COOK: Nearly bust to £100m a year revenue - with brother and sister in charge I Co-CEOs Ed Perry & Rosie Brown

0:04Along the way, the men in suits would tell me, you know, you've got to have an appraisal system and you've got to have a bonus system. You can't have a retail business without a bonus system. And it was like, hell we can, actually. We definitely didn't know. We didn't know what we were doing in some ways. But what we did know was what we wanted to try and build.

0:28There's a reason you just heard two voices instead of one. In this episode, I'm interviewing the pair of co-CEOs behind Cook. They make frozen ready meals using the same ingredients and techniques you would use at home. Ed Perry co-founded the company in 1997 with his business partner Dale Penfold. Then in 2001, Rosie Brown came aboard, eventually becoming co-CEO. If you think sharing CEO duties sounds complicated, then imagine sharing them with your sibling. Well, that's exactly what Ed and Rosie are doing, as they are brother and sister. Cook's products are now available in 850 stores across the UK, not including the 94 cook shops they actually own themselves, but they very nearly didn't make it.

1:16The 2007 financial crisis took them to the brink of bankruptcy, and between COVID, supply shortages, and the rising costs of energy and ingredients, the last few years have been pretty stormy. So, how have they managed it? And what was it like for them at the kitchen table growing up? I'm betting the food at home was either immense or terrible. There's a great quote. No one can press your buttons like your sibling can because they were the ones who created them. Yeah, so there are four of us. I'm the eldest, Rosie's number three, my brother James, who I ran the business with from 2000 to 2008.

1:53And then we've got our youngest brother, Alexis, who is about 12 years younger than me. So yeah, there's lots of us. So, yeah, I mean, it was busy. Lots of us, lots of opinions. But we grew up with our parents running two small coffee shops in Kent in the 1980s. And out of those two coffee shops, a bakery grew in 1987. So we grew up in a small business world, really, wasn't it? Yes, absolutely. And I think Sunday lunches were spent discussing sandwich fillings. We spent our teenage years growing up kind of in the coffee shops, working in them. So there was always entrepreneurial thinking. There was always kind of have a go mentality in the house.

2:35And also struggle, I think, if we're honest. You know, four kids, two coffee shops, small little bakery. It was quite tough financially. For us, a slightly odd sort of juxtaposition because we had a rich granny. So rich granny paid for us to go to private school. So we went to these nice private schools where I certainly, I don't know about you, Rosie, but I certainly was very conscious of being, I felt a bit like the old one out there. Everyone's dads were sort of lawyers and bankers and what have you. And my dad had a little coffee shop in the town. So it was very visible to other kids and other kids were on occasion quite horrible.

3:12And I remember, yeah, I struggled with it a bit. And so by the time I left school, I had no appetite to go to university or anything. I just wanted to get on with it. But, you know, it was definitely a happy, happy household. Yeah, and I think the other thing that's for us been pretty formative in the business is it was our parents both had a very strong faith. So we grew up in a household with a lived faith where Sunday church was a thing where, you know, mum used to every week on Sundays bring home people, all the lonely, sad people she could find basically from church to join the family at Sunday lunch.

3:49And I think that spirit of inclusiveness and relationship was what we grew up with. So normal measures of success in a household, you know, which are often career, money, degrees, exam results, weren't what was important, I think, when we growing up. It was much more about relationship with others, service to others, doing something useful. So, yeah, I think that was... It sure sounds a bit like the Waltons, really, but it was bloody annoying at the time, obviously. You know, she would bring all sorts of people back. But it was, you know, it's one of those things in hindsight, you look back on it and go, gosh, that was really healthy.

4:23and has certainly informed who we are now. And I think we all have sort of varying degrees of faith. And that's certainly not what a business is about. You know, I don't really have much faith, but I'm not sure where you are on that spectrum now. And I know siblings are on different, but we don't really talk about that much, do we? Well, let's talk about it. Rosie, your face was almost surprised to hear Ed saying it like that. So where are you on the faith spectrum right now? Me? That's a really difficult question. and I wish I had an answer for you. I don't know. I think it's been the same answer since I was about 16 when I listened to kind of Losing My Religion by R.E.M.

5:02and I was like, that was me and that song was for me. And I've sort of been looking ever since and I haven't quite found it, if I'm honest. I think I've been traveling and very inspired by all the great religions. So I love learning about them. I seek things out, but I haven't landed anywhere, if I'm honest. I think The Life of Pi was a really informative book for me on faith, because it taught me there's sort of more than one way to the truth. So yeah, I'm seeking, but I've become more peaceful as I've got older, that life's a mystery. Well, certainly, as I get older, you know, that obviously apocryphal phrase, you know, the less I know, and I'm more acutely aware of how profoundly ignorant I am about loads of things.

