Daffodil Foods Limited is a Welsh dairy company producing layered, thick and creamy, indulgent yogurts from fresh local Welsh milk. Stocked in most Welsh Tescos and several independent shops & hotels.
We use Welsh milk and Welsh cream, blended with the finest Madagscan Vanilla to make panna cotta, which can be turned out onto a plate and dizzled with the separate serving of raspberry compote. It is a very fashionable and popular dessert and we take all the hassle out of it. People can turn it out of the pots and serve for a romantic meal or dinner party, and nobody would be any the wiser! In fact we produced many thousands of pots for the Valentine week.
Address: Pwllheli, Gwynedd
Tel: 01758 720786
Website: www.daffodilfoods.co.uk
Facebook: Daffodil-Foods-Yogurts
Twitter: daffodilfoods
July 2018 Update
Daffodil Foods the creator of award winning dairy products proves again that great opportunities hide just around the corner
This was certainly the case for Jade Simpson, a second-year student at Cardiff Metropolitan University who landed a year-long placement at Daffodil Foods, a North Wales based yogurt and cream supplier, with head office in Botwnnog, just 5 miles down the road from her family home.
Daffodil Foods, which is based on Pen Llŷn, supplies a range of premium yogurts and desserts to various customers in Wales and UK, including national retailers, NHS and many independent distributors. Lynne Rowlands, Director of the business, explains: “We deal with national retailers on daily basis and work with them to bring various new dairy products into the market. This means that at times we have to try 20 versions of one recipe before we find the ‘one’. This is where Jade came in with her background in Food Science and Technology having done two years of her degree at Cardiff Met.”
Jade was looking for a relevant work placement as a part of her university course but wanted to stay local on the Llŷn Peninsula at the same time. Just as she thought this wasn’t going to be easy, her mum brought home a pot of Daffodil Foods Yogurt and to their surprise, it turned out that Daffodil Foods was based 5 miles down the road, in Botwnnog. That was where Jade went to the local school for several years.
“It was a pleasant surprise when I got the reply from Daffodil Foods asking me to come in for a job interview. I really wanted to spend my year working in food industry and in a business that would give me the experience that was relevant to my course. I have spent these past months developing product recipes from scratch and some of the products I have worked on with Daffodil team have now been launched in one of the major retailers under their own brand and are sold in hundreds of stores around UK.” said Jade.
Lynne has once completed a very similar degree in Food Science herself and felt she wanted to give this opportunity to someone local to enable them to go onto having a rewarding career in the food industry one day.
“It’s time to give back and share my experience now and I am pleased to see that there are talented and hard working young people out there. Where we are based, it is not always easy to grab hold off good opportunities, so I am very pleased our business was in a position to support someone who grew up locally but wanted to gain the knowledge of the food industry without having to relocate. During her time here, Jade had not only cooked hundreds of new product samples, but she also spent hours on completing the paperwork for the product specifications, helped us get through a technical audit and travelled quite a few miles to visit some major retailers with us. She has been a very busy bee🐝 this past year.”
Daffodil Foods has seen a double-digit growth for the last 3 years and has recently made a significant investment into a new dairy desserts production line in a bid to fuel that growth further.
Image: Jade Simpson being interviewed by Alun Rhys from BBC Radio Cymru
February 2018 Update
Llyn Peninsula based yogurts supplier, Daffodil Foods, has secured an exciting opportunity with Lidl supplying Lidl own brand Bircher Yogurt. A range of three muesli based yogurts has landed in Lidl stores across UK last month. This comes as the business prepares to diversify into other dairy products.
Lynne King, Director of the Daffodil Foods, explains: “For those who are not in-the-know to what Bircher Muesli actually is, imagine soaking up the oats (gluten free in our case) in fruit juice and mixing them with yogurt and other fruits. You end up with a nutritious breakfast staple packed with dairy, fibre and carbohydrates, all in one pot and easy to eat on the go. It’s basically a summer version of the porridge.”
Lidl has launched 3 different flavours: Cherry & Blueberry, Apple & Raspberry and exotic Mango & Passion fruit.
“As a relatively young business, we were very excited about this venture. We are all for natural, wholesome and innovative dairy products, so it is needless to say that we were overjoyed when Lidl saw our Bircher as bang on trend and decided to put it into their range.” added Lynne.
Bircher yogurt has recently grown in popularity mostly thanks to the food bloggers who crowned it a perfectly balanced breakfast-on-the-go. Almost every large coffee chain has got one of these in their breakfast offer.
Daffodil Foods has seen a double-digit growth in sales over the last 3 years and the Lidl contract will hopefully aid that growth further.
