Award Winning Erin Grove Preserves Opens New Farm Shop & Cafe
Great Taste award winner Erin Grove Preserves in Northern Ireland has launched a new farm shop, The Croft, near Enniskillen in Co Fermanagh. The shop also includes an outdoor café for coffee and homemade baked goods.
Food NI member Erin Grove, which has won a series of Great Taste Awards in the past 10 years, was set up by husband and wife team Jayne and Mark Paget on the family farm in 2001. The aim was to develop preserves with ingredients largely sourced from local suppliers.
The Croft farm shop is their latest expansion of an artisan business that’s become a leader in preserves in Northern Ireland due to the outstanding taste and quality of what has become a 40-strong product range. The shop has been developed in what was once a milking parlour that they’ve renovated to create an attractive retail space in a predominantly rural community.
“Owning my own farm shop has been a dream of mine for many years,” Jayne says. “There’s long been a need for such a shop with local food and soft drinks in this rural part of Fermanagh,” Jayne explains.
“While The Croft was established primarily as a showcase for our preserves and cheese accompaniments for customers to purchase right on the site where they are produced, I saw it as an opportunity to embrace dozens of other excellent foods from local artisans. We’ve seen a virtual revolution in quality artisan foods here over the past decade, and I wanted to provide an attractive hub for them too,” adds Jayne.
“The shop is proving to be an important investment for us in so many respects. Our products and those from other local suppliers have been selling well since we opened the doors to shoppers,” she continues,
The Croft is now part of an exciting growth in farm shops, delis, family butchers and greengrocers across Northern Ireland aided by the remarkable expansion in artisan food and drink and the strengthening trend among shoppers that became especially apparent among during the pandemic towards locally produced food with integrity, quality, wholesomeness, heritage and total traceability.