5:44I certainly, whilst I might have been age 21, sort of cocksure and confident enough to call myself an atheist. There's no way in a million years I call myself an atheist anymore. Life is far too much of a mystery. So I suppose I have a sort of woolly spirituality without it being defined by any faith. Or religion. Or religion, sorry. Yeah. I think it's really interesting to hear this. Are you both parents? Yes. Yes, yes. Oh, God, what a big sigh. The look on the face. Just before we got on the call, We had 10 minutes before having a good old moan about various children. So I've got four. Bloody hell, you as well.

6:24Jesus, that's occurring on a family tradition at least. Yeah, they range in age from 18 down to seven. Oh, just turned eight, actually. 18 to eight. And I've got three teenage boys, which is a bit like living with the in-betweeners. But a house of links. Okay, so I want to know a little bit about Cook. Like what, I think first and foremost, what was actually like the inspiration? like why cook why is that a business that you would logically start what is the uh what's the inspiration so very much very very much has its roots in my parents business so they had the two coffee shops my mother's best friend used to make the cakes for the coffee shop they looked homemade cakes did homemade they were all frozen and she set up this is a lady called dan amarr who was just a spectacular baker and she set up a company called the handmade cake company with my parents in 1987.

7:15And after I left school in 1989, didn't want to go to university, spent a year working in London, hated it and came out of that age 19 knowing I never wanted to work for anybody else. A good lesson to learn early. So I joined mum and dad's business. Well, my first job for them was I set up a tiny little factory shop for them in Maidenhead, which sold the cakes and the puddings that would be made in the bakery, all frozen, carrot cakes, chocolate cakes, chocolate roulas, raspberry pavlova rolls, things that we still sell today. They're all frozen, all different from what you could find in the supermarket.

7:49And I spent a year doing that when I was about 20, 21. And it was while I was working in that tight little shop that I thought we were brought up with mum cooking for the freezer. So once a week, once every couple of weeks, she would make a big batch of chicken casserole, chili con carne. There were obviously loads of us and we would eat some of it. And then she would put whatever's left over in an old ice cream tub and put it in the chest freezer at home. She would then whip that out on a Tuesday or Wednesday night, bung it in the microwave. And that's what we'd eat that evening. And it was always absolutely delicious.

8:22And I thought, well, you know, we're selling these cakes and these puddings. If we could make savory food like mum used to make for us for the freezer, then it could be something that could work as a high street shop type thing. So I was 21 at the time and I spent the next three years still working for my parents bakery business as a salesperson so i'd go around the south of england selling cakes and puddings to caterers coffee shops those sort of people and that's where i met this guy called dale who was a chef at a local tourist attraction and i just kind of fell in love with him in a business way um and i would sit in his tiny little office and i'll tell him about this idea of how i wanted to make frozen casseroles that looked and tasted homemade and i did this for about I must have done it about three or four times and then I got to the age of 25 and I thought I've just got to do this so I sat down with mum and dad and I said look you know this frozen casserole thing I've been banging on about I've got to do it and they said look you know we've been by that stage I think they've been running their business for about 14 or 15 years and they were just about making some money I mean they've been a long hard slog and it was still quite a small business.

9:31And they said, look, if you want to do this, we get it. But you need to leave and do it yourself. And I still remember the conversation vividly, because as soon as the words were out of my father's mouth, I knew it was the right thing to do. I just said, yeah, you're right. I need to do this. So I left. They lent me six grand, which was all they could afford at the time. And I persuaded this guy, Dale, to leave his job and come and do it with me. And we We borrowed 24 grand, 12 grand off NatWest for the retail business, created two different companies, 12 grand off HSBC for the production business.

10:08So we had a total budget of 30 grand to set up a retail and manufacturing business, which even 25 years ago was not very much money looking back on it. But as your podcast with so many entrepreneurs, you know, the most valuable thing you have right at the beginning is your profound naivety about what you're doing. because had we had the first clue about what we were trying to do, then we wouldn't have tried to do it. So we had this small pot of money. Dale had 18 grand to set up the first kitchen in Raynham in North Kent. He found an old disused pizza delivery unit and he bought some secondhand kit and got going.

