Thomson Snell & Passmore is proud to have acted for Watts Farms for many years.

Thomson Snell & Passmore is proud to have acted for Watts Farms for many years.  The business has continued to grow and innovate at an admirable rate, and its recent experiences in this time of the coronavirus pandemic is no exception.

Watts Farms is a family-run business growing, importing and supplying fresh herbs, vegetables, dairy and other groceries.

Whilst the side of its business which supplies supermarkets has not been adversely affected by the coronavirus shutdown, the other side of the business, which supplied hotels and restaurants, saw its orders drop to zero overnight.

Suddenly Watts Farms had a glut of produce and no one to supply to and it had employees without anything to do and a fleet of lorries sitting idle.  At the same time, the public were rushing to supermarkets to find the shelves empty and supermarket delivery services stretched to breaking point.

In the space of a week, Ed Gray, one of the directors at the company, designed and launched an online shop for home delivery and collection.  He didn’t get much sleep that week!

The shop is now delivering groceries to 500 households each day.

The online shop has been so successful, that other growers have approached Watts Farms to enquire whether they can licence the storefront design and intellectual property, so Watts Farms has been able to spread the benefits of its hard work to other suppliers who find themselves in a similarly precarious position.

Not only has Watts Farms rescued the company from what could have been a devastating financial blow as a result of the forced temporary closure of their hotel and restaurant customers, it has created a whole new arm to its business which will most likely continue to develop even after the coronavirus shutdown ends.

It is a great story of a client rising to the challenge in the face of adversity.

As a latest development, it has just received a licence to sell alcoholic products, so it is still pushing boundaries of what it can achieve in the current climate.

We recommend you visit the online shop if you live within 35 miles of Aylesford near Maidstone.  The website address is here.

We look forward to continuing to support Watts Farms with legal advice in every way we can.