Before you even step inside the door of Teals, you get a strong sense of what this warmly welcoming Food Market and Kitchen is all about. Situated on the A303 between open farmland and a rangy orchard of traditional cider apples, Teals’ sensitively located building borrows heavily from agricultural shapes, huge glass windows on both sides flooding the space with light and views over the countryside. Flower beds to the front are a riot of seasonal colours from hot orange geums, lavender sprays of catmint and deeper purple salvias through the summer to give the sense of both an English garden and at the same time, the hot colours of the African landscape that inspired the project to begin with.
On one elevation, painted in huge colourful letters, a message: Smile, you’re on a Ley Line! The build, which took place in that first hot summer lockdown was a very happy one – unusually for building projects, there was a sense of ease about it, things just fell into place. The team wondered at the time, was this due to the ley line they were located on, one of the ancient the energy pathways drawn along travellers tracks across the West Country? Inside, the walls are panelled with reclaimed wood and colour is everywhere, from the deep reds, oranges and greens of heritage tomatoes, the multitude of hues on the book jackets and cards in the small but well stocked bookshop upstairs, the sunshine yellow packets of own-brand coffee commissioned from Origin Coffee in Cornwall, the paintings by local artists on the walls of the restaurant. Everything is arranged on Montgomery Farm crates on whose farmland Teals sits.
The shelves showcase an extraordinary range of skills, whether that’s in the great truckles of beautifully kept cheddars and other local and UK cheeses (deli staff are trained by Neal’s Yard Dairy), a butchery that offers both traditional and contemporary cuts of thoughtfully reared, predominantly grass-fed meat, and hand-selected, lovingly made selection of gifts and homeware items from makers that focus on ethical and environmentally sustainable materials.‘Putting quality and service front and centre has always been a priority for us, underpinning it with a strong sustainability ethos feels good to us and makes sense to our guests,’ says Nick Sinfield, who, with his wife Ash, founded the store. ‘We started out asking ourselves how best we could contribute to both our community from a business front, but also support projects that are at the forefront of good practice that enable a better future for following generations.’
The Sinfields met at school in Bath and spent a year after university running a camp in Africa where they fell in love with the farm stall culture; roads lined with stalls of scented pawpaws and mangoes, as well as herby pasture grazed meat cooked over fire.‘We’ve always been into food,’ says Ash. ‘Nick is a great cook, and ever since we settled back in the area, we have felt there was a real opportunity to gather under one roof the very best of the area and in particular Somerset, to make it available both to local communities as well as to travellers stopping on their way through to Devon and Cornwall’. Wherever possible, their team choose locally grown or sourced and ethically produced ingredients and materials that make an active contribution to the local economy and environment. So, the flour that is stocked on the shelves and used in the kitchen for their famed flatbreads is Wildfarmed, the farming community that is planting and managing regeneratively farmed cereal crops that include organic strip planting with plenty of pollinators along with heritage wheats. They have supported Holy Cow milk since the very beginning, a small herd of organic dairy cattle down the road in North Perrott. These lucky cows wear necklaces that allow them to ‘check in’ for milking whenever it suits them and are mob-grazed on a wide range of crops and grasses which sequester carbon, improve soil health and provide the most delicious, creamy, mild whole organic milk to refill your glass bottle. Wild Garden, the small market garden just a few miles away provides year-round leaves and greens from their no-dig plot, bags of dark cavolo nero and curly kale in winter and, in the summer, mild lettuces, spicy mizuna, rocket and edible flowers which fly off the shelves as quickly as they come in.
The restaurant is a showcase for beautiful produce, skilfully cooked by Head Chef Ben Champkin and his team, specialising in tasty, thoughtful dishes at the very height of their season. The menu changes often with new dishes arriving at least weekly - whether that’s a seasonal cycle of wood-fired flatbreads, crowd-pleasers such as crisp-breaded iron age pork with fried egg and brown butter, or healthy and satisfying vegetable dishes such wood-fired cauliflower steak with chimichurri.The same for the drinks shelves, which champion UK grown and bottled wines, ciders, beers and spirits, whether that’s micro-local King Brain, less than a mile away and making small batch cider and sparkling drinks from their own orchards and foraged hedgerows to a variety of local brewhouses, experimenting in pale as well as traditional ales, ciders of all methods and varieties of apple and the many local wines that are beginning to pop up in the area – even rosés, which must be very pleasing to the winemakers – and drinkers - across Somerset. ‘We love getting behind small local businesses – who often need a leg-up getting a great product going ,’ says Ash. ‘If that means achieving a modest cut so it’s viable for the producer and our guests get to try at a fair price, we see that as a win for all. Some very small projects are made in a home kitchen, such as Gorges Granola which has proved so popular that when it ran out, tens of customers complaining and requesting restocks. We are now their only outlet.’ By focusing primarily on local businesses, Teals has been able to connect farmers and producers with customers from their own community, creating a circular microeconomy that benefits everyone, and has already put significant money back into the local area.
Such is the positive impact that the business and its suppliers create it was accredited the much coveted ‘B Corp’ status this year. B Corp is a growing movement to inspire businesses to be forces for good, measuring their impact beyond financial success. The B Corp accreditation process looks across different areas of all businesses that apply - from work environment, worker rights, environmental impact, charitable works, contribution to the economy and more. It’s extremely difficult to achieve particularly for such a young business. ‘It was a fantastic acknowledgement of the work we have put in but, for us, it’s really just the start of the journey. Now that we have found our feet, we are hoping we can contribute a lot more over the coming years,’ says Nick. This summer has seen their bank of EV chargers going live, and by next year they’re also hoping to add a little extra space. This will enable Teals to act as a canvas for even more local supplies and introduce a studio that will meet the request for more classes such as the already popular bootcamp that takes place in their field, pilates and yoga, as well as provide bookable spaces for meetings, seminars and other events to offer to the community. Perhaps it is no coincidence then that Teals sits on a leyline. More than simply a place to eat and to shop, it is a modern incarnation of a ley line crossing: a place to recharge, to nourish and to connect.
