A team of Moulton College students will launch their own food product commercially after winning a competition designed to give Northamptonshire catering students hands-on experience of bringing products to market.
The Delapré Food Festival competition challenged students from local colleges to develop original food products with commercial potential, alongside branding, pricing and marketing plans. Entries also had to include a connection to Northamptonshire.
This year’s winners — Chloe, Erin and Michael from Moulton College — impressed judges with what became known as the Northamptonshire Scone, which used locally sourced ingredients and was designed with straightforward retail appeal in mind.
The product will now go on sale at Delapré Food Festival in June before being stocked at The Orangery Café at Delapré Abbey for six months, giving the students experience of selling into a live hospitality environment.
The team said the competition exposed them to the commercial realities behind food production, including cost control, scaling and consumer marketing.
Erin said: “You can make all sorts of things, but we came up with the idea of the scone because we didn’t want to complicate the product or the ingredients we were using. We wanted something simple where the ingredients really came through.”
The competition reflects a wider push within the hospitality sector to strengthen skills development and create clearer pathways between education and employment, particularly as businesses continue to face recruitment and retention pressures.
Bart Polinski, executive head chef at Delapré Abbey and part of the judging panel, said students had been asked to think beyond cooking alone.
“All of the students’ confidence and hard work that they put into making not just their products, but fully composed business plans and presentations, was extremely impressive,” he said.
Alongside food preparation, entrants were required to consider how products would perform commercially in a competitive market.
The winning team said the exercise gave them a clearer understanding of the operational side of the food industry.
“Working out the breakdown of the costs and the scaling and the marketing was much more in-depth than what we had thought before,” they said.
Sarah Blunt, senior development chef at Classic Cuisine and another member of the judging panel, said initiatives linking industry and education helped students understand the range of careers available across hospitality and food production.
The competition forms part of Delapré Abbey’s wider programme around enterprise, hospitality and visitor economy activity ahead of the Delapré Food Festival on 6 and 7 June.
Image from left: From left: Chloe, Erin and Michael from Moulton College, whose Northamptonshire Scone won the Delapré Food Festival student food competition and will now go on commercial sale.
