It all got a bit out of hand.
The journey of our food business really began about 5 years ago as I tinkered around making chilli sauces in the kitchen. Food has always been my world and I had always enjoyed reading recipe books mainly for the inspiration rather than the instructions.
My kitchen experiments were usually disastrous but this time around the feedback on my sauces was very encouraging.
Various members of family, friends and friends of friends started asking for more samples of what became the Original Zingy Pepper, Mellow Pepper, Screaming Pepper, Aged Bonnet and Hot Tom sauces and September 2015 saw the launch of Sidekick Sauce at London's chilli festival: the Festival of Heat.
One thing led to another and after dragging various (and most amazingly supportive) family members into it we opened Wimborne Chilli Shop 8 months later. Stocking hundreds of the finest chilli-based products we could find we began to ignite the flame in East Dorset's palate.
2016 and 2017 saw us take over both of the UK's original hot sauce subscription clubs, leading to the spicy birth of Flaming Licks. We aspired to be the world's greatest hot sauce subscription by continuing to curate Britain's most amazing, hard-to-find, chilli products from the most amazing artisan producers.
It has always been the producers and each of their unique stories and reasons for doing what they do that has inspired me the most. The passion and energy they put into their products is incredible. Most of them are definitely not in it for the money.
At the end of 2018 we embarked on the most exciting chapter of our journey. We closed the doors to Wimborne Chilli Shop on Christmas Eve and moved into a new premises, the old flour mill next door in Mill Lane.
It took us until mid-April 2019 to refurbish the place and finally open the doors to Farehouse Trading Co. a speciality food and drink store committed to supporting local, small batch and ethical producers.
And now, in July, we're finally online. Check out our range of craft beers, craft ciders, wines & spirits, chilli products, spices, beer snacks, chocolates, coffees and teas - all sourced with their provenance and ethics in mind.