Waitrose CEO: How To Win Waitrose in 7 Easy Ways

0:00Mera Christmas you filthy animals yeah I hope you're having an amazing Christmas this week currently recording this in that weird limbo time in between Crimbo and New Year where I feel like a literal pig in blanket I've stuffed my fucking face the last few days one of those mornings where you sort of wake up have lint balls and champagne for breakfast so kind of in a kind of squiffy blur at the minute so we are re-releasing one of the OG episodes from a few years ago with um a CEO of Waitrose James Bailey it's a certain banger it's one of the most listened to episodes of all time and I think it's perfect as we go into the new year um just want to say a massive huge like thank you for all your support this year for listening to the pod really means the world to me still can't believe I get to actually do this thing so yeah we'll always be so grateful and we'll always show up um would be amazing if you fancy giving a christmas present please leave a five star review on apple or spotify it all helps push the pot out there or please just share your favorite episode of this year with a mate like literally whatsapp them your favorite episode you don't understand like how far that can actually go and i'd be so enormously grateful 2025 i'm absolutely fucking sending it we're gonna have some amazing episodes coming up uh we've got a tour which is going to be sick and yeah i just want to keep providing amazing content for you guys so you can keep building amazing brands anyway hope you'll have a lovely rest of 2024 and are ready to send it in 2025 too thank you so much hello there people and listeners of the hungry podcast today i am beyond thrilled to welcome james bailey onto the podcast um our listeners have been waiting this for me for a very long time um james is the current ceo of waitrose um who's the number one premium uh grocery retailer in the uk uh james responsible for seven billion turnover uh over 50 000 partners over 300 stores um and one billion plus in e-commerce uh pre-waitrose james worked for sainsbury's where he was the grocery buying director um accountable for sales of 16 billion or 60 percent of of sainsbury's total turnover and was leading a team of around 150 people um james also the ned for several challenger brands, Augs, Hunwines, Well and Truly.

2:30And pre all of that, James had a career at the NHS and in finance. So look, I'm so excited and very grateful for you coming on today, James. I really appreciate it. No problem. Nice to be here, Dan. So the word I want to start this conversation with is the word calm. And I've done a lot of research and the kind of the general archetype of a ceo is and albeit this may be a little bit archaic but the general archetype is kind of ostentatious bit braggadocious kind of billy big bollocks like you know climbing their way up to the top um and i've seen some of that firsthand but in two of the articles i've read one said james is less intense than most supermarket bosses i've met and seems genuinely quite relaxed another said senior traders can often be intense ostentatious characters it's not necessarily a bad thing when you're managing vast revenues and driving your team onto hit aggressive targets bailey by contrast exudes a sense of calm and control which should stand him in good stead as he faces the greatest challenge of his career to date um so you became the ceo i think it was march 2020 so that you basically get thrown right into the you know in the hot heat of a pandemic that's right yep exactly you've got brexit um you've got just a whole myriad of different issues and i really want to kind of yeah use the word calm to unlock the start of this conversation so could you describe where this ability to remain calm came from and how your parents kind of nurtured and shaped that uh yeah i mean uh first of all thanks for having me really appreciate it um i'll uh i'll do my best to throw as much interesting stuff at you you and your listeners as i possibly can um and i'll try and stay calm as well that would be ironic if i lost my tempest wouldn't it um like i don't know i think i've always uh i've never really been to uh i don't really get to carry away with stuff you know i love the things i love i love and i get excited about i love being with my friends my family there's loads of stuff I enjoy but I um I've kind of always had uh an attitude that there's much more important things going on and certain things you do take seriously and certain things you don't and I've always um I kind of naturally relatively calm don't get too carried away I don't know how much of that I mean my dad is pretty similar uh so maybe there's a bit of genetics in there my upbringing was as vanilla as you can possibly imagine nothing nothing good interesting or bad particularly happened it was all just so which probably helped I don't know um but no it's that uh that kind of attitude is kind of in bill I didn't I didn't decide at one one day that I was uh losing my temper too much and so I should calm down and then from then on everything was like a cool uh uh mill pond of emotion it was just i'm just kind of wired this way um and i'm not a big fan probably because of that i'm not a big fan of huge egos generally and definitely not a work um i think i think you do need sometimes you do need in different businesses you need a bit of ego to drive things forward you need a bit of uh drive and vision and some of those things some of those things sometimes come with ego but certainly in bigger businesses like the ones I've worked in, those big egos kind of get in the way of common sense.

6:04They kind of start to distort the mood and the vision and the quality of work being done in big rooms full of people because more than often than not, the ego takes over from the brain and you end up in some different places. And more as importantly, maybe most people don't really enjoy working in a room full of big egos. it can be quite a bruising experience i don't think you get the best out of people in the long term if most of the things that are driving their performance are fear or intimidation or you know any of those negative things i think in the end you always get the most out of people by engaging them both treating everyone as individuals and finding out what motivates them and trying to trying to create sort of an environment where they are happy and giving their best selves i know it sounds a bit corny but i genuinely i do genuinely think eventually that's the that's the right medium long-term uh approach to working with people so don't know the calmness is kind of innate i can't turn it on and off if i the one thing is if i do if i do lose it then people do take notice because it's so unusual um that everyone sort of rolls their chairs back to the corner of the room and says oh we better actually do something about that so if i do if i am going to go it's it's on a very very rare occasion and it usually works so i keep it um i keep it um limited yeah there's i mean there's just so my brain's kind of bubbling with questions um so so so the first thing you said is you know ego is a kind of common place and it can be quite a bruising experience uh to work among that and you know i've seen it firsthand with some of the companies I've worked for and just through kind of um friends who work in this industry you the the kind of the common or maybe old school story is that the biggest ego kind of rises to the top if that makes sense and it's not necessarily true but how did you navigate your way to become the CEO of Waitrose when you were potentially surrounded by some big egos because that sounds really hard um well do you know what actually i think it is becoming less and less common i think the more common archetype archetype for leadership these days is a bit more like me which is uh i mean i'm not saying i'm all of these things but it's broadly more inclusive less egotistical more um authentic is a very overused word but you know what i mean um and this that image of it being a a bit like Wolf of Wall Street where everyone's banging on the table and you know jumping over and and killing each other for the next sale I think that is I think I think in almost every job I've done there's been the odd example of that but most of it was 10 15 10 or 15 years ago now most of the leaders I've very rarely do you come across a leader these days who's survived or is continuing to survive in in some of our industries with that much ego overtly if you know I mean sometimes it's sometimes it's well hidden and stuff like that that's okay but i've been lucky i haven't really i've run into a bunch of people with egos who kind of hit the ropes um either because it wasn't it didn't fit properly or you know they got carried away or it didn't you know they couldn't like pull it off there's always the odd um there's always a little bit of politics there's always a little bit of maneuvering and everything else but it's not game of thrones you know what i mean it's not you know you don't have to come in and out think everyone politically every day to survive what you should probably do is come in say hello to your team have a look at the numbers and make sure we're doing what we need to do and and you know build from there and i think most most people i've worked with have ended up in that space so you know being not being too egotistical didn't didn't hold me back um and if you take if you take enough of the ego out of there and what what matters is good people good ideas good execution um and those and those things I prefer spending more time on.

10:05So there's an amazing amount of luck involved in most jobs you end up doing. So I'm going to put 90 % of me getting this job down to luck and 10 % down to doing a good enough job and all the jobs on the way into it.

