Jonathan Warburton, The King of Crumpets: Building a British Icon One Loaf at a Time | The Warburton Story | Extraordinary Life Stories

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1:19This last week, we'll have made and sold 17 million crumpets. I have no bloody idea who's buying all these, but I love them all to death. Tell me, who is Jonathan Warburton? Jonathan Warburton is a baker from Bolton in Lancashire. There are five businesses in Britain that sell at retail over a billion pounds of product per year. Mondelez, which is Cadbury, and that's American. Coca-Cola, American. PepsiCo, which includes Walkers, crisps, American. Nestle, Swiss, and Warby's. That's a proper British success story. But to have got to our position now where, you know, me at the end of the fifth generation and now moving into the sixth generation, but I've had a bloody good career along the way.

2:08And a lot of fun. Yeah. Let's talk about the fun bit. Thinking of using Jason Statham in the advertising, of which my daughter went, ooh, yeah, yeah. And Kim went, who's he? Somebody said, well, I'll tell you what, we should really punch the lights out. Well, why don't we get Sylvester Stallone to do it? I was like, Sylvester Stallone, is he going to come to ball and make an ad? And the rest is history.

2:44Jonathan Warburton, looking forward to this. Thank you. Good. Good to be here. Tell me, who is Jonathan Warburton? uh jonathan warburton is a baker from bolton in lancashire and um yeah that's that's pretty much if if anybody asks me what i what i do that's my answer instantly instantly relatable to countless people watching this and you probably had warburton's crumb fixer bread i hope so breakfast yeah yeah yeah fifth generation i am well yeah i am the fifth generation or i am part of the fifth generation um they it and we've also got the sixth generation just joining the business which I know we're going to talk about but it's it was uh started in 1876 in a grocer shop in Bolton in Lancashire um now the glib answer is that we haven't been very ambitious because my office is about 400 yards from where it started and in a way that tells you a lot about the business is the fact that we're really deeply rooted in our sort of culture and values of the north of England.

3:50So much so I have a northern chip on both shoulders to keep me nice and balanced. But it runs through the DNA of the organisation. Quite rare as well, right? Very rare. So looking at the sort of boring stats, if you take family businesses, only about 3 % get past the third generation. And I say to the business that when I go around the business, I'm sort of talking about this fact and say, look, if you think how many businesses have been started since 1876, which is 22 years before the Ball War, it makes you realize to have sustained it for multi-generations and to have had many, many ups and downs, but have got to our position now where, you know, me at the end of the fifth generation from the fact that, you know, my career has been spent in the business and now moving into the sixth generation.

4:52It's sort of like it becomes such a part of the makeup of our whole business, being a family business. And it's something that we feel we've worked very hard at using it as a competitive advantage to try and add value to the proposition to the consumer. Now, it's a bit like, you know, if I was a bullion dealer, you wouldn't really, ooh, do I want a family bullion dealer? I might want a big, ugly bank to look after my bullion. But a baker, you have this, you probably would like to think a baker's still a thing, a person. Funnily enough, bread bakers tend to be men. and cake bakers tend to be women.

5:39And I don't know why that is, apart from Mr. Kipling, who's a bloke, and so that rides the cooking horses through what I say. And so we have always been men in our business. You know, it was great-grandfather who was the... He worked for his aunt and uncle who had the shop. And my great-great-grandfather was a... I think it was affectionately known as a cotton waste merchant. Bolton had 200 working cotton mills at the turn of the 20th century. And a cotton waste merchant, which was probably a fancy name for a rag and bone man, but it was probably quite lucrative because with all those cotton mills, he had a whole raft of kids.

6:24And then great-grandfather was the enterprising one. And then he had five kids and my grandfather and his twin brother ended up, the business ended up with two. And then after the, they ran it through this from the 30s through to the 50s. And then my father and his two brothers and his cousin, there were five in my dad's generation, four men. And of course, in a Lancashire business, the women would never have gone anywhere near a manufacturing business. Probably wouldn't have been allowed to, let alone, even if they'd had the choice to. So that then developed into my dad's generation. And all my knowledge of the business really comes from listening to my father as a kid.

