How I Made Millions Supplying The Worlds Best Restaurants Fruit & Veg - The River Cafe, Per Se, The Devonshire

36:34And it really has always grounded the fact that we deal with nature and that we deal with farmers and the weather and soil has always been very grounding and has rooted us in in a level of realism and and being a bit more human which then ties to the second piece which just quickly on that so so i love that it's almost like the um the rigor the rigorous nurse that's right of saying it of like this is the way we're going to do things and like another thing i took from your from your book mate is like always taking the hard route in some in some respects that's what i gathered and it's like applying that to this it's like to go the extra mile you know but when what i found um what sparked my curiosity is like the compromise because like how how did you navigate that because you've got sort of like the uh sort of the perfect situation but sometimes you have to go down the adjacent possible because you've still got a business to run like how do you navigate that tension it's a tough one it's a it's um i don't know if i have there's no there's no hard and fast answer there's no silver bullet that you're like, this is how you do it, I think.

37:41And I actually asked, I had the benefit of having lunch with Yvon Chouinard, who's the founder of Patagonia. And I asked him the question. I was like, what's your take on compromise? He actually told me that he's never had to compromise, and then he backtracked. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He was like, the good thing is I never compromised. I think in one way he hasn't. He was looking at it from, I've always done what I felt was right, right or wrong. He never had outside investors. And he was always able to just do what he felt was the right thing to do for Patagonia. But he then did say, compromise is important.

38:17And you need to find that balance. You need to figure out what are the things that you're willing to do and not do. Is there an example where you've had to compromise? Yeah. I mean, the fact that we sell a range of industrially farmed produce, like industrial carrots and onions. the reason why we do that is because it makes the economic model work a hell of a lot better so the way that we rationalize that compromise is to say okay we're selling a product that we're not proud of we're selling a product that you know you could argue is not moving the food system in the right direction it's part of the problem of the food system but there are a number of positives that come out of it within within a company like Natura and I say with it within a company like because it then all depends what you do with that positive economic outcome.

39:02What we do is we reinvest that into the farm fund. We reinvest that into farms that we work with, that we support their ability to scale. So all of the resources that benefit from this more efficient economic model, right, where we make more money by virtue that we provide a better service to restaurants, which are also buying the industrially farmed carrots and onions, we then choose to divert that money to further the improvement of the food system. The other thing that it does is it builds volume in a range of product, right, that we can then go and improve the sourcing on. So if I buy a truckload of onions a week, right, I have the volume then to go back into my supply chain and say, okay, how can I improve the sourcing of these onions so that they don't continue to come from this industrially farmed system that we don't even know who's farming them, right?

39:55With a lot of, you know, negative inputs into the farming. So we build the volume up and we have examples of that. We've done it with leeks, with a farm called Lincroft in the north of England. So all of our leeks now come from his farm. They're directly sourced and they're farmed organically. It's larger scale organic, but it's a million times better than leaks that we can find on the market. We wouldn't have been able to do that if we had zero basic leak business, right? Zero commodity leak business. And we just went to Linkroft and said, hey, like, we think that we can sell a truckload of these leaks, but we don't have the volume yet.

40:37It wouldn't work. So that's why the, as an organization, if you have, if you're seeking the right outcomes, you can take this compromise to really move the food, in our case, move the food system forward faster, but then utilize the benefits, the positive outcomes of that to actually further the kind of work that you do. A company that wouldn't care about it would take the extra money they make out of the commodity product and continue buying in the same way or find a cheaper alternative for that product. Yeah, it's like going for the, I think this is what Rory Sutherland taught me. It's like you want the theoretical perfect, but nine times out of 10, you're going to have to go for the adjacent possible.

41:18And as long as you're re re putting that back into the bigger picture, then that's how change happens. Um, so, so looping this back. So we sort of, we were talking about, um, human nature and business. And you said the first thing is the rig rigorousness, um, being in nature gives you sort of like a human, um, humanness to the way you do things. But then you said there was a second thing, which was, which is that I learned, it took me a while to realize it. that one of the ways that we achieve great flavor as Natura is not purely by finding the product and, you know, carefully bringing it into our warehouses and then out to customers.

42:03But that's all fundamentally important. But I realized that it was actually the human connections across the supply chain that really drive flavor. So I started to really understand the importance of humanity within the supply chain and the value of those human relationships and how fundamental they are. And that, I think, is something that is really important in any business, is to value the human connections, is to value the human relationships and how critical they are to the success of an organization, whether it's the building of culture within a company, which is really what allows you to thrive.

42:40It's the suppliers you work with. It's your customers. and it's just generally, again, grounding you. It's like this, you know, the fact that you can't, well, you can, but the fact that selling beautiful peaches year round is not an option. Well, likewise, and that grounds you, right? It slows you down in a way. Well, building human relationships also slows you down, right? So whilst we have great ambition and want to grow and we want to, you know, we want to grow quickly and grow as much as we can. And, you know, we have this healthy ambition that we want to deliver a lot of impact and work with more farms around the world, we are very grounded by nature and by the fact that we are very human.

43:20And we need to first and foremost build really solid and healthy human relationships across the whole ecosystem and the whole community that we build in each one of the regions. How, yeah, because again, I ask all these questions selfishly. So I'm like, at the minute, a bit neurotic about growth. Like I'm like wanting everything to grow, like constantly checking, like is it growing is it growing and it's like fucking hell mate just chill out chill out a little bit but I think um there's what what have you learned about going slow um because you've been doing this what 20 years 20 years yeah like I think there's there's definitely something to be said for like endurance um in business to be around for 20 years like what have you learned about going slow and and actually endurance um and also keeping the joy in the works I think an obsession with growth can actually take all the joy out of what you're trying to do.

44:12You're kind of, it muddles your day-to-day sort of being, if that makes sense. Yeah, it definitely can. It definitely muddles and it can get in the way. And it can very quickly get into an unhealthy obsession for growth. Yeah. I think I've learned, you know, my grandfather, I remember him telling me that you need to do something for a long time to get good at it. And that wasn't my thinking when I was younger, so before Natura. And even at Natura, I remember vividly, we were still in Battersea at the time, so it was, I don't know, three, four, five years in, and we had done quite a bit with Natura by then.

44:54I certainly felt that. Were you Comic Garden Market? Were you near that? Right next door to it. oh where uh it used to be in front of the cats and dogs home the battersea cats and dogs okay yeah yeah industrial estate which i think has been torn down now it was called have luck industrial estate yeah i do you know harvey and brockless the cheese yeah yeah yeah i used to be a delivery man for them okay i spent all my time around that yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah so sorry your grandfather taught you so he said you know you've got at least 10 years and i you know as a you know as a much younger individual at the time, yeah, kind of get bored.

45:27I get bored of stuff very easily. So, you know, every two, three years, you're like, I mean, in fairness, I stayed four years at my first job, almost five years at Merrill Lynch. So it wasn't that I was jumping around, but when I was at Natura four or five years in, we were still not profitable. And I don't know, I got to a point where I was like, maybe I should go do something else. I'm kind of getting tired to this. And there was a voice inside me. And a part of it was my grandfather was like, I haven't given this 10 years, man. Like I've, I've, I got to see this through. I've got at least this thing needs to, needs to be profitable, right?

46:00If I leave now, I'll be happy with what we've done, but I won't be as happy as I, as I know I could be, if at least we get to profitability. That was the only time throughout the 20 years that I, that I, those doubts were in my mind about maybe, maybe giving up. How did you push through? I know you sort of said you've got to give it 10 years but like what how did you get through that period because there'll be a lot of people listening to that who are at that i mean i think um paul graham calls it the trough of sorrow right so at the beginning you've got all this excitement for your brand it's your baby you're like this is buzzing your tits off like you're not in merrill lynch but you get this period it is about four five six years where you're where you have actually grown it massively but you want to be here and it that's where a lot of people sack it off like how did you actually get through that i I believed.

46:48I never lost the belief in what we could do. And that there was a market for what we were doing. And I think I relied on, I think doing what you love is, I know it can be a bit of a luxury sometimes, but if you can do what you love in life, it transforms your existence. It certainly did for me. And I think that the fact that I did what I loved, like I never stopped loving it. I still do. Going out and, you know, tasting product, going to a market, you know, visiting a farm. That love of it was always there. But pushing through those difficult, that trough of sorrow, which is a great way to put it, was through belief.

47:36Through belief. Yeah. I listened to, again, completely random here, but I listened to a podcast with a DJ I love called Seth Troxler. And obviously he was like, you know, on paper, going around the world, DJing, seeing all these things. And it's like, it's amazing. But he said, once you start doing your dream, be careful because your dream can become your nightmare. And it's like, you're actually doing what you love. And I get all that. When did this beautiful thing you created, when did Notora become a nightmare for you? I don't think it ever has. Wow. No, I don't think it ever has become a nightmare.

48:09I think if it did, I would give up. I've, you know, handed off to someone else. But what have been the hard, okay, maybe that's the wrong question. The better question is like, when have been, what have been the hardest periods? The hardest periods were those years in Battersea. Right. We started up in Mare Street and Hackney, right off of Broadway Market. Yep. And then we moved to Battersea and we were in Battersea from 2006 to 2011. So we were like five years in Battersea. And they were tough as hell. They were really tough as hell. Because? Because we were not profitable. We were losing money.