10:21No, I think there's so much in that because I think a lot of our listeners may... what you talked talked about there about having to navigate the politics and the egos and i completely agree it's it's it's redundant now to kind of go all guns blazing into these situations as you say you'll fall against the ropes eventually but how do you specifically kind of get your point across or or say what you want to say whilst relinquishing the ego because i'll throw my hands up if i've got an idea my ego kind of jumps kicks off and i'm like well i think we should do this and blah blah blah blah and and then kind of it's not it's a weakness i sometimes don't let people talk um so how do you do that and i'm kind of asking this selfishly james um i think it's uh i mean there's all sorts of different things isn't there i think finding ways of asking of using good questions is really important so you know if so if say for example dan you've charged in with a cracking idea or a really awful one probably uh what you know what's the best way of of continuing that conversation is it dan that's awful um that's never going to work for the following reasons or is it okay dan well you know that's that's really interesting i love your energy what's sort of talk to me about what happens if this happens what have you thought about x have you thought about y who have you spoken to you know questions tend And if you disagree with something or if you're not sure about something yet, there's always good questions to open a conversation up.

12:00But if you confront someone and completely disagree straight away, you mean you can if you want, but there's always a better conversation if you're just asking open-ended questions. And I'm not sort of suggesting you kind of deliberately construct them or come in with a set of three questions you always ask everyone because it gets a little bit formulaic and again, you lose a bit of authenticity. but I think if you keep an open mind and you know you're you're coming from a good place like you're genuinely interested in someone's opinion and their ideas um you know starting by asking two or three good questions usually takes most of the can take most of the sting out of a challenge that you're giving someone else's idea and it's not you're not saying it's a bad idea you're asking you know you're asking to develop the idea with them a little bit and I think that I think usually stuff like that helps create a better conversation than than confrontation or or picking on someone's uh you know idea they've come up with and they thought was the best thing in the world in front of other people that's uh that's not very constructive it's not and also the next idea they come up with might be an absolute game changer and you know are they going to come up with it if what happens when they come up with an idea is they get shouted down or belittled in front of their colleagues or anything else like that it's not going to work so you know you've got it you just got to be open-minded and constructive with people i think it's almost like if you go into it with statements it's statements are really combative that i don't have to say that combative yeah whereas um whereas questions are more exploratory and actually open up that they as you say they take the sting out of it but they actually open up possibilities to find even better ideas and solutions and i think that's that's brilliant for our listeners because I think a lot of our listeners are challenger brands and you know, the founders often are super single minded and sure you'll know this with the brands you've worked with super single minded, like this is the way I want things done.

13:55And that's, that's super actionable. Um, so I interviewed Ed Perry from, um, from cook last two weeks ago and he's, he's really, really good guy. And he was basically saying that he, he, he struggles to stay calm. It's almost like the kind of the complete complete opposite to yourself um and one one of the words he he said to navigate all the kind of the the um the inflation the cost price increases going through uh cost living crisis he said he needs to stay calm is that's what he needs to personally do um i would love to know what has been the hardest day in your career when you didn't stay calm initially and it did it did emotionally sting and then how did you navigate out of that um yeah i mean good question i i mean i often refer back to a uh something that happened when i was at sainsbury's um and it's a good answer to it's an okay answer this question it's a good answer as well to what happens when you get a setback in your career a little bit um and you know i won't go into all the details but it was basically my i'd been promoted to a director I was relatively young not the youngest but quite young I felt a little bit of that and it was my first chance to talk to my whole team there's about 200 people in the room and in Sagesby there's a sort of an underground auditorium so it's a bit like being on the on the stage of the National Theatre sometimes but I'd had a think about I'd had a chance of thinking about what I wanted to say to everyone and the thing that was the most important to me all the way through all the way through my career actually the thing that has most interested me most often is the culture at work and how we work and how you how you improve engagement how you improve autonomy and happiness at work and the impact that can have on you know the work environment and the results so I kind of had a thought about I think about that and I thought right so now I'm now I'm in charge probably a mistake at the time but now I'm in charge of this team what you know how do I want to how do I want to position that like how do I want us to work i think that's the first most important thing to talk to everyone about so i stood up and i sort of said look i think it's really important that that we are that we that we're all engaged and we're all happy in what we're doing and we know what needs doing and you know it's a nice open authentic room and we can all talk to each other about whether we think these are good or bad ideas and i and i think being able you know i think having a high degree of trust is important and being flexible and things like that and i kind of talked about the way I wanted us to work being a bit more flexible and I'd said um you know I personally won't be checking where everyone is that's ridiculous you know I trust you guys are doing a good job it's it's going to be about the work we do not where we do the work and you know all things that sound a bit um uh old-fashioned now but they were like this is about maybe I don't know 10 years ago so at the time it sounded revolutionary to my ears anyway I thought it was really good um and I said at the time as well i want a good work-life balance for everyone because i think it's really important so i said that we won't like the the only um the only sort of rule i want to try and work together on is that we won't send emails between uh six in the six in the evening and eight o 'clock in the morning right so that when you go home and at this point something you know this is how old it is you had like a blackberry or something or you could still get work emails on your phone or something and i wanted people to be able to go home and not be constantly looking at their phone right so it was either buzzing or they you know they were they weren't switching off and they're coming in exhausted the next day so i said right no emails between eight in the morning and six at night and everyone left and it looked and it and it felt quite positive and i thought right this is great we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna push on here and work together as a team and do things differently and this was in the morning and around about two o 'clock in the afternoon i got a phone call from one of the directors proper directors not just like mini directors of the business and said uh james have you know someone just called me and said that you told your team that they could all work flexibly and that they wouldn't be sending emails after a certain time and stuff and i said yeah i did say that it's really good isn't it and they said no that's awful that's that's not the company policy you can't say that to one team and have your team working one way and everyone else working a different way um and you know it's gone all the way to the top and the people at the top at the time weren't particularly um open-minded should we say about flexible working and the idea that you know you you would um trust people to work you know on what they're doing and in the way they wanted to do it and so i so i brought broadly in the space of about eight hours i got a phone call from that person and then i said and then they said well so the boss is going to call you um and uh he wants to understand exactly what you said and based on what exactly you said, you might get fired because you completely undermined company working policy and you can't just go out and say these things, etc, etc.

