Who we are
In a nutshell…
Westcountry Fruit Sales Ltd, incorporating The Essential Food Co., is the largest and most dynamic privately owned, 6-day-a-week delivered wholesale supplier of fresh, chilled and ambient foodservice products to the catering trade in Cornwall and Devon.
About this website
Our customers can share in something truly unique. This website is the first in the country to provide the catering trade with a genuinely current view of product availability. The easy to navigate product listings show only the products currently available in stock. The online stock lists are constantly and automatically updated throughout each trading day ensuring that you, the customer, can see the very latest lines of fresh produce to be brought into us each day from local growers. There are current, live product promotions, many of which are available to purchase only via the Online Ordering system. Newsletters and daily listings of locally grown produce will ensure that you have the information that you need for menu planning in real time, not as is often the case with traditional suppliers, days or weeks after the event. All account customers have the ability to order products online using the ‘username and password’ facility to create a ‘shopping basket’ of products that are required for next day delivery. Orders can be submitted via the shopping basket for next day (morning’s) delivery at any time up to midnight.
A little bit of history…
Our roots as a fresh produce wholesaler in Cornwall go back as far as 1856, making Westcountry Fruit Sales one of the oldest produce trading businesses in the region, and indeed in the UK. Members of the same family have owned and operated the company since 1961, providing a consistent approach to our primary aim of delivering excellent produce to our customers where they want it, when they want it.
In addition to our unfailing commitment to our customers, we have always been dedicated to providing a reliable and efficient route to market for growers of high quality produce across the South West. We are acutely aware of the need to work closely with and respect the work being done by our growers, not least because we have hands-on experience ourselves of growing produce in Cornwall. For many years a division of our business, Harcourt Williams of Tregarthen Nursery, operated the largest and, for many years, the sole surviving commercial Tomato nursery in Cornwall and Devon (producing up to 250 tonnes of tomatoes a year). As a consequence of our own experience as growers we appreciate the challenges facing local producers in the South West and also the importance of doing whatever is possible to support the efforts of our local growers.
Our commitment to both our customers and suppliers continues to this day, and a lot more besides…
Today…
The company today is one of the largest private foodservice supply chain businesses in the South West of England. Based in Falmouth, on Cornwall’s south coast, we deliver wholesale food products to the catering trade throughout Cornwall and South West Devon from our two depots in Falmouth and St Austell.
Our customers come from both the private and public sector, and range in size from small café’s to large hotel groups, schools and hospitals, with nearly 1,800 delivery points across the region.
We operate a fleet of 36 multi temperature delivery vehicles, ranging from 3.5 tonne transits to 10 tonne HGV’s.