48:50So there was a huge amount of pressure. We didn't have a lot of resources. We had some investors, but we weren't flush with money. It was the days that you could not pay HMRC, your PAYE tax, for like six, nine months, and it would be okay. they actually did come to the office once I got very upset at them that they didn't announce it and we still have open offices at Natura but they came into the Battersea office which was, you know, there was a tiny kitchen or kitchenette and then we were all there and then what separated us from the rest of it was just the cold room, so this wall of the cold room and this inspector came in and was like you owe us a ton of money, we're going to start taking stuff away from here.

49:39And I was like, you know, how could you be doing this in front of, obviously it was an open office, you know, having to then freak out that everyone thinks that we're going to, you know, we're going to go bankrupt tomorrow. So, but those, those years were very tough because we were working incredibly hard. We started out as an e-commerce business, delivering food to consumers. That was the whole premise. We were like the, one of the original online farmers markets. Yeah. We end up supplying restaurants because we acquire a company called Portobello Food Company, which was doing the same thing, but with Italian produce here in London for consumers, mostly dry goods and Parma ham and Parmesan and things like that.

50:18But they had a very small restaurant business, about 20 customers. It was like the River Cafe, George Club, Locanda Locatelli, Harry's Bar, those kinds of old schools. Wish I could say the way you say Locanda Locatelli. It's such a good way. I wish I could do that. I'll practice in the mirror when I get back, mate. so that's what got us into the restaurant business and that's what saved us so i was for many years as a lot of the a lot of the older chefs now i can say uh will know i was basically coming in in the morning two o 'clock three o 'clock in the morning going to do the buying at covent garden market i'd go like three four or five times because we were all kind of disorganized so we'd end up having to go back and continue picking stuff up yeah um packing orders with a team orders would go out to I would do all the invoicing manually orders would go out to restaurants and then I'd finish up in the morning and then I'd pack samples and I'd go out and I'd spend the rest of the day visiting restaurants going out so a lot of restaurants here in London a lot of chefs here in London older and some of the younger ones that know me from the time that I was just running around every day into kitchens with samples so it was a huge amount of hard work it It was fun as hell in some ways and full of energy, but we had to work really, really, really hard.

51:35It was really, really tiring. That's so, when I, interestingly, when I left junior, I didn't know what I wanted to do, but so I ended up getting a job delivering cheese for Harvey and Brockless. Yeah. And that's what got me into food and into restaurants because one of my drops was going into the Ritz, right? So taking all this cheese into the Ritz, and it's basically seeing the underbelly of the restaurant, and that got me into Bourdain. I was like, what the fuck is this? It's like a majestic underworld, you know, underneath London. And I was like, this is just, I can't really describe it. It was a visceral pull into restaurants and almost seeing it from the other side.

52:11And then you walk in and see it from the consumer side. But when you were going into those restaurants, I think, I know Ruthie Rogers wrote, who's the River Cafe founder, like, what were you learning from actually going in and seeing the underbelly of the restaurant? I mean, I saw the service needs that they had for consistency. That's something that I learned early on. The fact that the quality of the product is fundamentally important. But if there's no consistency in the quality or in the service, it's very hard for a restaurant to rely on you. That was really, I guess, life-changing for me and professionally.

52:55How so? because I understood that quality wasn't the only thing right I would opening an account wasn't difficult um you go in with a really amazing product right you go in with bergamot like when I first started sourcing bergamot no one was what's bergamot is a citrus uh that usually is used for most of it goes for the production of essential oil because it gets used in things like earl grey tea and perfumes right a lot of the perfume industry uses uh bergamot oil or bergamot essence sure as one of the ingredients um you know you take fresh bergamot to chefs back in the day when i was taking them most chefs even three michelin star chefs have never seen a fresh bergamot before in their life um it's very easy to capture their their attention with that you take in a phenomenal tomato, they'll want to open up an account.

53:51They'll be like, I want this. But from opening an account to doing proper business with them and actually becoming a reliable supplier, that's a totally different thing. So I understood, yeah, we can come in with the best tomato, but if we can't deliver consistency on that tomato, if we can't be reliable, it doesn't really suit a busy restaurant. So I really understood that the quality had to come with a quality of service, a quality of knowledge and expertise behind that. That's what I really, that's what really stood out yeah because one of the things i wanted to ask you is like what's almost like your la technique if that's the best way of saying it of business lessons you know like almost like the and one could be like just consistency of quality because i think it's i think consistency is true and no matter what you want to what you want to do you've got to be consistent yeah um any any other one two three principles you've learned that you think are really impactful?

54:44I mean, from a business standpoint, I find that focus is one of the most important things. Learning to say no. I mean, Steve Jobs used to say it, right? It's more important what you say no to than what you say yes to. And again, I, you know, learned that, maybe not the hard way, but you learn that you kind of start internalizing it. You're like, yeah. How did you learn that the hard way? Well, because you, you, um, so I'll give you one good example, early on, early on, you tend to say yes to everything because you're trying to grow the business, right? So if a customer asks you for something, your tendency is to say yes.

55:21On top of it, we work in a service industry, right? Hospitality is all about service. So service is ingrained in what we do across the industry. So as a produce supplier, whether you're selling whatever, fruit and veg, meat, dairy,

55:48You need to provide a high level of service. that is provided to restaurants on the part of suppliers. And there was a restaurant that said, hey, listen, can you bring this pasta for me in? I'm going to buy it, right? So yes, we bring in a pallet of pasta. For us at the time, we were losing money, small business, we were doing maybe 30, 40 orders a day. We bring in a pallet of pasta. Lo and behold, he buys 10 % of it. Oh, God. He stops ordering it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we're stuck with a pallet of pasta that we brought in from Italy for the chef who said that he was going to buy it from us. And if we, obviously you're doing it because you think, well, that's going to put me in as good books.

56:30I'm going to get more business out of it. So you end up with a pallet, you end up with money tied up that you've had to pay for that pasta. You have no one to sell it to. It's taking up space in your warehouse and you're thinking, why the fuck did I say yes to this? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you say yes to a lot of things. You say yes to a lot of special requests. and it's again it's finding that balance right the compromise right you try to aim for the middle you you get that nine out of ten but you learn to say no you learn to say no to customers if you're a challenger brand that's absolutely killing it in d2c but you're struggling to crack retail then you've got to listen to this maybe you've got an ocado listing maybe you've got a whole foods listing maybe you're absolutely killing it in selfridges maybe you're absolutely killing it in your farm shop and your indies but my friends making the leap crossing el chasm crossing el Rubicon to grocery retail is not easy.

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57:57Northstar are not like another data company that force Fiji data like Fuagua that act like a NASA space mission. It's super, super simple to use. Their team are amazing and they actually get the challenger mindset. Northstar are your shortcut to smarter decisions, stronger pitches and investor confidence all built specifically for challenger brands like yours you don't need a massive sales team you need north star link in the show notes click that link and you'll be able to book a free demo with north star highly highly recommend that and thank me later what's the hardest big opportunity you've said no because i think opportunities sorry distractions masquerade as opportunities and like that's one thing i've been um one of my follies is basically saying yes to everything and before I know it I'm trying to you know build something completely different that isn't this so again I think focus is a is a definitely a lat technique principle of business if you want to call it that but like what's the hardest big opportunity if you said no to the toughest one was uh I don't know if I should name it's a competitor of ours that no longer exists I think most people will know who it was it was our main competitor it was mash it's fine um they were our main competitor they were like here before us and they uh we had long conversations about merging the two businesses about acquiring them it was incredibly exciting um but ultimately ultimately we ended up saying no because we felt that we would lose the state that the business was in uh and this was during um we had conversations before covid and then we had another lengthy round of conversations right when COVID hit.

59:43And we felt that if we did it, we would lose a tremendous amount of focus in trying to integrate this business that by then was not in a great state. It was a very difficult decision to take because at the time you're thinking, well, listen, you know, we put Natura and Mash together, you know, you're putting the the two top quality produce distributors in London together, what we could do as a joint organization in terms of supply chain and the network of farms that we could quickly build up and so forth. But ultimately it was probably the right decision, but it was a very, very tough decision to say no.

1:00:20What would you say for anyone who's going through a hard decision right now? Cause it's like a, it's an exciting excitement with founders is a, is it's their it's their their greatest strength but their achilles heel at the same time in my in my regard but like yeah how what's the sort of what have you learned about saying no like what's the art of getting to those decisions you know because it's not it's not that is so hard you know i think you're totally right as a as a founder and as an entrepreneur your tendency is to want to say yes your tendencies to want to do stuff because it's exciting i mean you know it it's challenging like that that's that's kind of why we do what we do right because you want to take on challenge you want to do difficult things you want to do things that are exciting so i think the the art to it is spending enough time beforehand uh not that you kind of do it before decision.

1:01:19But if you have real clarity as to what your current focus is and what you're aiming to do over the next 12 to 24 months, that clarity and that focus that you build, that rigor that you build, is that grounding force. It's similar to what we were talking about, how nature grounds you. That is what grounds you to be able to counter your enthusiasm and excitement and your kind of instinct of wanting to do these things was saying okay let me try and look at this rationally let me try and put some data right onto this decision yes right it's like the pre-work is almost like watering the roots so that when the the winds of distraction excitement come you're like i ain't fucking moving but that's because that's where you can see you can you can it's one thing to say hey does we opened up a bakery right does opening up a flour mill and bakery make sense or not, right?