19:01So this is the Wednesday of my first week as a director. And I think, and I was sitting there with a single... How old were you, sorry? Oh, I would have been mid-30s, late 30s, something like that. Okay, yes. So yeah, okay, just to get some context, yeah. So you're still pretty young in the grand scheme of things. yeah well i think so yeah i mean not compared to a lot of people probably listen to this but it felt young at the time um but yeah so i was three days in and uh i was getting a phone call from the basically the boss of sainsbury's to to check what i'd said and if and if if i'd said the wrong thing i was i was going to get fired and i was completely blindsided because i was like i'm pretty sure i haven't said anything too bad i i was just saying the things i believe in and i want the team to get on with um anyway that you know so i was absolutely mildly petrified um but uh there's a there was a part of me that said i've not done anything wrong so i don't know i'm i'm i'm just going to say what i said and if if that was the wrong thing i'm gonna have to take it on the chin and as it happened it was okay i kind of got a slap on the wrist and a telling off and had to sort of um apologize to a few people but but it about a week later after i'd finished panicking slightly um i i kind of realized that actually what i'd done was assert the things i did believe in and that that was pretty important to me and i didn't think i'd said anything wrong and i did think those things were the right things to do and lots of people come up after us and said oh i hear you're in trouble for that i think it was worth it because someone needs to say those things we'd you know we need to change the way we work and i think i think at one on the one hand i learn you've got to be a lot you've got to be conscious of the of the impact you have in certain jobs and the fact that you're not just talking to a room of 200 people underground in a head office sometimes there's a lot more it has a lot more impact than that and you need to be a bit more wary of that but i also learned not i learned if you believe i think if i believe in something if think it's the right thing to do i don't mind who hears it um and so so you know the conviction you that conviction that you that you believe certain things are the right way to do things and the right things for the way people work it could be anything it could be different convictions but i it was the first serious time i'd nearly got fired um and it was it was for saying something i've really believed in and i i kind of i know it sounds corny but i kind of thought well if you're gonna get fired or something it might as well be something like that um so i don't know what i was supposed to learn from that situation but what i did take away was you might as well just go for the things you believe in because if they if they don't fit in the environment you're in you're better off learning that straight away and there's definitely no point in hiding i could have i could have turned around and said oh i don't believe in those things i've changed my mind we're going to do it differently etc but i wouldn't have believed it um and so yeah i kind it was an unusual way to learn it but i kind of i think i learned in that moment and through that process that you might as well there's one of my favorite phrases apparently comes from a mexican revolutionary um uh called emiliano zapata and i think let's say it was him who said it basically said it's better to die on your feet than live on your knees and i think when he was saying it it probably meant a lot more but when i hear it i think well you might as well stick to beliefs and say the things you believe because otherwise you're going to look back and think i never really said what i meant to say and i never i know i never found out why other people would or wouldn't how they'd react to it whether it was important whether people agreed or not so i kind of i kind of accidentally learned that lesson by nearly getting fired from the biggest job i've ever done at the time i mean it's it's what you've said there it's better to die and die on your feet than live on your knees and i think i think that's just absolutely delicious and i think having having your own personal principles to make decisions from is is really strong and your own values i think there's so much in that for our listeners and i also think it's true of questions um i think i think there's this it kind of goes back to the ego thing or the insecurity we were talking about earlier about asking questions and sometimes in settings you can you can be and i've had it before i'm too scared to ask a question um whereas whereas now the more i've as i've just got a little bit a little bit older i don't think any questions a bad question someone i was listening to on a podcast so every question's a good question just ask the question it's actually about building the muscle to ask the question um uh so so what did it feel like when the boss called you like because as i said i'm like what did that i'm trying to see you've ever been rattled?

23:55Where were you when that phone call took place? Et cetera. Yeah, I was at home and I'd gone home and I told Emma, my wife, and she'd kind of looked at me like I was an idiot. How could I possibly be getting fired after three days? And I was a little bit rabbit in the headlights. I wasn't particularly, this was before I'd had time to sort of process it a little bit. So it was all happening a little bit quickly. and so I was just sat at home waiting for this phone call and and um and trying to decide whether I try whether I'm how honest I am about what it was I'd said or not or whether I try and second guess what um that person might want to hear or not hear and again you know again trying to second guess people and understand what they're hearing or not is not a good idea because you end up tying yourselves in knots so yeah I mean I had to I had to just be completely honest and say what I had said and explain why I'd said it and trust that it was enough not to get me fired.

24:58So yeah, I was, without using bad words, I was slightly nervous for quite a while before that phone call arrived and afterwards. But then he, so this was Justin King, who used to run Sainsbury's, and I hadn't had a lot of interaction with him before that, a little bit, I kind of knew a little bit. and he's a good guy but he sort of takes no prisoners either so I had kind of no doubt that if he disagreed and didn't think it was a good idea he would probably have said so but he texted me soon after and said look don't worry about it you were sticking up for something you thought you believed you've probably crossed the rails you might need to apologise to a few people but don't worry about it get on with it so in the end he was supportive um but yeah i wouldn't i'm not gonna pretend i wasn't slightly um nervous should we say beforehand yeah the and i think it reminds me of of a of a great quote i love which is you you are the sum of the of the uncomfortable conversations you have i think a lot about of life is having really uncomfortable conversations whether that's you know potentially your boss calling you to say right if you you get you're getting the can yeah if you this conversation doesn't go well from our end as brand it could be having hard conversations with the retailers that you've got to have these conversations to progress forward what did you like did you were you just like hold my hands up i'm honest this is what i said like because i think that it's not what you say it's how you say it often especially with uncomfortable conversations so kind of how did you deliver the the news because you'd kind of gone against sainsbury's policy yeah again i uh But like I said, I could have probably tried to spin it or try and, as I say, try and second guess what I thought he wanted to hear or they wanted to hear or anything else.

26:54But because I didn't know what particularly that might be, I kind of didn't have that option. And because I was convinced I hadn't said anything wrong and I thought it was the right thing to do and the other things, I had enough conviction to take me over that line. and like I said, in my experience, probably when I was a bit younger, I probably did try and second-guess things and try and adapt to what I thought people would prefer to hear rather than really what was more authentic or anything else. And again, you end up tripping over yourself afterwards. There's a slow winding path to not being able to bring yourself to work by following that route.

27:34So I don't think I particularly thought about it too much. I just kind of, do I still believe what I said was the right thing? And I positioned it that way. And I think I kind of stuck up for myself a little bit, but I was smart enough not to assert that too much, if you like. So I'm pretty sure I said everything I'd said and why I'd said it and tried to make myself sound as open-minded as possible about the things I should learn from this scenario rather than getting fired um would probably be the best summary of it no but i think it goes back to this this open-mindedness and open questions i think that's real uh kind of there's real value in that for for our listeners um where i want to go now so so waitrose have got arguably um the one of the best cultures and you know i we did a we came in today a demo with you guys at one of the like partner dining rooms and all this every single sort of partner and staff member was super happy they talked about this kind of waitrose stone that everyone seems to put on a waitrose stone the first year they work at waitrose because the food's so good sounds i mean i was like yeah i mean i'm pretty sure i put on half stone in in in the afternoon i was just scoffing my face with all manner of things but but the culture is really strong and what i what i saw and what I was fascinated by is, you know, the people who've got the badges that say I've, I've been here for like 25 years.