10:45I found a tiny little shop in Farnham in Surrey. There was 200 square foot with room for about six freezers. And off we went, basically. No, so you're right. It's the naivety. It's the sort of borderline stupidity that the entrepreneurs don't really know better. And so they get going. But then that kind of brings me to Rosie, who should know better because she didn't join at the same time. Right. And so surely at this point, I mean, Ed, you're a bit disarming because you've got a bit of a tan and you've got all your hair. But I'm sure there were other examples of how maybe this business had been causing you stress.

11:21Well, I mean, I used to go down at the weekends because at the time his friends were getting married and things and cover him because he was working in the shop in Farnham. And I used to go and cover him on Saturday. So I had I had a very good insight into what this life was like and how hard it was. So so, yeah, I must have been desperate. I mean, I was working looking back. I was working in an investment bank at the time. And I think I was finding it very countercultural. I think everything I've been brought up with were kind of relationships. and service were the measures of success. And I was in this environment where money and status and job titles were the measures of success.

11:59Money is a religion, Rosie. Money is a religion. And I didn't buy into money as a religion. So I was unhappy. I didn't have a sense of belonging or purpose. But I was enjoying the money and I was enjoying the party lifestyle. But actually, I got a call from Ed and James, our other brother who was working at the time, saying, come and join us. and you know I was young and foolish and I had nothing to lose either and I said what do you want me to do for you and they were like come and set up an HR department and I said but I know absolutely nothing about HR and they were kind of like haha that's cool we don't know what we're doing either and so so off I did and it was a it was a risk you know and I think all of us individually have taken a lot of risks along the way and I think the business has taken a lot of risks and that was certainly the first one I took in regards to cook and I got paid less but I loved it.

12:48From day one, I loved it. I had purpose. We were part of that small team that you get in startups where there's passion and energy. And I think what I'd learned about at the investment bank is what I don't want a company culture to be and the kind of company we didn't want to create and actually almost trying to create something that was the opposite of that. And so began a bit of a love affair with company culture and looking at the people that were doing it well and learning from them and trying stuff out. And we're still doing that now. But actually trying to, how do you scale relationships in a business?

13:20And it's still something I'm really wrestling with because there's loads of books on, you know, how do you scale profit? How do you scale product? There's not much good stuff being written on how do you scale that startup culture? So for me, that's like a really interesting question. And, you know, along the way, kind of the men in suits would tell me, you know, oh, you've got to have an appraisal system. And I was like, I don't want an appraisal system we don't want to rank each other um and you've got to have a bonus system because you can't have a retail bonus you know you can't have a retail business without a bonus system and it was like hell we can actually and so actually being willing to trust ourselves and the culture we're trying to create and resist the pressure to do it like it had always been done yeah i think it's really important what you just said though so just to reflect every single entrepreneur that's listening will have smiled when you said, well, we don't know what we're doing either.

14:12And I love what you just shared as well about resisting the fact that everyone else tells you this is how to build a culture. That actually starts from your own family values, which in itself is a very unique thing. So it'd be really weird to just implement someone else's way of doing culture. You'd have to figure that out for yourself. Otherwise, I think it'd be really hard for your team to buy into it. I think you have to think for yourself and you have to be brave enough to listen and envision the kind of company you want to create and then go with that. And, you know, I still have a postcard on my dresser at home and it says, I have no idea what I'm doing.

14:47And I look at it most days and I smile to myself because I don't. And I'm still making it up as we go along and we're still figuring it out. I think I'd add to that, that certainly when we were younger, we definitely didn't know. We didn't know what we were doing in some ways but what we did know was what we wanted to try and build certainly from a product perspective i think i look back on those early days and the sort of extraordinary naivety and the only thing we had going for us really back then was a really clear vision of the product and the business model which actually has largely largely sort of held out over over the years it was always about making food and selling ourselves that was one thing we were and also being very clear that we had a founding statement saying that to cook using the same ingredients and techniques that a good cook would use at home so everything looks and tastes homemade.

15:41We had that from the beginning and we still hold to that now. So that product aperture was really, really clear and we all really believed in it. And then we were also really clear from the beginning that we wanted to, I suppose, what would be called now, control the route to market. Back then it was just we want to have our own shops. So my brother joined us in 2000 and he'd been at Cabri's for, or he'd been on their graduate training scheme for five years or six years. And one of the first things he said when he joined was, the one thing we are never going to do is sell to the supermarkets, because I've spent the last five years having the shit kicked out of me by supermarkets, and that's working for Cadbury's.

