About Us
Hi there welcome to the Dorset Spice Shed! We're based at 27B Dreadnought Trading Estate in Bridport, Dorset and if you're ever in the area call by and see us - our postcode is DT6 5BU. We don't sell from the factory because we have several very supportive, lovely farmshops in the area that stock our products but we really love to meet our customers and find out what they like and what they want in future!
We started back in 2011 and the business grew from a love of seasonings including herbs and spices that for Richard, the owner and founder, went right back to childhood.
Trading in spices is one of the oldest activities in the world - back to Biblical times at least. Herbs too were gathered, dried and used to flavour food right back in the archaeological records. Although it's big, big business today its products are still natural - mostly cultivated, still largely hand-gathered and sometimes still wild.
Most herbs and spices are air-dried (as opposed to freeze-dried) and this is really important to us because where the drying is in the sun (like chilli and paprika) or in drying-sheds (like pepper) no other energy is used in their production. Drying along with salting is the oldest method of food preservation known to us humans and we love the fact that much of what goes into our blends is in the same, sustainable tradition. This also goes for our sea salt which is sun-dried and naturally harvested.
For us most of the excitement in our work comes from creating blends, developing them, cooking with them, succeeding and failing followed by the naming, packing, seeing them onto the shelves and waiting for people to tell us what they think.
We're inspired by what people want to season - it's that simple - and it's things that are otherwise a bit bland like potatoes, chips, green vegetables, vegan meat alternatives, supermarket meats and fish - very much the kind of thing we eat everyday. Our seasonings are loved by home cooks but they're great for non-cooks too preparing microwave meals, oven chips, frozen fish or chicken breasts banged into the oven. With some exceptions like our SpiceNite range we aren't about recipes - we're very much freehand about flavour - but we're always about making things taste good.