The industry has an outspoken new player. Simon Mowbray meets the man they call ‘The Black Farmer’
To say that Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones has had a varied career would be an understatement. Born in Jamaica, the 47-year-old businessman has, at various stages of his life, been in the army, a careworker, chef, TV producer and a marketing and PR executive with his own company.
He’s also one of Britain’s most novel additions to the food industry, having spent the first four years of his life in the Jamaican bush.
This son of a Pentecostal minister who spent the rest of his childhood in a terraced house in inner-city Birmingham has realised a life-long dream - to become a Devon farmer and launch his own food brand.And he’s loving every minute of it.
As we meet at Exeter train station, it is immediately clear Emmanuel-Jones is going in for the gentleman’s branch of farming as he rolls up in his Volvo 4x4 and jumps out wearing designer jeans, a smart open-necked shirt and jacket.
On the 45-minute journey to his West Kitcham Farmhouse in St Giles on the Heath, near the Cornish border, he sets out his credentials as a potential business heavyweight by sharing his no-nonsense views on how the food and drink industry should shake itself up. They include the view that Tesco should give up a third of its car parks to local producers once a month, that big corporations like Unilever should throw money at small independent “nursery” companies (“small producers are
the only ones showing any real innovation”) and how a recent claim by Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, that ethnic minorities are made to feel unwelcome in the countryside is “bollocks”.
The man locals affectionately refer to as ‘The Black Farmer’ appeared on the Devonshire horizon seven years ago after the success of his London-based marketing and PR agency enabled him to buy his current country residence (the father of three also owns a family home in Battersea, south west London).
Not content merely to turn the dilapidated farmhouse, which stands in 30 acres of land, into a weekend retreat, he set about making it a going concern, re-introducing sheep and cattle and employing a farm manager.
Now the working farm is the basis for his own food brand, The Black Farmer, which he recently launched with a three-strong range of sausages that have secured a listing in 18 Asda stores in the south west. The £2.29 premium sizzlers, made from local pork, including Emmanuel-Jones’ own stock, have already been honoured by the Taste of the West judges and in the prestigious Taste Awards. Emmanuel-Jones has also brought out a range of premium dipping and cooking sauces, under the same banner, that are doing the rounds on the upmarket delicatessen circuit.
Despite this initial success, Emmanuel-Jones still has things to get off his chest as he fires up the farmhouse stove to fry some of his prize-winning sausages. One bugbear, for example, has been dealing with the multiples - and all of them except Asda have annoyed him at one point or another.
“A lot of people in the food industry are lazy,” opines Emmanuel-Jones. “Buyers, for example, are always looking for the quick fix. If I present what I think is a great product and then Wall’s goes in with a multi-million pound budget, the buyer goes for the option that grows his bottom line more quickly.
“These supermarket guys on the front line are actually shrinking markets as categories get down to three or four big players. It’s so short-sighted.”
Another source of annoyance has been the multiples’ claims to support local producers and the cumbersome way that they operate. He says Waitrose’s claims to help local brands are over-egged (“they’ve hardly got any stores down here anyway”), while Tesco, with whom he is currently in talks, is not let off the hook, either. “I saw the manager at our local Tesco in Launceston three times, but she wasn’t interested because everything has to go through head office. There should be a system where stores can trial locally produced goods. The multiples claim to offer choice but it’s often nonsense.”
Big brand owners also come in for criticism. Advertising, he says, is “lazy” and too readily jumps on the latest bandwagon or reality TV craze.
Emmanuel-Jones is coming at this with a credible amount of knowledge. As a TV producer, he spent the best part of a decade at the BBC working on an array of programmes and, latterly, set up Commsplus, a marketing and PR agency he runs with his wife Michaela, the clients of which have included some of the most innovative new brands of the last decade, including Loyd Grossman, Kettle Chips and Cobra Beer.
“All those brands had an instinct that they were bringing something new to the market that people would want. Great brands are about instinct, not research. Some of the greatest brands would never have survived if they had been researched.
“Can you imagine someone like Unilever or Premier Foods coming up with the idea for a Black Farmer brand? There would be terror in the boardroom in an industry that is full of white, middle-class manufacturers.”
Despite this last statement, he insists that he is not playing the race card with his brand,but is celebrating Britain’s multi-cultural heritage. “I want this to be a national, multi-cultural brand. It is about great-tasting food that has been brought to market by someone who happens to be black.”