1:02:18If you kind of know where you're going, but you're like, hey, we're doing a bunch of stuff and we're going this direction, like it all makes good, a lot of these things can make good sense. Should we open up a restaurant? You know, the amount of times that we've thought about opening up a restaurant and the people have said, hey, have you ever thought about opening up a restaurant? Yeah, of course we have. We've got all the, you know, we have all the food and stuff available, but that one we haven't, that one we haven't done yet. So it's very easy to get lost. But if you say, hey, should we open up a flour mill and bakery as we've done, you can then root it back and say, okay, what is our plan?

1:02:50What have we set out to do over the next two years? What have we set our focus is? Well, we've said that our focus is going to be going in this direction, really leaning into these parts of the business, investing in this, making sure that, I don't know, that our data and analytics and business insights are a lot better than they are today before we actually, you know, move into this other direction. Then you can say, okay, does the flour mill make sense now? And maybe you're like, it's super exciting. The grain sourcing is very cool, but now is not the time for us to do this as much as we'd love to do it.

1:03:20So that to me is the art to it, is making sure that you've got a really solid and clear path. Also, that solid and clear path is what allows the organization to commit all of its resources. And by that, I mean all of the individuals that are in the organization, you know, going in the same direction, right? If everyone's rowing in the same direction, you're going to get there a lot faster. So you forcing yourself first as a leader, then as a leadership team, and then how that filters through the organization, that clarity and focus is really critical to success. How do you, like, what have you learned about sort of how you relay that to the team effectively?

1:04:00Again, because like you're 500 employees all over the world, like we'll get to this because i think that's insane that there's my fascinating how that works but like how do you get the boat moving in the right direction with all these people you know a lot of uh transparent communication and thoughtful communication so we spend time when we communicate we think about we're having a company meeting what are we going to be talking about right what are the important things what's the message that we want to come out of this we don't just say all right let's throw some numbers up oh this is how we did in the you know this is how we did these are some updates on some of the things that we're doing you know we've gotten better and better at understanding what is the message that we want the team to walk away with um what's the message that we don't want them to walk away with what what is information that if we you know relay it is just going to confuse team members yeah and it all comes again it all comes from starts from the very top right it's have do we have clarity of where we want to take the business and once we have clarity and committed to it and decide is how do we get better at.

1:05:00So we have a whole process that we run through every year that is quite structured, that allows us to take all of these ideas, refine them, figure out what our strategy is for the next 12 to 24 months. We obviously think further than that, but what we really nail down is the 12 to 24 month time horizon. And that then gets communicated to the people that the managing directors that run the regions, the people that work on some of the more global functions so that everyone has an understanding. Okay, this is, we have real clarity into where, where we're going. And that, that has really transformed the way that we say no to things because we, it helps me as someone who loves to do a ton of different things to say no to things and say, nope, this doesn't fit in this two-year plan.

1:05:54You've obviously got to have some flexibility. The other part of the art is go with your gut. I would say that never lose sight that your gut is a really important decision-making tool, which anthropology. Yeah. You must have read about that. Yeah. So the Franco-La technique of business is consistency of quality, saying no, and the art of focus, go with your gut as well. Anything, any other like maybe more slightly nuanced or underrated or less obvious things you've picked up?

1:06:35One that comes to mind, I know a lot of people talk about the quality of your people and how important they are. I think the rigor that you put into recruitment and then also into, you know, retention, firing, right? Getting rid of the people that don't fit the culture and that need to go.

1:07:03It's so damn critical because, you know, anyone that runs stores, anyone that has multiple stores um talking about tom and gales i haven't asked him this but i bet you're asked that if you ask him what is one of the key drivers of success across stores it's going to be the store manager right of course if it's a shitty location that they've picked and all that then there's not much you can do but really what you see is the is the individuals his whole thing was don't get in the way of the flow like and he was talking linking this to water right he was like and i was like what do you mean by that and he was like it was the business has to flow and he was essentially saying you know cancerous that's kind of a maybe verbose way of saying it but like people who are cancerous to the organization i.e they're the wrong fit doesn't mean they're a bad person you've got to get get that right because it just ruins the flow yeah i think what you're saying the people and integrity that is the soil culture is the soil of a business it's like it all starts with the people and then everything you build um it comes comes off the back of that um in terms of like the so Ruthie Rogers and I think you work with Brett Graham yep like and I was speaking to these guys before as we were setting up and I was like they and the references in the book is it's like you know cooking and food there's like a sort of a poetry to it there's an art to it and I really believe that I believe it's not like exclusive for three-star Michelin chefs like someone could go and pick up some stuff today and you are creating some form of art it's not like just some wanky phrase for these high-end chefs um but like what have you learned about like cooking and and turning this produce into art from someone like Brett or Ruthie and it's interesting you pick you pick Ruthie and Brett because they're they're very similar it's a bit close to me yeah yeah they're very similar at the outset okay right so they're when they source they're two very similar chefs right yep both of them are obsessive about the quality of product that they that they bring into the kitchen brett is doing very different cooking to the river cafe river cafe is doing very you know very it's the kind of cooking that you would have at home almost right and yes right It's rooted in simplicity at its core.

1:09:35Brett is running a three Michelin star kitchen. So what ends up on the plate is very different, much more technical in a way. So I think what I've learned from each is, so from both of them, I've learned about the obsessiveness of sourcing. The River Cafe has always been religiously seasonal, but from day one, right? So from when we started working with them, I think that we've influenced the importance of seasonality in a marketplace like London, in a city like London, without a doubt. But I'd say that the River Cafe was doing it before we were. So this religiousness around seasonality, around, you know, not using peppers when they're out of season, has really stuck with me with the River Cafe.

1:10:23yeah because talk you talk in the book about radical seasonality and how that will like and we will get we will let's get on to like the food system and why it's um why it's buggered why why um why it's ultimately impacting our health and it's obviously a huge topic right um but i think and we'll get on to radical seasonality and we'll get some other bits but i think to preface that I would love to understand more is how supermarkets have sort of, yeah, yeah, fucked us over kind of in some respects. I know it all came out of World War II, like the need for convenience and all that stuff. But yeah, because I think what I found fascinating from the book is how supermarkets are relatively in the grand scheme of say 500 years, a very new invention, really.

1:11:11It's really, it's like, it's a new invention. It's probably the smartphone of 50 years ago. But we just like, because we were only, you know, I've grown up with supermarkets, you don't question it, you know. So yeah, just detail that first, and then we'll get on to some of the ways we can begin to, you know, solve it. Yeah, so supermarkets really take hold, as you say, 70 years ago, in the 50s. Yeah. The first one was Piggly Wiggly. Such a funny name for a supermarket. No, they're still around, those guys. What, Piggly Wiggly? Piggly Wiggly, yeah. Whereabouts is it? Is it in? It's somewhere on the East Coast, a little bit south.

1:11:43I don't know exactly, but they're still around. The brand is still there. So that started in like, I don't know, 1913 or 1916, something like that. It was the first time that, you know, you used to go to whatever the market, the supermarket was. It wasn't a supermarket back then, but you used to go buy your food and you'd ask the, you know, the gentleman who ran the store, owned the store, and they would serve you. So Piggly Wiggly was the first one to say, we're going to do self-service. You go in and you pick your own food. Yep. so supermarkets then really take hold in the 50s that's when like supermarket culture as we know it that's that's the that's the beginning of it and what happens with supermarkets is that they take advantage of our inbuilt habits habits psychology the way that we behave the way that we you know consume um habits were changing it's going to the habits bit because i think we've got reverse engineer that reverse the habits to make the change but so world war ii happens women go out into the workforce they come back and by then things have changed right you start getting a lot more um to two income households where both man and woman are going out into the workforce that means less time to cook that means that convenience starts becoming a habit right or a desire a need whatever you want to call it.

1:13:11Convenience starts becoming interesting with less time to cook. Some of the cooking and culture, and obviously this happens in the US where it's a little bit like the UK. Gastronomy has never been as ingrained as it has been in a culture like the Italian or the Japanese. So we lose the cooking at home, start losing a lot of that. We want convenience and pricing becomes much more important pricing and choice. So the supermarkets latch onto this and say, okay, if I can build a shop that has more range, where I can also provide convenience with some of the food that I sell, I can make it accessible by making it affordable and pushing down prices, it's going to connect with consumers.

1:14:04And it did. So our shopping went from going to independent stores into supermarkets because they provided the range, the price, the convenience. So you fast forward to like, I don't know, the 80s, the 90s, you know, we are shopping becomes we go once a week to the supermarket, buy what we need. You know, we drive and particularly in the US, you drive, park your car, buy your groceries, drive back home. And that is the way that we shop today. You either walk to the supermarket if you're in the city or you drive to the supermarket and load up your car. And you usually go once a week. Now things are changing a little bit, but essentially that's the habit that was formed.

