Tasty Challenge

Set amid the rolling hills of South Devon, Langage Farm has been a working farm for over 900 years. Today, with a herd of over 260 Jersey and Guernsey cows the farm produces an extensive range of high quality farmhouse products, including clotted cream, yoghurt and ice cream which is sold to both local and national customers.

To find out more about Langage Farm, please click here.

The Diploma project

In September 2009, the farm became involved with delivery of the Diploma in Manufacturing and Product Design (MPD), setting a project brief for level 2 students from two Plymouth schools – Tamarside Community College and Notre Dame Girls’ School. And incredibly, by the first week in December the young people had produced and sold 350 Christmas themed gateaux, at a profit!

Christmas gateaux project brief

Langage Farm set the Diploma in MPD students a brief to develop two new flavours of Christmas gateaux.
 

The project had to achieve two objectives:

1.      Raise local awareness of the farm and its products
2.      Raise money for the school and college

In essence, the students had to work in groups to design, make and sell - at a profit - several hundred gateaux.

Initial input and site tour

Initially, the students were invited to visit the farm in September, they were then given a tour of the site and a presentation by the Commercial Manager and the General Manager, Paul Winterton.

During this visit they learned about the structure of the company, the individual pieces of machinery, the processing and manufacturing side of the development of food products, and the research and product design process. The Langage Farm executives also took this opportunity to set the project brief and to discuss this with the students.

Key considerations for this project included product design; research and marketing, technical research around the availability of flavours and ingredients, which had to be sourced locally; food safety; team roles; production planning; financial planning.

Continued input and support from Langage Farm

After the visit the Diploma students returned to the classroom where they began to learn the theory and processes involved in a product development and manufacture project. This included learning about market research, performance of blind taste tests; production and financial planning and team working.

As the product development progressed the young people were visited by the Langage Farm managers, and presented their proposals to them. The managers then gave feedback on these proposals in order to help the youngsters to shape the products for a commercial market.

Planning production of the gateaux

Once the gateaux ingredients, designs and flavours had been finalised and agreed with Langage, the students were invited back to the site where they turned their attention to the development and set up of their production lines.

The managers gave general guidance on how to develop effective production lines, but were given a lot of scope to use their initiative in developing the details.

At this stage, key performance indicators (KPIs) were set by Langage Farm, which included the numbers of units (gateaux) the students should be able to produce in certain time frames, portion control objectives and wastage levels which had to be observed.

Paul Winterton found that natural leaders emerged from the teams quickly, it was clear who was cut out for certain roles, such as quality control, financial planning, team leadership etc.
 

Marketing and pre-selling

The Diploma in MPD students then marketed and pre-sold 350 Christmas gateaux. They agreed the production days and timings with the farm and paid in advance (at cost) for the gateaux that they were to produce. The youngsters paid the farm £6.50 (plus vat) per gateaux, which they were able to sell at a retail price of £8.99.

The outcome

One of the schools made 150 gateaux and the other made 200. This activity also raised around £450 in total for the schools.

“The project was a real success, both enjoyable and rewarding. The students were incredibly enthusiastic and hardworking. To see them grow in both ability and confidence in a few months was really brilliant, I would go as far as to say that all involved benefited from the experience.

“It was fantastic for us from a business perspective. Awareness of our farm and products went up locally as we gained a lot of local PR; we sold an extra 350 gateaux prior to Christmas; all staff thoroughly enjoyed themselves and I am sure it will lead to future sales.

“I would thoroughly recommend that other companies get involved in similar projects in the future. We shall certainly be continuing to do so."

Paul Winterton, General Manager, Langage Farm