7:13And then I went in. I went to local school in Bolton. I think my dad moved me before the school did. and I ended up going away to boarding school down in Somerset, which was, I mean, it was without any shadow of a doubt the game changer for me in a positive way. It was a highly unusual environment. Even in the 1970s, they had 63 nationalities in this place. I think somebody from Scotland I'd consider as a Lancastrian was foreign. And that opened my eyes and then I left. I didn't go to university. It was just not for me. And became a sales rep for a couple of years, living in bed and breakfast all over the country, and then joined the business.

8:02I joined Warburton in my early 20s. Were you almost expected to join the business? Do you know what I mean? Because there's a succession element there. Did you feel that pressure? No, I have been asked that question many, many times. And I don't have any scars of dad going, well, of course, you're going to go in the business. I think when I got asked to go into the business, it was an opportunity that came about where I had been living as this sales rep in bed and breakfast for 18 months all over the UK on my own as a 20-year-old. I'd probably be about 22. And this, we were, as a company, we're talking of now 40-odd years ago, 45 years ago.

8:52and we were in the process of just starting to deal with supermarkets because the whole explosion of supermarkets was taking off in the UK. It's not that long ago, you know, when there were loads of regional supermarkets and I had a bit of experience because of the job I'd done previously and I was so glad to get out of the bed and breakfast lifestyle, which wasn't very glamorous, and so I jumped at the chance to go back to the business. You were ready for it. I was. You came with a certain amount of experience as well. Yeah, I mean, I was, but I was completely wet behind the ears. I was 22, you know, and then I had five years of finding my feet before I sort of found the right position for me.

9:39And at the same time, my two cousins, Brett and Ross, who I've spent all my career working with, Brett joined when I did. He'd gone, you know, his background was, the way we split the business up is commercial was sort of in my bailiwick, manufacturing was in Brett's, and the sort of operational, the financial side, pension stuff like that, Ross looked after. So we were very lucky that we were complementary to each other. Sure. And we were pals without living in each other's pockets. and so I'm brought up in an environment where the the business was more important than the individual so you have to get on and our fathers did it and we've done it and we certainly certainly I have made sure with my twin boys who have joined the business recently that you know the business you you know now we employ 5 ,000 people so you're responsible for a lot of people's livelihoods So if you two fall out because you don't like something he's done, you've got to remember it isn't just the ego of you two.

10:44And we had that. And it's held us in very good stead. And it's part of the culture in the values of the world. You know what they say. Early Bird gets the ultimate 30A vacation rental. Wait, they don't say that? They do now. Book early and save over$530 on select homes for week-long stays with Vrbo. That's the way to 30A. Refreshing Wild Cherry Cola meets Smooth Cream.

11:14The treat you deserve. Pepsi Wild Cherry and Cream. Treat yourself. And you were brought up around that. That's a really important set of values to be brought up around where managing that ego and any success that you clearly had and what will come to that is measured by the fact that you're actually, there's almost a succession element to it, isn't there? There's an element of your living right now, building and scaling a company that is not in any way, some people would be looking to have an exit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Whereas this is almost like safeguarding. Yeah. Is that how you see it? Very much so.

11:52Yeah. So you are, I mean, we've done okay. We've had a good run for years and years. But I'd like to think it wasn't by good luck. It was predominantly by hard work and a bit of good fortune. But I think that you, I realized very early on, and I think I can speak for the three of us, that if we did really well as a business, we as shareholders would be able to do well out of it. Now, I don't know how much money people need to have a really interesting and enjoyable life. We all would have a number that it might be. but if you run a great company that's profitable and investing you you can pay yourself you the and the dividend stream is attractive then you kind of get the best of both worlds you have a really interesting career you can see where you can create something for the future but you're living pretty well and I'll tell you I'll tell you a little story that one of the guys who I met when we first went into the marketing of the business was a friend of mine at the time.

13:04I've lost touch with him now. I call him Adam Morgan, a great guy. And he told me this story about a pal of his, and I don't know how, it may be half true this, but it's a great, the message is really important. And the culture has always been, and you highlighted it, that people are successful, and then somebody comes and offers them, We'll save for this conversation 20 million quid. And you go, 20 million quid? I can do what I want. And so this guy used to go to the Caribbean on holiday. And he decided that, oh, I wish I had a place in Barbados. So he built a business, and somebody came along and offered him whatever he wanted for his business.