1:14:43But we took, we say the supermarkets, not just the supermarkets, but also what happened with a lot of the chemical industry that in the post-war period divert their manufacturing capacity to one, chemical farming and two, the manufacturing of food additives. we get into this industrialization of food where we start producing food again because it provides convenience so you can get you know biscuits you don't have to bake your own cookies for your kids you can just buy a pack so we start industries start shifting and supermarkets and industry collude but they work together to say hey how do we develop a system where you guys are manufacturing food, we're going to promote this manufactured food that's convenience at the forefront.

1:15:33And then our diets start to change. We start moving into these ultra processed foods. So you end up in a system where we consume a lot of processed foods. So it could be cookies, cereals, I don't know, ready meals, right? And you do that in a supermarket environment that is pushing pushing you to shop from the center of the supermarket so the the non-fresh rather than the perimeter which is where you tend to find the meat and fish counters and produce that then led into how that fed through to the consumption of produce the the lack of seasonality and produce and you know again pushing pushing habits and convenience so you have blueberries year round strawberries year round is what do you think like again looking at this through sort of uh anthropological humanity like lens do you what do you think the supermarkets are like are desire like in incentive for greed like what's the the human sort of incentive with that is it greed like how do we get to this fucked up situation is it is it our our desire for people at the top who want to like their self-interest like because i think there is it's kind of unintended consequences from from that angle not from like sort of not from like the nefarious ceo angle?

1:16:48I don't mean like that. I mean like stepping, almost zooming out and seeing like, is our desire for progress also our Achilles heel? Does that make sense? Yeah. Or what's your take on it? I think what it, so one angle is the consumer angle, right? Why did consumers accept it? And I think the evolutionary answer to that is we like convenience. Yeah. Right. Don't walk too far from the fire to get your berries. Exactly. You will, you will, if you can avoid walking upstairs, you will. Right. Yeah. So great. Right. I don't need to cook or I can get a packet of biscuits. Right. I can go to the supermarket and do my shop all in one go rather than going into five stores.

1:17:31Fantastic. Right. You've given consumers something that they're going to just like the bliss factor, like chocolate. Right. It, it hits those trigger points. So yeah, we'll, we'll eat a bag of Doritos in one go. So one evolutionary element is the desire for convenience. And I think the other one is the fact that we need to eat to survive. And we are naturally inclined to eat and store calories. So if I can engineer food that you're going to eat more of, which is exactly what happened, I'm going to eat more of it because you know that's how we've been designed to evolve it's adaptive really like yeah yeah if you're being a no like a bit a bit of a fat fuck back in the neandroid i can't say it days was very advantageous right but it was yeah yeah it says now like it's fucked because there's so it's just there's yeah it's it's interesting how you're saying the incentives from the consumer angle what about the incentives from from the business from the business like what does that tell us about human nature is that our desire for again i think it probably boils down to like protection really like ultimately yeah protection of self not of others i think it's the capitalist system right as you said maybe i don't know you maybe can call it greed i don't necessarily call it greed i think there's a you know there if you think of sam walton i don't think he was greedy i think he was an entrepreneur he was walmart founder yeah yeah yeah exactly he was the walmart farm founder he just loved growing his business.

1:19:11There's a lot of incredible things from a business perspective that you can learn from how he built Walmart and how he scaled it in a massive way in a very short space of time. If you look at the numbers, if you look at the growth, sidetracking a bit, but if you look at the growth of Walmart in its first 20 30 years it was just insane like they got to billions of revenue in a very short space of time so it's interesting so um one of my poor charlie almanac which was charlie munger's book um he was warren buffett's like right hand man he's got a great thing i love which is like don't slam mcdonald's because those people slam mcdonald's he was like on from the quality of the the food and stuff yes that's like horrendous right but actually if you look at it from this what his one law of life is be be reliable a bit like be consistent right because the amount of kids who were probably working were probably you know it was either it was either they could have they had two paths who were either going to go down like sort of the drug route or like just a uh not the right route mcdonald's taught the amount of people and kids it taught to be reliable and be on time it's like that and that is just a core fundamental thing it's like we often just look at it and I'm not something I mean I love a big mac I'm not gonna lie to you but like there are and I think you're right there's these um the whole sort of capitalist thing it does provide a lot of good for people as well you know and it's um it's but with the food it's like the system isn't great so that's the supermarkets um that's how they came to be and it's just fascinating understanding sort of incentives from a really sort of basic evolutionary level um and then what i found interesting in the in in the book and i i think this is interesting uh in general is like perceived value like behavioral science right so we we perceive food our perception of expensive we think oh organic's expensive is actually well you need to look at the other way around it's like why is that so fucking cheap yeah like that's the better question so like talk to me about that like how the situation we're in right now isn't um well it's pretty messed up but like talk to me about what like what's going on there it comes you know it's a it's a perfect continuation from the supermarket because what what the supermarket stripped was the connection to nature i won't blame them entirely for it but we become very disconnected particularly in the that is unhealthy because we are a product of nature right we we are part of it and we still need to live within it right we're still guided by it and when we see you know the climate events you know what happened in LA months ago you know demonstrates that nature is far more powerful than we are so that disconnect is not good what that's done is it's removed us from the earth from soil from product.

1:22:17When you remove yourself from something, you start, you lose appreciation for it, right? You don't understand what's gone into producing a spear of asparagus, right?

1:22:30So again, you look at our habits, consumption of technology, right? We spend far more today on gadgets than we do on food. Our disposable income, the percentage of disposable income that we spend on food in all developed nations has been decreasing since the advent of the supermarkets, just like nutritional value of our food has also been decreasing. So the reason why we choose to allocate less of our disposable income to food, you might not, you know, you might, you know, like me probably maybe spend more than, more than average on food, but that's because we're in that population where we're kind of much more in the food industry and we care about it.

1:23:19And we, we get a lot of joy out of, out of it, whether we're traveling or whether we're, you know, eating at home, you will go and spend good money on a bottle of olive oil. But if you don't, if you don't see enough value in that bottle of olive oil, you're just not going to go and spend the money on it. so we fundamentally need people to revalue food and you know you were touching before we started about kind of some of the the the farmer stories right and and the artistry and poetry around it the reason why that's there one is because i feel it but sharing the love of food and getting people to almost have reverence for a beautiful orange or a beautiful peach is to me a way to say hey like you need to rethink this right this is a work of art this is this beautiful product of the interplay between an incredible farmer and nature right they're both working together it's the farmer coaxing nature to work to work its magic and produce this like beautiful food you need to revere that you need to value it and i think if you do if you've got the flavor component but also that renewed appreciation for it you will want to spend more on it right it's not purely about a financial thing but it's you you will you will want to have that in your life have it be more present and that will mean that you're going to spend more on it yeah no i mean i think for me that's why i love like restaurants i think it's the greatest art form imaginable when it's done perfectly because it's like it's the the link between the artistry with the soil and the seed and the vegetables and then you it passes on and you get the chef's creativity and um and then they essentially get this this selection and they create a piece of art and then it makes someone else happy but that is just to me like utopia like i that's that's why i love restaurants the other side of this and i think you touched on it on like the flavor note is like let's just say there's a a single and i asked this to henry dimbleby as well like say there's a single mother um who is literally just trying to put food on the on the table and i think what henry does really well in ravenous is he says it's like half the issue is not that like mums don't want to um and or dads cook delicious food for their kids it's like sometimes they won't eat it like the kids have become another part of the incentives like unfortunately chicken nuggets do taste better than broccoli like it's just and that's another issue with this right um uh it's probably blasphemous to you, Franco, but I'm just saying in general, but what's the, what's the, um, how do we begin to, uh, solve that problem?

1:25:59Cause this is so, so, so multifaceted. And I think I get it from like the, we need to get this reverence back for the ingredients, but then it's like, I just need to get my, feed my kids. What's your take on that? It's a, it, I mean, it's a, it's kind of the question in the food system, right? Is the whole affordability. it's how do we get the people who don't have the luxury of saying i can spend whatever i want yeah to get the best food i think again what henry's doing with chefs in schools which is a which is a program that we support um we we we work closely with chefs in schools and um supply them supply a lot of the schools i think that to me is a critical piece is what happens in school at an early age.

1:26:47Yeah. Because going back to this broccoli and chicken nugget example, you need to break it, right? If you're going to say, listen, the only way that you're going to get a human being to appreciate good food, and by good, I mean healthy food, right? Yeah. Is you need to start enjoying the broccoli. You need to start enjoying a spring onion, right? there are your palate has to be able to appreciate that um so for that you need to be introduced at an early age it's not the only way to do it right you can you can be introduced at a later age but it becomes harder and harder if we can tackle it in an early age kids will choose not always like my kids i always say my kids they're very privileged in kind of living uh you know with Daisy and I because of what I do for work from a food perspective, but they like chicken nuggets and they like Doritos as much as any other kid, right?

1:27:47They like junk food and they're not denied it. But I say this in the book, they will get tired of it. My daughter, Clem, came back from a school trip and I was like, I wasn't on that. She's like, yeah, but I was fed up of eating chicken nugget. And she actually, it was chicken nugget. She's like, I was fed up of eating chicken nuggets all the time, you know? So she'll enjoy them. But because she's growing up eating healthy, good home-cooked food, her body can only take so much junk. So I think really the only way that we're going to solve it is by reintroducing healthy food at an early age. And imagine the transformation that you would have if kids would grow up getting healthy food, at least at school.

