#60 - Becki Hawkins - Champneys [Head of Nutrition]

0:00Hello, hello, hello and welcome back to the Unfounders. Today, I'm joined by the wonderful Becky Hawkins, who is the senior nutritionist at Champneys. Now, Champneys are known for their amazing health resorts, their wellness days, their spa treatments, but we're looking at it from a food and drink perspective. What does what you eat and drink affect how you feel, how you look, how you perform? All of these amazing areas. And how does Champneys do that as a business, as an offering to people coming and having these retreats? Food is so important. Everyone has a different approach to it. And it was great to unpick what are the pillars that Shampneys look at when they're designing menus, when they're looking into nutrition, when they're looking into wellness from a whole perspective.

0:36Becky's been integral with that, having been at the business for 20 years now, along with Louise, the director of wellness, and Chris, the head chef. They've even made a cookbook. How did that come about? I think it's a fantastic story. Becky is super passionate about this industry and about eating well, not just eating restricted. I think that's a really, really important take home message. And I'll let her do the rest of the talking. So without further ado, let's get on with the episode. Are you a founder of the next exciting food and drink brand? Are you looking to scale and grow? Well, let me introduce you to Mission Kitchen, London's home for food and drink entrepreneurs and sponsor of The Unfounders.

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1:39Hello and welcome back to the Unfounders. Today I'm joined by the wonderful Becky Hawkins. So Becky, can you let everyone know where you work and how long you've been there? Hi Mitch, thank you for having me. So I'm Becky. I'm a registered nutritional therapist by trade and also known in my role as the senior nutritionist for Champneys Health Spas. I am into my 20th year for Champneys, so it's an amazing opportunity to have been there for a whole one-fifth of their 100-year journey in the front of the wellness space. And I kind of turned a fascination with food and wellness into a thriving, science-backed career with many fingers in many pies across the industry.

2:20and one of my main mantras would always be eating to thrive rather than deprive and I love translating sometimes scary sounding science into actionable advice that people can really translate into day-to-day life and hopefully make a positive difference. That's amazing I think we obviously met through Champneys and me trying to get our packed smoothies in there so that's still on the card so depending on when you're listening to this it's either hopefully happening or it's happening now. But what was it about Champneys that has managed to keep you there for 20 years? Because that's a long time for anyone to be in any role.

2:56Yeah, absolutely. Champneys still has my whole heart after 20 years. I think it's general philosophies, it's emitting messages of sort of a luxury wellness brand, but also accessible to everyone. We meet people everywhere. So it could be a person buying a champagne candle for their kid's teacher from Boots. It might be someone buying the recipe book and making a family friendly meal. The other end of the extreme, we get people moving into the resorts first, maybe months on end sometimes for a complete immersive kind of lifestyle reset. So yeah, It's holistic, it's individualised wellness, it's experience.

3:39I love their food philosophy. I'm proud to have been able to help develop and build that. And of course, it's a really exciting place to work. We get some great clientele across the years from Hollywood movie stars to world champion athletes. I've worked with X Factor winners. There's some brilliant media opportunities that it's afforded that have helped my career development and all helping to sort of emit the message of optimum health and wellness but through a really holistic and sometimes collaborative approach. Champneys it's not just bath products, it's not just massages, we can look after everything from your sort of mental well-being to your physical fitness to your nutritional health and of course we like to give people a bit of a haven of wellness and escape and relaxation and luxury too.

4:29Yeah that's brilliant, I think whenever I think of Champneys, it's that premium spa experience. And I love your involvement with the food side. I've got a copy of your cookbook here. So I'd love to know from Champneys' perspective, when you look at food, menu, nutrition, diet, and all of these things, what is the kind of Champneys' mentality when it comes towards food? Because food is very emotive, food is very specific to these individuals. But if people are coming for a retreat, are you nourishing them from the inside as well as the outside? Is that the plan? Absolutely, yes. I am completely food obsessed.

5:01Live, breathe and eat food and nutrition 24-7. And I think that helps to really be immersed in the practical side and the technicalities that are required to build something that is going to suit the needs of the guests, fit the agenda for that particular recipe or break or retreat, but also trying to think about what's realistic for our chefs to deliver beautifully as well. So the Champneys food philosophy, there are three core principles. We build our mantra around moderation, balance and variety. And there are so many takes and individual perspectives on each of those terms that we're able to apply in different guises depending on what we're working on.

