You might be thinking, September’s a bit early to be talking about Christmas….! Well, Christmas starts early here at SDCF….!
Usually, the first thing we start planning around Christmas is which Christmas Markets we plan to attend. Bookings open early in the year – anywhere from February to June – and it’s a COMPETITIVE field! The most popular Christmas Markets around the UK are massively oversubscribed, which means a huge amount of work has to go into our applications to ensure we stand out in a crowded marketplace!
This year, we were delighted to be accepted into Exeter, Bath, AND Cardiff Christmas Markets! We’re super excited (and a tad nervous!) to be at THREE markets this winter - something we’ve never attempted before!
Once we know which markets we’re going to be at, we can start forecasting the volume of sauces, jams and chocolates the team need to produce. This can’t start too early in the year as we need to be conscious of product shelf life – but it all needs to be fitted into the kitchen and chocolate room schedules of Dan and Elsa over the course of the second half of the year.
Something else festive that starts early on, is the research and development of any special Christmas product lines.
For Christmas 2024, we introduced our Winter Spice Drinking Chocolate – this was a HUGE success and as a result we have re-released it for Christmas 2025. We have one other special chocolatey Christmas gift for your stockings this Christmas – and all will be revealed in the coming weeks! Suffice to say though, that development of this new product started on Valentine’s Day! (No complaints from the team though who have been diligently taste-testing the various trials and iterations we have come up with over the year!)
Christmas is a time for gifts, and so all our chilli themed gift sets fly out the door during November and December. BUT – these are all assembled by hand! So, that means all hands on deck with a production line, building gift boxes and popping our bestselling jams and sauces into their cozy packaging, ready to go under the tree….
Seed collection has also been completed by around early November, and gardeners up and down the country turn towards the new year and planning their allotments/gardens/pots! So, that means seeds need to be READY to go! Again, we hand pick and pack our seeds, to ensure only the best quality make it into our seed packs. This is painstaking work for the team who count every last one.
Christmas is a crazy time of year at the Farm, but we wouldn’t have it any other way!