What do you do when you tire of long hours in a busy kitchen, but do not want to leave the local food community that has grown up around you? This was the dilemma facing Nick Barclay when he decided that he wanted to spend more time with his young family and less time standing over a hot stove. After six successful, award-winning years at the Barclay House Hotel in Looe, Nick was ready to swap the 24/7 hotel and restaurant lifestyle for 'new ventures and challenges.'

"It was, he says, a question of quitting while still ahead". For the food and drink producers of South East Cornwall, the prospect of losing one of their champions must have been devastating - since arriving in the county Nick has been at the forefront of the change to serve the best local produce. Not only has he talked the talk, unlike many others he has walked the walk, they need not have worried.

"I have always embraced change and I like to be challenged by change, and my partner Matt Chatfield came up with an idea for what has become food4myholiday, he explains". In essence this is taking the local food supply chain one step further, on to the plates and tables of holidaymakers visiting Cornwall. Having run six luxury self-catering cottages as part of the hotel he knew that visitors prefer easy options.

"The last thing people want as they are driving down the A30 or A38 is to stop or find groceries when the car is full, and at that stage they're not concerned whether it is local or not. So we thought, why not deliver it to their holiday home?

"Then wearing my dad's hat I thought, it's great supplying local food but I would like some brown sauce with my bacon, what about teabags, bananas and other essential ingredients? "There are quite a lot of people doing Cornish food hampers but not offering those things that people want from a supermarket. I'm a realist, local food is great but you have to give people what they want so if that's Diet Coke, we'll deliver Diet Coke."

It may be anecdotal, but it seems that the rule of thumb for self-catering holidays is that visitors either bring all their food with them, or they ask where the nearest supermarket is, or they get Tesco to deliver to their holiday accommodation.

Food4myholiday offers a chef-selected range of great local produce along with all the other holiday essentials. And there's more. Nick will not only deliver on the day of arrival but has already found himself delivering repeat orders later. And with advance notice he will cook dinner parties for a selected number of people.
He believes that offering top-notch local food without any effort involved encourages visitors to go out and search for more themselves. "So we use the website, not just for ordering but to give them lots of stories about the people we do business with, places to go, the scenery and tourist attractions.

"We want them to understand that by choosing us, rather than Tesco, they are helping support local farmers, small producers, that they are reducing food miles at the same time as buying something with real provenance that is helping to keep the Cornish countryside alive."
After a local soft-launch, working with businesses he already knew on both the food production and holiday accommodation side, he soon found interest growing without any real marketing or publicity. It was a good way of making sure the system worked before going all out for the 2008 season.

"Starting at the end of last summer gave me a chance to see what it will be like this season, and to fine-tune and work on it," he said. For holiday cottage owners it is an ideal way of offering something extra with no additional work or cost involved. They are served by a separate website, and send a flyer about the service when visitors book. Two days before arriving, the holidaymakers place their order with Nick and his team, who then select the produce, assemble the order and deliver by 6pm on the day of arrival.

As a holiday cottage owner himself he knows that changeover days are a nightmare and it is essential not to deliver too early. At each location the goods are delivered, the chilled goods are put in the fridge, others left in old-fashioned brown paper bags, clearly labelled. It is this attention to detail, going the extra foodie mile (while probably saving several thousand over the course of a season) that make this a winner.

Using the most up-to-date technology makes it easy to update the website to reflect seasonality and availability. Nick adds that he is happy to leave the admin to his partner while he concentrates on "the foodie side".
However, as you might imagine for a man with Nick's drive, energy and vision, food4myholidays is just one strand of many other ideas he wants to try out. One is as a kitchen coach, working with restaurants that are not doing well. But unlike Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, Nick sees this as taking a long-term approach.


"It's something I've always wanted to do and I've already got clients on board just through word of mouth," he explains. "As well as showing them how to write menus and wine lists I can bring new ideas to keep them on track and motivated."

Fans of Nick's cooking will be relieved to hear that he has not hung up his chef's whites altogether. After an evening guest chef-ing, which he does regularly for friends such as Richard McGeown at Couch's in Polperro, he admits that he starts looking at trade magazines to see which restaurants are up for sale, until his wife reminds him why he decided to leave the hotel behind.

"I still get a buzz from it and I can keep in touch with some of my loyal customers, keep my hand in at the stove. It's great because guests like to see us in a different light, and two chefs working together is a lot of fun."
He is hinting that he may return to the stove, somewhere, by the end of the year. But for now watch out for his vans around North and South East Cornwall, helping more visitors to enjoy Cornwall on a plate.