Farm diversification into ice-cream is not plain, vanilla process

Researching some materials for our revision toolkit for the OCR Applied Business Unit 3, I came across a really useful case study on farm diversification into ice-cream.

This article in Farmers Weekly is an excellent case study in a start-up business. It describes how the farm at Chatsworh House attempted to diversify into ice-cream making.

There is some excellent, accessible business studies content in the article. The key points I picked up were:

- Diversification is easy to say, but it’s not a cheap or easy option
- The frm realised that an alternative diversification option was not attractive. They discovered that offering bed and breakfast had reached saturation point in the area
- Accreditation for food hygiene is essential if an ice-cream business is to build a customer base and retail distribution
- 6-12 months of production history is required before accreditation can be obtained
- As much time and effort was then spent on packaging design as getting the actual taste and texture of their ice cream just right.