1:28:29And that's how also you can tackle it. If mothers don't have time at home, they don't have the resources is you can do it at mealtimes at school, which is the whole point of chefs in school. Yes, it's a constant tension between bottom up and top down, isn't it? But I think the, I think as well, it's like kids, if you introduce at the right age, it's like kids will go out and do sport, like play football, if they're introduced at the right age. If you make it fun and desirable, they'll do it. I think Joe Wicks, do you know Joe Wicks? He's like a PT over here. He's done a great thing. His whole thing is getting exercise into school.

1:29:07But it's like start the kids when they're like four or five and make it fun. And they will pick up that habit back to habits. And I think if you can make cooking like going into schools and getting kids to have that reverence for fruit and vegetables is great. But if you can then get, you know, I don't know, like who do kids like, some sort of celebrity to make it aspirational. I think a lot of these things are aspirational. That's 100 % away. And then in terms of the affordability piece, you basically saying that if the parents can't afford it, then it should be a government funded. Well, I think there's an element where food.

1:29:50So there's a couple of things. I always say one thing, right, that at least in terms of fixing the food system, you have these two extremes, right? You have super wealthy people and you have people that are very unfortunate and, you know, poor. but obviously if we if we talk about the extremes it doesn't really address what we can do on mass and there are a lot of people in the western world that sit in the middle and i'm super generalizing here right but there are a lot of people that sit in the middle that go on holiday to expensive locations that have three flat screen tvs in their house and actually choose to spend their money on things other than high quality food.

1:30:37So we don't, you know, the affordability issue doesn't necessarily need to be addressed across all demographics, of course, but there's a lot of change that can happen right in the middle, right? With this readjustment of what we choose to spend our money on. Then when you get to the real affordability question of how do you deal with people that don't have the luxury of choosing that actually go into a supermarket and need to buy, you know, the cheapest bread that they can find and so forth. I think the way to do that is by starting with the people that can and that big chunk of people in the middle, we can start producing food in a healthier way that also becomes more affordable.

1:31:20So that's where scale comes in, which maybe we are kind of scaled as an obsession we have, which answers that kind of question on supermarkets and why they got so big is that if we can start farming at scale but in a better way right in a baby that's in a way that's respectable um responsible and respects the soil and respects the the ecosystem and that's producing flavor and nutrition rather than just yield and price yeah then we can make really good quality produce also more affordable because at the moment the really good quality product is out of reach for a lot of consumers. So I think scale will play a role in making produce more affordable for kids.

1:32:00The thing is that if, back to the broccoli, if the kids won't eat the broccoli because they prefer the chicken nugget and the chicken nugget is just as affordable as the broccoli, then you've got to want, that's where my demand thing comes in. You've got to want, you've got consumers to want the broccoli, right? They've got to be, they've got to be asking for it that's where you talk about um flavor like that's the kind of the from what i picked up of the book is your kind of the thing that runs probably is running through this whole conversation right from the mangoes in egypt right at the beginning to all your cooking um what like how far off is is what we're getting in the supermarkets flavor wise from what it could be like i think that gap because as you say like and i encourage listeners to read the way you talk about this peach it's kind of it's mind-bendingly kind of like just wonderful the way you write about a peach but yeah how far off are we realistically i'd say we're probably at 20 percent of where we could be on average 30 percent in terms of flavor if you were to you know where we are at the supermarket and what the the ultimate could be yeah and then how do we begin to get on the scale route like say we get it from 20 to 50 right because i think another thing with change is theoretical perfect versus adjacent possible this is what rory southern talks to me about so like theoretical perfect is what we are going for yeah but like realistically it's the adjacent possible so this is the kids let's eat broccoli versus chicken nuggets same with um with alcohol-free booze right so theoretical perfect is everyone stop stop drinking and you're going to drink lucky sane and you're going to drink alcohol free and you're going to do yoga and feng shui and all that shit right fucking boring yeah fucking boring life so that's the theoretical perfect adjacent possible was probably what i do which is zebra stripes so i'll have three four pints and if i'm feeling a bit like i need to parachute in an alcohol free i will and that's the the adjacent impossible.

1:34:03I like that. I haven't tried that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good. It's zebra stripes is a great way if you want to get a bit twisted, but also, you know, be able to speak to your grandma. But what is that with the quality of food? Because like, you know, as you say, we're at 20 % now, which is the sort of where we're at. 100 % is being able to eat delicious produce like this. How do we get it to land somewhere here, which is maybe 40, 50%. Does that make sense? And how do we do that scale? Because, you know, we're in this wondrous part of London, which is very sort of foodie-centric and with amazing stores, but not every, you know, Tom, Dick, and Harry can come here.

1:34:41Does that make sense? Yeah, yeah. I think you've got a... It's small steps, right? Yeah. It needs to be demand-driven. So if consumers... I use the extreme example, right? Yeah. If everyone stopped buying strawberries in December, supermarkets wouldn't stock them. There would be no demand for them, right? So we wouldn't be, it would just be as simple as that. If no one's picking them up, they would not stock them. There wouldn't be farmers farming them year round. So if we can stimulate, or if we can stimulate demand, if we can start demanding better, the supermarkets will start sourcing better, right?

1:35:19So that 20 will get to 22, 25, 30, 40, right? You start inching up. So let's say that, again, to use a percentage, let's say that the range of produce that you find at a Waitrose, I don't know, is 20 % really exciting and 80 % not as exciting, right? If within that shelf, all of a sudden, 30 % of the products are actually from the right farms, with nutrition, with flavor at its core, that will be moving. And the way to do that is demanding, right? If the supermarkets recognize, and they are recognized, right? We work really well with Waitrose and we're doing more and more with them. If the consumers are there and picking up those products, the supermarkets are going to react and buy them, right?

1:36:06So that's how we kind of inch one percentage at a time more in the direction that we need to go. Part of that is consumers wanting to spend a little bit more, right? So it's the job of Natura and other companies to figure out ways that we can be affordable. And again, in those gradients, you could say, well, there's the ultimate peach. But between the supermarket peach that we all know and the ultimate peach, there are also some really good peaches in there that are more affordable, are farmed better, more nutrition, but don't cost as much. And that's, I think, the way, that's what we can do as Natura as a way to bridge the gap a little bit.

1:36:47So you want consumers demanding better. You want consumers valuing good product, valuing nutrition and flavor and saying, I'm going to spend a little bit more to get a better peach. And then figuring out on the sourcing side, how can we get product that is much better than what is there today? But it's not necessarily what's going into the River Cafe or the Leadbury, right? So that we can start bridging the gap between price, quality, what the consumer wants, and we can start getting a little bit more in the middle. And then those of us that can, that's where that middle comes in, start shopping more.

1:37:22So what you'll find is that the supermarket will start getting from that 20 % more to the 40-50. And if we can get more people access to that, I think better quality product can become more the norm of what we consume and what we're putting into the supermarkets. Yeah. It's also like, I think, the role of the chefs now. I think you talk about this in the book. but like chefs now um who was it i think someone said that 2011 was like 1962 for music you know so 1962 post-war you got the beatles that changes music 2011 was that for food because you get a melting pot of street food markets basically anyone could try and it was very easy to start something yeah social media sort of people posting like the whole the role of the chef i mean bourdain was doing this many years before anyone else but the sort of the rock starification of chefs went through up now these are the high status high aspirational people um you know it means why i started the bloody podcast right don't do these chefs right but but they are having so much more of a say and there's way more foodies now because of social media and it's like if you get the social media that sort of the chefs as sort of like the beacon of this is how we do things plus the consumer demanding it then it does as you say we begin to nudge from the 20 peach to the to the perfect peach and i think also it's like uh who was it someone said to me like you know good uh bad news travel travels fast good news travels slow and i think actually if you zoom out again it's like the supermarkets now there's nowhere near perfect but that's they're way better than they were 20 30 years ago like if you go into a supermarket now like completely it's still we are actually moving in the right direction i don't think it's it is all sort of doom and gloom do you know what i mean not at all i think it is changing i think you're i think everything that you've said I totally agree with and I think that's helped shift right because again if you get exposed to stuff right you go to you go to restaurant you try something and you're like shit those beans like they were fantastic yes right it kind of you know maybe you would have never picked those up before from the supermarket but now all of a sudden you're like oh you know I want to try that I'm going to have that what are some of your favorite sort of restaurants or chefs in London that really again that and I think this is what I was talking to Stuart about is about like a lot of the way you've built the brand is around almost nature's art that that's what i pick up from my perception as a consumer like who what chefs do that really well do you think i mean i always um i always talk about braun and ed wilson at braun um because of that i just love the balance between really impeccable sourcing and that style of food of again rooted in simplicity so the river cafe do it do it very well um as well river cafe is quite incredible in terms of the quality of ingredients that you get really yeah everything that you get on that plate is going to be of a super high quality every single olive oil that they use even the oil that they use for cooking is of an incredibly high quality so i really respect chefs that source as impeccably as possible in terms of that real commitment that they put to sourcing so their own investment and like finding the best getting the best uh and that's you know in vinegars and oil not just the produce and the meat and the fish but just making sure that what they're getting in um is really incredible because when you start for me when you when you build when you build a menu and it's ingredient lead i just think that that inspiration that is how we're meant to cook we are meant to be inspired by nature first so you need to be in season seasonality teaches you a lot about what things go well together um so i think you talk to me about radical seasonality it's a nice way to bring that in yeah so what is that as a concept first and then the concept of radical seasonality i guess in part it's about pushing consumers to think harder about seasonality and it's it's about beyond four seasons it's not just about you know so yeah i mean i don't know tell me about that i don't actually know yeah yeah right so we tend to think of you know winter spring summer and fall right that's that when we think about the seasons those are the seasons that we that we think about having said that most people don't know what is in season when, except for some iconic ingredients like, you know, asparagus and peas.

