This October, we’re thrilled to be stocking Rubies in the Rubble – a ketchup that not only tastes like the Nation’s favourite, but also contains twice the fruit and half the refined sugar than other leading brands.
We asked Founder and CEO of Rubies in the Rubble, Jenny Costa, a few questions.
So where did it all begin?
I grew up on a farm in Scotland, it was super remote so I learnt to be very resourceful and creative with food.
After moving to London and starting a career in finance, I began reading about the problem of food waste and was shocked by the amount of fruit and veg that is rejected because it doesn’t look perfect! After seeing the problem for myself, I began rescuing produce from New Covent Garden market and experimenting in the kitchen with childhood recipes.
In 2012, I made the plunge and decided to take the idea from side hustle to centre stage. Fast-forward eight years and Rubies in the Rubble is one of the pioneering voices in food sustainability, with an award-winning range of ketchups, mayos and relishes, stocked nationwide!
How do you get it to taste just as good as the Nation’s favourite?
It took over two years of recipe developing and copious amounts of chip dunking to get the taste just right.
We believe that you shouldn’t have to compromise on taste to be sustainable, and that’s exactly what we achieved. A ketchup that tastes just like ketchup, but is better for you and the planet.
Sustainability and protecting the planet is also really important to us – where does your enthusiasm stem from?
When you become aware of the issue of food waste and how it contributes to global warming it’s hard not to be passionate.
For example, did you know that if Food Waste was a country it would be the third largest carbon emitter after the USA and China? Or, that globally, we waste four times the amount of food which could feed all malnourished people around the world. Food waste is a social, economic, and environmental problem – when you see the numbers you can’t not want to take action!
Sounds great. We are proud to work with suppliers who share our ethos and source well. Where do you source your ingredients and how do you make sure they are the best you can get?
For our Tomato Ketchup we focussed on the two largest ingredients – sugar and water – and replaced them with fruit that would have otherwise been discarded. The solution is pears! The surplus pears in our ketchup are collected from the next door valley to our factory, and are ‘out-grades’ or surplus to demand, so they have no other buyer. They are the teeny tiny pears that fall early in the harvest, we pick them off field floor, pop them in storage for a few months to get sweet & sticky before turning them into a purée.
So next time you dunk your chips in a dollop of ketchup in a Peach Pub, know you’re playing your part. Find out more and sign up to Rubies in the Rubble over on their website here.