Lidl Bircher joins Daffodil Foods’ portfolio of other private label products as well as Daffodil’s own range of layered yogurts available in independent retailers and Asda stores in Wales.
September 2015 Update
The world’s most coveted blind-tasted food awards, Great Taste, has just released the Great Taste stars of 2015 and Daffodil Foods is amongst the producers celebrating as not one, but two of their products are now able to proudly carry the little gold and black Great Taste logo. Their lemon yogurt gained one star and the Mango and Passion Fruit yogurt gained two stars.
‘As a relatively new business we have not entered the Great Taste Awards before but we were keen to see how our products would compete in an International blind tasting competition. We are absolutely delighted to gain awards for both our Lemon and our Mango & Passion Fruit yogurts from just 25 different yogurts from around the world which gained stars this year. The key to our success is to use the best quality locally sourced Welsh milk and cream and the feedback from the judges was that we have an excellent yogurt and beautiful combination of flavours so they could barely withhold from polishing off the pot! We will be using the Great Taste logo to highlight these wins to our customers in Asda, Tesco, Bodnant Welsh Foods and other independent shops across Wales.’ Said Lynne King who founded Daffodil Foods.
Recognised as a stamp of excellence among consumers and retailers alike, Great Taste values taste above all else, with branding and packaging ignored. All products are removed from their wrapper, jar or bottle before being tasted. The judges then savour, confer and re-taste to decide which products are worthy of a 1-, 2- or 3-star award.
There were 10,000 Great Taste entries this year and of those products, 130 have been awarded a 3-star, 597 received a 2-star and 2,382 were awarded a 1-star accolade. The panel of judges included Masterchef judge and restaurant critic Charles Campion, TV presenter and cook, Aggie Mackenzie, Great British Bake Off winner, Frances Quinn, Masterchef the Professionals finalist, Adam Handling, food buyers from Harrods, Selfridges, Waitrose and Marks & Spencer, and chefs including James Golding, Chef Director of The Pig hotel group, who have together tasted and re-judged the 3-star winners to finally agree on the 2015 Top 50 Foods, the Golden Fork Trophy winners and the new 2015 Supreme Champion.
Daffodil Foods Wins Welsh NHS Yogurt Contract
Sales of Daffodil Foods new yogurts are already over target after winning the competitive tender for supply of yogurts to the NHS across Wales for the next 2 years.
Lynne King, Director of Daffodil Foods said: ‘The new NHS yogurts were developed specifically to meet the very strict nutritional requirements for patients in hospitals. They are also made using fresh local Welsh milk, cultured with probiotic bacteria and do not contain any e-numbers, modified starches, colouring or artificial sweeteners.’
The yogurts are distributed to over 60 different hospitals in Wales. Since winning this contract Daffodil Foods has been working very closely with the NHS and is now using their scanning technology to send invoices electronically, meaning that they can be processed very efficiently by the NHS which helps to keep down costs.
To further bolster sales of Welsh yogurt the company has also improved its retail range of layered yogurts. The new packaging was designed by a local Welsh company, the milk and cream used are supplied by local Welsh farms and the product is made and packed in Wales, so it couldn’t be more authentic!
The new packaging has been well received by a number of retail buyers who agree that the quality and design of the packaging now more accurately reflects the quality of the yogurt inside the pack. Customers are spoilt for choice from Timperley rhubarb, Senga Strawberries, Alphonso Mango and passion fruit, zesty lemon, raspberry or succulent summer berries. The layered yogurts are on sale in a number of independent and Tesco stores across Wales.
Daffodil Foods Launches New Welsh Yogurt Range
Daffodil Foods has launched an improved range of luscious layered yogurts in six fruity flavours. The new packaging was designed by a local Welsh company, the milk and cream used are supplied by local Welsh farms and the product is made and packed in Wales, so it couldn’t be more authentic!
Lynne King, Director of Daffodil Foods said: ‘In the light of the horsemeat scandal consumers have a heightened awareness as to where their food comes from. We are delighted that our new packaging now makes it very clear that this is Welsh produce.’
The new packaging has been well received by a number of buyers who agree that the quality and design of the packaging now more accurately reflects the quality of the yogurt inside the pack.
The yogurts are made from a blend of whole milk and cream which is cultured with bifidobacteria. This decadently silky thick and creamy yogurt is then delicately layered over fruity compotes. Customers are spoilt for choice from Timperley rhubarb, Senga Strawberries, Alphonso Mango and passion fruit, zesty lemon, raspberry or succulent summer berries. The yogurts are on sale in a number of independent and Tesco stores across Wales.