The magic formula that created a Gloucestershire business legend
We look at the journey a family firm began just under two decades ago that took its turnover of £29 million to four times that and staff numbers to 220. It's a business that’s just been sold for £70m.
Dear Readers,
Welcome to Thursday’s edition of The Raikes Journal. We hope your week is going well.
Our first edition of this week was a write-up of what we really thought was taking place at last week’s CyNam event at Cheltenham Literature Festival. Something about the article seemed to have found favour, and the comments on LinkedIn alone - where we try and share some of what we’re up to - were great to see.
You can read the edition here, in case you missed it.
Today we take a look at a story we almost ditched when the business it is about was sold recently, but after a little thought we realised that news only made it all the more valuable. At least we think so anyway. We hope you do too.
If you are one of those debating whether investing money in training yourself and your leadership team is worthwhile, we hope this story blows away any of the fog and makes it clear just what that move could do to you and your business.
As for tomorrow, well, you’ll have to wait and see - but we do have an announcement coming up soon that we are trying not to let out of the bag! Maybe we’ll share that tomorrow. Maybe not.
If you are interested in becoming one of the stable of businesses backing Raikes and making all this possible please email andrew.merrell@raikesjournal.co.uk or telephone 07956 926061.
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At this time of year it’s the colour of the leaves that provides one of the most stunning and uplifting spectacles of the year’s seasons. Few places are better to soak up those moments than Westonbirt Arboretum – home to a world-renowned collection of more than 15,000 trees and shrubs from around the globe. The group that supports the destination, The Friends of Westonbirt Aboretum, is gearing up to mark its 40 years committed to the cause in the next edition of its magazine, and you can help it do that. First of all by becoming a member (which starts from £45 a year - for one adult and up to four children/grandchildren aged 18 and under). Once that box is ticked you’ll then be able to respond to its appeal to its members to send it their best memories from the last 40 years, comment on what they consider the best change at the attraction in all that time, and share your hopes for the next four decades too! Send your answers via email to marketing@fowa.org.uk.
Your briefing notes
💷 Nearly three quarters of a million pounds has been won by Gloucester City Council to help clear the way for 200 new homes near the city’s railway station. The grant from the Government’s Brownfield Land Release Fund will allow the local authority to prepare the site of the former Wessex House on Great Western Road, unlocking its potential for redevelopment. The now demolished building that sits behind Gloucester Railway Station, had been the offices for Edmundson Electrical but stood empty for several years before being knocked down. You can read the full story in our PR Wire channel here.
👏 The Gloucestershire Nature and Climate Fund has revealed Diane Savory OBE as its new chairwoman. Savory spent 22 years helping grow fashion chain Superdry alongside Julian Dunkerton and take it to the stock market. She then helped create and lead the highly effective local enterprise partnership, GFirst LEP, for a decade-plus. She is a Deputy Lieutenant of Gloucestershire and chairwoman of the Cheltenham Festivals Charity. In 2013 Savory received an OBE in recognition of her work with the LEP. GNCF is a not-for-profit organisation established to support developers, landowners and local planning authorities. It aims to create both a biodiversity and a carbon market for Gloucestershire.
📽️ When Raikes relaunched at the start of the year it was lucky enough to interview Jane Roberts, a former businesswoman from Stroud whose story is both heartbreaking and inspirational. After a successful career as an entrepreneur Roberts was gearing up to retire when her son, Ben, died by suicide. Roberts now dedicates her time, energy and money to raising awareness about ADHD and the impact it can have. In February we explained how she had teamed up with ADHD Foundation and the Universal Coaching Alliance (UK) to help it provide fully-funded education and training for schoolteachers, parents, and anyone else to help them better understand people with the condition. Roberts also sponsored experts to produce a treatment guide and she’s now made a video of the recommendations. If ADHD impacts your life, the life of someone you know or love or you simply want to learn more here’s a link to her video.
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Revealing the magic formula that created a Gloucestershire business legend
We look at the journey a family firm began just under two decades ago that took its turnover of £29 million to four times that and staff numbers to 220. It's a business that’s just been sold for £70m.
By Andrew Merrell.
A month-ish ago we were about to write a story about Gloucestershire legend Creed Foodservice’s just-published outstanding annual results for our rolling Top 100 series, our collection of stories that follows the financial fortunes of the county’s biggest firms (see our Reports & Deals channel).
And then its boss, Chris Creed, suggested we hold fire. Only afterwards did it become apparent why. News soon broke that the business had sold.
What had initially struck us most of all about its financial results was not the astonishing growth in turnover, which we’ll come to shortly, but the reasons behind that growth.
And so, rather than just walk away from the story we wanted to try to make something of it, not just to pay tribute and point to the achievements of Creed Foodservice, but to try to lay bare some of the magic formula that took it to where it is. Who knows, it could work for others too!
