Charlie Fermor, Co-founder, Freddie’s Farm, says: “ It’s just been such a long time getting to this point. I started the journey as a student studying agriculture at Reading University. I took such a risk when I invested in our unique dehydrating machine. Then with the pandemic happening just as business was taking off, at one point we thought we’d never get here. Actually during the show we’d convinced ourselves we hadn’t won, but when Julie announced our name it was crazy. We can’t be happier, and it was so exciting to tell the kids – we can’t wait to get them down to an Aldi store to see it on shelf now!” It was quite an experience filming the show. Very stressful, but definitely worth it,” Laurie Fermor told Grocery Gazette.

Everybody’s products were amazing and deserved a place on the shelves, and we had totally convinced ourselves that we had lost,” said Laurie, adding that they were up against some “seriously stiff competition”. Sign up and find out why our readers call our newsletter the most influential in Business. Get the UK's leading business content straight to your inbox every week. As the couple are making all their produce from their farm in Kent, the ongoing cost-of-living and energy crisis is making it increasingly expensive to keep operations up and running. If you’ve missed it, Channel 4’s latest reality TV show‘Aldi’s Next Big Thing’ has been championing a wide range of new food and drink brands over recent weeks.

Being on the show has hugely increased our visibility on the market, so we’re not complaining at all! It was such an amazing opportunity and even more mind-blowing to win.

As for our own sales figures, they are selling very well. Our online sales have increased a huge amount, I think by 600% – 700%, which is just incredible.”The drying process has been perfected over a long time so it’s quite special. We try to keep the flavours you get in raw fruit and veg,” Laurie said.