This is the first time an independent grocery retailer has been our guest editor. How broad is your knowledge of the trade? I’m not your typical independent retailer. It’s partly because I’ve worked on the supply side. And I’m not as hands-on and as detailed as other independents. I’ve got a fantastic manager who runs the Belsize Park store and I really trust him to do a lot of the detailed stuff. If you were to fire at me questions about the price of milk last week I probably wouldn’t be able to answer them, but I do have that broader perspective.
What is your impression of the trade today? I think everyone is having a hard time other than the discounters, and wearing my green sustainability hat cheap food is usually a warning sign if you look back in history. Cheap food leads to Horsegate, BSE, and salmonella. Is it good having food so cheap, is that good for society? I’m not sure it is actually. How difficult can it be for a convenience store to compete in the current climate? The weekly shop is dying or dead and so small high street stores are in a really good place - people will accept a silly price - whereas mid-ground supermarkets like ours are in a challenging place because of price. When price becomes more important it becomes more difficult to differentiate.
People will accept paying a silly price in a small c-store or petrol station but in the a mid-range supermarkets like ours, people have an expectation for it to be more price competitive.
That said we’re looking at areas where we can do things differently. We have a juice bar and a florist. We had an ice-cream parlour outside on the street [in the summer]. It’s focusing on those areas where we’re not going head on with the big guys, be they Tesco and Sainsbury’s, or Aldi and Lidl. Why do you think Morrisons failed at convenience? Running a c-store business is quite different from big out of town superstores. M&S, Waitrose and Tesco made lots of mistakes when they started too but that was a long time ago and they were doing really well financially so they could afford it whereas Morrisons had to make those mistakes and learn when the business was under huge pressure. But Mike Greene is a really good guy, he knows what he’s doing and I’m sure he’ll make a real success of it.
Budgens has just been acquired by Booker. What do you think? I think it’s great, absolutely fantastic. Musgrave is a really interesting company and they do an amazing job in Ireland but they just did not get to grips with running a much lower-volume, lower-scale business in the UK.
By going into Booker you have a much bigger scale and they’re very entrepreneurial. I’ve been getting to know Charles and the team and it’s really encouraging so far.
For us it’ll mean more flexibility and better prices. And price is such a critical issue. Every Autumn I do some structured interviews with customers. In 2013 no one in Belsize mentioned price as an issue; in 2014 42% said price was an issue.
After a lengthy career in sales, you opened your first Budgens in 2006. What made you want to be a retailer? Retail is in my blood. I’ve been involved with retailing in some shape or form my whole life. I wanted to create a model of a business that was less profit focused, and retail for me was the easiest place to do that.
What has been the highlight and the lowlight of your time as a retailer? The highlight was being credited with closing down the News of the World. When it transpired the newspaper was tapping Milly Dowler’s phone I thought it was outrageous and I took a stance that we wouldn’t sell the newspaper any more. We had just gone on Twitter three weeks before, and I posted it naively. In half an hour I had every single newspaper calling, and the BBC and ITV sending film crews. I even got on to The Grocer Power List as a result of it being claimed I had a role in their downfall. The lowlight was Waitrose opening next to us in Crouch End, and seeing 20% of our business disappear overnight. Realising we had built great loyalty but hadn’t done enough. My physical health really suffered from the effort we were putting in just to lose money every year.
What’s been the most important lesson? Being heartful. And it’s not about being soft. We take difficult decisions. We’ve had to make people redundant and people still have to be disciplined if they’re not performing properly but we do it with heart.
You’ve developed loads of unique ideas to stimulate publicity. Which has been the most and least successful? Contrary to what some people think, I don’t set out to do these things for publicity. We do them because we believe they’re the right thing for our customers, for our community.
If you do things for the right reason then they can’t backfire. We’ve never been caught out because we’ve always done what we believe is right.
Even when we sold squirrel meat there were a small number of complaints but I felt totally comfortable. Everyone who complained I rang up and talked to them directly. .
How involved are you in the day-to-day running of the shop? What I’d like to see in a few years’ time is Belsize Park doesn’t really need me anymore. I now have only four responsibilities; I’m responsible for the vision, innovation, I’m custodian of the customer and the consciences of the company.
