The frozen food sector is hotting up with a number of businesses report growing sales as households change the way they eat.

In a converted cowshed on a farm in Edenbridge, chickens wander through the office of Field Fare.

Its six staff can hear the calls of sheep and llamas outside but their frozen food business is far from a sleepy rural affair.

This 40-year-old company stocks more than 130 products into over 400 independent garden centres, farm shops, delis and butchers.

Many of these retailers are home to Field Fare freezers, where shoppers can scoop loose frozen goods into bags, from sweet potato chips to cinnamon swirls.

Managing director Karen Deans, who has worked at the company for 16 years, believes the business is enjoying a shift in consumer attitudes.

“The whole face of frozen food is changing,” she said.

“When I started it was fruit and veg and nothing else.

“Now we have four or five core lines. Now bakery is incredibly strong and ready meals are really strong.”

Historically, she said, frozen food has been “seen as the poor relation” but today she believes “the world is our oyster”.

Research by the Grocer and Harris Interactive last April found 60% of consumers now consider frozen food to be as good as fresh.

Also the type of person eating frozen food has spread across the age demographics.

It is attractive to young “time poor” professionals who often do not know how to cook, but also elderly singletons who are only cooking for one.

As a result, the company, owned by the second generation of the Cryer family, which owns its headquarters on Black Robins Farm, is forecasting a 10% increase in turnover this year.

“The consumer is starting to understand there are no additives in frozen food,” said Ms Deans.

“It is nature’s way of preserving and it is quality.”

It is a similar story for COOK, which makes frozen meals at its kitchen and headquarters in Sittingbourne, as well as in Somerset.

The company, which has 84 shops across England, Scotland and Wales, increased turnover by 12% to £50.6 million in the year to the end of March 2017.

“The whole face of frozen food is changing...” - Karen Deans, Field Fare

Its underlying earnings grew by 14% to £4.5 million, its latest accounts show, despite missing budget targets in the first half of the year after hiccups moving its logistics centre from Lenham to Gillingham.

It enjoyed a “spectacular” Christmas trading performance, with like-for-like sales up 12% over 12 weeks.

In his annual report, co-founder Ed Perry said the beginning of 2017 was its “longest sustained period of robust like-for-like sales growth in our history”.

Meanwhile sales in the first two months of its present financial year showed double-digit like-for-like growth.

Despite this potential for sales, neither COOK or Field Fare work with the big four supermarkets.

Mr Perry goes as far as saying he is “proud” of this fact on his company’s website, while Ms Dean highlights Field Fare took on 36 new customers last year.

She said: “We’re not into supplying supermarkets. We have been approached but I have always said no. We are here to support the independent sector.

“I wouldn’t want to get into bed with a supermarket. It’s a very risky business. They can change their supplier at any moment.

“We are a very established business with loyal customers and I don’t want to upset that loyalty.

“Our target market is very niche and about having something you don’t get in a supermarket.”