13:45And the first thing him and his wife did, right, we're going to buy a villa in Barbados or Antigua, wherever it was. And we're going to move out. Young family, we're going to go out. I've made it. I'm 40 years old. I'm going to go and do it. And then three months later, he wrote back to the pal of mine and said, when you get there, there's no there there. Sold his villa and came back to start another business. So people lose sight of the fact that the whole, in my opinion, the whole fun is the journey. and if the journey is interesting and enjoyable you'll get well rewarded for it if your aim in life is to build a pot of 20 million quid you might well do it but you'll be bored rigid once you get the money because otherwise you'll start spending it then you'll get paralyzed by the fact that you're you know you're running out of money so that's always been with me is that i've had the best of both worlds i'm i live very nicely you know we don't we don't we're quite low-key but we live very nicely but i've had a bloody good career along the way and a lot of fun yeah let's talk about the fun bit because i was uh we're filming in the landmark hotel it's having uh breakfast with our mutual friend alan and uh your face was in there with a brilliant uh marketing ad that been related with samuel l jackson yeah you need to explain that and i want to know the backstory yeah this awesome marketing so when i came back to the business in the in the mid 80s early mid 80s my father was still around he'd be in his very early 60s and um we at the time this is pre-satellite tv this is pre-sky and uh we all know you're you're young enough just probably to remember you know granada tv yorkshire tv tine t's tv whatever you were down you know uh down south and we were so we we were a lancashire business literally the granada tv region was the footprint of our business we had three bakeries in bolton uh alderman burnley and a little tiny bakery in black in in blackpool and that's all we did but you could advertise in that region and your ads wouldn't go into Yorkshire because you didn't want to waste the money if it was going into Yorkshire.

16:14So we were doing a little bit of localized advertising and I came back in and thought, of which the guy who did it, who was a great chap, he was a salesman and he organized it and I'm like, would an advertising agency, would it bake its own bread or would it go to a baker? Well, of course it'd go to a baker. So what on earth are we doing writing in the ads? one of the directors of the business who was a who was a great guy called Bob Ivo and I and I sort of went to talk to Bob and said look we're gonna now it suited me I was a single guy in my 20s I'd been as ways as a down at boarding school in Somerset a lot of my mates had moved to London because they were from the south I think oh great excuse I can go to London and I can do a job so what you did at the time was you went to see the advertising agency authority and they would say, well, they'd ask you what you're trying to achieve.

17:08You tell them. And so they'd say, well, we recommend try this, this, and this. These agencies. So I wrote them a letter. You've never heard of me. My name's Jonathan Warbton. We have a bakery business in Lancashire. And we'd like to do some TV advertising. Only one of the three agencies bothered to respond. and it could only be an ad agency because they were called Still Price Court, Twyvie and D'Souza. I mean, they couldn't be plumbers, could they?

17:40Anyway, so chairman rang me up, Chris Still, great guy. And we got on really well together. And so they got the job. And one of the great conversations that I've had in my career happened very shortly after the joining. So I've been brought up in a household where product quality has been the mantra. My dad was obsessed with it. He was probably of his generation the best baker of bakery products in the UK on big bits of kit. And ours have big bits of kit. My dad knew how to make it. And our bread's shaped slightly different than other people. And we're the biggest users of Canadian wheat in Europe, which is the best bread-making wheat in the world.

18:24and we have a grist, blah, blah, blah, and all that sort of stuff. So I go in and see the creative director, Mike Court, who's a hell of a nice fella. Sadly, he's no longer with us. And I said to Mike, a bit like I'm doing this with you now, I said, look, we're Canadian wheat and we have better bakeries and our tins are shaped differently and we do this. And he sat there and he said, Jonathan, that's really interesting, but it's probably the dullest story I've ever heard. And I was absolutely crestfallen. It was like, wait. That's your product, right? You're proud of it. And he said, we want to use, we still think we should use the family.

