Paul Hargreaves: Making It Work

When it comes to getting your business to stand out from the crowd, the key thing is to stick your head above the parapet. Wholesaling is quite an old fashioned industry – buying and selling has been done for years – and I have always felt that whilst it’s a thoroughly numbers-driven business, you can still be creative. I have always tried to be innovative and creative in the way we do business, and would attribute some of our success to that.

I’d like to see more innovation in our market – there are a lot of items which are basically rehashes of products which are already available, and I and buyers want to see something completely new. BecauThe secrets to Paul Hargreaves, chief executive of Cotswold Fayre’s success? Hard work, delegation and gut instinctse there are more independent retailers than there used to be, I think it’s important for them to differentiate themselves from each other as well as from the supermarkets. I’d like there to be more theatre with people making products in front of customers, including in-house butcheries which I’ve happily seen a growth in recently. It’s about educating customers and children about food, and telling the story of foods in-store is key to that.

I would say that the speciality food and drink market has reacted to the generally negative retail market in an inversely proportional way. Our fastest years of growth were during the times of deepest recession, and when the economy was doing better prior to and since the recession, growth slowed. In my opinion our sector is definitely recession-proof. Waitrose is in a similar position to our sector – it started to show strong growth in around 2008, in opposition to market conditions. People go out for more meals when they have more money and eat at home less, so to an extent the retail world suffers when the economy is doing well.

The sector’s big enough for brands to exist to just supply the speciality food sector, whereas 10 years ago they would need to supply multiples too to make it work. If you wanted to grow beyond a certain size you had to have at least a few of your products in supermarkets as well as independents – whether own-label or your own brand. I’d like to see more larger brands being wholeheartedly in the speciality food sector rather than just dabbling in it.

Too many people hold onto things they’d be better off entrusting to someone else. Also, we spend a high percentage of our lives working, so if you can’t enjoy it then what’s the point? I’m profit-driven in terms of the business, and that’s in order to feed and educate more children in Kenya. Taking that out, just doing something well and having happy and motivated staff is key.

Read the full interview in Speciality Food’s January issue, out 4th January