To say that Wilfred Emmanuel-Jones has had a varied career would be an understatement. Born in Jamaica, the 47-year-old businessman has, at various stages of his life, been in the army, a careworker, chef, TV producer and a marketing and PR executive with his own company.
He’s also one of Britain’s most novel additions to the food industry, having spent the first four years of his life in the Jamaican bush.
This son of a Pentecostal minister who spent the rest of his childhood in a terraced house in inner-city Birmingham has realised a life-long dream - to become a Devon farmer and launch his own food brand.And he’s loving every minute of it.
As we meet at Exeter train station, it is immediately clear Emmanuel-Jones is going in for the gentleman’s branch of farming as he rolls up in his Volvo 4x4 and jumps out wearing designer jeans, a smart open-necked shirt and jacket.
On the 45-minute journey to his West Kitcham Farmhouse in St Giles on the Heath, near the Cornish border, he sets out his credentials as a potential business heavyweight by sharing his no-nonsense views on how the food and drink industry should shake itself up. They include the view that Tesco should give up a third of its car parks to local producers once a month, that big corporations like Unilever should throw money at small independent “nursery” companies (“small producers are
the only ones showing any real innovation”) and how a recent claim by Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, that ethnic minorities are made to feel unwelcome in the countryside is “bollocks”.
The man locals affectionately refer to as ‘The Black Farmer’ appeared on the Devonshire horizon seven years ago after the success of his London-based marketing and PR agency enabled him to buy his current country residence (the father of three also owns a family home in Battersea, south west London).
Not content merely to turn the dilapidated farmhouse, which stands in 30 acres of land, into a weekend retreat, he set about making it a going concern, re-introducing sheep and cattle and employing a farm manager.
Now the working farm is the basis for his own food brand, The Black Farmer, which he recently launched with a three-strong range of sausages that have secured a listing in 18 Asda stores in the south west. The £2.29 premium sizzlers, made from local pork, including Emmanuel-Jones’ own stock, have already been honoured by the Taste of the West judges and in the prestigious Taste Awards. Emmanuel-Jones has also brought out a range of premium dipping and cooking sauces, under the same banner, that are doing the rounds on the upmarket delicatessen circuit.
Despite this initial success, Emmanuel-Jones still has things to get off his chest as he fires up the farmhouse stove to fry some of his prize-winning sausages. One bugbear, for example, has been dealing with the multiples - and all of them except Asda have annoyed him at one point or another.
“A lot of people in the food industry are lazy,” opines Emmanuel-Jones. “Buyers, for example, are always looking for the quick fix. If I present what I think is a great product and then Wall’s goes in with a multi-million pound budget, the buyer goes for the option that grows his bottom line more quickly.
“These supermarket guys on the front line are actually shrinking markets as categories get down to three or four big players. It’s so short-sighted.”
Another source of annoyance has been the multiples’ claims to support local producers and the cumbersome way that they operate. He says Waitrose’s claims to help local brands are over-egged (“they’ve hardly got any stores down here anyway”), while Tesco, with whom he is currently in talks, is not let off the hook, either. “I saw the manager at our local Tesco in Launceston three times, but she wasn’t interested because everything has to go through head office. There should be a system where stores can trial locally produced goods. The multiples claim to offer choice but it’s often nonsense.”
Big brand owners also come in for criticism. Advertising, he says, is “lazy” and too readily jumps on the latest bandwagon or reality TV craze.
Emmanuel-Jones is coming at this with a credible amount of knowledge. As a TV producer, he spent the best part of a decade at the BBC working on an array of programmes and, latterly, set up Commsplus, a marketing and PR agency he runs with his wife Michaela, the clients of which have included some of the most innovative new brands of the last decade, including Loyd Grossman, Kettle Chips and Cobra Beer.
“All those brands had an instinct that they were bringing something new to the market that people would want. Great brands are about instinct, not research. Some of the greatest brands would never have survived if they had been researched.
“Can you imagine someone like Unilever or Premier Foods coming up with the idea for a Black Farmer brand? There would be terror in the boardroom in an industry that is full of white, middle-class manufacturers.”
Despite this last statement, he insists that he is not playing the race card with his brand,but is celebrating Britain’s multi-cultural heritage. “I want this to be a national, multi-cultural brand. It is about great-tasting food that has been brought to market by someone who happens to be black.”
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