THINGS don't stand still for long at Puxton Park. Don't try to tell Alistair Mead, the 35-year-old managing director of the north Somerset visitor attraction, that a recession is biting the tourist industry in the South West – he's too busy growing the business to worry too much about the downturn.
"We're just ploughing everything back into the business to keep getting bigger and bigger," explains Alistair. "Last year we spent £200,000 on new attractions. This year we have already reinvested £250,000 back into the business.
"You have to keep growing – it's important to keep offering visitors something new in order to keep them coming back. You have to keep ahead of the recession.
"Our visitor numbers are up on last year, but our turnover is the same – so people aren't spending as much while they're here. People don't have the same amount of spare cash in their pockets.
"So it's important to make sure we keep the numbers of people coming through the doors on the rise, just in order to keep the turnover steady. To do that, you have to keep offering something new."
The 40-acre family attraction, now in its fifth year, is located just off the M5 at Hewish, a few miles outside the tourist hotspot of Weston-super- Mare.
The growing attraction represents an increasingly important slice of the Mead family's farming business – Alistair's father, Derek, is one of the county's biggest landowners, with 1,600 acres of mixed arable and pasture land – with 350 milk cows, 200 beef cattle, and a flock of 1,000 sheep to keep an eye on, it's easy to see why the 65-year-old is happy to cede the daily management of Puxton Park to his son.
Alistair's most ambitious plan is to create a new 10,000sq m garden centre attached to the attraction.
"It will be something for the older generation to enjoy while they're here," he says. "And it will make a big difference to the company – we currently have around 60 staff, but if the plans go ahead we will be taking on another 40 people.
"The planning application is in, and we're just waiting on the nod from the council in order to make a start."
It's one of numerous projects that Alistair has overseen in the past year alone – he has built a new toddlers' play area – Little Farmers, an adventure area for older children – the Adrenaline Zone, and has even had a boating lake constructed on the site, complete with rowing boats.
It all adds to the existing complex of cafes, outdoor playgrounds and indoor soft play areas as well as an extensive farm shop.
Alistair is also planning to open a new campsite attached to the park, including log cabin accommodation as well as around 60 acres of caravan and tent pitches.
But the most exciting new venture for Alistair and his team is an on-site ice cream parlour – making Puxton Park's own range of ice creams, using milk from his father's herd of cows.
"Given the ongoing issue over what supermarkets are willing to pay farmers for their milk, it's quite refreshing for us to be able to process some of our own milk into a new ice cream brand," Alistair says.
"If anyone knows about the importance of diversification, it's the farming community – I've learnt how to constantly diversify in order to survive from my father. Indeed that's how Puxton Park first came about."
The visitor attraction was Derek's brainchild at the height of the Foot-and-Mouth epidemic of 2001-2002, when diversifying into the tourism industry became one means of surviving the crisis that engulfed the farming industry.
"It was a wake-up call for the industry," Alistair says. "Farmers realised they couldn't rely solely on cattle to make a living anymore."
But Alistair and Derek are keen to maintain a strong farming theme throughout the attraction.
"This place basically came out of the Curry Report on the future of farming, which the Government commissioned in the wake of Foot-and-Mouth, " Derek says.
"The strongest message that came out of the report was that the farming community needed to communicate more effectively with the general public – it's up to us to teach people about where their food comes from, and to help them understand the way the countryside works.
"That's when I came up with the idea for this place – adding an extra element to the family business, certainly, but also doing some good by introducing youngsters to the complexities of farming."
That's why as well as the usual petting farm – with everything from donkeys to reindeer, and even an extensive collection of birds of prey – the old milking parlour on the site remains at the core of the attraction.
"Visitors can come in here and watch cows being milked," Alistair says. "For many of the youngsters coming to us from Bristol or Weston-super-Mare, stepping inside a milking parlour is a whole new experience – and it's one way for us to really connect with them and make them think about the food chain, and where the products in their fridge actually come from."
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