29:10It's very revered that, and how long people have been at the company. Um, but that is kind of unique, especially in today's world where most people kind of hop between jobs every two to three, four years. Um, I really want to dig into, dig into this culture. Um, so the, so the first question is, and I think that kind of the way to do this it's almost look at your interview process to become the ceo because the the way the questions they're asking for the for the man at the at the helm are probably going to be the best lens to look through this so what was like what was the interview process if you're okay to disclose like uh going from sainsbury's to waitrose yeah well i mean this is going to be bitterly disappointing but mildly interesting for people because the there wasn't much of a process yes um so i mean i'd left sainsbury's the summer before and had an absolutely brilliant time for about eight months um you know meeting loads of people at quite a lot of um you know i kind of indulged in a bit more of my passion on the food startups got involved with um uh well and truly got involved with some of the other guys like hun um met lots of pe companies talked about lots of interesting things i was really enjoying it um uh and slowly running out of money which is always a problem um and and broadly i was kind of answering lots of phone calls and saying a lot of people were saying can you come and talk to us about x y and z and i had nothing to lose so i was just going and having good conversations with people which is a brilliant sort of frame of mind to be in it's very um uh liberating and i got a phone call and said and they said basically uh so sharon who's my boss Sharon White a pretty remarkable person she's new to the job of chairman of the John Lewis Partnership and she would like to meet some people from retail and just sort of begin to learn about the ups and downs, what are the ins and outs what should she be watching out for, things like that and would you be prepared to go and have a cup of tea with her so I said yeah of course I would that sounds fascinating so I went into London and met Sharon in a really nice little uh tea room and we sat in the corner and Sharon is uh if anyone gets a chance Sharon's an amazing person to me she's super warm and generous and really personable and you know I just felt at ease really quickly and she kind of explained that she just started and was really just keen to learn and we talked a little bit about how grocery works and all the different ins and outs and things like that and just had a really lovely conversation for about an hour and nothing nothing particularly she asked a little bit about what I thought about the Waitrose brand and the business and and she also asked about she'd seen on my cv that i had um uh one of the businesses i'd worked with so if you go back uh seven or eight years i'd we'd set up a program at sainsbury's uh as a sort of a forerunner to what we did on future brands where we did dragon's dens and we met loads of um food entrepreneurs and they came and pitched and you know i still i still talk to some of those guys now like harriet from manor marsh um uh and uh jane from x of kiddy yum and things like that so we met loads of really fascinating people um but one of the one of the things i did was take on a uh an advisory role at a social enterprise um which has which uh has morphed into a really interesting uh uh business that works with homeless people it's a charity as well so a fascinating setup but Sharon had seen this on my CV and said well talk to me about you know why are you working for a social enterprise what was it like and I just talked about the uh the the draw of of business doing a good thing at the same as time as doing good business but that good business had to come first because for all of the of the of the impact you'd like to have with your purpose you can only have that if your business is successful um so if you focus all your time on the purpose and not on the business is it's the amount of good you can do is going to disappear because that you're going out of business um and so we talked about a few of those things and that was that um and then i got a phone call the next day from the same um intermediary and they said oh sharon really likes me and you can meet her again on friday um and this was the week of lockdown so boris was about to go on telly on the Friday and tell us all that we weren't allowed out anymore um and so I thought hang on a second do you want me to go back into London on Friday when most of London is closing down um and so I did think about it a little bit and then I got a prompt from a friend of mine that said are you crazy she wants to talk to you again go and talk to her so I thought yeah fair enough probably so I did I went back and on the Friday I went into London it was I can't remember the day exactly but like I said it was the Friday of lockdown that that Boris went on TV that evening and declared a lockdown.

34:16And I went into London. It was like a ghost town. Sharon had had a private members club in Soho open just for her. So that's when I started to think it was something out of the Matrix or something because it was only her sat in the middle of this cafe. And it was a bit odd. And a nice man greeted me at the door and said, oh, yes, you're meeting Sharon, aren't you? There's no one else there. So a little bit intimidating. But again, Sharon was just lovely. and we talked a lot. And about halfway through their conversations, she started sort of explaining that she might reintroduce or change the structure to reintroduce an executive director or an MD of Waitrose and would I be interested in doing that job?

35:02And so I sort of said, well, I've been really clear, I do not want to get back into food retail, but here's the chairman of the partnership saying, would I be interested in the Waitrose job and Waitrose was one of the very few companies that I would probably have would have been different and interesting enough to convince me to go back and have a go at it and so I sort of said yes and she said great well we'll send you some paperwork on Monday and you know I need to get you to meet some of the non-execs and some of the other execs around the table but broadly let's see if we can work something out and apart from some zoom meetings with some non-execs and some some of the other people in the business which took place over the course of the next two weeks that was the that was the entire extent of my interview process you know a cup of tea and then a cup of coffee with Sharon um so uh yeah I'd love to tell you a story about a really grueling set of interviews with lots of different people and psychometric tests and some sort of test of my you know my stamina or something it really wasn't Sharon is much more personable and much more she trusts her instincts and her judgment and so in the end oddly enough it was one of the lightest processes I've ever been through to get a job that's I mean that's kind of fascinating and blow my mind that even at a level that big with that many employees with billion billion turnover that it's a it's a cup of tea in in london and i and i think for our listeners um you know hiring is is the most important thing i think if you get one dodgy hire it can eviscerate the culture people leave people come and go so it's the most important thing um but i also think sometimes they they can kind of over complicate it and so sometimes just going to meet people for a cup of coffee or a cup of tea what one one guest on um on here always said you used to take someone for um for for a cup of coffee and see how they treat the waiter because almost like that's a really good indication of how how that how they're act and so i think that's brilliant um i would love to know how how how's james had to change um moving from sainsbury's to to to sort of a different role in waitrose like what what are some of the weaknesses you've had to work on as you've crossed from from sort of yeah sainsbury's to waitrose well i mean it's interesting if just practically speaking 80 let's say at least 80 percent of what how what good supermarket operating what good practice what you know what good strategy looks like is pretty similar between all supermarkets there's you know there's a core set of things that you have to get right every time uh and there's a lot of infrastructure and people and stuff that goes behind that but it's 80 % is a cunt paste broadly so a lot of what I've learned and good people I've learned from in change was I can take over and begin to try and work out what the path for Wage Rose could look like and then the 20 % is the bit that you need to spend a bit more time on because it's the thing that makes the business and the culture different how do you adapt to that how do you make the most of it and strategically what's the most important thing for Waitrose versus a Sainsbury's or anyone else, an Aldi or anyone else.

38:42So on the one hand, there was a huge amount that I'd learned that I could almost immediately start thinking about and doing in the new job. But then the context of when I joined and the situation I joined in was pretty unique. So obviously I joined about a month after COVID started. So all of the, you know, there were queues outside all the shops. online was going through the roof and waitrose didn't really have an online business um but i also joined on zoom so i didn't get to meet anyone who was working with before i joined uh the offices were closed so i couldn't have gone to the office to meet anyone um and you know it was a business that had gone from uh being very reasonably old-fashioned about presenteeism and being in the office to having to immediately adapt to this online flexible approach and so i arrived i didn't arrive in a room i didn't arrive on the lectern i couldn't go around saying hello to everyone and sort of building trust and a bit of rapport everything was on zoom um so it's a really unusual way to walk into a job in a very very unusual customer market context and the partnership is a really different business so the context i walked into was uh was exceptional um and and so i was really um it was really difficult to begin to build momentum and trust and connect and the kind of connections you need to get hold of a business and and begin to shape and and move in the direction you're moving in and not least because the dominant theme 80 of the dominant theme was covid and keeping the shops open and whether you had enough partners and what was the law and would there be enough stock coming in so really really practical everyday things there was almost no headroom in the business at all for what comes next um and it took you know took two or three or four months before we could create that headroom and i took and i needed two or three or four months to begin to get to know everyone and for them to get to know me so the context walking in was really different um and difficult and it kind of shaped that first three to six months um but like i say 80 percent of running at of any super of how any supermarket runs is pretty similar so you know you've got to have the right shops in the right places you need enough presence in the right channels operationally you need your supply chain logistics your supply relationships to be good your commercial setup but your retail practice and process needs to be productive and quick, and all these things are joined up.

41:25And all of that is consistent across almost every supermarket. They all do it. There aren't that many differences between what good looks like. Depending on the model you're using, there aren't that many differences. So to an extent, all the experience I had, I could immediately start working on, but the context was exceptionally different. So it was, let's say it was a really interesting first year, shall we? And I think it's always that 20 % where people need to focus because that's what gives you that edge in everything, not just as a supermarket. So if we go into that 20%, what took you by surprise by the way Waitrose operates?

