Me and My Factory Interview: Lucy Stout, The Sous-Vide Food Company

Sous-vide started in France in the ’70s with a chef called Georges Pralus. He wanted to improve the cooking yield on foie gras so he copied an old French method, which was to wrap product in oiled paper bags. Then he progressed to vacuum-packing it in plastic pouches and cooking it slowly in a pan of simmering water. That way, he kept in all the juices and flavours and improved the yield.

Thomas Morel Foods in Redditch were the ones who really got it going on an industrial scale in this country. They’d been trained by the Roux brothers, who still use the method today. Sous-vide gives caterers a portion-controlled, kitchen-prepared high-quality product that they can regenerate from frozen in about 10 minutes in a bain-marie.

The partners behind Thomas Morel sold out to Unilever a few years ago, and last July the Redditch factory was closed down. It’s a shame because if someone like Unilever really got behind sous-vide they could get it into retail. Most of my friends, when I give them our products to try, say it’s much better than anything they can get in the shops.

Our process starts with hand-cut pieces of meat or fish. If it’s meat we might sear it in a pan to seal and brown it. Then it’s deposited into a formed pouch in a thermoformer. We add a sauce and perhaps some vegetables, vacuum-seal the pouch, and then it’s cooked slowly in a steam oven. That’s how we make fully prepared entrées like coq au vin, beef bourguignon and braised lamb shank.

We’re also doing quite a few partly-prepared products - we call them ‘confit’-style - for chefs who want to add the finishing touches themselves. For example, we do a duck leg confit, which is fully cooked in the pouch so the customer just has to pop it under a grill to crisp it up.

We’re in an industrial unit in Aylesbury that at one time was owned by Elmdale Foods, who made ready meals for Brakes.

Brakes eventually took over from Elmdale. When I first came here the factory was being operated by Park Farm Catering, which was part-owned by a local brasserie chain, Nichols. Nichols set it up to ensure they could maintain product quality and consistency as the chain expanded. The factory was also doing some wholesale meat-cutting for other clients.

The business hadn’t been going well, and I was originally invited to come in as MD. But to be honest, it was a mess. After a couple of months, I went to the major shareholder, who is a private investor, and said to him: “I can’t make this business work in its present format.” I said I would consider setting up my own business from the premises if I could find the funds. So we came to an arrangement whereby I gave him a share in The Sous-Vide Food Co in lieu of cash for the equipment, because he had funded it all and was heavily out of pocket. The factory was already fitted out for manufacturing, with built-in freezers, chillers and steam ovens and a Multivac thermoformer.

We closed the factory, got rid of the red meat operation and cleaned the place up. A lot of the machinery had been totally neglected so we spent a lot of money on repairs and maintenance. Really we spent the first 18 months working towards getting our BRC (British Retail Consortium) accreditation. We got that - higher level - in October 2003 and again in October 2004. Keeping the accreditation costs money but it’s worth it: without it some customers won’t even talk to you.

We’re still producing for Nichols and we’ve managed to get listings with some of the smaller breweries. We’re also working with Devco. They’re part of the Spirit Group, which owns brands like Chef & Brewer. Devco does Spirit’s retail concept development and we work closely with its chefs. Nichols had originally been buying from Morel, but the Redditch factory was already over capacity and they only wanted to do long runs. The difference here is that we’ll do short runs of bespoke dishes.

If we’re clever, and stack two or three different products into the steamer at the same time, we can do as little as 300 portions of each product per run, although we’d prefer to do 1,000 at a time. Either way, it’s always a freshly made sauce and freshly prepared meat, specifically produced for that batch. Most customers then want it frozen, although sous-vide does give an extended chilled shelf-life. We know from trials that the chilled life on the duck confit is at least 108 days.

We’re building up listings with independent wholesalers. Our local one, Waterdean, is listing about 15 products, which is taking us into a lot of pubs and restaurants. And we do a bit for a frozen food home-delivery company called Eismann. Our latest product for them is a ‘summer special’, barbecue spare ribs, which has turned out to be a bit of a nightmare. We’d shown the idea to Nichols who listed them, and when we happened to mention it to Eismann they jumped at it. But by the time we started making the product the cost of raw material had gone up 50% and we couldn’t get the ribs anyway in the middle of summer because it’s peak time.

I must have contacted at least a dozen possible suppliers before finding someone who could supply at a reasonable price and even then we had problems with the spec.

That came on the tail of a new terrine with duck foie and duck breast that we did for British Airways (BA). It wasn’t meant to be on their menu until December of this year, and then they phoned up in the middle of May to say they wanted it for June 1. They’d only seen kitchen samples at that stage and we’d never trialled it in the factory. So we had to move quickly to source the foie and other raw materials and carry out a trial. We had to find new kit too. We needed a bowl chopper to blitz the foie and chicken breast to make a mousse, which we’d done with a food processor to start with. And we needed a machine to slice the duck breast, and a gas-flushing, tray sealing machine, because BA wanted this product fresh, ready to serve. You go after these bits of kit and you think: ‘Am I ever going to need this again once this comes off the menu?’ But, funnily enough, since then we’ve had a lot of interest in terrines and pates.

The BA product is a seven-layer terrine, with alternate layers of mousse, duck breast and foie. It looks lovely but it’s all having to be sliced by hand. The guys on the line are getting very good now at hand-slicing precise 50g portions. I tried it and couldn’t get it right at all. But Grant Huntley, my factory manager and development chef has sliced 4,500 portions of terrine on his own in one day. He’s a whiz with the knife.

Interview by Mick Whitworth​

Factory Facts

Location:​ The Sous-Vide Food Co, 48-50 Edison Road, Aylesbury, Bucks HP19 8TE.

Tel:​ 0845 121 2213

Size:​ 930m2

Main products:​ Restaurant-quality meat and fish entrées and semi-prepared meats, cooked sous-vide-style in vacuum-sealed pouches. Also a small range of upmarket terrines

Employees:​ Eight in the factory, plus three directors and one admin person

Capacity:​ Up to 30,000 portions per week

Personal

Name:​ Lucy Stoutt

Age:​ 57

Career highlights:​ Ten years in sales and marketing with Mayhew Chicken before its flotation and eventual purchase by Northern Foods. Left Northern to run her own interior design and soft furnishings business during the 1980s property boom. Later worked with ex-Mayhew colleague Bruce Parsons in ingredients business Food For Thought and, briefly, with husband Richard Murphy in Woodstock Foods, his excess-stock trading and re-packing business. Became MD of Park Farm Catering in 2002, and set up the Sous-Vide Food Co in 2003.

Domestics:​ Lives near Leighton Buzzard with partner Richard.

Outside work:​ “Is there time for anything else?” Still interested in interior design. Enjoys theatre and opera, time permitting, and spending time with her four grandchildren.