The Wooden Spoon Preserving Co.
To this day, our small team has stayed true to the essence of why the company was created 40 years ago, and we continue our story now—the desire to produce a unique range of traditional and contemporary preserves using natural ingredients.
A family business, we operate from a converted Kentish Oast House on the edge of the picturesque village of Wye. Our premises include a small factory shop with a viewing gallery overlooking the production area. The artisan production is supported by modern filling and capping equipment. This enables us to optimise efficiency without impacting on quality.
We are proud members of the Guild of Fine Foods which represents manufacturers and independent retailers across the UK. We are also members of Produced in Kent, the champion for good food in the Garden of England.
Proudly we only sell products that we make here in our premises. Wooden Spoon is synonymous with tradition and good taste. This has led us to expand exports and be sought out by a number of high profile organisations.
Proud members of the Guild of Fine Foods
The Wooden Spoon Preserving Company produces a unique range of traditional and contemporary handmade preserves in Kent using natural ingredients.
This family business now operating for over 40 years, operates from a converted Kentish Oast House on the edge of the picturesque village of Wye.
Our premises include a factory with a small factory shop that has a viewing gallery overlooking the production area. The artisan production is supported by modern filling and capping equipment which enables us to optimise efficiency without impacting on quality.
We are proud members of the Guild of Fine Foods which represents manufacturers and independent retailers across the UK, as well as Produced in Kent, the champion for good food in the Garden of England.
As a manufacturer, we only sell handmade preserves that we make here in our premises.
Wooden Spoon is synonymous with tradition and good taste, which has led us to expand exports and be sought out by a number of high profile organisations for the supply of bespoke ranges.
Our enthusiastic urge to come up with new products often overwhelms our business planning, and as a result we have a range that is probably greater than most multinationals! Its not just the ranges – extra jams, marmalades, no added sugar spreads, curds, bottled fruits, chutneys, sauces, relishes – its also the breadth of variation in jars which range from 35g single portion units to 1.1kg dinner party-size fruits in liqueur jars.
It goes without saying that we source as much UK fruit as we can for our products: apples, plums, damsons, strawberries, tayberries, loganberries, blackcurrants, blackberries for example, though there are some fruits which are difficult to obtain such as cherries due to short season and high fresh demand from retailers.
"The Wooden Spoon’s heritage has been crafted over the years, much like our preserves. Founded 40 years ago, the company has stayed true to its roots by focusing on artisan products aimed at independent retailers."
Jeff Higgins / Managing Director
Our products
Our products and enthusiastic urge to come up with new products often overwhelms our business planning, and as a result we have a range that is probably greater than most multinationals! Its not just the ranges – extra jams, marmalades, no added sugar spreads, curds, bottled fruits, chutneys, sauces, relishes – it’s also the breadth of variation in jars which range from 35g single portion units to 1.1kg, perfect dinner party-size fruits in liqueur jars.
UK Grown
It goes without saying that we source as much UK fruit as we can for our products: apples, plums, damsons, strawberries, tayberries, loganberries, blackcurrants, blackberries. For example, though there are some fruits which are difficult to obtain such as cherries due to short season and high fresh demand from retailers.
Based in a converted Oast House – the traditional Kentish hop drying kiln. We combine artisan skills of small batch production and specialist hand-labelling with a significant array of support machinery and equipment;
- our pasteurising water tanks are ideal for heat treating bottled fruits and warm-filled preserves, which is rarely seen elsewhere;
- in-line filling, capping and metal detection is available for larger production runs (for us a long production run is 300 jars!
- we have two kitchens which enable us to segregate production when required;
- we use both traditional small batch cooking vessels as well as larger steam jacketed kettles enabling us to produce batches from 40 to 120kg