1:41:50But radical seasonality is about taking a much deeper view on seasonality, taking a finer comb on it, which means to the extreme is what I call seasonality 365, right? It's every day seasonality is progressing every single day. And it doesn't matter what window you take, right? If you take a week, if you take six days, 10 days, doesn't matter, whatever you want, right? You take 10 consecutive days within a period, that is a seasonal window that is very important in its own right, particularly if you take forage product, right? So that's what radical seasonality is about. It's about living in the moment.

1:42:26It's about making the most of those ingredients at that time, at that peak, right? And we build in early peak late, which is a Japanese concept of seasonality into it, which is - It's called early peak late. Early peak and late, right? I thought you said a Japanese word like origato. Yeah, sorry. I wish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's my dream is to learn Japanese. Early, peak, late. Yes, it's how a product travels through the season, through its own season, right? Right. Nothing to do with like winter, spring, summer, and fall, but it's like you've got this variety of plum. Like you've got a Rencloade Doré plum from the south of France.

1:43:05What is its season and how does it navigate through that season, right? So if you were to plot all of these products, right, when it goes in early and peak and late and how it kind of disappears, you were to plot those. If you take a 10-day window, obviously, you know, nature moves. So seasons vary year on year. But if you take a snapshot, you'll find that there's all of like these products that are overlapping. Some of them are just getting into season when some of them are coming to the end of the season. Some are at peak. cooking with that, that is the best way that for me, you can express that creativity and that artwork, right?

1:43:40Is letting nature first guide you. And then on the back of that, the polar opposite is to, for you and I to sit here and say, Hey man, let's, let's think about a dish, you know? Oh, I really liked the flavor of passion fruit. And I don't know. I love the flavor of passion fruit and, uh, and raw fish, right? It does go very well together. Let's do a dish around that. will bring in, I don't know what passion fruit goes well with, I don't know, with some citrus. And you're like, yeah, but maybe passion fruit and citrus are not in season at the same time, right? Or the scallop that you want to use is not in season at the time that the passion fruit is in season.

1:44:15So we're seeing less of that in the restaurant world, but we did see a lot of that where the creativity comes before the ingredients, right? It's what flavor combination do I think is clever and do I think is going to work well together? And then on the back of that building a dish and bringing components in. Whereas I like to cook and I believe that the real artistry is from looking at what is available and letting that be the guide and the inspiration that then ends up on the plate. So for me, a place like Braun, anyone that's kind of ingredient-led, anyone that's leading, that's for me why the sourcing is really important.

1:44:51But by sourcing, I mean, you take someone like Ed Wilson, he spends a lot of time on sourcing the ingredients that end up on the plate yeah and about on on the seasonality piece like radical seasonality like what are some of the like what when is stuff good when is stuff bad like what are some of the so like say say you know let's take some kind of fruits and vegetables that are in most people's homes probably right now like your strawberries or your raspberries or i don't know like in cucumbers right like what what are some of the like when when are those best when are they like Like when are those worst?

1:45:29I mean, you know, fruits tend to be a summer product. You have some stuff that is spring. So you've got strawberries that come out in the spring. Things are blurring a little bit because even good quality produce now, seasons are extending. We've done that with asparagus here, which I'm not a big fan of growing asparagus indoors to bring the season in earlier because the quality is not the same. Strawberries, less problematic. It's kind of like tomatoes. There's a lot of tomatoes that are grown indoors. So, you know, a lot of your fruits tend to be in the summer. What are your thoughts on sort of James Dyson's strawberry thing, where you can get strawberries all year round?

1:46:04I haven't heard about what. You know James Dyson, the Hoover guy? Yeah, yeah, the Hoover guy, yeah. Actually, yeah, Hoover's a brand. Actually, he's a vacuum cleaner. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's calling him the Hoover bloke. Mate, he does strawberries now. Like, he does these strawberry farms. He's doing the... I think they go into Waitrose, but they're grown almost vertically. Yeah, I don't believe in that. Really interesting. interesting because what's yeah because vertical farming is the other it's a super energy intensive yeah and the flavor and nutrition is not not there so they're just sort of faux they're basically biscuits of strawberries really yeah you know the a good biscuit yeah that's the best way of selling it yeah yeah yeah biscuit it's not that bad but uh they're terribly energy intensive i don't think we need them yeah i think that we can grow you know and also we shouldn't be growing strawberries year-round.

1:46:55I just don't see the point. We should be eating strawberries at spring and summer, early summer. And we should be eating other things at other times. And that also brings a lot of joy and variety. And when you have stuff all the time, you lose a lot of the appreciation, right? Yeah. I need to quickly run to the toilet because I'm completely dying. The perfume, the color, the eyesight. I'll have to rock and roll with one of these. So where are these from? these are from uh south of france um they're garagettes oh my days yeah but um those aren't biscuits strawberries no one of the nice things with seasonality is uh i i again i touch on this in the book is at the extremities so we're here in the uk we take asparagus right asparagus classical spring product um what i find really interesting to to get into seasonality a bit more is to look at those extremities.

1:47:50When you say the extremities, what would be the two extremes? Winter to spring, right? Right. So where the concept of radical seasonality is most evident is where you get that big contrast. So for example, citrus, super classical winter product, right? Really? Yeah. What? So citrus as in like limes and stuff? i mean lemon lemons the the lemon tree and lime they flower three times a year most of them so you get you get production year round okay what would you what citrus would be oranges right oranges pomelos grapefruits all that kind of stuff right their season is the winter time that's mental i was that's a whole that's for a whole other podcast in terms of why certain fruits are are in season at certain times of year it's really fascinating to to think through that but So citrus, winter product, asparagus, English peas, broad beans, those are a very spring product.

1:48:54I mean, here in the UK, English peas and broad beans are a little bit kind of touching almost on summer. But you have these kind of very iconic products in each one of those seasons. interestingly because they do overlap right there's a time when like now where you've got the late citrus that's still around and you've got you know peas and broad beans that have started they actually work incredibly well together peas and broad beans and citrus right so i find that that is a great time to get people to understand seasonality a little bit better is that you can demonstrate that what's really important is not so much whether something is winter or fall or a summer product but is what is that variety of citrus that you're eating is it more of a later variety when is it in season does it happen to be in season at a time when some of the early spring products are coming in i mean it's like you know wild garlic and and orange goes really well together so and again that's because within that snapshot they're both growing at the same time so nature is like doing the hard work for us in terms of flavor combination it doesn't mean that you can't use your own creativity, but that allows us.

1:50:03And if you let, if you let the seasons guide your cooking, particularly with people that want to get more into cooking or find it a bit difficult, like, I don't know how to use something or what to do. Like for me, simplicity is the best way to go about cooking. It's also makes it easier for you to cook at home. If rather than needing to look up a recipe or, you know, trying to go and source 10 ingredients, 15 ingredients, aside from the fact that a lot of the recipes that are in cookbooks particularly over like from 2010 backwards even nowadays most of them are not seasonal some of them are but there are a lot of a lot of recipes out there that are not seasonal really yeah so we almost need seasonal cookbooks yeah there are a couple but you'll find it i mean i know but i'm just i'm thinking of like yeah you do like how do how do we back to the sort of the kids in the school and the consumer piece yeah it's like we need to actually get them cookbooks that are based on seasonality so that's another that's the educational piece what's um what's cooking taught you about brand building what cooking taught me about brand building are there any parallels there it's a lot of trial and error trial and error interesting yeah trial and error you need to get good at it yeah yeah yeah that's for sure do you know william kendall who did green and blacks he introduced me no i know green and blacks but so he does i mean he's you should definitely meet him he's good friends with henry henry but i asked him that question because he's really into invest a lot into these soil businesses and he was saying you know it's all his sort of parallel between cooking and and um and business was like constraint equals creativity so like if blueberries are in season that's the only thing you can get is blueberries you're going to find a way to do something creative with it and i think there's something in that about like the trial and error and the creativity and and constraint in in the produce forces you there's something beautiful about constraint in business I think yeah constraint is fundamental what do they say um constraint is the the mother of innovation yes yeah yeah yeah what um so when you're in New York like you live in New York now right I do yeah Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:52:10One thing I think is fascinating with yourself, Frank, is you're in so many different countries. How is each... So London, New York, Melbourne, Copenhagen. Are you in Miami as well? Paris and Miami. But how is each individual city's food system slightly different with their problems and stuff?

1:52:32There's a lot of similarities. What are the similarities to start with? Well, take the industry, for example. there's a lot of overlap of chefs. Chefs move around a lot. Chefs have moved from New York to Miami quite a bit. You get people moving from London to Melbourne. So obviously Instagram, social media, the world is becoming smaller. So you tend to find a similar style of restaurant that connects with us in any of these big cities nowadays because they're all quite international in the way. So you will always find these ingredient-led restaurants that are focused on sourcing, on quality, on freshness of product, on simplicity on the plate and so forth.