42:08Like what not necessarily shocked you, but okay, right, this is why Waitrose is Waitrose versus Sainsbury's is Sainsbury's. Well, I mean, there's some things that everyone can see and feel. And you talked about going to the office and the kind of camaraderie and the sense of being a partner and the extent to which people are invested in that idea that the business is different and operates differently. That is a competitive advantage if it's enabled and people are allowed to sort of given the freedom and autonomy to act on it. That's a competitive advantage. That is different. But the thing, I mean, you know, some of it is obvious.

42:48So Waitrose is positioned as a premium experience grocery retailer. So if you're charging a premium, the experience has to match. So, you know, the most commonly, well, one of the most common phrases we get back on net promoter score is expensive but worth it. We have to concentrate on the worth it. Because there are a significant number of people out there who are prepared to pay for higher quality, sustainably sourced, ethically sourced, and experientially presented food. Food is important to a lot of people, and how it's made is important to a lot of people, and it might become more important to a lot of people.

43:29and so waitrose is one of very few supermarkets or grocery retailers left at scale who are who can who can who are committed to sort of delivering that proposition um and so in a way it's one of the reasons actually uh i sort of said before then there are a few reasons why waitrose was one of the few businesses i would have gone back into food retail for and one of them is that it's really clear what his brand stands for it's not in a in a in a sort of a mirror image oh that's a bit harsh but in a in a sort of a the other end of the spectrum to an aldean middle aldean middle know exactly what they're doing and they execute it ruthlessly because they know what they stand for and customers know what they stand for and work on on the other end you know waitrose mns similar-ish it's not you know you're not going in to get the cheapest food you know what you're doing is you're going in to get the very best food um and you want you expect a good experience and so that clarity of mission is very helpful and it is broadly how you shape that extra 20 is what is it that we will deliver to our customers current and future that will make them love this business and keep coming back and being prepared to pay for the premium food that we offer that's so interesting so how do you guys kind of compete with m &s is there with the brands obviously you've got the brands in like how do you do that?

45:02Well, I mean there's all sorts of ways. So firstly, I think M &S do a brilliant job at the moment, right? They're on a five or six year path they started back way before the pandemic, they set out some really clear priorities, they've invested in their shops and I think they're doing a great job but broadly their challenge is that they are for most people, they're not a full trolley shop they are a sort of a basket food on the move premium special occasion kind of um uh grosser and that's what they're trying to change with the ricardo deal with the bigger shops and everything else makes perfect sense waitrose is a premium full trolley shop so we offer the you know the full breadth of everything that you'd want to buy that you can buy in a save as a tesco's but with premium experience and premium food so if if if we were just competing with mns you'd concentrate on the things that that create that difference and for us that is service so our our partners in branch are you know we tend to get regularly get high very the highest service scores in the business because the partners are invested in the principal um there are enough of them to provide good service we concentrate on the points of service around a visit to one of our shops and we have i mean a really good example is we're apart from Morrison's we're probably the only but one of the only supermarkets left who are investing in and invested in having counters so fresh serve over counters so Sainsbury's closed theirs a few years ago Morrison's still have Market Street which is great um but you know that's a point of difference that M &S just don't have in their branches normally and so you concentrate on the on the points of interruption that you do have that they don't um and of course there are other things that we can do that they can't like we have our own we now have our own online service so it's a waitrose partner that comes to deliver your groceries at the doorstep and can have a good conversation and talk to you about you know hopefully provide great service at the doorstep and M &S's goes obviously to Ricardo which is also a great technology business and so they do there is advantages to that so if you're competing with just one person which you never are just one competitor you never are if you were you concentrate on the points of difference um and you make sure you deliver them relentlessly and brilliantly

47:35yeah i mean it's i can completely agree and i think what's really interesting is is how this is this angle of service because see for our listeners james is currently at the you're at the eaves is eaves from store where we're recording this yes so you're like constantly not not i don't mean like checking but being on the ground to make sure everything's up and running and checking that service is it's kind of it's something that you can't service is quite hard and you've got mps schools but often it's quite hard to put in an excel spreadsheet which is quite interesting but it's something that has to be felt and it's very it's more qualitative um no i i love that um so where i want to go now is i believe there's this kind of tension between challenger brands and the the cost of living crisis and yeah and waitrose have always been the kind of they've they've flown the flag they've been the the bastion of challenger brands like you you're kind of you know you're the first to take on a lot of brands and really kind of get them going and believe in them and and and nurture them so that's on that's on the one hand and there's also on that side there's there's an inherent need as you said for for sustainable brands um in better packaging uh better um better produced b corp etc um and these are because of that they're often more expensive so you've got so you've got that on the on the say the left and on the right hand side let's not like you know cover our ears and eyes there's a cost living crisis whereby as a retailer you're going to have to rationalize range ranges maybe not as often in in with the waitress shopper but you know for as you said about that full basket spend or full trolley spend is a lot of the time you know um shoppers may be trading down from like a premium challenger brand to an own brand so there's there's an inherent tension there and i'd love to kind of get your your two cents on it really so so despite everything that's going on will waitrose still champion challenger brands uh yes we will um i i mean this thing's going cycles a little bit i think we've been a little bit behind the car i think historically waitrose has been um really strong on challenger brands i met the um the guys from fever tree if you talk to charlie biggums you know going back through history i think waitrose used to have still has but certainly in past had buyers who were real category experts and had a bit more autonomy to take a risk and go looking for those you know new breakthrough products so as i said charlie biggums fever arbitrary innocent people like that um and i think that is probably because a you had buyers with loads of tenure who were who were product experts and could have spot the trends without any help you know they were out out and about looking for those trends and they kind of grabbed them and also of course like you say most challenger brands are certainly start as premium products for all sorts of obvious and and understandable reasons um and if you're if If you're trying to launch a premium product, then Waitrose is a good place to start because our customers tend to be a little bit better off, a little bit more food inclined, a little bit more inclined to spend more on food.

51:06So it's a natural marriage. I get that. I don't think we've probably been at the forefront of that for maybe seven or eight years. There's all sorts of reasons. We don't need to go into them now. but strategically i mean my my obviously my history is at sainsbury's was a bit of future brands and not and sort of trying to drive the uh strategic value of smaller challenger brands premium brands incremental product etc and i think there's a you know it worked at sainsbury's and there's all sorts of reasons why it works it will work and it should work at waitrose so I don't think we've been on the ball as much as we should have been in the last seven or eight years like I said lots of reasons but definitely built into the strategy from now on and moving forwards and we're in the process of trying to resource around that so we can set up a structure that makes it as easy as possible for the buying teams here and sort of challenge brands to connect and test and learn and see what works and what doesn't work but you're right all supermarkets are under immense pressure on cost and margins and the breadth of your range and the effectiveness of your commercial strategy as in on the fixture the structure of your merchandising the flow of trade between the tiers in different categories is one of the biggest drivers of commercial advantage.

52:38So there's no question that the breadth of range will come under pressure and rate of sale will come under pressure depending on how you judge commercial success. And so I think there is a default, there will be a default move to put a bit more pressure on what might be slower rate of sale but higher ticket items, you know, generally across retail. Not everyone maybe, but I think you should expect that pressure. Some of your listeners are probably already feeling it. So you have to prepare for that and you have to have good arguments why keeping your product on the shelf is a better idea than swapping it out for more varieties of hind soup or something that there are already quite a lot on the shelf.

