Rushton’s has been named Food Brand of the Year at the Caterer Supplier Awards.
The nomination came from Firmdale Hotels, which makes it mean more than a standard industry gong. It came from a customer. From chefs who order from us week in, week out, and who decided we were worth putting forward.
Who we are
We supply fresh produce to more than 375 restaurants, pubs, bars, hotels and caterers across London. Our base is New Covent Garden Market, our warehouse is BRC accredited, and we’ve been doing this for over twenty years. Seasonal British produce and premium Italian specialities sit at the centre of the range.
S. Thorogood and Sons owns the business. It’s a family firm with farming roots going back to 1922, and that background shapes how we buy, how we talk to growers and how we plan around the seasons. Sitting inside a group that operates across New Covent Garden, New Spitalfields and Western International markets gives us a supply network that holds up when the weather doesn’t.
We’ve widened the offer over the last year. Mushroom Man joined the group, so our mushroom range now stands on its own for depth and quality. Dairy, ambient and frozen sit alongside fresh produce, so chefs can consolidate with fewer suppliers without giving anything up on standards.
Leading from the front
Good suppliers do more than turn up with boxes. Chefs want provenance, sustainability and information they can actually use.
In November 2025 we became the only B2B greengrocer in London to hold both ISO 14001 and Zero Waste to Landfill certification. Both are audited, not badges we gave ourselves. They reflect real changes in how we run the business.
Our closeness to British growers means we can feed back to chefs in real time: which crops are strong, which varieties are peaking, and how the weather is affecting supply. Monthly seasonal reports, farm updates and our seasonal calendar exist to help kitchens plan ahead. The mushroom reports we produce through Mushroom Man have quickly become a useful planning tool for menu development.
We’ve also put work into digital traceability so chefs know where an ingredient came from, who grew it and how, rather than leaving that information on the invoice.
Closer to chefs
Our team is out in kitchens across London every day, talking menus and planning against seasonality. We bring chefs into the market too, so they can see how we source, pack and hold quality at the scale we operate. The chef-led test kitchen has become central to that work: tastings, demonstrations and collaborative sessions where new ideas get pressure-tested before they hit a menu.
Behind the scenes, the new ERP system we launched in October 2025 has made ordering cleaner and more transparent. Small thing on paper, but it matters when you’re placing orders at 11pm for a Saturday service.
Growth in a tough market
Hospitality has had a rough run, and the fact we’ve grown through it says something about the customers we’re winning. They treat us as a partner rather than a line on the ledger. They use our seasonal insight, they plan menus with us, and they stick around. That shift in customer profile is the most important change in the business this year.
What’s next
The award is a marker, not a finish line. With over a hundred years of farming heritage through S. Thorogood behind us and clear sustainability credentials in front of us, the plan is straightforward: keep raising standards, keep building closer links between farm and kitchen, and keep giving chefs a supplier worth recommending.
The credit goes to the team, to our growers, and to the chefs who keep pushing us. Onto the next one.
