Our story
Watts Farm is a family-run business which farms over 600 hectares of land across 10 farms in Kent and Essex. We grow around 100 different crops each year. Our customers include major supermarket retailers, wholesalers, high end hotels and restaurants, airlines, school and the general public. We sell the produce we grow and buy many other products from UK growers. We also stock products which are grown overseas so we can offer our customers a wide product range. Our product range includes fresh produce, dairy, meat, fish, ambient and frozen products.
1952
Donald Watts was a man that did things properly. From mucking out pigs to pulling rhubarb and planting strawberries he'd nearly always be seen in a shirt and tie. He made a great success of the farm. And, in fact, became colloquially known as the Kent King of Rhubarb.
1970
Donald’s wife, Joan, would sell much of the produce by the side of the road and eventually went on to run a green grocer's shop in Petts Wood.
1980
Avril, one of Donald’s and Joan’s daughters, took over the farm when her father died. She started trialling some herbs such as parsley and coriander. “A good farmer always needs a salesman” Avril says and she married Mike Gray who had extensive experience in the London wholesale markets. They began growing new crops and increasing wholesale sales up and down the country.
2000
Joe Cottingham joined our farm in 2000. He continued to expand our range and raised the farm’s productivity by introducing a wide range improvements. And his efforts were rewarded in 2008 when he was named Young Grower of the Year, aged just 34.
2009
Avril’s husband, Mike, and her son, Ed, started the food service division of Watts Farms supplying high-end restaurants. The product range included produce grown on our farms, as well as a wide range of products including fresh produce grown by other growers in the UK, imported products from outside of the UK and dairy, ambient and frozen products.
2020
Ed Gray started the Home Delivery service following the Coronavirus outbreak. After most of our customers temporarily closed during the first lockdown, Ed set to work creating an online shop and within 2 weeks we were delivering food to the general public for the first time. This part of the business continues to grow, and we now offer a nationwide home delivery service.
