Preservers & Co.
With over 50 years of preserving heritage to tables, cafés and hotels across the country, Preservers & Co. has built its name on producing delicious, high-quality jams, preserves and condiments. It supplies products to retailers and creates award-winning preserves for third-party brands, combining decades of experience with the reliability and consistency its customers depend on.
This year’s Scottish Food & Drink September campaign celebrates the idea that ‘Every Bite Tells a Story’, so we caught up with Preservers & Co. to discover more about the story, heritage and experience behind every jar.
Scottish Food & Drink September 2026
What's the story behind launching Preservers & Co – do you remember the moment it went from the initial spark of an idea to reality?
Preservers & Co was established after a management buyout of Galloway Lodge Preserves and is a business idea sparked from encapsulating where we’ve been and where we want to go as company. We make preserves and sauces under a few different brands so this was a way of communicating the craft and ‘making’ aspect of we do as well as an overarching name that positions our expertise on preserve making.
Preservers & Co has over 50 years of heritage, is there a technique, recipe, or process that has been kept true to since the start?
Honesty and integrity. We don’t cut corners as a business, ever. This culture is vitally important to us and filters through all our processes. We vet our suppliers, use distilled malt vinegar and raw cane sugar to preserve, we use extended cooking times to thicken, we use whole fruits and vegetables and never anything artificial. We employ local people, offer them flexible shift patterns around their home and family life. We engage with our customers’ needs fully and responsibly. Loving what we do for a living also drives our values and culture at the business!
What makes Scottish produce so special, and why is it important for shoppers to support local producers?
The passion of Scottish producers makes it special. We care so much about our products, the story behind them and that’s why we collaborate so well with one another. We also love supporting one another, for example, you need a delicious Scottish cheese to eat Poacher’s Pickle with! According to the Scottish Government, almost 1 million people in Scotland are employed by SMEs. For this reason, it is so important. By shopping local you are supporting so many jobs.
What have been some of the proudest moments in your business journey so far?
This year we are proud of working with some of our customers to come up with solutions to their problems. We can be highly responsive because we are such a small team that work very closely together. We’ve created several new bespoke products such as Dundee Marmalade, Cherry Jam and Wild Blueberry Compote that have gone into a nationwide retailer and have been exported to America to fulfil our customers’ needs. This has inspired a new NPD Kitchen at our Factory site to allow us to carry out these projects even faster and on a larger scale. Additionally, this year we worked with the James Hutton Institute to promote their work with fruit breeding. We made them a “Glen Mor” Raspberry Jam, to showcase the variety of Scottish Raspberry – it was a deep red colour and tasted so delicious!
What does ‘Scottish food and drink’ mean to you, beyond geography?
Scottish food and drink to us means innovation. Historically, Scotland has been a place of immense innovation and solutions. We’re a resourceful nation and we take that sentiment forward when we face any new challenge. We focus on what we can do, not what we can’t do. It’s always saying ‘yes’ to ideas and new ways of doing things while keeping the core integrity of what we do. At the moment, we’re working in collaboration with a local environmental organisation to make a “Peatland Pickle,” where profits will go to highlighting some topical environmental issues around acidification of freshwater ecosystems in Scotland.
The theme of this year’s Scottish Food & Drink September campaign is ‘Every Bite Tells a Story’. When someone tastes your preserves and condiments, what story do you want it to tell them?
When you bite into any meal that includes our products whether it’s a cheese and Poacher’s Pickle sandwich or an elaborate desert containing our Strawberry Jam, we want you to enjoy the taste and savour every mouthful in the confidence it’s real, honest food. We also want every taste to reflect the care behind our products from our team; authentic, high-quality food made by people who work hard and genuinely care.