1:53:24Chefs also work in very similar ways across regions, like the way that kitchens operate, very similar. There's some nuances and habits of how kitchens buy in a city like New York versus Miami. Seasonality plays a role. So Miami has very different weather to New York. So those things do play into the differences of what's relevant at any time of year. So what's relevant in Miami might not be relevant in New York at the same time of year. so the biggest the biggest difference is in tailoring the product range to the sea the the let's call it the seasons or the weather in that particular region in that particular city and how chefs cook in that city okay because French chefs in Paris lean in more on look on French product.

1:54:24Let's not call it local because local can mean a lot of things. They will lean heavier onto French product than say Miami chefs will lean onto, you know, US product. Right. Yeah. So whilst I believe that you can find as good or better green asparagus in the UK, it's very hard that we will sell green asparagus. We don't sell green asparagus, English green asparagus to our Parisian customers, but we will sell them Yorkshire Forest Rhubarb. Okay. And that's, so that's from, so sort of from the restaurant chef angle, in terms of like more, that's kind of the supermarket or the biggest sort of system, food systems in these countries like how they different so like for example um guy i interviewed last week um is so in australia you've got coals and woolies yeah two big markets and he was like saying that their produce is just nothing's in uh plastic wrappers um and then you've probably got you know i think what's interesting about the uk is our supermarket system represents our class system which is very much a british thing you know you know it's like you have your your mark spencer's waitrose and then you kind of have your iceland at the bottom it is it's a very uniquely british thing and then in the states it's i mean i don't i don't know the states that well but it's like cowboys and indians because they i mean each fucking state is a country in of itself but like what would you say are like in and i don't really know the french market apparently the french have got like a really good frozen an m &s frozen equivalent yeah like pcal that's it yeah what would you say are the sort of the that where the system's fucked with everything we've talked about like what are countries where the problem's really hard?

1:56:12What are the differences? Does that make sense? Yeah. So it's all cultural to me. Okay. Countries where food is a really important part of culture. So let's take France, Italy, in Spain, right close to home here. The supermarket world over there, particularly as you move out of the cities, can be quite exciting. Like you can go to Tuscany and go to local supermarket and you'll find, you know, Roman courgettes with the flour still on at the supermarket. Yes. You'll never find that anywhere in the entire of the U.S. I don't know how many supermarkets there are in the US, but there are tens of thousands.

1:57:00You will not find a, they call them zucchinis there. You will not find a zucchini with flour in any supermarket, right? So why do they call it zucchini over there? And I don't know. Yeah. And what's the other one? Cilantro. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I've always thought that. Yeah. And eggplant. Yeah. Aubergine, isn't it? Aubergine, yeah. You have to change the brand names when you're selling it. Yeah. I bet I'll wind you up. That's so interesting. So it's cultural. It's a very cultural thing because there's the demand for it. Because the demand is there. So the supermarket in Tuscany will go and source from some farm.

1:57:36And those regional supply chains are connected. So the US is also no plastic like Australia. So all the produce is out. Really? Yeah. Big piles, but obviously super, super industrial. It comes from these mega farms. Most of it is coming from mega farms. You know, Whole Foods market is, of the large ones, the highest quality. And you do find some, that 20, 30 % is there, right, that we were talking about. You do find. Like, I've bought some really good cherries out of Whole Foods once. You know, you do find good stuff there. But it's a very, the U.S. is such a big country. They move, the volumes that they move are so massive.

1:58:22just to give you a sense that the consumption of avocados in the US just on Super Bowl weekend equals the total production of avocados in South Africa. And South Africa is one of the world's leading producers of avocados. They're probably making it for their guacamole for their Doritos, aren't they? That's such a beautiful juxtaposition that. Yeah. So those are the kind of differences. It's, you know, I'd say that the, not the bigger, the bigger the country, it's a problem. And also the more removed they are from food being a really central part of the country. You get it in Japan. I was there a couple of weeks ago.

1:58:59You can see that it's closer. It's still a supermarket. You can still get better produce if you find a market or a farmer's market and so forth. But a supermarket in Japan, a supermarket in Italy will be maybe 40, 50, 60 percent, right? Versus uk us you're looking more like the 20 and i'd say australia is probably um in the middle of that yeah produce that you find in colds and woolies what country has what country has the biggest problems to overcome us really and that's because the consumer piece yes interesting yes 100 and then somewhere like the japanese japan where they the reverence of food and like the artistry of of what they do is it's almost like because i'm trying to get a holistic view because that's where I'll see whether it's making more sense, if that makes sense in my head.

1:59:54That's probably got less issues. Or what would you say the issues are in Japan? Because I went to Japan five years ago for the World Cup. And I was like, this is like mental. Like it's such a wild, like kind of just insane country. Like what would you say their issues are? Because it seems like food's high on the agenda. I mean, I have less visibility on what goes on there. I think what I would say is that the problem, it's a similar problem that you have in a place like Italy or Spain, which is that I would expect that people are cooking less. I know that is happening in continental Europe. And I think with cooking less and more convenience, you know, things are being lost.

2:00:38So I think the risk there is losing too much of it, right? Moving too much into the kind of UK-US model where you really lean in convenience. I mean, in the US, in a city like New York, a lot of people don't even cook at home, ever. Yeah. Not even once a week. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I think that's the risk over there is with globalization, with industrialization, with convenience, with kids, you know, our lives have changed, right? We don't, kids are not learning to cook from their parents in the same way. Kids don't necessarily want to cook. Kids want to go out and eat at restaurants, right? so well if you've got call of duty or a spag bowl like as a five-year-old or six-year-old maybe it's it's a you know the opportunity costs at the minute and that's what is that's why we need to get these kids cooking or like the reverence for food and make it aspirational and high status yeah um there was a lot i've read this thing the other day which is like history and travel overlap like they give you a more developed perspective but like the link of history and travel so if you read about history like again with the um with all the stuff we're talking about about sort of like evolution and why we've got to this this state where we're at i think linking that with travel like you you've seen a whole about this what bourdain did a brilliant job of um like you you go around the globe the whole time you see all these things like what are the things you you've learned with this problem about sort of human beings you see you see so many different cultures must be so fascinating.

2:02:13I think, I guess I've learned to recognize that the cultural piece is, when we try and analyze the food system, you really have to look at culture, right? Yes. If you want to try to understand what's happening within a society, what's happening in a country, why a supply chain is geared a certain way, the answer to that comes from culture, right? And then you can draw, you can start answering further questions. But when you go all the way back, it starts there, right? Why is that courgette with flour available, right, if you go to a supermarket near Kianti? Well, because there's demand for it, because there's consumption.

2:02:56But why is there demand? Yeah, what's the history of that? What's the history of that? Well, it's because people cook with the flours. And why is that? Well, because that is still maintained. And there's still enough people cooking with the flours so that they demand it. and there's a market and there's a farmer growing it. And it's because of that. But you go to the Midwest of the US and they've never cooked with a courgette flour. And what's the history of that? Is that because? I think there are certain societies where food is more prominent. And there are other societies where food is just not, culture is made up of what language, food, habits, behaviors.

2:03:31Some cultures, food is massive, right? It's like at the center of everything. food in the US hasn't been at the center of everything. It's just not as big of a thing. What are other ways, we talked about radical transparency, sorry, radical seasonality. What are other ways that you think we, or levers to pull on to create the demand from the consumer side?

2:04:01education, kids, right? I think that's fundamental. because you're developing consumers with a, I don't know, yeah, there's a conscious element to it. But again, no, you play sports as you were saying, right? I bet you that if you get, if we were to look at the percentage of people that do sports later in life or stay active later in life, how many of them were doing sports early on in life, I think you'd find a strong correlation. I think sports are a really good link. like i think it's because yes getting kids into playing sport we need we basically need cooking to become like we basically need we need cooking to become a sport we need leon or messi to start making spag bol yes that's a good one and getting the kids to you know is the aspirational piece i think so education i think the aspirational piece i i think there's a nutritional piece that's coming up more and more right all of the work that people are doing tim specter around to cut health.

2:05:00I think if we can get consumers, and this is consumers, this is actually flipping it, right? This is getting older consumers, right? You start, you get to your 40s and 50s and, you know, what you eat becomes more relevant. You can't handle hangovers in the same way. You can't handle, you know, trashy food in the same way. You've got to be more careful. You start worrying about your health a lot more than when you're in your 20s, where it doesn't even cross your mind. So that connection between flavor and nutrition is a hook later on in life, right? Because the amount of people you, you know, joke about kind of the yoga and like, you know, well, people start getting into yoga later on in life.

2:05:43Namaste, bro. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And wanting to go on holidays that are a little bit more eco-conscious and healthy and stuff. So, you know, if we can, if we can connect food and say, Hey man, like if you're, and that's part of the argument that I make in the book is food is sorry, flavor is nutrition. So if you want to if you want a good bang for your buck, then make sure that you're spending money on stuff that's actually good for you. And this becomes really important when you get past your 40s, when people start seriously thinking about nutrition, they start having kids, so they think about nutrition for their kids and what they're feeding them.