5:42But we also, we want to think about what our clients want. We want to be at the sort of cutting edge and ahead of the curve in the technological advances that are then feeding down through always a positive evidence-backed basis for health and nutrition protocols. We want to take science first, but we want to link it into the taste and the experience for people. We want our philosophies and food to be accessible and transparent for people with clear labeling. And we want to take care of the technical side so they don't need to worry about that. And almost reframe the concept that some programs may involve feelings of negativity and deprivation, but really switch that on its head and show them that whatever their agenda may be you're still enabled to enjoy fantastic colorful delicious engaging interesting food but still you really can achieve any of your health and wellness objectives whilst doing that as well no i love that and it was one of the reasons when i reached out to champions i was like look you've got smoothies but i'd love to show you our packed ones we've designed our recipes around different need states like this one's for energy this one's for detox and all of that and I think for you it's like yeah absolutely this makes sense so when you're when you're looking at menu development where do you find inspiration for new products new recipes like working with say Chris or Louise like within the team where are you finding new brands because obviously people listening to this go I'd love to get our products into Champneys they're a great fit like how do I make that happen who do I need to speak to like what's what's your approach when it comes to like keeping that innovation wheel rolling?

7:21Yeah, so massive advocate for the functional nutrition perspective. And I think that's one of the reasons that Pat stood out to us. Yes, people maybe know how to make a basic smoothie at home. That's not necessarily new news. But how we can frame that for people and really add that sort of USP value with the functional superfood blends. I love that idea. And I think we're both advocates for supporting the benefits and the the comeback of the frozen food industry as well so helping people to understand the message that the technological advances have enabled the nutritional value to really be tied in so quickly after picking now a lot of research suggests that some of the frozen fruit and veg could actually be more nutritious than the stuff if we're buying off the shelves fresh due to do food miles.

8:12It's a great way to help people manage sort of social and economical climates like cost of living crisis, as of course there's huge benefits to sort of buying those pre-packed frozen elements in terms of convenience, but also shelf life and things too. So yeah, it's always a collaboration. And Louise Day, who's the wellbeing director, massive mentor and inspiration of mine over my 20 years, She's a shining light of what ladies can achieve within the wellness space. And then Chris Clunan is our group executive head chef. Again, a fantastic kind of stalwart for really putting the theory into practice.

8:52He's the one that's there getting 200 people fed every day. In some ways, I kind of have the easy parts kind of creating recipes and suggesting tweaks of how we can support the nutrition a bit further. But yeah, collaborative team approach, always looking at the technical and functional side of nutrition, trying to keep on top of trends, of course, because our clients are seeing those things in the magazines and social media. So it might be going from looking at a viral recipe to see how we could make that a little bit more interesting and in our version. So for example, a recent PR event we did for a big group of journalists to mark our 100 year anniversary.

9:34We took the Dubai chocolate trend that's everywhere at the moment. And we kind of fused it with one of our Champagne signature items, our bliss balls. So we made these super healthy Dubai chocolate style bliss balls that didn't have any processed sugar. It was high cacao. It was dates. It was oats. We had, of course, the pistachios. stachios. So yeah, we like to take things and twist it up a little bit and put our slant on it, but still meet what our guests want and ultimately always be supporting their holistic wellness. We all know that brand is important, right? But what if I told you it can impact growth and customer acquisition costs by up to 50 %?

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10:43And I think for me, like that's a hard ask because I like to feel like anything that's going on, I kind of see that brand and know that founder and all of that. And when I came in, I was like, oh, I've never seen that before. So for brands who do things like that, they're like, I have the perfect product. It does this. It's blah, blah, blah. Like, is it best to come to you, to Chris, Louise? Like, how do they get in front of these people? Because I know people listening and be like, I really, really want to speak to Champlies, like rather than just texting me and be like, give me their emails.

11:09I'm like, no, no, that's not how it works. Yeah, undoubtedly, as time's gone on, sort of product analysis, product placement, brand partnership buildings has become an increasing part of my role. Yes, either myself or Louise or Chris, we're all sort of, I guess, accessible through different veins of the business. We're going to be seen in different parts or different representations of Champneys. But yes, the analysis is often a collaboration between the three of us. So Louise will look at the placement in the various departments of the resorts. I'll be checking the technical nutrition, the nutritional values, how the functions relate to Chamney's story as the bigger piece.

11:48And then Chris will obviously, he'll have a part in looking at sort of the business side, the markups needed, the number of units, the ordering criteria, all those things. But yeah, together it works between us. And yes, no doubt I am approached by lots of companies, as you can imagine, that would love to see themselves represented within our resorts and our growing portfolio. And then every now and again, it's been known that I will grow such a passion and a love for a certain brand as well that I'll actually reach out to them. So it works both ways. But yes, if anyone feels they might fit that space, I'm always open to having a chat.

