The Interview: Monika Linton

I’ve learned to keep pushing the benchmark up, to never settle for the lowest common denominator. We don’t want to just meet the market – just because a percentage of the public wants cheap food, doesn’t mean we have to go there. I don’t think food needs to be elitist in that good food is only for the people who can afford it, I think people can be taught that there are ways of consuming better food that don’t necessarily mean it costing more. Eating a lot of meat does not make you healthier, but by having a small amount of meat with some lentils you can have a really hearty meal that’s inexpensive. It’s a case of re-educating people about what’s actually nourishing. Fine food may have seemed expensive to some people in the past, but the sector is now promoting healthy, educational messages – it’s no longer all about foie gras, it’s about ancient grains, dairy-free milks and ingredients from across the globe.

I find the complexity and cost of logistics and bureaucracy within the food industry shocking. When a customer complains about the price of something, they have no idea of what percentage of that price goes to things the system insists on. A while ago a café owner received a complaint on his business’s TripAdvisor page from a customer taken aback by the cost of a drink. His reply was superb, justifying the cost by explaining all the behind the scenes expenses – customer service comes at a price!

Packaging and labelling is another issue in the industry which concerns me, as on the one hand you have more and more detail being included on the labels, but on the other there’s no policing of the message the labelling may give. For example, if the packaging features an image of a pig in a beautiful field, you would assume that the meat would be free-range even if it’s not. We came across difficulties recently, as we were told that we could describe items in our range as ‘Product of Spain’ even if the raw ingredients came from elsewhere and the product was only packaged in Spain. If it’s not grown in Spain, we don’t want to say that it was – we want to say ‘Product of Peru, Packed in Spain’. Producers have different pressures and criteria for different markets and are faced with many challenges (Spanish hazelnuts, white asparagus, saffron, piquillo peppers, capers, fresh oranges plus many other products all have cheaper crops from abroad that undermine the Spanish version in terms of price and quality). We are not so naive that we do not accept this as a reality, but where we can have transparency we prefer to label accordingly – we have managed to insist on this within our own range labelling. It’s a real talking point across the whole food industry at the moment –  where do you draw the line when it comes to transparency with origin and processing? Our aim is to improve integrity and transparency whenever we can.

Read the full interview in the June issue of Speciality Food. Download it here