History

1970: Birth of Meingwen Armor Services (MAS) company.

1982: MAS turns to the vegetable field. This activity very quickly becomes its only activity. At first, MAS specializes itself in the packing and marketing of shallots.

1983: The company opers a large diversification of the activity through a group of vegetables cultivated by regional market gardeners, soon federated into a farming cooperative group. The Company develops itself with consequent productions of full field tomatoes, especially located on the Batz Island, and other undeveloped market gardening vegetables in Brittany, such as parsley, turnips, condiment plants, sandy carrot and others.

From 1983 until today: Under the brand mark HOTGAME™, the Company explores and programs a large number of fresh edible species and progressively builds its range of more than 200 different vegetables gathering baby vegetables, fine salads, ancient vegetables, edible flowers, edible seaweeds, edible mushrooms, wild plants and other specific productions. A lot of these vegetables exist or have existed in local consumption or in famous chefs dishes, but had so far never been developed at a scale for export.

Year after year, Hotgame selects vegetables and edible plants that correspond to the taste and new trends of great chefs and catering businesses. The innovation comes either from geographical or historical company researches, referent customers around the world, but also growers and producers who regularly propose new ideas and, most important, put in culture test quantities, useful to the market launch of new products.

1986:  The company together with its main supplier L’Armorique Maraîchère, develops new local productions, such as broccoli and long leeks.

1992:  Although organic agriculture has existed in the group since 1983, it really booms in 1992 around regional traditional vegetables. These vegetables being more and more produced and commercialised under this system of production, completing the company’s range of products.

1997: Next to  the existing 2000 m² warehouse, a second 1350 m² warehouse is built to ensure the development of the company. A land of  nine acres is bought, on which trees are planted and grasslands are taken care of in an ecological way.

Since 1999:  Together with the market gardeners, Hotgame and Biomas annually travel around the world. The goals  of these trips are to visit production and market systems, to acquire a new knowledge so as to ensure the richness and quality of the locally produced range and to maintain the collective sense and broadmindedness that are necessary for innovation. Therefore, 15 to 28 members of the group have successively visited, for instance, production areas in Italy, Spain, California, Turkey, Poland, Holland, Morocco, South Africa, Swaziland and of course in France.

2001: The group reaches its first stage of maturity around main activities such as baby vegetables and organically grown vegetables. Additionally, some more traditional specific vegetable productions are maintained, like the new Batz Island potatoes, shallots or the iceberg lettuce.

2005: Some new productions are explored, such as organic medicinal plants or organic seeds of potatoes and shallots.

2005 until today: With hundreds of references and customers, the company starts to reorganize itself, in order to to rationalise the flow, to modernise the means of marketing and to keep on answering, even more efficiently, to the very specific and personalised demands of its customers and providers.

Thanks to its culture of biodiversity and to the permanence of its innovation, HOTGAME responds to the culinary novelty wishes of its clients composed of restaurant chefs and famous caterers and has been maintaining for 25 years its experience and ranges, developing them according to the upcoming trends and demands.