‘We made 25 jars at a time with six pans

There could be no better validation for Nicola Elliott to launch her food business in 2016 than winning a gold award just a month after producing her first batch of Seville marmalade. “It gave me the confidence to go ahead if Marmalade did well,” recalls Elliott, founder of the Single Variety Company.

She went one better this year. At the same World Marmalade Awards, his Amalfi lemon marmalade went through to the final round of tasting and then won double gold and top accolade in an emotional moment for the British entrepreneur. “We say we’re doing everything right to do this at the scale we’ve built,” says Elliott.

In the beginning of her single-fruit preservation startup, Elliott was making 25 jars at a time with six pans going at once and the help of two part-time staff, as well as family and friends.

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From selling her jams on a Balham Market stall to owning her own production facility, eschewing mass supermarket listings to maintain independent quality, the single variety company now produces 5,000 jars per week and is set for latest annual revenue of £1.7m.

It was a far cry from seven years ago when Elliott received his first export order to Germany for 8,000 jars of raspberry preserves. “I said ‘yes’ thinking I’d make 25 jars at a time. Somehow we did it in six weeks. We didn’t make any money on the order but it was a turning point for us.”

Business lessons made Elliott reluctant to outsource production for a few years until her husband – a “personality person”, former personal trainer and tennis coach – joined the business and the couple moved to Bristol five years ago to set up their jam factory with a £200,000 outlay.

In her former career as Sainsbury’s favorite fresh food product developer, Elliott cut a frustrating figure in a role that focused on cost and didn’t prioritize quality. She left her supermarket career to set her sights on short-shelf-life produce.

“When you mass produce, quality has to give way. I was determined to make the quality we were aiming for,” she admits.

At the time, Elliott added Champagne to strawberries or bay leaves to blackberries in premium jams, and “no one was making a better-tasting strawberry jam.”

It hasn’t all gone according to plan. Elliott once bought a faulty second-hand jam kettle for £12,000 instead of an electric kettle, which her husband still reminds his working mum of today.

Now with a staff of 12, he works directly with UK fruit farmers for his products. These include seasonal limited edition jams such as Yorkshire’s traditional rhubarb, which is grown in the dark and picked by candlelight.