19:02We'd like to use your family and preferably your mother and father. Now, at the time, for the older people watching this program, there were two guys who were advertising businesses in Britain that many people remember. One was a chap called Bernard Matthews, and he had bootiful turkeys, and he used to sit there in his stately home in Norfolk. And the other guy was a chap called Victor Kayam, who was an American who bought Remington razors. And it was an electric razor, and he sat there like I'm sitting there, and he said, I like the product so much, I bought the company. And my mum and dad, who couldn't have been more self-effacing, went, look, because you've asked us, we'll do it.

19:46But we will only do it if we're part of the joke. so we're in on the joke if people laugh with us great but if people laugh at us we would never do another one we made three ads for for no money I mean it's when I think what explosion of expenditure for no money and one of them was incredibly good and successful, incredibly simple. And then that gave us the confidence. Over a period of 20 years, yeah, it probably was the thick end of 20 years, maybe a bit less. We kind of lost our way. We'd used the family sometime. I did a couple of things when I was in my late 20s, which I wouldn't, I'd be embarrassed how on earth I got taught into doing it.

20:45But then in the, we changed agencies in about 2010. I got, a guy used to write to me or ring me up very regularly. You need to come, eventually I got so sick. He was great, love you fella. And eventually I got so sick, I thought, well, it's easy to see him. And I think we were in the process. we needed to make a change and our then head of marketing who's still with us and she said look leave it with me i'll sort it and then we'll make a decision and we went with with a company called wcrs which is white collins rutherford and scott who were just going through a sale of their business um and i they wanted to use the family again but they wanted to do it in a different way so they said well look I'll tell you what we'll do leave it with us we'll come away and come with a proposal and I'm a bit uncomfortable about this I don't know how much I don't feel in the meantime in 2010 and 2011 we had two very bad winters relatively speaking and I remember a shopkeeper in the Cairngorms wrote to me and said Dear Mr.

22:01Warburton, I thought you ought to know that our village was shut off for five days. The only delivery driver that got through was a Warburton spread van. And I remember taking that letter and going to the creative director and saying, there's got to be an idea for an ad in this. Thinking, being a careful northerner, that we would get our own drivers to do the driving. after numerous false starts, and the guy who was doing the PR at the time said, you can't, we need a star to do this. You've got to be famous. We need someone that's going to make you famous. After numerous false starts, they came up, there was a series of movies called The Transporter at the time, Jason Statham, who'd started to make his name on the back of Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels.

22:56and I remember them suggesting that we should use him as the driver because of the transporter movies. And so I went home to my wife and daughter and said, Charlotte would have been about 20 and Kim would have been late 40s, maybe only 50s. Probably late 40s. And saying to them, we're thinking of using Jason Statham in the advertising, of which my daughter went, ooh, yeah. yeah and Kim went who's he and I thought oh actually that's target market Kim's right in the sweet spot for consumers went back to them and said look sorry it's not past the the Warby household test and then somebody said well tell you what what we should really punch the lights out we'll get well why don't we get Sylvester Stallone to do it I was like Sylvester Stallone He's going to come to Bolton and make an ad.

23:52And the rest is history. He did. He was fantastic. Great fun. He was a very, very nice guy. He was what you would hope he would be. Interested. And that then led to the Muppets and Peter Kay and, you know, and, and, and, and. Morgan Freeman. Morgan Freeman. I love that. It's been a great, it's been a, every time we do one, there's no, you know, with Fiamma South, there's no way we can do it better than that. And not every time, but the bar was there with Stallone and it's just gone up and up. And of course, what happens is that they all see their mates doing it. And in fact, Morgan Freeman said to me on the latest ad, wait till I tell Sam, who's Sam Jackson.

24:43And they're sort of becoming a Hollywood badge of honor to be in the Warbiz app.

25:12deed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Your planet is now marked for death. Marvel Studios' The Fantastic Four First Steps is now streaming on Disney+. We will protect you. As a family. Light them up, Johnny! Marvel's first family is certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes. That is fantastic. And critics say it's one of the best superhero movies of all time. Marvel Studios' The Fantastic Four First Steps, now streaming on Disney+. Rated PG-13. What time has it been? It's Clubroom time! Yeah. One common denominator though in them right now is you. It's me. Exactly. The star. Well, I don't know about it.