53:22I mean, it was always a relatively simple argument for me, which was, is your product, your product may be slightly more expensive and it might have a slightly slower rate of sale, but is that sale incremental? So if someone buys one of your products instead of a can of Heinz soup, if you have a nice premium soup brand potentially, is that sale incremental to the category? Because another can of Heinz is just going to be another can of Heinz, but growing the overall size of the category, the value of the category is more important. and yes it may have a lower rate of sale but it may also be a higher cash profit because you're off of a higher starting retail point and in the blend of the category it's in no one's medium long term interest to have a category where there is no trade up option you've got to give customers the option they may not be choosing as much as they used to for a few years but if you don't have that structure then the commercial direction of that category is only going to go one way, which is lower and lower and lower.

54:29And it's harder in the medium long run. It's always harder if you don't have good trade-up options. You haven't got newness on the fixture to keep customers engaged and to keep growing that category. So buyers will come under short-term pressure. Good challenge brands should be using the data they've got and talking about the, I guess, the structure of the category and making sure you've got good trade-up options, making sure you're talking about incremental sales not just absolute sales

55:04yeah i mean there's so much in that james i i think one of my first questions is i i've seen it happen just lots and lots of times um where where brands will go into go into a retailer and i think it's because of this this newness um and keeping the stores fresh and the customers excited but then often because of just just a lack of experience and you know they may not have the big budgets to to do gondola ends to do all these expensive activations and eventually they they get kicked out and i think one of the painful things is for a lot of founders it's their it's their livelihood it's it's a lot on the line there's a lot on the yeah a lot more on the line i should say um what would you say are the three principles or basics that our listeners need to get down to make sure that once they're in they're they're going to stay in well um yeah i mean that's the golden question isn't it i mean the oh let me let me think so i I think the first thing first is always the thing that sells a product is the product, right?

56:19So for all the money you might or might not invest in point of sale, in marketing, in everything else, in my opinion, this is a huge simplification. In my opinion, as a founder, the most important things are relatively simple, right? How good is the product? when you you could spend a lot of money getting someone to try a product if it's no good if it doesn't taste good almost no one's coming back to buy it the next time right so all of the talk about repeat rate and acquiring new customers it's all great and it's all good it's all good um practice it's none of it happens none of it works if the product's no good so always first things first how much time are you making sure that the product you've got tastes great customers love it and it's it's it's doing the job it needs to so it's i know it sounds simplistic but first things first get the product right secondly and it's the only thing so there's two things secondly get the branding right right don't you may have a million reasons why customers should buy your products it could be beautifully sourced it could be made artisanally it could be you know keto or or gluten-free or it could be you know like tony's it could be um slave free or something it could have a really serious purpose that you believe wholeheartedly in but if you look at tony's chocolate only brilliant product for a start right so why do people buy it again and again this might be um oversimplifying and uh the guys the guys there might kill me for saying it I think it's because the product tastes amazing, right?

58:08So people go back and buy it because they love the product. And the branding is as in your face bright as it possibly could be. So the two things that you have to, you know, you'd always focus your time and effort on, get the product right, get the branding really clear and bold, and don't overcomplicate those two things. you know you can and I think if you're relentless about that and don't get distracted by a million things that want to distract you if you get those two things right broadly you've got a much much much better chance of staying on the shelf if you get them wrong you've got almost no chance of getting on the shelf and then likely you won't stay on the shelf because there just won't be enough repeat or rate of sale or pickup or anything else that comes with it um so i mean i know it sounds simplistic get the product right all the time get the product as right as you possibly can and make sure it's it's the customers who are buying it are buying it because they love it not because it's cheap not because they consent a voucher they're buying it because they love it and that's that in the end is going to be the thing that keeps it and gets gets it on shelves and keeps it on shelves.

59:26And the only other thing I would say is it's really tempting because it's your baby and because it's a really unusual world, grocery retailing, that getting on the shelf is very exciting. You go on LinkedIn and there's lots of people doing an excited star jump outside a shop saying, excited to see my product in the branch. And that's brilliant because it's about the passion and the joy that comes with seeing your project go somewhere. it's really easy to get drawn into the complex world of it and to be, you know, a supermarket will usually say, can you invest in more promotions? Can you invest in a Barker?

1:00:09Can you invest in our social media? Can you invest, you know, there are a million things, a million different ways of wasting your money when you're working with a supermarket. it you've got to be quite focused about things you think are will get your return on investment you haven't got much money to invest you know Heinz Pepsi everyone else they can afford to lose money here and there but they are ruthless about return on investment if they're going to spend some money they want to see they're getting a benefit for it and so tempting though it is and you might there might be a little bit of I have to do as I'm told or I can't be seen to be argumentative or anything like that you've got to be you know you've got to be the business person in that room not the not the not the founder and the business the person who owns that business is interested in what return am i getting on my investment so be very very careful and try and be as strong as you can about only investing in and supporting the products in the way that you feel confident it's going to get a return on investment not because the buyer asks you to pay for a bark or something else.

1:01:15It's difficult, but that would be, that's the best advice in terms of relationship management I could ever give anyone.

1:01:50I mean, I love that. that's the foundations everything else goes on top ultimately but i i've seen it firsthand i've got a mate asher called um who's got a brand called rogue well it doesn't he's had to close the business down um who got into a couple of sainsbury stores they had a great product they had like espresso martini jams um and they had like a like which was that was 100 incremental were very weird and wonderful flavors um and and they did have they had pretty good branding as well so so in my eyes they've got the product and the branding down and but they they haven't made it is there other than those like foundational things of of getting the product and the marketing down is there anything else i mean this could be something like just knowing your supply chain um like how to how often to check in with the buyer because you know it sounds like not not crazy but i you know when uh when manny life first went into mns we didn't even have like a plan so sometimes brands go in without a plan it sounds crazy but like just some of those things i'd love to get your thoughts on that yeah i mean again you so i mean you mentioned one of the most important things let's assume you've got a great product and a great brand right tick tick what you've done there is there's no guarantee that that means it's always going to work right um there's a million different things going to get in your way after that but if you've got those two things you've got a fighting chance right um i you mentioned the one thing the one thing to never drop the ball on which is supply so the worst thing in the world would be you know it's hard enough to get into a supermarket for a lot of the time you've bowled your way through the buyer through all the admin forms you signed 700 page terms and conditions um you're really excited you're about to go into 50 100 shops whatever it is uh and they press the button on the order and all the order arrives perfectly all ends up on the shelf start selling and then you go in a week later and there's nothing on the shelf because the forecast system hasn't pulled it through you guys haven't been able to check about rate of sale or deliveries um most of the time these orders will fall well below any of the thresholds or the the sort of the alerting systems in the stock systems in a supermarket so there's every chance they're not keeping a very close eye on it so if if people are buying your product the worst thing in the world in the after you've got through all those hurdles is not putting it on the shelf for them not giving it not getting it to the retailer so they can sell more of it um and i've been in a number of rooms over the last 10 years where a brand has come in to try and explain that the rate of sale the the supermarket think is is a product is producing is misleading because they weren't they weren't in half the shops there weren't any products for half the time so in some shops it was selling brilliantly because it was always product in some it wasn't selling anything at all and the supermarket you know because they're busy because there's not much else you know there's all sorts of other things going on they're just going to press a button and look at the average rate of sale you know if you're very lucky you'll get a buyer then goes oh that's interesting half the shop sold 10 per week 10 units per week and half sold none that doesn't make any sense what's going on there they're not going to do all that work for you most likely so you've got to supply the product and then you've you've got to make sure it's it's arriving in those shops for at least the first two or three months until the stock systems the branch systems catch up when you're into the kind of into the mainstream of the flow um because i've seen i've seen brands um you know landing shops sell out and be out of stock for two months because no one was the order system wasn't all reordering and the brand themselves weren't weren't weren't aware that that was going to be a problem you assume the supermarkets you send it in they're going to reorder it when they need it and actually it's not always as smooth as that so you do like consider those first couple of months two or three months as kind of hyper care if you can get into as many of those shops check this on the shelf go and speak to the branch manager or someone there and say do you know why this isn't have you got any of this out the back um and just um and just be just own the implementation phase there because this trust me it doesn't matter if it doesn't matter how good you think the product is you are 0.1 % of 0.1 % of 0.1 % of what's going on in that supermarket at any one time.

