbet is created using water from our farm’s own natural spring and we source ingredients from local suppliers, sea salt from the Cornish Sea Salt Co. and clotted cream from Roddas. And we only use milk from our own herd of grass fed cows that graze on our farm here in the heart of Cornwall.
As we always say, we have 400 employees at Callestick, 380 of them with four legs and the key to our success! Our herd’s welfare and happiness is paramount to us and this translates into award-winning products. The combination of this, the way our team approach life with a work hard, can-do attitude, and the fact that we are proactive rather than reactive, has helped to build the Callestick brand year on year.