Would you ever open another store? It was a really painful experience selling Crouch End, but I took a three-month sabbatical and realised I had more time for my life purpose - to put the heart back in business. I wouldn’t have been able to do that if I had two stores, and the energy I put into Crouch End I’m now putting into inspiring other people to be more heartful. When people ask me if I’m interested in getting a second or third shop the answer is absolutely not. Not because it’s not fun but because my priorities are elsewhere.
What would you do if a multiple launched near your remaining shop? Tesco tried to open on our doorstep earlier this year but there was such a campaign from the community that in the end they backed down. But it’s a wafer-thin margin business we operate in so if someone comes along and steals 10 or 20% of your business that’s pretty difficult. It’s a big concern. Having a multiple open up on our doorstep would be a huge challenge and a lot of what we’re doing now is to continually be different so that it would be less attractive.
As a progressive retailer, do you pay your staff the living wage? Morally I think it’s absolutely right to pay the living wage and I’ve been trying to move us toward the Living Wage Foundation recommendation for years, but the marketplace we’re operating in makes that really difficult. We don’t have any full-time employees on the Minimum Wage at the moment but we have a number of people who aren’t that much above it. Now with the National Living Wage our hand has been forced. I’m conflicted because morally it’s the right thing to do but practically it’s really challenging. I was talking to a retailer the other day who was just too scared to even do the numbers.
What can be done to tackle the levels of food waste in the sector? It should be a criminal offence for a supermarket to throw away food. It’s really simple. They just need to arrange transport from the stores to the charities that need the food. That’s what we’ve been doing for a while. Seven days a week we drop all our food that we can’t sell that’s edible to Centrepoint.
Our agreement with them is they must use it all, though, because they were cherry picking and we said that doesn’t work. We all get and understand what’s edible so there is an awareness of the risks at the charity end. There’s an opportunity with the carrier bag tax to use the money to set up distribution systems to take food from supermarkets to charities, and to put pressure on the government to say there should be a 24-hour window in which you’re allowed to give away product. We all know it doesn’t suddenly deteriorate.
There’s a plastic bag tax coming in next week but of course you’ve been charging for them for years. Companies with less than 250 employees are exempt. What’s your message on that? Go for it, do it and give the money away. It’s a fantastic way to connect with your community. We’re exempt but we will be doing it.
So far we’ve been a loner so we’ve had more customer resistance but there won’t be customer resistance because everybody will be doing it. Suddenly you’re collecting money from your customers that you can distribute to the community which allows you to connect with your community and help them.
Now you’ve set up a consultancy - Heart in Business. What’s it all about? We’re trying to encourage businesses to put people and planet first and trust profit will follow.
This is not some tree-hugging, wet lettuce brigade. For me what’s really powerful is it’s needed and it’s good business at the same time, which is why it ties up so beautifully. All of us in the company have done this in our companies so it’s not theoretical, this is real practical stuff.
We’re at early stages with some really interesting companies in the food business, but I can’t say yet who. It’s a commercial company so when we do advisory work we charge a commercial rate for it.
Any business that claims to have a heart will attract cynics. What do you say? I say if it’s not for you, if you think it’s a load of crap or for the fairies, that’s fine. I don’t try and convince them because you have to be ready. I don’t want to sound arrogant but I think in 10 years’ time this will be the way, the only way businesses are run, and there will always be people who are early adopters so I’m interested in the people who want to do that now. The people who are cynical about it that’s fine.
Are you a die-hard indie, or would you take a job on the board at Tesco, for instance, and try and change the system from within? I think that’s unlikely. I can achieve more by doing what I’m doing now than focusing all my energy on one company even if that company would have me. And also I’ve worked for myself for the past 25 years and I love the freedom, I don’t think I could go to work and have a boss.
What could Corbynomics mean for food policy? What burning question would you put to the shadow Defra team? Jeremy Corbyn’s heart is in the right place but I think it’s too early to say what it could mean for food policy.
What’s really encouraging though is he seems to be a really honest, clear-speaking straight person and that’s really encouraging because politics is so full of spin. The Punch & Judy routine of Prime Minister’s Questions is just farcical, it’s an embarrassment to watch.
I’d ask the shadow Defra team what are they going to do about food waste and when are they going to change the law so it makes it easier for supermarkets to give away food that’s perfectly good to people who are hungry and homeless.
No comments yet