1:06:31And the system is often not going to do his job properly for those first few months. So hypercare it in and make sure that the rate of sale you're getting is actually representative of what happens when it's on the shelf, not when it's out of stock. 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 it's the champions league of fmcg it's super hard it means playing at a higher level and that's where some of your amazing brands sadly stumble Look, retailers want stories backed by data, not dreams and a pretty pitch deck.

1:07:24And let's be real, supermarkets are not just going to magically make a space for you and your little brand. They need data. Something's got to go for you to get in, for you to get on shelf. And that is why I've got to tell you about Northstar. They are the team that's helping purpose led FMCG brands go from gut instinct dreams to unstoppable pitch decks that actually unlock retailers. northstar i'm not like another data company that force feeds you data like foie gras 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 northstar link in the show notes click that link and you'll be able to book a free demo with Northstar highly highly recommend that and thank me later I it's I it's kind of the availability I've almost talked about everything on this podcast and the way the analogy that's come to come to my mind is is almost football right so you've I've talked about growing the rate of sale the marketing the branding the activations the star jumps outside the store that's ultimately that's your midfield and actually that's your strikers going out to get the goals but availability is is is your goalkeeper like if you don't have availability you really it's an own goal you're shooting yourself in the foot and and i think it's something like yeah i haven't you know i've talked about all the not the bells and whistles but the fun bits the the you know the getting the goal in the net and how are we going to attack but without the availability and i've seen it firsthand when you're not on on on shelf and the rate of sales plummeting and i think one of the biggest things for the brands exist in a brand bubble where you think everything revolves around whatever brand it is whereas actually and i know i learned this the hard way but the the retailer's got a gazillion brands a bazillion things just it's just a bazillion, it's not even a word, but loads of things to manage, that you are that 0.0.0, 0.1 % of their priorities.

1:09:35So I think that's fascinating. And in terms of, so you'd say, in terms of the actionable things, so you'd say doing the store visits and checking the first time, I think one of the things we always used to do was the relationship with the supply chain is just as important as the relationship with the buyer. So build that. um i mean with with when we were working with co-op was we'd actually go up and meet go out with the supply chain teams for beers and stuff because that's super important is there anything else they can like say say a brand goes into store and there isn't availability like how do they deliver that message through the kind of the the rigmarole of waitrose yeah well i mean i uh so the in a way the last thing you want to be is that that that business that brand that phones up on day two that says i've just been in the shop and there's no stock what are you going to do about it because the buyer is probably going to go unless you've got a really understanding buyer they're probably going to go do you know what i'll call you back in two weeks time or something else because you know an amount of effort's gone into getting you in it's kind of like they've fed you into the system, the system has to take care of it.

1:10:45They're not going to, unless you've got a really, really understanding buyer, they're not going to go and dig up the road for you and try and get that product flowing through properly. I would, if I was bringing this product in or a brand in, I would, once you've agreed it's going in, I would probably two or three months, a couple of months before launch date, I'd be, if you can, in with the buyer or send them an email or something that says look we're really excited we're super excited we're going to do what we need to do to make a success in your business and give you what you need as a buyer um connect as you say connect with the supply chain guys because that's quite important who's asked the buyer who's your supply chain forecaster who's going to be ordering the products and stuff like that uh built connect with those guys and i would say to the buyer look we're going to invest um well if you're going to spend money in those first couple of months there's there might be a promotion there might be something else that's all fine keep some of that money for to get some help operationally so it's either supply chain help or it is branch execution help so who can you pay some people if you have to can you pay some people to go and do the checking for you can you pay some people to make sure your operations are set up smoothly and the ordering process is going to work and there's nothing that you're going to do that's going to get it wrong so so invest a little bit of time if necessary or money if you can on you know stock and availability assurance in those first couple of months um and there's there's people out there that will help you with it like young foodies or other people like that um and then go to your buyer and say it's really important for me that you've taken a pun on us.

