The Hodmedod Story

Nick Saltmarsh, Josiah Meldrum and William Hudson founded Hodmedod in 2012 to supply beans and other products from British farms.

We work with British farms to source a range of top quality ingredients and delicious foods. We’re particularly interested in searching out less well-known foods, like the fava bean – grown in Britain since the Iron Age but now almost forgotten – and black badger peas.

The Great British Beans project

We founded Hodmedod following the successful Great British Beans trial project to stimulate and assess demand for indigenous pulses.

For the trial project we bought a tonne of British-grown split fava beans, packed them up at the kitchen table, and distributed them through community groups and local shops. Each pack contained a postcard with a short questionnaire on the back to collect feedback on the beans.

The response to the beans was overwhelmingly positive, inspiring us to establish Hodmedod to continue and develop supply of British-grown fava beans and other products.

The Great British Beans project was run by Provenance for East Anglia Food Link as part of its Norwich Resilient Food Project, which was developed with Transition Norwich.

From Fava Beans to Quinoa

Our first product was the Fava Bean, grown in Britain since the Iron Age but little eaten in recent centuries. Fava Beans are delicious, nutritious and good for the soil and bees. Split Fava Beans are especially versatile and easy to cook as they don’t need soaking.

Since launching our packs of dried Fava Bean we've been working to search out and develop production of other less well-known foods, like "Black Badger" Carlin Peas and Quinoa from the plains of Essex.