12:28And yeah, let's see what's out there. Brilliant, yeah. I apologize in advance for all the emails and DMs and everything you'll get following this. One thing that I would love to kind of touch on was obviously the cookbook, which I just mentioned a second ago. So when we met, you very kindly gave me a copy and I was having a flick through and I was like, firstly, it's a stunning book, like really, really creative recipes, very healthy. Like you can just kind of see in the imagery and the products used. How did this come about and what was your involvement? And did you always think you wanted to get involved in a cookbook?

12:59Was that a goal? Like where did this idea get born from? Yeah, good question. So with that, it's been one of my proudest achievements and one of the most fun projects we've had the chance to take part in through Chamneys. Now, the cookbook, it was a little bit of a baby of our sort of founder, Mrs. Perdue, who we sadly lost in September 23. And it had been on the radar for a while. There'd be so many meetings and planning sessions about it. And then it'd go off the boil again a little bit. And then we started to get a bit of momentum. And to the point around March 2020, when of course the world stopped during COVID, we'd made progression, we had a framework of recipes we wanted to include, which were going to be a combination of Champagne's classics that guests were constantly asking for the recipes for.

13:48It was the idea to give people a little bit of a taster and a bit of a teaser into some of the types of foods that they might be able to enjoy if they're visiting us on one of the retreats, or if they've been on a retreat, it enables them to recreate those things at home as well. So we've made so much progress up to March 2020. We had food photo shoots planned with home economists, food stylists, and then the world stopped. So horrible, horrible time. We didn't know if the book was ever going to be able to come back into fruition again. COVID, of course, was very difficult for so many businesses.

14:23I was sort of on furlough for 16 months and felt like I'd lost all of my knowledge and my confidence. But then we slowly rebuilt, We adapted to the changing landscape. And then all of a sudden, out of the blue, the Shantley's and Boots partnership had continued to evolve and develop. And with about three weeks notice, we were thrown back into the lion's den. Boots wanted the cookbook to be done and finished in about three weeks. This was, I think, March 23. And because they wanted it launching ready for their Christmas campaign of sort of October 23, all of the work on the Boots Christmas catalogue is finished by about April that month.

15:03So panic stations, I sort of suddenly had to switch back into mad creativity mode. And we were revisiting the recipes that maybe hadn't been touched for nearly three years at that point. Sort of adapting things the way food and nutrition interests had evolved. We got it done. There's over 100 recipes in the book. They're brilliant. There's lots of plant forward recipes. There's interesting gut health, diversity, inflammation. And then it was such a joy and a pleasure and a sort of proud opportunity to get invited to go along to the photo shoots. Seeing how the professionals and food stylists actually brought my recipes to life was a real humbling experience, actually showing me how much better they looked in the hands of professionals than my phone photographs with my ring light.

15:52But yeah, a great collaboration between the Champneys marketing department, the historical element of Champneys and the chefs crafting and then the nutrition scientists. But yeah, so proud, really pleased with the end result. And from what we hear, it's really helped a lot of people to be inspired, bring a little bit of Champneys class and luxury and optimism into their own kitchen too. No, I think it's such a good tie in. It's kind of that moment of like bringing people back to that moment of the retreat or going, oh, actually, if this is what the food looks like in the book, like I can't wait to enjoy that when I'm there.

16:27I think it's a really nice tie. And as I said, as a work of like an actual cookbook wise, it's really, really nicely done. So whoever was involved, amazing work because that is a cracking cookbook. Thank you. We appreciate it. One thing I'd like to now go right the way back to is when you're growing up, like clearly right now you come across, you're super passionate about your health, your fitness, your nutrition, like everything to do around eating well and how that helps you feel. But when you were younger, what was your relationship with food like? Were you really into food? Were you just kind of eat to eat whatever was on the table?

16:58Or was it born from a young age? You're like, you know what, if I eat this, I feel like this and I want to do that full time. Like, did you what did you want to do when you grew up? Yeah, so I think it was slightly sort of intertwined into my DNA from the off. So I grew up with a performance background, did sort of well in school, was always interested in science and nutrition. But my passion, as far as I was concerned, I was heading to be on the West End stage in musicals. My knee had another idea, unfortunately. And year 2000, a week before moving down to London to start at Italia Conti, my knee just gave up, had horrendous issues that were kind of life changing.