1:12:30It's really important for me that we show up properly for you in your stores. So we're going to invest some time and effort in making sure the product's arriving in the shops and it's on the shelves and it looks right for you. And so this is what we're going to do. We're going to invest. This is what we're going to do is try and assure you on that. And then they know that you're going to be behind the scenes, checking the numbers, having someone help you check the numbers. and so if you come back to four weeks later and say you know here's what we found we've got a little bit of an availability issue here's what we've done about it we've had this conversation with the supply chain guys uh and we're still working on it you know they know that you're after it they know you're not telling them to fix it and if the if the subject of availability or stock availability needs to come up it's on your terms so just for those first two or three months let them know you're going to be investing time effort if you can resource to make sure it's on the shelf all at the right time and it needs to be the first three months because after that time the supermarket's own system has picked it up properly and it's kind of revolving through you've got a rate of sale and it's and it's working its way through and it's in the right place in most of the shops by then and it's flowing in the way it's meant to i mean what you what you've kind of just said to me there james and it's it's striking a chord is is it's almost waitrose have great service with the end customer but you're almost saying brand should have great service with with the buyer in terms of like as you say don't don't get on the phone to them day two be like mate where's my stock like where's the one star and then yeah and then but then also you know seeing it as you're both on the same side of the table to grow this thing together and i think that's there's just so much in that for our listeners um so we've got a hungry whatsapp group and told listeners that you you were coming on and what it's kind of the million dollar question uh and lots of our listeners want to know how to get into into atros and i think from your side of the table like you you're under pressure um cost of living crisis christmas is now i think brands as i said to you earlier get so in their own head that they just think with you know god's given son essentially so like every buyer will respond to my email but I'm just gonna be very frank um it's imagine imagine you had a brand I don't know like I say it was Bailey's Biscuits or something like that sounds good what are the steps you yeah sounds good yeah Bailey's Biscuits um maybe made with Bailey's um but say you were trying to get into get into Waitrose tomorrow what would what would you do uh is the first question and then and then the other thing is and i know there's there's no there's no like it's a variable answer but with with the deck what do you what do you actually want to see like if you had four slides what would you actually put on that deck yeah so i mean the first question was how to connect with waitrose like i said i think we i don't think we've made that as easy as it needs to be and we're in the process of changing that so um in the near-ish future we should be able to provide a gate like a gateway or a sort of a team that will that will take all of those calls and and have good upfront conversations so at the moment in the absence of that I should be in the next three four months latest hopefully in the absence of that you know you're looking for someone you're looking for a phone number or an email who because I mean as I say it's a relatively friendly business right so if you do connect with someone preferably in the commercial teams and you know a lot of those emails or connects are out somewhere on the internet or you can ask someone else who works with them for a connection you know find find someone to connect with and say you know i'm this is us we're looking to have a quick conversation with the relevant buyer would you mind telling me who that is or or finding a name so you've kind of got to work your way towards it which i don't think is quite right but at the moment that's probably the only way it's going to work um as i say sooner rather than later we'll set that up so it's a lot easier for brands to come and talk to us but at the moment that's probably the obvious way and you know what it is the million dollar question when you put on those first four slides or you know do you come in dressed as a as a giant jar of peanut butter and sit on the steps of the the head office and and and try and um trip people over on the way in um i wouldn't if i wouldn't by the way but that's some people do that um the the most important thing is is what the brand is about is it about what why should your customers why would why should waitress customers buy this brand why will they buy this brand is it is it an upgrade in an existing category so you know manly life's great example sun pat been around for hundreds of years whole earth etc but manly life's a great tasting product be a fan of pip and that as well everyone you know there's other brands are available um so it's an upgrade on an existing product and that's pretty easy for most customers to understand because they already buy a lot of the core one so think you know think fever tree uh think innocent some of those those aren't creating new food food categories they're not products that people have never heard of they're just better um product better versions of a product people buy a lot of already so understand what the what you're selling and who's going to buy it and then and then you know explain why you're get you know be as clear as possible about the branding because it's the for the first couple of years probably the packaging and the branding is going to have to sell do most of the job of the selling so be really be you know to be bold about what the product looks like how it's going to how it's going to sound up for the customers on the shelf and if you've got why that if you've got the why and you've got the the product that looks professional looks looks like it's you know it's believable that we could sell some of this if you can the next most important thing if you've not got any data if you're not getting any data if this is the first time you're talking to a supermarket then you're kind of if you can't convince them on a rate of sale from somewhere else you can't say these are the margins or anything else you can do if this really is the first conversation we have with the supermarket then the most important thing that is the product so how can you get the product into the hands of the person who's going to try and taste it it's not ideal because that's a bit difficult especially now everyone's sort of spread across the um uh the world of flexible working a little bit but if you genuinely believe in the product if you've got strong brand if you've got a reason why customers are going to buy it um to a great extent the most important thing for a buyer is like i kind of get that i kind of get why they might buy a premium jam or a premium something else i kind of understand why this is coming from the brand looks nice and bright and clear um what does it taste like you know is this any good at all is this the it's the obvious missing question um so i i would keep it i would keep it simple and if possible if at all possible the obvious thing if this is your first rodeo the obvious thing is the product's the thing that's going to sell it if it's not if you've got some other people you sell with then the most important thing is proving that it's working somewhere else so showing a growing way of sale use the data you've got because there's nothing that convinces a buyer more than FOMO someone else is already working somewhere else I don't have to worry that I'm going to spend all the time putting this in and I have to take out again three months later because you can build a bit more confidence by saying, look, it's already in Icado, it's already in somewhere else and we sell a lot of it.

1:20:28So if you've got that, use it. If you haven't, it's going to have to be the product itself.

1:20:35That's fascinating. And you know what you were saying earlier about this 80 % of when you've moved from Sainsbury's across, 80 % of grocery is the same and there's that 20 % edge. where it goes to different retailers. And I think from the brand side of things, we are very good at that 80 % of like, this is the brand, this is what we shout out about. Most of the packaging is really garish as a good, good at PR, that stuff's good. The 20%, which is almost the bit that kind of seals the deal really, which is these case studies, which are fantastic. Would you want to see like a rough calculation of like, okay, if we're in X number of stores, this is predicted rate of sale like this is the p &l for what we could make for you in this year this is how we'd support the marketing plan that do you think it needs that or is that more of a discussion once you have the meeting and again i appreciate there's no is this it's an art not science but yeah you're kind of more appealing to the heart than the head in those first interactions so i wouldn't go into here's an all singing all dancing business plan and i'd even be quite simple about that afterwards as well i wouldn't i wouldn't try and over professionalize or over complicate the conversation and those first interactions are is there is there a market for this product does this buyer believe do they like it do they believe in it do they even if they don't like it do they think the customers will like it more importantly so i would try and keep it as you know as simple as possible to begin with but you you know have the commercials in your back pocket and know what you're you know know what you want to sell it for know what you might be able to offer on promotion a little bit but i wouldn't i wouldn't go in with all of that because it's that's that's the kind of detail you get into once you're motoring it's not and before you get on the shelf obviously the buyers are on the pricing and everything else that comes with it and how might you support and that's great but you've got to first of all you've got to sell it you've got to go over that first line and that is a that's a hard rather than a head conversation to begin with i love finding principles and it's heart versus head is brilliant i love that um where i want to go now and i'm obsessed with this kind of this um this hardware versus software um of of leadership and i think um so hard hardware is stuff that is is kind of principles that you're you're taught um through courses etc whereas software is something that you personally kind of only get through experience so um an analogous example could be like football like people can tell you how to put a print like put put a football into the back of the net but there's a the software and the nuances is very like the way Messi kicks a football versus Ronaldo is very very different um cooking is the same thing the principles right look make a burger this is how you make a burger if you were to get gordon ramsay versus otolenghi versus i don't know heston blumenthal they'd probably create three very different burgers right yeah um so a lot of icens are leaders what would you say the three principles of great leadership are in in terms of hardware in terms of something you just you need to have down first and then second is is what i'd love to unpack is kind of these nuances you've personally picked up through being in the industry for so long yeah well i think on your analogy i'm a much more of a software than a hardware kind of guy um so i'm a terrible example of someone who hasn't learned much in classrooms or on courses or uh things like that and actually um uh that i'm a i am a strong believer in personal development and I think it's a different it means different things to different people so you've got to kind of allow a quite a wide spectrum of what someone's development is and what works for them or doesn't work and I'm on the I'm on the I'm on the one end of the spectrum where I think most of what I've learned has come from experience and from other people in the in in just understanding and working getting to know them rather than particularly from a development course or or something else but there's horses for courses um and i you know what it's really difficult um to you have to take a real step back and work to how of the rat race before you can get perspective on what works and what doesn't work but the main the main thing i always rely on is i have uh i don't think in my entire career i've ever got anywhere if if i didn't have the right team around me i know it sounds like an obvious thing to say but i think one of the few things i'm really good at is uh putting together and enabling uh high performing teams um which is not as easy as it sounds but I think that kind the focus on the team rather than the objective particularly the outcome the results the drive and everything else that comes with it if I used to say to people who were doing their first sort of management leadership job that if if you are spending more more than half of your time on the people that's probably you're probably going to get where you need to go if you're not it probably works it's you're probably not um and that gets harder and harder in the different jobs you do and it's harder and harder in you know in for you know some of your founders they'll probably you mentioned it yourself at the start but the uh you know the number of fans i spoke to and said that the people the the thing that takes up most of the time is the people because there's a lot of recruitment and performance and everything else but when you get the people right then the whole thing works and that is true that's i think that's very very true for challenge brands i think it's true in nearly every work you're going to do so i my like i said my focus is the software normally by default that's just the way i'm wired and most of my software is focused most of the time on either interesting exciting problem solving stuff that gets me out of bed or the people required to solve those problems.