Schoolgirl set to become supermarket’s youngest supplier
A ten-year old English schoolgirl, who started her own business selling duck eggs, has eclipsed Britain’s foodie talent to win the top prize in the ‘Country Living and Waitrose Made in Britain Awards’ and the chance to supply a major supermarket.Elsa Amiss and her parents Rona and Nevil won the overall Food Champion of the Year award for their organic free-range duck and egg-selling business at Higher Fingle Farm in Devon. The title means they will walk away with £10K prize money from UK supermarket operator Waitrose, as well as the opportunity to have their product listed on Waitrose shelves.
The family sells more than 100 organic ducks a week at their farm on the edge of Dartmoor, while Elsa, who was behind Elsa’s Organic Duck Eggs, helps her mother and younger siblings to collect, grade and pack eggs from more than 300 free-range layers.
The Country Living and Waitrose Made in Britain Awards were launched earlier this year to promote the UK’s small food and drink producers and to help Britain’s butchers, bakers, growers, brewers and cheese makers fast-track their produce onto the country’s supermarket shelves.”Our buyers are constantly seeking out products of the best quality, farmed with high standards of animal welfare in mind – Elsa’s duck eggs are a cracking example of this – and just the sort of product we wanted to see on our shelves,” Waitrose Commercial Director, Richard Hodgson, said. “It can take many food producers years of hard work to get their products onto the shelves of a supermarket but Elsa is to be congratulated on achieving this feat at the ripe old age of 10.”
