Omlet

When the guys from Omlet were at the RCA, their lecturers thought that they were bonkers when they showed them their designs for the Eglu - a chicken run for urban environments. The colourful plastic chicken house has been designed for the small to medium sized garden as well as the first time chicken owner. With people increasingly questioning where their food comes from, this is the perfect and fun way to recycle any leftover scraps from the kitchen and know exactly what goes into your eggs. This is not a venture based on pointing green guilt fingers - this is about having fun in the garden, and enjoying fresh food, well eggs anyway.

Johannes Paul, co-founder Omlet

'It has long been held as a convention that people who live in the country have much more access to fresh food, that there is much more of a sense of traceability about what they eat and that keeping chickens is something that you cannot begin to think about doing in an urban environment. When I was researching developing the Eglus, I would ask people in urban pubs what they thought about the idea of keeping chickens in an urban environment and they would ask if I grew up on a farm. Others would say that you couldn’t possibly have the space to look after chickens in urban environments. This is completely wrong. Just because you live in the countryside does not mean that you have the god given right to have animals or that because you live in the country you will know more about animals.

But with people increasingly concerned about where their food comes from, a growing interest from consumers to turn over more of their gardens to growing herbs and vegetables, we knew that there would be a great demand for creating an urban styled chicken run that could break down the barriers about what looking after animals in a town or city could be about. We didn’t want it to be perceived as being about ‘urban farming’ we wanted it to be about having fun. If we could get people think differently about animals in cities we could probably get them to change other behaviours subconsciously too.

We’ve done pretty well to, as we have now sold in excess of 15,000 Eglus throughout the UK. If you think about it that is 30,000 chickens sold and about 9 million eggs laid. When we first started we tried to get Waitrose to sponsor us to put Eglus in schools but I think that they realised just how much business they could lose. People did realise that having eggs was more than they could have ever imagined. Not only are they really friendly and amusing to watch in the garden but you also get the freshest possible eggs every day.

What happened is that people began to understand the problems associated with supermarkets. They began to see past all the wrapping and packaging and even through the price. What we were doing was educating people about the benefits of fresh produce without them actually realising it. They were taking waste from the kitchen – such as peelings from vegetables, leftovers, things that might have passed their sell by date in the fridge – and instead of bunging them in the bin they would feed it to their chickens. It became a form of guilt free recycling. People would begin to see what was going on in their back garden and then see how it applied to the bigger picture. For me what we are doing is not about having an organic life but about having fun in the garden and knowing how the food process works and taking a bit of time away from the pressure of the commercial world.

And this has led to our customers getting allotments, some have even rented fields and bought a pig or a couple of lambs so that they can have a greater understanding of where there food comes from. We couldn’t have hope for a much better response than that. I wish that we could get local councils to change their behaviour too and start planting fruit trees so people could have access to other natural products.

And who we consider our competition to be? We think that it is any other company that is trying to entertain people. This might be TV, cinema, food, satellite TV, sport, products design, anything leisure related. Who’s to say that having chickens in your garden is not more entertaining that watching an episode of 24 or Lost.

I know what I would rather do. All we want to do is change people’s behaviour. Let’s face it the government is not really taking a lead. They talk about sustainability and green issues and then drive around in massive Jaguar cars. We have taken chicken ownership and turned it into something that make make a change for the better and make people feel good about where they get food from. One of clients started off with just two chickens and has now taken on a further six. She takes all of the eggs she produces and sells them at the school her kids go to and boast how she is ‘undercutting Tesco’. It doesn’t get much better than that.'