17:36So then I was led to rethink, refocus. Now, my mum had actually lectured in nutrition at a local college when I was growing up. So it had always been around me. And I think growing up as performer, dancer, all into fitness, it was always there in the background to be interested in how food made you feel, how it would reflect on how you were perceived by people all of those things and what you could do to fuel yourself from the inside out as well now I had to have a year out or so to see whether I was going to be able to go back to performing but that wasn't to be so amidst all the auditions and things I got good A-level results and I was working for my dad during my year out and one day just decided you know what I'm going to go to university so my mum had been telling me at the time there there was an up and coming new slant of the industry called nutritional therapy.

18:30And at the time, my degree was the only degree in it in the country at Westminster University in London. At the time, it was known as BSc Honours in Health Science Nutritional Therapy. It's now evolved to be the degree in clinical nutrition, but sort of the same thing. So, yeah, I took that upon myself. I did it. I graduated with a 2.1 and the award for clinician of the year in 2005. and then it was a little bit of a drive then just putting myself out there see what relationships I could build and again my mum had always been a big fan of Champneys one of the Champneys resorts was sort of 20-25 minutes from me and I managed to get a meeting with Louise Day there started on board as a freelance nutritionist at the Champneys Springs resort in Leicestershire that just snowballed then I absolutely loved it seemed to hook with their clientele and was making great progress for people.

19:26And then my role sort of grew and advanced over the next few years. 2014, they created the role of senior nutritionist for me. So I was able to elevate to extend the message across the whole of the Champneys portfolio. In the meantime, gaining other qualifications like allergy and intolerance testing diplomas to have an interest in specialising in that side as well. And then yeah, never looked back, just always pushing forward, striving for the next opportunity. I think my performance background has helped big on communication, not shy. I think you have to put yourself out there. You have to have some sort of engaging communication skills to get people to want to listen to you, hopefully.

20:10But yeah, hopefully now I think my superpower is probably taking data that can sometimes be a bit dull, looking at biomarkers food intolerance test results research papers and really translating it into realistic actionable advice for people no that's brilliant I think um yeah there's quite a few people that have that moment of like being in sports or going that's my career having an accident or an injury or something that stops them doing that full-time and then going okay what what's next so I think the fact that you were like yeah university let's go for it and kind of went within there I love that it's been 20 years for Champneys.

20:44I think that's, as I said at the start, 20 years in any business is incredible. How has the Champneys approach in your time evolved over that when it comes to the menu development, the offer, the size of the business, like all those kinds of things, like how's that evolved in the last 20 years? Yeah, so the Champneys portfolio is growing from strength to strength. As I mentioned, we've just, well, we are celebrating our 100 years this year. So that's been a fantastic pinnacle. The foundation pillars of the food philosophy have always stayed. Their interpretation has evolved as the science has evolved.

21:23As you probably know, nutrition, it's a fast paced moving industry. It constantly contradicts itself. And things sort of do 360 full circle. so if we look at the things like moderation so it might have been 10 years ago focusing very much on portion sizes and educating people around sort of calorie management but now when we have the advances and we look at things like time-restricted eating the information that the links between the gut and the brain are growing and telling us yeah we we take those core philosophies but we we enhance them. And the Champneys menus, they tend to be reviewed and sort of evolved generally seasonally.

22:06But then of course, if there are specific projects or retreats that I'm working to develop or enhance, they may have more specialised technical menus that will come onto the radar of our portfolio then in line with the retreats being run. And then as we look to sort of the future, we're trying to incorporate the evolving landscape of more personalized nutrition protocols. Of course, there is the evolution and the slightly unknown landscape of AI and where that's going to take us with these things. But yeah, I think testing is a big part that's advanced. And we kind of work on this philosophy of testing rather than guessing.

22:45There are great insights from some of the fantastic companies that we partner with, like York test, Genova diagnostics. And we try and support people to know their numbers. And if we have that biomarker data, you have a really strong evidence-based foundation to then build the optimal plan of action for someone to work on all elements of the health and well-being. And I think as that goes on and grows, I think there's going to be more microbiome testing. I think the oral microbiome offers a really interesting future perspective. I think the changing landscape with the introduction of the GLP-1 medications, it's so vital people getting the lifestyle and the nutritional counselling to go with those life-changing drugs as well.