25:53I think I've got away with it, John. I think I've got away with it. Do you know what I love though? In the same way that I've had a bit of time outside of this film with you is you can tell you're enjoying it. In the ad, there's a tongue in cheek. It's serious. It's marketing. You're spending a lot of money on it and you're reaching a lot of people, but you're enjoying it. I think that you, if you'd have been at the Park Road Junior School Christmas play, I might have got the part of a tree if I was lucky. I wouldn't have gone anywhere near it. But there's something about, because I'm trying to play myself, I'm not trying to be something I'm not.

26:36and generally speaking I haven't found it I haven't actually found it that difficult I don't mind I mean you've been in in studios where they're making films or commercials you know there are 20 people behind the camera and you can't move and somebody in my case is in putting powder on my head every take because it's a bit shiny and you know you've got you literally can't move it doesn't bother me and i don't know why i just because i think i'm being myself authenticity yeah yeah exactly yeah and i'm not trying to say it for you but i think there's an element that it's like right now this is the the brief for us to be having this conversation is be yourself bring yourself and you're very good at doing that i'd love to i'd love to go back to what you said about the um kind of almost the usp if you like of uh warbitons and how you have uh You know, all the sort of stats, if you like.

27:32And I'd love to open that up, the numbers, because it's a proper British success story. I'd love to champ in now. What are the numbers? Well, we make her. The way that we look at it is if you take a product like crumpets, for example, which has become a bit of a national treasure, which we got into almost by default about 30 odd years ago, because crumpets were only ever sold between November and March. and we used to buy them in and somebody would make them for us and we'd put our brand on it because Warburton's is very unusual. We only make products that go out with the Warburton's on it. We don't make any own label for retailers.

28:10Nothing wrong with that. It's just not our choice. We want to do a branded business. And we started with, a guy had built a crumpet business. It hadn't worked. He rang me up. I want to sell the business and we kind of went, well, yeah, we'll buy a plant. We'll buy one plant. small plant put it in our bakery in her only um and over the years based on the fact that we strive with absolutely everything we make to make better quality products than anybody else does now we don't always achieve that but that's been this unrelenting pursuit of excellence fundamentally bread isn't bread's very very inexpensive very compared with the rest of the world.

28:56The UK bakery is very cheap, most of it. And so what we try and do is make very high quality at a fair price in vast quantities. This last week, we'll have made and sold 17 million crumpets. I have no bloody idea who's buying all these, but I love them all to death. and the volumes that are, you know, the sum of these lines have surprised us where you think, well, who, I mean, let's say there's 70 million people. That's almost one in three is eating a Warby's Crumpet every week. I think it's fantastic. It's massive. It's massive. And then, so we're making, if you look at the sort of, there are five companies in Britain with a retail in the fast-moving consumer goods world so I'm the my world there are five businesses in Britain that sell at retail over a billion pounds of product per year Mondelez which is Cadbury and that's American coca-cola American PepsiCo which includes walkers crisps American Nestle swiss and warbies so it's a proper british success story and we didn't ever set out to do that what we set out to do was have a simple set of values and run a very good business and then it's happened i wouldn't say it's happened completely by default but the primary aim was never to be a billion pound brand the primary aim to was to have a well-invested profitable growing business and the rest will take care of itself and so that it are you a golfer bad okay but you've probably heard the phrase of of you know driving for show and putting for dough well our you know top line's great you know our revenues 800 million great just shy of but it's the bottom line that really matters because we as a family put our money where our mouth is because we're reinvesting in the business all the time you think one of my philosophies is that you have it as an organization it's no different for you as it will be for me or any individual is you have a responsibility to innovate yourself out of existence because if you don't in my opinion if you don't do that somebody's doing it to you now i was going to ask you how you stay relevant how you stay current and you're you're this is this is really interesting to me so there's no complacency no absolutely not i mean my my twin boys at harry jack who have joined the business now and jim they're ross's son they're all 32 33 harry jack are 33 in two weeks time and i said i was doing a presentation to one of our businesses with harry yesterday and i said to the to the guys i said what would i give to be 32 again you know because the opportunities for the business it's because you've got to when i joined we were 95 a sliced loaf of bread 40 years later we're 45 sliced bread everything else is bagels and crumpets and pancakes and thins and wraps and pitas and and waffles and so the diversification in the so if we're not creating ourselves somebody's doing it to us and that's open that just on that that test and learn because what if i go into a supermarket now and i see the warper warbiton's range if you like it'll be the ones that have made it through to have effectively gone gone into the world of the consumer and being well received and so on but there must be so much that goes into what we don't see where there's been things that haven't necessarily worked and i want to know why some of the things that are so now synonymous do um one of the things i have I've learnt over my career is, I mean, it's a bit obvious when you say it, but it wasn't obvious to me 30 years ago, is it's all about timing.

