The group has a loyal fanbase — it has delivered to 19,000 homes across the UK since 2010, including orders to Buckingham Palace — and fans who keep coming back for the company’s vast online emporium of meat, which stocks beef, chicken, pork, bacon, lamb, wild game, veal, mutton (and fish), all sent out in ice-packed boxes.
Now with Christmas approaching, Field & Flower is gearing up for a hectic period shipping out boxes to meat-hungry customers.
“Christmas is the biggest time of the year. Our revenues quadruple,” says Mansfield. “It’s a crazy time.”
They’ve already chalked up orders for 600 turkeys and 10,000 pigs in blankets, and have been forced to add an extra delivery day to cope with demand, including a surge in popularity for goose.
The success has come from unlikely origins. After a seed-funding round in 2011, the duo built a tiny butchery near the farm fitted with old pharmaceutical fridges and recruited three more farms giving them access to chicken, lamb and pork.
They spent the next three years building the business with their bare hands — preparing the meat, wrapping it, packing the boxes and even delivering them sometimes.
“At the start all you think about is delivering that set of boxes in that week and making sure you’re not letting anyone down. That’s our philosophy,” says Mansfield.
The duo are from different backgrounds but share a love of the countryside and farming.
Mansfield, 34, is the son of a radio executive.
Flower, 31, worked on the farm before going to agricultural college.
Mansfield worked at the Ivy as a waiter for a while before swerving into the agricultural sector, doing his final thesis on how to hang beef properly to make it more tender.
He spent the firm’s formative years as master meatballs roller, spending hours in the butchery getting meatball-making down to a fine art, while Flower focussed on the steaks and worked with the main butcher to dice up juicy cuts.
The big turning point came in 2014, when the company decided to outsource the butchery. They now work with about 15 farms, but still get some of their steak from Flower's family farm.
“It helped us concentrate on growing the business and look at the product quality. It made it more viable,” says Flower.
With the duo preparing to embark on an online marketing blitz, a new app and more hires next year with the new funding, perhaps it won’t be long before those meat-loving celebs are on the phone again, tapping up some more of that delicious steak.
