Be My Guest Vanessa O’Farrell – Head of Marketing at Plum Baby

 

When and how did Plum start?

Our founder Susie, first came up with the idea of launching a range of baby food after the birth of her third child, Francesca. As she visited the baby aisles her immediate thought was “is this as good as it gets?” little appeared to have changed over the years, and as a mum who is passionate about kids and good food, the idea to launch her own baby food brand jumped out at her.

Right from the word go she had a clear vision for Plum, she wanted to create real food for babies and not just baby food and use adult style recipes, that ensured every mouthful delivered in terms of taste, nutrition and goodness.

The inspiration for each new recipe is simple – knowing that every baby out there deserves food that is full of healthy nourishing ingredients, with no added sugar and free from any additives.

All our Plum recipes are versions of foods that she has created for her own family for years, and tend to evolve from her love of using natural, organic ingredients. When she started the Purple Plum Cookery School she helped mothers to gain confidence in making their own purees and yummy meals for their little ones. It is such a pleasurable experiences when weaning your baby, to know that you have lovingly prepared everything from scratch. It is what we do at Plum, but on a larger scale!

What are Plum's underlying principles?

Plum has revolutionised the baby food market – we have pioneered the use of adventurous ingredients that invigorate the palette and help babies grow and develop. The key to Plum’s success is that we really listen to what parents and babies need to help them with the weaning process.

We like to keep things simple when making our food, by sticking to four principles we’ve kept close to our hearts since Plum was born in 2006:

•          Always create food as parents first & foremost

•          Produce food that uses nutritionally rich organic ingredients that provide a food adventure for little ones, helping them build an appetite for life

•          Responsibly source ingredients

•          Never use additives or unnecessary fillers

How can mums become more involved in the Plum community?

Plum constantly encourages parent’s feedback, so this is why you can review all of our products openly on our website. We have a selection of Plum Super Mums, who are carefully chosen from our Plum Mums to become advocates for our brand. This handful of Super Mums are truly involved with Plum, tasting samples, researching and spreading the word at coffee mornings, Facebook, Twitter and other community websites.  

You can also find us chatting most days on Facebook and Twitter, so do come and be involved.

What has been the hardest aspect of getting Plum to this highly successful stage?

Plum is now one of the leading premium baby food brands in the UK and is sold through all the major food retailers including Asda, Boots, Co-Op, Ocado, Morrison’s, Sainsbury’s, Tesco and Waitrose. We have launched over 50 products since 2006 some of these extending into new categories such as dairy, as well as broadening the recipes and packaging formats.  We have had to grow up quickly, but being a small team of 19 we all have to ‘chip’ in where needed.