33:17You've got to have a great product. So the consumer has to want to buy your product because it's so good. But if you get the timing wrong, and a real example of this was 35 years ago, I did some work at a big trade show in Dusseldorf called Anuga. And I went, I don't know how I ended up doing it, but I went to work to help a bagel business called Petrovskis, who were based in St. Louis, Missouri. we knew them through industry contacts but i thought i'll be good if they asked me would i like to go to the stand in the new girl and i went and worked there and it was a really fascinating so i came back absolutely buzzing about bagels and how this was the future this is 35 years ago and persuaded my head of technical who was also very enthusiastic that we should launch bagels built a bagel plant only small but built a bagel plant and they had launched them this is not quite true but it's a good tale and then not long after launch them I got a I got a letter from a local consumer we're still in letters because we're still we're pre-email I think and basically it said yes is a Mrs.

34:42Biggins from Halliwell Road in Bolton Dear Mr. Wolverton, I've just bought your latest product. I thought you ought to know it's got a hole in the middle. I can't. Timing is everything. We now have two, three bagel plants making six million bagels a week, give or take. But we were 30 years, 25 years ahead of the game. There is a phrase which I'm quite fond of, which I think is really relevant for NPD. which is I want to be at the leading edge, not the bleeding edge. And the bleeding edge is often the great idea that's just at the wrong time or not quite executed well. And I think we're also very good at launching products that aren't perfect because we'll modify them as we're going along.

35:37But what we want to do is get them out quickly. Not waiting. Again, testing and learning, but real time. yeah testing in real time talking about holes crumpets you explain the holes in the comforts so how you make a crumpet is it it it's difficult to describe on this but it's a it's a it's a long it's a an oven that goes onto a hot plate at the the hot plate is the oven and let's say for this conversation they're 11 10 wide there's 10 rings in the line and it goes down and and a hot batter A batter drops into the hot plate, into the ring, and hits the hot plate, and it does that. And it's true that all Warburton's bagels have 300 or more holes in them.

36:26And if they don't, they get rejected, because we have scanners that can do it. But somebody could, I would go out and count them as 298. Well, don't shoot the messenger. we've got approximately 300 holes in the crumping they're actually flutes so if you can imagine what a flute looks like because as the as the batter hits the hot plate it does that and they literally do that and so it's the porosity of the batter which is all to do with the flour it's the kit you make it on it's the type of flour that you use so it's actually quality control oh completely it absolutely and it's and it's how it eats because nobody ever eats a crumpet without something on it a they never eat it without toasting it or they shouldn't and b they never eat it they're not going to toast it and eat it they're going to put butter on it they're going to put and the holes create that beautiful the butter will drop in or the peanut butter or the marmite i'm getting hungry now and that but that's part of the experience but there are i mean give a take yeah there'll be a 300 holes in everyone i've always wanted to know that yeah yeah and And that's absolute truth.

37:34Yeah. Let's go to succession. So you're 32 years old. So the point being that there's a life experience that goes in before they're coming into the business. Because it feels like there's a lot of empathy there. You had your own chance. Yeah. And there was no pressure as well. I just need to know how that in succession has been for you. So we said to all of our next generation that we would like you. We think it's the right thing for you to have between three and five years external experience. You don't necessarily have to go to university, but you have to do a proper job. You can't just go and be a surfer for five years and then come back and go, can I have a job, please?