Patchwork Pate

Patchwork was established in 1982 by Margaret Carter, a talented, although untrained, home cook, who found herself divorced with three children to look after. With a start up cost of just £9.00, saved from the housekeeping, she began selling her home made ptés to pubs in nearby Llangollen. As Margaret attracted more and more customers and the busin... ess successfully started to expand she moved the business from her house in 1987 to a purpose-equipped factory in the heart of Ruthin. Despite the commercial scale today, everything is still hand-made in small batches, without artificial colouring, additives or preservatives, to Margaret's original recipes. A self-directed team The Patchwork Traditional Food Company now has a strong work force of 30 employees who once worked as a self directed team. However, when we introduced the British Retail Consortium quality systems to achieve our grade A we had to introduce a more structured supervisory process. We have maintained as much as we can of our original management systems and we still maintain a factory with limited titles where everyone is able to have their say and openly voice their opinion. The team decides its own production schedules and work patterns, is able to recruit collectively and is involved in everything from the design of new packaging to product development.Read More