— Our Products —
Our teams work together with our partners, using the latest market data and consumer insights to develop new flavours, more choice and greater convenience.
Our Products
Sustainabilty
Capability
Thistle Seafoods is a highly innovative, private label manufacturer of chilled and frozen coated and value added seafood products whose origins date back to 1947.
We pride ourselves on the quality of fish products, service level, flexibility and reliability. In addition we have a very proactive and highly successful development department, which monitors market trends, creating fish products to meet consumer
and customer needs.
— Meet the Team Behind the Flavour —
At the heart of our innovation is our Development Team — a talented group of chefs who are passionate about bringing great food to the table. From initial concept to final product, they combine creativity with practical expertise to produce innovative recipes that delight our customers and consumers.
Whether reinventing classic recipes or embracing the latest food trends, our team works closely with suppliers, partners, and customers to ensure every product exceeds our standards for taste, quality, and sustainability.
Driven by passion and guided by experience, our Development Team is proud to shape the future of food — one bite at a time.
Ciaran Lack
Ciaran started working in kitchens at the age of 14 and continued while at school and studying at the University of Southampton.
Following university and a year working for Birds Eye in product development, Ciaran decided to pursue a career as a chef. Starting as Chef de Partie in a 3-Rosette restaurant in Norwich, he worked up to Sous Chef over the course of three years.
Deciding it was time for a move and a new challenge, he took up the position of Head Chef at the Scalloway Hotel in Shetland, where he worked for a couple who gave him carte blanch with the menu. It was here that Ciaran worked with some of the finest quality fish that Scotland has to offer, and leading a small team of chefs, the restaurant was Shetland’s first to win a 2-Rosette award.
Two years later in 2015, Ciaran was offered the role of Development Chef at Thistle, where he has been innovating and developing market leading products in collaboration with our customers ever since.
Dan Ellis
Dan moved to London aged 17, as an apprentice scholar of the Royal Academy of Culinary Arts, working in high end establishments around London.
He followed this with a spell at a 3-Rosette country house hotel in the southwest of England before returning to London, where we he spent two years at the 2 stars Michelin restaurant Le Gavroche, under Michel Roux Jr. and Rachel Humphry.
He went on to become a private chef working in the Alps and the Cote d’Azur for four years, where he discovered his own cooking style which is classically French based in technique, but with the influence of his travels around the world when it comes to ingredients and flavour profiles.
Returning to the UK, Dan moved into NPD at Finsbury, before joining Thistle in September this year.
Che Mueller
Che has worked in hospitality for over 25 years. He trained in the Chicago area with a James Beard Foundation recognized restaurant, Timpone’s in Urbana, Illinois.
Moving to Europe, Che worked at the Aztec Country Club in Mijas, Spain, and went on to cut his teeth in the corporate restaurant world as a Head Chef with Living Ventures Restaurants in the UK, operator of the Blackhouse, Grand Pacific, Olive, and Sunset restaurant brands.
Since relocating to Scotland, Che has put his extensive experience to use managing several food projects and restaurants start-ups, including a country house hotel and American BBQ restaurant, before joining Thistle in February 2022.
Joe Grant
Jos is the newest member of the team, joining in July 2025.
Joe started working in kitchens from a young age to pay his way through art school and university. Based in the north of England, Joe was cooking British and Mediterranean cuisine in his early days where he first found his love for seafood.
Joe landed his first Head Chef role at Coast Dining in Camden, a seafood restaurant and oyster bar, which then led to a move to the Scilly Isles where he farmed, foraged, and fished produce from the islands.
Heading back to the north of England, Joe moved to a new role at Australasia in Manchester, as part of a 20-chef brigade cooking high-end pan-Asian cuisine, where he worked in the sushi, robata grill, tempura, and pastry sections. He continued to expand his Asian cooking repertoire at Cottonopolis, the Japanese izakaya restaurant in Manchester’s northern quarter.
Joe was poached by Sir Terence Conran’s D&D London group to run Issho in Leeds, a high-end Japanese restaurant, where he was part of the team that saw the restaurant listed in the Michelin and Good Food guides.
Moving away from big city centre restaurants and back to his roots, Joe has spent the last few years cooking for small groups of high-end cliental, and more recently as a private chef in the highlands and islands of Scotland.
Thistle Seafoods 5 Pillars of Corporate Social Responsibility
CARBON
Oversight
Environmental Working Group – An environmental working group, comprised of department heads and CSR, convenesquarterly.
Environment
Waste
Food Waste
Thistle is engaged with WRAP’s Food Waste Reduction Roadmap to reduce our food waste by 50% by 2030.
Raw Material
MSC Database
Thistle, where possible, sources wild-caught fish from an MSC certified fishery.
Ethical
Oversight
Thistle has an Ethical Working Group; comprised of representatives from all departments and meet 3 to 4 times per year.
GDST Traceability
GDST – Global Dialogue on Seafood Traceability
Thistle is an endorser of GDST.
Thistle has recognised the requirement to have full traceability i.e., back to farm or fishing vessel.