16:15So we've got no chance. So we're not doing that. And that became a sort of red line that he set down. And actually, we've been enormously fortunate, enormously fortunate that we've been able to grow without having to go down that route. It's been a very conscious, strategic decision and that gets revisited, you know, every kind of three years properly, I think. I'm a great believer in never say never. But I think what freedom from the supermarkets has allowed us to do is really invest in our values and do things how we want to do them. And I think the danger for us is the minute, you know, the supermarkets become such big customers so quickly and they become very powerful in your business.

16:56And I think we always wanted that independence to be able to run things as we wanted to run them, to grow as we wanted to grow, to create the product we wanted to create and the culture and the purpose. And actually, that would have been a much more difficult route if we had supplied the supermarkets. Yeah, we usually have that conversation every three years when we get in the shit. I mean, it's tempting. It's tempting, right? Like at the end of the day, in a lot of financial difficulties, as I'm sure we're going to come on to, there's only so many different routes you can go. And any channel you haven't unlocked yet is obviously an attractive option when you're given an existential threat.

17:36I actually totally agree with you. I'm a pragmatist. And I think businesses are living, breathing organisms at the end of the day, and they have their own energy, and the markets around you have their own energy. And you've got to move with that. I agree that I think business kind of dogma actually can be quite dangerous in business, which is why I very much never say never when it comes to supermarkets. I think it's allowed us to build a strong brand, but who knows what the future holds? And it might be that the way we can express our values and have the greatest purpose is by doing something different for the next 10, 20 years.

18:11Who knows? But I agree that I think business dogma can kill good businesses. I think one of the areas that entrepreneurs get things wrong is trying to start immediately day one with purpose before you've really figured anything out like going to the you know mile 100 this is what we're going to do for the world how we're going to help other people how we're going to do all of these things and it's like buddy you don't even know how to tie your shoelaces up in terms of business context I've certainly been there and actually the best thing you can do back to Ed's point is start with the total naivety of passion like passion will take you extremely far because it will take you through all the very mundane and boring days that you need to get to before you can start to think about purpose.

18:50So with that in mind, Ed, before Rosie joined, can you give us some of the really crappy, boring days that passion had to drive you through some of the negative moments before Rosie was actually able to come in and think about how to take it to the next level for customers? Well, the first week that we opened, I'm sort of working in the shop by myself. My girlfriend at the time, Sophie, would come down and help me at the weekends. But that first week I remember we took 1059 pounds across six days open nine till five you know we would have three hours between customers coming in the product range at the time consisted of six six portion meals we didn't have any one or two portion meals back then and it's just that I just remember that week in particular because I you know I'm a hopeless optimist and I just thought that this would work from day one because of course it's going to work it's a brilliant idea and I just remember sitting in that shop thinking oh my word what have I done what have I done this is going to be really difficult and even actually before we opened before we opened Dale had just got the kitchen going and we had about two weeks to figure out how he could make some food and I just assumed because Dale is Dale's what 14 years older than me and he'd been a chef all his life he'd left school at 14 and he is like he's cockney and just proper not a moment's self-doubt about anything and he just said, Ed mate, I can sort this, no problem.

20:12And I remember one of the first things he ever produced, I had a tiny little flat in Clapham, he produces lentil and fennel bake, which even now sounds like horribly uncommercial product, but I got it into my little... Even in a world of many vegan consumers, I think every vegan listening was like, I don't know about that. It was a terrible idea. But anyway, it was like, okay, well, he's made a lentil and fennel bake, let's see what that's like. And I remember I popped it in the oven and it came out again 45 minutes later. And at this time, it was like it had a sort of consistency of treacle and it had a sort of off sort of musty smell.

20:48And, you know, I had one mouthful and it was spitted out disgusting. It was completely inedible. And I remember it just hit me like it just hit just like slap around the face. I just went, oh, my God, this is going to be really difficult. I just I just assumed that Dale would be able to make from day one the kind of food my mum used to make. But of course, cooking at scale when you're trying to do 150 or 250 portions at a time, which is what we were, which sounds quite small by what we do today, by today's standards, but it's a completely different set of skills. And it was in that moment when I thought, oh my God, this is going to be so difficult.