2:06:18So I think bringing that narrative in and making the connection that I make, and I'm not the only one that makes it between flavor and nutrition, but making that connection and starting to communicate that, right? Starting to back to Seth Godin's comments as to, you know, what am I communicating with the things that I wear and I eat? What am I communicating with the things that I eat? If I can start building a connection between nutrition and quality food, if I care about my health and I'm like, shit, I want to make sure that I'm putting good food into my body, that will become a way to get consumption stimulated or stimulated and what like what i was like from the mangoes in egypt like what is this drive like where does this like what gets you out of bed every morning like like just keep doing this do you know what i'm saying despite all the obstacles all the hurdles like what is that fire i love doing something that has meaning and impact and you know real purpose to to my life and I think you know leaving a legacy is something that to me is is important you know whether that's for the food system for one for my kids and just I want to be able to look back it won't matter much when I'm when I'm gone for me personally but I still want to be able to look back on life and feel that I dedicated my life or at least a good the vast majority of my professional life by then to doing something that mattered that made a difference you know and that's in something that I enjoy.

2:07:51Like I love, it's the one thing I don't get bored of is produce and, you know, meat and fish and like just eating and cooking and the restaurants. Like I just love food. So I'm doing something, you know, I'm doing something and, uh, curious consumers.

2:08:08So yeah, it's, it's wanting, wanting to do something really meaningful with my life. It's fun. What would you, what's one sentence you'd want on your gravestone? Sentence on my gravestone.

2:08:27Wow.

2:08:33That I...

2:08:38I mean, one is that I tried to leave the world in a better place. And I think one that's as equally important as a message for people is, again, I go back to just, I did something that I loved. I did something I loved in terms of the like that's what I keep reminding me with this is like I love as much as this is I mean this is this is joyous but all the bollocks around the outside the editing stuff it's like oh drop me out yeah but the um I think that there's something in just leaving the world world in a better place in terms of one thing I've always found fascinating is how you've built a brand in a in a traditionally very b2b world do you know what I'm saying like that's like harvey and brockness did that to some respects the um the cheese the cheese guys like their family friend like um that's how i got the job as a delivery man but so not because of your driving skills yeah yeah i had to go to court i got i got almost i got caught because i was just was probably too busy um yeah well i was i was too busy listening to podcasts ironically um but yeah definitely not for my driving skills i actually went around there was a there was a mcdonald's and i basically took the van round and you know like the the um when you go into like a drive-thru it's got the the height thing yeah yeah i basically took the van in order load of mcdonald's and i've come around it's gone i've pulled back into the depot and jamie was like what the fuck have you done i was like the van's fucked but i got you some nuggets then you go back to the nuggets exactly back to the nuggets but how have you done that like building a brand in, in, um, like B2B is so hard, but I think it's a, if you get the brand, you win essentially.

2:10:23Yeah. It was all, I think one of the things was that brand building a brand was always in our DNA because we started out going to the consumer in the very, very early days. Yeah. And I've always felt that it was important in, you know, back to a couple of questions, ago how do we get consumers right you know the way that we try and do it is we build a brand that gives consumers the confidence that you know if you buy natura you're going to get rewarded with flavor and nutrition certainly flavor and that's important right it's important because we that's how we shop that's how that's the that's our behavior right we look to brands for the signaling that they give to who we are and what we do.

2:11:12And I think that there was a need for a brand. I always saw a gap in produce kind of very early on. I'm like, there's no one that's branded produce. You have Chiquita, you have certain single category, single product brands that we see on supermarkets, but there's no Natura of produce right on supermarket aisles except for natura um yes and that you know that well the b2b brand came before as in building a brand as we were building natura within the b2b space we still continue to build because it was b2c first and then okay but you know this idea of building a brand and when we sent out a newsletter for it to have a certain style and to brand our vans in a certain way like we've always invested um what's your definition of a brand in a sentence it's a set of i guess it's a set of ideas it's a set of ideas and behaviors uh and promises that are really in the head of a consumer i think a brand is what's perceived within within the consumer right it's in the consumer's head yeah there's i asked that to a lot of people who've been on the pod like i asked it to rory southern and he gave as you'd imagine some very interesting answer but he linked it back to nature and actually brands are sort of uh um he linked us back to survival of the fittest so the bit the better brands and competition you get a new brand in another one comes in yeah it's like um what does he say hipsters raise the ceiling chains raise the floor so it's like the new the new restaurants that come in raise the ceiling but the change needs come in it makes everything better final question mate but i've absolutely loved this is what's one truth you believe that most people would disagree with you on

2:13:05um

2:13:10that shipping produce produce around the world is a bad thing I think it's a good thing. Tell me more. Well, there are a few ingredients, a few products that we ship. Forced rhubarb being one of them that we fly over to the US and then sell to chefs in New York and Miami. The rhubarb is from Yorkshire? Yorkshire, yeah. Is it the only place in the world you can get it? Yes. Well, we have a Canadian farmer that grows Forced's Rhubarb, not nearly as good as, I mean, if you want Forced Rhubarb. Probably Yorkshire.

2:13:51And most people believe that, you know, shipping product around the world is a bad thing. now i think that if you take certain product and you look at it in isolation you can find that compromise we were talking about where in my mind the benefits outweigh the negatives right what about like i know you talked so but surely that's really like energy consuming like what's how how do i rationalize it yeah because that's one of the things yeah how do you rationalize that And that kind of goes back a few steps early with like theoretical perfect adjacent possible. I think, yes, there's a, I think with food, when you touch on food choices, there's no perfect, right?

2:14:38Yes, carrot straight out of the ground, grown organically with nothing on it. Perfect. That's a perfect choice. Food choices, unfortunately, are not that easy. You go walk into a supermarket, you're deciding whether, do I buy something that's local, less local, processed, less processed, right? You kind of have these levers that you need to toggle in your head to decide what do you care most about, right? So with shipping food, you have the same toggles, right? Do I care more about preserving cultural heritage, right? This incredible product that is totally unique, that's grown by six, seven families in the world.

2:15:17that's part of the richness of what makes us human and that is part of this kind of human heritage? Or do you value food miles more, right? So these are the kind of choices. So it's not a zero-sum game. Like you've got to figure out what do you care more about because expanding the market for rhubarb as we've done, right? Robert Tomlinson, who's our main rhubarb farmer because that's who we really started with, he's kind of known all over New York now. Really? He's getting known in Miami and French chefs know him and, you know, is preserving that product and the amount of push that we've given to that part of that rhubarb triangle, right?

2:15:59Through, through the three farmers we work with, the growth that we've seen in rhubarb consumption, you know, is in part because we have decided to export this product to the world. So we're broadening the market for it, which means that we are creating long-term resilience and a market for it. We're doing it at the right price. The carbon footprint of a product is about 80 % to 90 % on the farm. Very little of it is actual transportation. It's anywhere from 8 % to 17%. So what's it on the farm? Inputs, diesel in the tractors, the production of chemicals, if using chemicals or fertilizers or whatever inputs you're putting on farm.

2:16:43So the actual growing process is where most of the carbon footprint sits. If there's soil disturbance and there's release of carbon, that impacts it. So really transportation is not where the problem is with the eco-worthiness of a product. So what I believe is that when you take an ingredient like forced rhubarb, broadening the market, letting more people experience that product, creating more employment and more longevity for a product that I believe more people around the world should discover and that we should preserve those farming techniques. If we can broaden the market by going further abroad, then it's something that we should.

2:17:23What's, when you get, because I think you talk about in the book, it's like, so so so say like rhubarb comes out the ground yeah we'll use this as an example what how do you keep it the quality high enough because i think that's a again a science and an art so that when it gets to some restaurant in new york or paris or melbourne like it is like is it jack who the farmer is robert sorry robert yeah it's like it's just being pulled out of robert's soil yeah does that make sense so it's obviously refrigeration and good transport and moving around. Obviously, I want to say that 99 % of the produce that we sell in New York and Miami comes from North America, US, and a bit's coming from Mexico and Canada.

2:18:07Supply chain here is European. So we're not shipping 80 % of the fresh products from Europe to the US. We have these local, you have three supply chains within the natural world, the North American one, European one, and Australian one. right then there are a couple of ingredients that fresh ingredients that we choose to move like rhubarb being one of them white asparagus from france goes into the u.s because we just think that they are unique enough um that they fit the market they set a point of difference network but in everything that we do we need to look at freshness so even when we're bringing product you know from from yorkshire down here needs to be refrigerated we need to make sure that it's handled correctly at the right temperature and different products require different handling in different temperatures, yeah.

2:18:57Mate, I've absolutely loved that. It's, yeah, been a wonderful, wonderful experience. I'm just, there's just, my brain's bubbling with wisdom, mate. There's just so much to take from that. But I think the main thing is flavor and consumer and the rest will sort of slowly fall into place. So thank you. Thanks so much. It's been a real pleasure. Really enjoyed it. Yeah, that was banging. Nice. That was absolutely amazing.

2:19:26Thank you so, so much for listening to the podcast. I really, really do appreciate it. If you liked that episode, only if you liked it, please do give it five stars, subscribe, tell all your friends, families, foes, next door, but one, cat, dog, whatever. Please tell everyone about this podcast. It means the world to me. And I really want to understand what your pain points are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands. please do hit me up on LinkedIn, search Dan Pope, and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands.

2:20:00Thank you so much.