The Times - Piccolo baby food cooks up export business as added security

A baby food brand that counts Prue Leith, the The Great British Bake Off judge, as an early backer has built a £1.5 million export business in the past year to help to cushion it from Brexit uncertainty.

Piccolo Foods, founded by Catherine Gazzoli in 2016, makes Mediterranean-style organic fruit and vegetable purees using her experience working in food education at the United Nations. The brand, which sells pouches of sweet tomato and ricotta spaghetti and squash mac and cheese purees, is also backed by Craig Sams, founder of Green & Blacks chocolate, and Mark Angela, the former Pizza Express boss.

Ms Gazzoli said that Piccolo was on track to make £7 million in turnover this year after winning contracts with all the main supermarkets, broadening its range to include teething biscuits and stir-in pasta sauces for toddlers, and launching overseas.

Two years ago the company brought in Oliver Pinkus from Gü, the chocolate desserts brand, to lead a “Brexit mitigation” strategy. “Investing in export early on with someone experienced is one of the best decisions we have made to really take care of Piccolo in the face of October 31 [when the UK is due to withdraw from the European Union]. Being smaller, we have less muscle than the big boys but are more agile, I think,” Ms Gazzoli said.

In the past year the business has begun to sell its products in China, South Africa, the Middle East and the Netherlands. “We hope that China will soon be bigger for us than the UK,” Mr Pinkus said.

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