21:25And if it wasn't difficult, everyone would be doing it. It was so immediately obvious. I remember sitting on the stairs, that little flat, crying, going, oh my God, what have we got ourselves into? And so it was then that I realised actually the idea, I never sort of lost faith in the idea. I always thought the idea is a good one. If we can make frozen food that looks and tastes homemade, that's got to work. But all the complexity then, as it is now, is in the making. It's in the making of the food is really, really difficult. I've got to say, I'm pleased to know that a lentil and fennel pie tasted crap because it sounds crap.

22:02Yeah, we've never revisited that one. No, I'm surprised. I'm actually very curious. I wonder when you're cooking with scale, I would imagine that it's much more of a mathematical thing, right? I'm assuming, but please tell me, how much heart gets lost doing that? Because how could you really possibly, how could a brain understand how to cook for 200 people? Surely that's just pure maths. Yeah, I think if you were to go into our kitchens, you would find chefs with real passion for what they do. I think we are cooking at such a scale where we have to have recipes and we have to follow recipes and we have to be consistent.

22:39So consistency and quality for us is absolutely kind of that's the game. And we're getting in ingredients in the back door that are fresh. They are, you know, but even fresh ingredients vary. So it needs chefs who really deeply care about what they're cooking in order to cook them right. You know, cooking is an art. It's not a science, unfortunately. And however much you try to turn cooking into a science, it's always going to have an art form. It needs people who understand food, who understands what happens to proteins that are cooked at different temperatures, who understand what's the freshest veg versus not the freshest veg and all of those things.

23:16So I think it is a real combination of science, which is the recipes and the training, and then art, which is actually that really deep understanding about food and ruse and cooking out raw wine and all of those kind of techniques. So I think it's both and. I don't think it's either science or art in our kitchens. I think it's probably a mix of both. I find it fascinating and daunting. I can't imagine it at the kind of scale. And actually, you know, I want to stay on the early journey. But as I'm here, what kind of scale are we talking? How many meals do you cook on a weekly or monthly basis, whatever you track as your objective?

23:50I mean, just in terms of the scale, in terms of how we cook, I mean, most batches will be somewhere between about 1 ,500 portions and 2 ,000 portions. I mean, it's a really critical size because a lot of manufacturers will use huge kettles to make their stuff. But we use these things called brat pans because a brat pan is like a giant saucepan which you can fry, braise. I'm going to ask, is that just sounds like the world's biggest paella? Yeah, well, I mean, kind of. Yeah, kind of. But the whole thing is heated all around it. But the reason these are so important is because if you go back to the founding statement, that is the biggest vessel that a human being can cook with.

24:28After that, you're into automation. So, for example, if we're making a roux in a brat pan, we'll do a roux, but it will be with 18 kilos of butter and 18 kilos of flour. So it's a big old roux, but it's still a roux. It's still stirred by a human being. You know, it's absolutely vital that those techniques are retained because otherwise you start compromising on the founding statement. And that's what sits at the heart of the brand. And that's one of the things I think that as you get bigger, you always and we have plenty of debates internally about it because people come forward, well, we can mechanize this or we can do that.

25:00But actually, you have to go back the whole time and go, well, look, are we compromising what sits at the heart of what the business is all about? Yeah, you know, our whole brand rests on does it look and taste homemade? The danger of too much mechanisation is it will very shortly stop, you know, either of those things, in which case we have no right to exist. So we have got to protect that, absolutely. And yet, you know, to that dogma point earlier, not get too dogmatic about it either. And where do those grey lines exist? What's the thin end of the wedge? You know, we agonise about those things internally often.

25:34But the point is, you should also be agonizing over the decisions. And it's when the agony stops, that's when I think problems emerge in a business, if you're not agonizing about that stuff and how it pertains to what sits at the heart of the business. Yeah. And I would say sort of the rule of thumb is, can I look a customer in the eye and defend our brand statements and feel entirely comfortable doing that? And for me, that's the line. Yeah, I think something, a number that we've had in the business for a long time now is 15%. Always felt that if we were to try and grow by more than 15%, then the quality wheels would fall off because ultimately you would have to scale the manufacturing too quickly.

26:17Corners would be cut. You wouldn't be able to grow the supply chain quick enough, recruit the right people quick enough, train the people in the right way, get the culture in the kitchen right. And I've always been wary of any kind of growth of more than 15%. And that still holds true. That very much still holds true. Now, obviously, the numbers now are getting bigger. I was going to say 15 % is all very well and good, but you're pushing over 100 million in revenue, right? So 15 % suddenly starts to become very daunting, actually. Correct. So that's what we're looking at at the moment. We're suddenly going, oh, things are going quite well, actually, because I think we'll do about 125, 130 this year.