Channel 4’s Aldi’s Next Best Thing has seen some more wonderful Yorkshire folk secure a prized spot on Aldi’s shelves it was announced on this weeks show. A Yorkshire couple Razan Alsous and Raghid Sandouk, who run an award-winning cheese business in Sowerby Bridge, Yorkshire Dama Cheese were crowned the winners on the party-themed episode.
In the six-part series we follow a series of businesses as the vie for the top prize of a chance to be a food & drink supplier fro over 1,000 Aldi stores nationwide. And, Yorkshire’s very Own Dama Cheese made the cut. The cheese was featured alongside other contestants offerings which were an alcoholic dessert sauce, black pudding jam, filipino inspired buns and canned wine.
The couple’s business specialises in creating unique halloumi-style ‘squeaky cheese’, made from 100% cow’s milk, as well as other diary products including yoghurt, butter and ricotta. The couple’s ‘Hello-Mi Rolls’ where the item they were hoping to be featured on Aldi’s shelves.
Managing Director of Buying at Aldi UK, Julie Ashfield, deliberates on factors such as price, packaging, shopper demand, and the ability to scale up, in order to shortlisting contestants down to just two. And, this couple who moved to West Yorkshire in 2012 after fleeing the war in Syria made the grade,
Razan explained: “We had lost almost everything and had to settle into a new life in Yorkshire with three young children. Initially, I began searching for a job but despite having a pharmacy degree and a scientific background, my lack of references and work history in the UK made it extremely difficult.
After some time, I started to look at what’s around me – the expertise I could tap into, the sources of support and other opportunities available. I thought, why not create a business and make Syrian cheese from fresh high-quality British milk? And so started our journey – with an idea and a start-up loan of just £2,500 from the Local Enterprise Agency. We had to adapt the equipment we bought and finally got approval to start manufacturing cheese in June 2014,” Yorkshire Live report.
The couple’s business has a small team of just five employees – but the new deal with Aldi would see them having to produce a huge 400,000 rolls. The couple will have 40,000 boxes of the Hello-Mi rolls stocked in the special buy aisle of Aldi stores nationwide.
You can catch the episode and others on All4 here.
Read More: Ex-James Bond Star Pierce Brosnan Spotted In Yorkshire Bar
Feature Image Credit: Channel 4