23:30I think we're going to be seeing more of that. And then, yeah, other growing areas, psychobiotics I have quite an interest in. So how specific strains of probiotics can directly impact the gut-brain axis. And of course, the interest in mental health nowadays there's a lot of impact and potential benefit to some of the big players at the moment like creatine I think we're going to be seeing more and hearing more about that so yeah really exciting time looking sort of past present and future but we are dead set on staying at the head of the curve as we enter our second century of being one of those pioneers in the wellness space and yeah long may it continue yeah no i think it's fascinating and fantastic like if you you think of going on a spa retreat i think for a lot of people you don't really necessarily think too much about the food unless you're there for a long period of time if you're going for like a spa day be like oh what's on the lunch menu or what's included with my package or those kind of things but i think hearing it kind of from your side that the fact that they go hand in hand it's a big consideration and the fact that champanies are so ahead of the curve and doing all this testing this research they've got you on board full-time to do these things i think that's a real testament to the overall offer that champagne's give around wellness and health and i think as you said the link between feeling good from the inside and outside with diet and with all these treatments there's so much to be said for that yeah we we really want to sort of cut through the noise separate the fads and the fallacies back to the the science-based evidence And I think one of the things that we do really well is showing people that you can eat well, but still enjoy your food, still have great colours, great textures, great looking food.

25:14The old adage associated to health spa food from sort of 20 to 50 years ago, where you would come and you would just have celery and water for three days. I mean, unless people want to do that on a fasting retreat, we could also help with that. But that's not generally what people want. They want to come, be reassured. We've taken care of all of those things for them, but they can come and have a great time, feel well looked after, still enjoy themselves, have a little bit of indulgence, a bit of luxury if they want to. But at the same time, know that we're nourishing them inside and out. And yeah, we're looking after all those pillars from social health because people come and congregate at Shampley's to reconnect with their friends and families and have a breakaway.

25:56We support things like the digital detox. We're important in the space of educating and empowering people to manage their own health and lifestyle longer term by looking at the elements of mindfulness and social health and, of course, physical health through the fitness side. We have an incredible fitness department and always lots going on there as well. So, yeah, it's a real all rounder that we try and implement for every aspect of people. Yeah, no, I think you can still get your dessert when you're there. It just might be a little bit better for you than your average dessert. Exactly, yes. And we even put some things on now and again that might not necessarily be nutritionally healthy, but everyone can have a little bit of indulgence sometimes.

26:42The good old 80-20 rule that I often use as my get-out clause. Yes, it's not about obsession. It's not about being perfect all the time. It's just finding those little realistic lifestyle tweaks and hacks that people can implement every day. That really helps them to thrive and keep functioning as best as they possibly can to look forward to a great health span and a longevity in the future. yeah it's not about worrying about a single piece of chocolate cake or glass of wine or piece of cheese i mean we've all got to live right yeah i think that's so important and sometimes almost like pushed down the line because all you hear is like oh this needs to be healthy this is this as soon as you say plant-based people go oh it's gonna it's got to be healthier and better than this i'm like no if just because i'm vegan doesn't mean i don't want to have a nice chocolate cake or a bit of this or a bit of that it's like if i want pizza i want a nice pizza like it's not i'm not looking for a high protein carb blah blah blah like just give me give me something that to me that is looking after myself because actually the wellness and the enjoyment you get um i listened to a fascinating podcast and they're talking about longevity and your your way of doing it and they're like if you're stressing to the level of i can't eat out i need to do this i need to eat every these few hours you're less likely to live than your friend who is going to go out and have a mexican meal with his mates and then go home there's yeah so much to be said with eating with friends that community like what you're actually eating and enjoying if you're putting so much extra stress and cortisol in your body worrying about i can i have that is it healthy for me like if you question everything that's not healthy i think it is that whole approach and as you said the 80 20 like on the whole be trying to eat as best you can but allow room for those treats i think that's really important absolutely yeah food is joy it's about the balance of functional nutrition versus the social connection.

28:25We all eat emotionally to a degree sometimes. And yeah, I agree when you hear some of these extreme protocols that people are out there sort of backing at the moment for longevity, etc. Yeah, you really have to weigh up. But actually, how fun is that person going to be to be around? How much are they really relishing and benefiting from the other areas of their life beyond counting their 642 supplements they have to do every day and having to make sure they're in bed at 7.30 and never being able to go out to a party with friends. So yeah, it's a lifestyle. But as I said, I absolutely live, breathe and have a healthy obsession with all things food related.

29:06And whether it's nothing more than going and blowing a month's mortgage on a blooming Michelin tasting menu and wine flight. But all the time, I'm hyper aware of those opportunities and things that you can translate into the profession. So whether it's geeking out over the craftsmanship and the recipe synergy and the foods that go together, thinking about the nutritional benefits of a recipe and how we could build on that. Again, yeah, looking at what TikTok recipes are going viral and how I could make that healthier for my kids. Yeah, it should be joyful. It should be functional, no doubt. It's a real, yeah, a real mix of the two.