About Peckamix Wild Bird Foods
Peckamix is an independent, family run, Great British business dedicated to supplying superior wild bird food without compromising on quality, service or our environmental responsibilities.
Founded by husband and wife team Josh and Beth, we operate out of our facility in Hampshire to supply wild bird seed mixes, straight foods and bird feeding accessories nationally throughout the UK and locally in our refill shop in Andover.
To this day our process is very similar to how we first started making wild bird food back home in the kitchen, by hand and in small batches to guarantee a quality product we are proud of and cannot be matched by mass produced suppliers. Read on to discover our story...
Our story started in Spring 2016
Driven by Josh's love of photography and Beth's passion for nature, our journey began in spring 2016 when we visited a local garden centre and bought a bag of bird seed to attract more birds to the garden. This bag of bird seed was a pivotal point in our lives and the very beginning for Peckamix.
We had spent ages in the garden centre choosing a seed mix that promised so much on the packaging, but when we got home and researched the ingredients in this mix we realised it would not make good on that promise. It was full of whole wheat and penny pinching fillers that we watched the birds throw out. This soon led us down the path of trying to find a wheat free option which at the time in 2016 was pretty much impossible. If it was wheat free then it was still full of the other filler seeds that would be uneaten and go to waste.
September 2016
Following a summer of research and trial & error we created our own blend of seeds which was soon to be known as our “Autumn Winter Mix”, this recipe remains unchanged to this day and is still our personal favourite mix!
We started to see a huge increase in the number of birds visiting our garden and more & more different species that we hadn’t seen before started coming. We gave our grandparents some seed to try, and they had the same results, so Peckamix was born to bring great quality bird seeds to more gardens!
We also learnt that not all gardens have the same mix of birds visiting so a one mix for all wasn’t going to work for everyone. This is where our “Mix Your Own” service was dreamt up and sets us apart from other wild bird seed companies. You design the recipe for your garden visitors and we make it for you, it's as simple as that! This allows us to cater to all gardens no matter what preferences your birds have, we take pride in this service and your mix is still hand mixed by ourselves to this day!
September 2016:
For the first few years we made our bird food in Josh’s mum’s kitchen in the evenings & weekends, there are probably still mealworms under the microwave & cupboards! We were often up until very late at night mixing and bagging our bird seed then up early to do our full-time day jobs.
We boxed up orders in the living room and Josh took them to our local parcel drop-off point each day.
All of our deliveries were sent to Beth’s parent’s business premises, and we unloaded everything by hand into the car and transported it all to where all our seed was stored split between 2 garages and a shed, it wasn’t ideal, but we made it work!
January 2018:
We have always had pride in making a clean dust free seed mix and supplying our customers with quality products which you have all come to expect from us. Towards the end of 2017 we had some difficulty with some dusty seeds, so after testing various prototypes Josh made a cleaning machine, which is still in use today when the need arises!
June 2018:
By June 2018 we were well & truly national! Things were starting to get exciting, and we had so many ideas for how to bring our quality seed mixes to more gardens!
February 2019:
WE MOVED INTO OUR FIRST PREMISIS! After 2.5yrs of working out of the kitchen we rented our first 800sq ft unit. But first we had to do some renovating to make the space suitable for our needs. Josh’s grandad helped us build a stud wall to split the space in two, the front of the unit we turned into an office and the back of the unit was a new production space for manufacturing our increasingly popular bird seed mixes. This meant late nights and sanding until 1am in the morning to get it all complete and ready to go!
March 2020:
Things really started to take off in 2020! Our deliveries got bigger, and our space got smaller, we started to have to play Tetris to fit everything in and had tiny walkways around everything! We relied on our neighbours to help us get our pallets inside. We enlisted the help of both of our mums plus various other friends and family members to help us keep up with the orders
April 2020:
We rented a storage container to gain some much-needed space!
August 2020:
After a huge amount of research into packaging and the environmental impact of various materials we took our first delivery of our 100% plastic-free paper sacks! These are available for our 15kg and 20kg sizes on all our seed mixes and most straight ingredients.
March 2021:
WE MOVED TO A BIGGER PREMESIS! 1300 sq ft of space! Little did we know that we would be playing Tetris again very quickly and we’d completely outgrow this space again within a year!
September 2021:
We created a mini shop area to cater to local customers
January 2022:
OUR BIGGEST ADVENTURE YET! We took on Josh’s grandpa’s premises which was in desperate need of TLC. The original buildings were built in 1959 by Josh’s great grandad and later extended by Josh’s grandpa in the 70s, 3500 sq ft of much needed space for us to continue to grow Peckamix!
The renovation took 8 months, and we did 99% of the work ourselves with a huge amount of help from our families. We completely gutted the buildings, rewired all 3 buildings, replumbed the toilets, put in new ceilings, repainted the walls & floors, and brought the place back to life. There were even more late nights and early mornings to get all the work completed – painting floors at midnight on multiple occasions!
This move has allowed us the space to have a dedicated production building, a warehouse and a shop. We no longer have to play Tetris when deliveries arrive or have heart palpitations when a lorry load of pallets arrive with ingredients from our suppliers, it all just rolls in and slots into place!
August 2022:
WE OPENED A RETAIL SHOP! This has been quite the learning curve and personal journey as neither of us have ever worked in retail, but we do have a passion for wild birds and the products we sell so we have thoroughly enjoyed the adventure. As ever we are aware of our environmental impact so a large part of our in-store offering is in refill form and everything that is available on our website can be purchased in-store. If you are local to us in Andover, Hampshire then we would love to talk all things wildlife with you!
May 2023:
WE GOT MARRIED! I know, not strictly a Peckamix story but still a landmark moment in our history… After 8.5yrs together we got married and even at the time of writing this we still love working together!
Now:
Our mission remains the same as when we began – great quality products, good customer service & speedy delivery. We still make all our bird foods to order to maintain the best quality & freshness, and our “Mix Your Own” service remains unique to us. We have the interests of wildlife at heart and there is so much we still want to achieve, we have so we many ideas for Peckamix in time to come, we are just getting started! That is our story, and we hope you have enjoyed a step through time!
PS:
None of this has been without disaster…. We have had MANY MANY pallets arrive to us in questionable states – rain soaked, mouldy and growing ingredients, delayed, fallen over, and even one pallet that fell off the back of the lorry and nearly took the poor delivery driver over the edge with it! It is never smooth sailing running a business of any size but laugh or cry, right?! So here are some photos of some disasters we have had to deal with over time…