It was quite an experience filming the show. Very stressful, but definitely worth it,” Laurie Fermor told Grocery Gazette. Sign up and find out why our readers call our newsletter the most influential in Business. Get the UK's leading business content straight to your inbox every week.

Laurie Fermor, Co-Founder of Freddie’s Farm, which also employs two factory staff, said: “Our business idea, inspired by our taster-in-chief Freddie and now his baby sister Ottie, has come a long way in a short space of time, and recognition from a name like Aldi marks the latest exciting milestone for us. The latest in Channel 4’s portfolio of reality shows, Aldi’s Next Big Thing sees a range of new and emerging food and drink businesses pitch their new ideas to the grocer, bidding to be included on the shelves of one of Britain’s biggest supermarkets.As the couple are making all their produce from their farm in Kent, the ongoing cost-of-living and energy crisis is making it increasingly expensive to keep operations up and running. As for our own sales figures, they are selling very well. Our online sales have increased a huge amount, I think by 600% – 700%, which is just incredible.” If you’ve missed it, Channel 4’s latest reality TV show‘Aldi’s Next Big Thing’ has been championing a wide range of new food and drink brands over recent weeks.

Now the fledgling business has fought off competition from hundreds of other hopefuls to be named Aldi’s Next Big Thing and landed a contract with the national supermarket chain, as televised on the Channel 4 series in November. Co-founder and co-director of Freddie’s Farm, Laurie Fermor, takes Grocery Gazette behind the scenes of the prime time show and shares what happened after the cameras stopped rolling. The drying process has been perfected over a long time so it’s quite special. We try to keep the flavours you get in raw fruit and veg,” Laurie said. Charlie Fermor is a fourth-generation, multi-British Farming Awards-winning farmer, and his patented process of preserving the bond between natural sugar and fibre in preparing the products is key to them providing children with the best possible nutrition. All of Freddie’s Farm’s products are made with 100% British fruit and veg.

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Everybody’s products were amazing and deserved a place on the shelves, and we had totally convinced ourselves that we had lost,” said Laurie, adding that they were up against some “seriously stiff competition”. As a result, we have lower free sugars, which help prevent kids getting sugar highs and crashes, which we certainly like to avoid with our two at all costs!” Soaring demand and sales boost

Charlie Fermor, Co-founder, Freddie’s Farm, says: “ It’s just been such a long time getting to this point. I started the journey as a student studying agriculture at Reading University. I took such a risk when I invested in our unique dehydrating machine. Then with the pandemic happening just as business was taking off, at one point we thought we’d never get here. Actually during the show we’d convinced ourselves we hadn’t won, but when Julie announced our name it was crazy. We can’t be happier, and it was so exciting to tell the kids – we can’t wait to get them down to an Aldi store to see it on shelf now!” Now, for Laurie, the focus is on “trying to harness the current success and keep momentum going. We want to keep growing the business and we’ve got big decisions to make as to how we scale up.” Freddie’s Farm is based at the Fermor family’s Bramley Mount Farm in Ashford, and produces a range of fruit shapes aimed at toddlers that currently come in three flavours – apple, raspberry and blueberry – but all contain beetroot, carrot, and spinach, and no added sugars. Being on the show has hugely increased our visibility on the market, so we’re not complaining at all! It was such an amazing opportunity and even more mind-blowing to win. We run a number of differenttraining courses related to sheep, sheep dogs and general sheep management.

We offer Sheepdog training and experience days. We have dogs of all ages and experience which will often work for anyone as well as having different sheep in different environments. We need to look at ways to make everything more efficient – and to meet our ever-increasing demand,” she said. Husband and wife, Charlie and Laurie beat hundreds of other hopefuls to land contract of a lifetime

Hosted by Countryfile’s Anita Rani and Chris Bavin, of Eat Well for Less, the six-episode series sees hopeful food and drink suppliers compete for a space on Aldi’s shelves, before Julie Ashfield, managing director of buying at Aldi UK, decides on the winner – who is then given their very own space on Aldi shelves.