…Capeling & Co! A huge congratulations to Capeling & Co who have won by a trounce the inaugural Birmingham Independent Food Business of the Year award for 2010. Capeling & Co opened on the trendy York Road in Kings Heath in November 2009, offering something truly unique on Birmingham’s food landscape. Capeling & Co not only offer a fine selection of handmade artisan cheeses from across the UK and Europe, as well as other hard-to-find deli ingredients, but they deliver it with passion and style too. So much passion that they’ll even have run-ins with the British Cheese Board to ensure South Birmingham is eating the best cheddar possible. Their little shop is becoming a haven for foodies because you simply can’t get most of the things they stock without traveling outside of Birmingham. I first visited a couple of weeks after they opened, and have been a regular there ever since as both customer and supplier. They had a great 2010, building slowly, educating the public, reinvesting in the shop, venturing out to markets and events, and sourcing great cheese throughout. They topped off 2010 with a fantastic Christmas and New Year, improving the Christmas cheeseboards of half of South Birmingham seemingly, including mine!

There’s only a handful of businesses in Birmingham that take as much care about their food sourcing as Capeling & Co, and the whole point of this competition is to celebrate those great food businesses and hopefully find out about new one’s that we’re not already aware of. I hope everyone’s enjoyed reading, nominating and voting. I’m personally very excited about what 2011 holds for Birmingham’s grassroots food scene, happy new year!

After taking out duplicate votes the final scores for the top three were:

1st – Capeling and Co – 45 votes

2nd – Kitchen Garden Cafe – 21 votes

3rd – Rossiters Organic Butchers- 14 votes