Today Secretts grows an incredible variety of crops and salads on its Farm and Pick Your Own in Milford, Surrey, for local customers and over 300 restaurants in London and the South East. Indeed it would be difficult to find anyone in Europe who grows more, in fact over 100 different varieties - around one for every year the business has been in existence. Managing Director Charles Secrett explains "Anybody who looks at our range will say you must be mad to do that, you must specialise. Well what we've done is specialise in diversity in range - which I admit sounds a bit strange - but we don't supply the supermarkets, our main markets being our own retail outlets. We have two Farm Shops - Milford, opened in 1979 that is very well established and has an outstanding reputation and Secretts of Rudgwick, West Sussex opened in March 2007 and gaining a reputation of its own for the quality of its products.
In the late 1980's Charles Secrett was approached by Gregg Wallace, now of Master Chef fame, who was supplying restaurants in London but couldn't find anyone to grow a range of produce specifically for him. Charles says "Gregg was put onto me by the NFU and we got on well from the first moment. I liked what he was asking me to do because it took the range that we were growing for the Farm Shop and doubled it! He also asked me to do new things like grow wild rocket - we were the first farm to grow wild rocket in this country."
Today the farm grows around 22 different varieties of salad leaf throughout the year. The leaves and Secretts other crops are harvested daily and sold to good Farm Shops in the South East, via Secretts own stall at Farmers' Markets in the area and of course they are delivered to the restaurants six days a week.
Interestingly, Secretts prefers to focus on being a speciality supplier rather than a main supplier to its restaurant customers. Consequently the company has quite a few really prestigious clients in London, because it's the good chefs who want the more unusual produce. At the moment there is a fantastic demand for beetroot, a very trendy vegetable, but Secretts does not just grow beetroot, it grows four different varieties of beetroot and it's supplied bunched with the leaves still on. A large crop of Secretts Farm asparagus is grown each year and is very popular during the season.
The aim of the company is to get the crop from the field to the restaurant as quickly as possible. It can usually do that - everything is delivered within 24 hours maximum, crops are cut, washed, put on a van and taken to London.
The kind of product and service that the company provides is really turning the clocks back - it's all very traditional.

To find out more telephone 01483 520500 or visit their website www.secretts.co.uk