Braehead Foods and The Cook School :: From the Heartland of Scotland

Plan your Valentines Evening

Be extra romantic this year and plan your very own perfect night in for your partner. We'll show you what and how to cook, which wines go with each course and even give you suggestions on how to lay your table. All to make your night extra special. Class held on 11th February at 7pm. £45 per person or £80 for 2 people. Call us on (01563) 550008 for more information or to book. More Info.

Buy Gift Vouchers Online!

You can now purchase gift vouchers for the cook school and shop online - making it easier to purchase gifts for your friends and family whatever the occasion. Whats more - post and packing is free!

The online shop can be found by clicking here!

Cook School awarded Five Star status by VisitScotland

Scottish Tourist Board Five Star Vistor Attraction

The Cook School at Braehead Foods was delighted to be informed that they had been awarded a five star rating by Visit Scotland's quality assurance team. This award places us as an ‘exceptional and world class’ graded visitor attraction.

Sandi Hellowell, VisitScotland’s Regional Director said: “This is great news for East Ayrshire and Scotland as a whole and will certainly add an extra dimension to the tourism offering in the area. It is great to see businesses such as the Cook School at Braehead Foods continue to invest in tourism which is crucial to the ongoing success of the tourism industry in East Ayrshire and the wider area. This has real potential to be a centrepiece attraction and all involved should be commended on their efforts.”

Read the full story at: http://www.visitscotland.org/news_item.htm?newsID=53182

Scottish Countryside Alliance Awards

    Craig Stevenson Managing Director of Kilmarnock based Braehead Foods has won the coveted Rural Hero Award at the prestigious Scottish Countryside Alliance Awards ceremony held at Scottish Parliament, Holyrood on 11 February 2009.

    To judge this competition the Countryside Alliance split the UK into 13 geographical regions and picked a winner in each of the five categories below. The Scottish Countryside Alliance Awards were judged by a specialist panel led by Scottish Countryside Alliance Chief Executive Geva Blackett. The panel picked an overall Scottish winner in each category.

1. Best Local Food Award
2. Best Village Shop/ PO Award
3. Rural Enterprise Award (formerly the diversification category)
4. Best Traditional Business Award
5. Rural Hero

    Rural Hero was a new award category introduced for 2008 and the organizers have confirmed that Craig was awarded the prize because he goes ‘above and beyond’ the call of duty to promote or protect his local community, sport or rural Scotland in general”. He has been singled out particularly because of his passionate promotion of Scottish game and the effect his efforts have had on the shooting industry and on the whole rural Scotland. Organisers were quoted as saying ‘Not only did Craig create an excellent reputation for his company, but he also made his mark on the local area and beyond’.

    Craig is delighted to have won this award and will now go forward with the other four Scottish category winners to the final where regional winners from England, Northern Ireland and Wales will meet for a reception at the House of Lords on 18 March 09 and the overall winner will be chosen by a panel which will be chaired by Countryside Alliance Chief Executive Simon Hart.

The class list has been updated with numerous new dates. Included in these new dates are a selection of new classes. The new classes include:

Moving Up to Another Level

Welcome to Braehead Foods

We have now moved into our new, purpose-built 30,000 sq ft factory; 6 times the size of the previous factory. It has a much larger stock holding capacity and a new production kitchen allowing us to increase our product range, bringing your kitchen a source of any bespoke products you may require.

As well as the production kitchen, we are putting in a demonstration kitchen that will double up as a cook school. We are currently looking for chefs willing to come to Kilmarnock for the day to take classes of around 20 made up of the general public. All chefs will be paid and this is an excellent opportunity to promote your restaurant to a new market. We plan to set aside a percentage of the money raised from these sessions to pay for young chefs from across Scotland to visit Braehead for 2 or 3 days to get a feel for the industry from the suppliers’ perspective and will show them everything from game processing to order processing. We also plan to invite our suppliers to give demonstrations and take classes, and we would like to give you the chance to become involved in this too.

Our ‘open doors’ policy for customer visits remains however we have invited our suppliers of specialist products to visit us during the last two weeks in April and the first two weeks in May, to discuss their full product range with you. This is a great opportunity to speak with the producers face to face.

Please contact your sales representative or Aileen at our office on aileen@braeheadfoods.co.uk to register your interest.

Thank you for your continued support.

Craig and everyone at Braehead Foods