It’s a formula that appears to echo a little of the increasingly popular B Corp movement and its mantra of ‘people, planet, profit’, which as counterintuitive as it sounds to split your energies away from the bottom-line converts will tell you boosts it too.
Creed Foodservice did it slightly differently, but it became obsessed with its culture and looking after its people. It no doubt cost it more, but it was convinced this was its ticket to business growth. And so it has proved.
And although in recent times it has won accolades from the likes of The Sunday Times and featured on its Best Companies To Work For list - voted for by staff - it was its senior teams that it concentrated on to start with.
But first, who better to introduce you to the business than Chris himself, the man who did not just start that culture change, he tested the formula on himself first!
“We are one of the UK’s leading independent family-owned foodservice wholesalers specialising in providing a comprehensive range of multi temperature products to a range of customers within the leisure, hospitality, education and care sectors,” said Chris, writing in the firm’s recently published annual report.
“Our business is built on family values and trust, recognising the importance of open, honest and supportive relationships that work for everyone.
“Our brand message #BeleveInMore not only reflects company-wide culture to go the extra mile for our customers, but it’s also our aspiration to continually improve our industry leading service levels.
“This year, our 51st birthday, the business achieved another record year in turnover of £124 million and were again recognised by ‘best companies’ as being one of the UK’s 100 best large companies to work for, at position 55 (that’s The Sunday Times list).
“The results for 2023 demonstrate the resilience of the business.”
Operating profit was £8 million.
“The business has again responded well to the ongoing challenge of inflation and in particular food inflation together with significant energy increases, while continuing to invest in its infrastructure, its people and be a Living Wage Foundation employer.”
You can get the message. It’s business as you know it, but everything is linked somehow to its values, its determination to walk the walk it talks.
It’s a management culture where each person takes responsibility to set the best example they can, to support and work together and to pick one another up on it if they don’t.
“It’s not easy. You have to keep working on it. You have to pick one another up on behaviour, reinforce what we stand for all the time. It is hard, it can be challenging, but it works,” said Martin Holmes, then the firm’s people director, at a recent B Corp event staged by QuoLux, as possibly the only non-B Corp speaker.
Philip de Ternant, then chairman of Creed Foodservice, said: “Culture change has a massive impact on the business. We’ve simplified our values, which are ‘commercial, friendly, nurturing and proud’.
“The leaders have to drive it. I have to demonstrate it all the time and so does my senior team – otherwise it’s just a joke. It wouldn’t mean anything.
“Sometimes that’s inconvenient, to be honest. It takes thought and time and it’s easier to take short cuts when you’re busy. But you’ve got to do things properly.
“What does it say to everyone else if they think we’re not demonstrating the things we say are most valued by the business?”
The annual report outlines those other things you’d expect to see too. There was investment too in vehicles, IT and e-commerce infrastructure and a continual focus on cyber security.
Read far enough into the report and there is also mention of £77,000 in cash and products it donated to local charities - as well as encouraging and allowing its staff to be involved in charitable causes during the working week.
You won’t find much of that on social media. Which makes you come to the conclusion public profile wasn’t a priority.
Someone who did take note of all the detail was North Shields-based Kitwave Wholesale Group. It liked Creed Foodservice so much it’s just bought the Staverton headquartered firm, announcing the news in September.
The deal, which saw the foodservice firm use the services of its long-standing Cheltenham-headquartered legal partner BPE, is for an initial £60 million with up to an additional £10m over the next two years depending on performance targets being achieved.
Creed also relied on the services of another firm with Cheltenham offices, Crowe UK, for its accountancy.
For anyone who might need even more proof that the Creed Foodservice formula worked and also made it possible for its owners and shareholders to also calitalise on a lifetime’s work - knowing also that the new owner has no plans to change what they’ve built - the deal sounds like a win-win.
We turned to Dr Stewart Barnes of QuoLux for a little insight into the methods of Creed Foodservice, and with good reason. His business, a specialist in leadership development, was there at the very start of it all and has been there ever since.
“When we first started working with Creed in 2011 it had a turnover of £29 million and 221 staff. We like to think we helped them create a vision of the future, which at the time was a business with a turnover of £100 million,” he said.
“There is a culture of change that is clearly evident in the company. It perfectly understands its sector and has delivered massive growth year on year.”
Not that Barnes is taking credit for Chris’s achievements – just proud to have played a part and to work with the firm all the way through.
“What Chris has done is fantastic,” said Barnes.
But he will tell you that figures show that a shockingly low number of UK businesses invest in developing their leadership teams and culture, and that the percentage of those do embrace the change is fairly static.
Saying that, QuoLux has now worked with an estimated 200-plus businesses and almost 1,000 business leaders, UK-wide and internationally too.
Barnes’ frustration that there are not more is because he can also point to figures that show those who invest in their leadership teams see turnover increase over and above those that don’t – and continue to. Just Google it!
When Creed Foodservice’s culture change story began way back in 2007 B Corp was only in its infancy (it was founded in 2006), not even on the radar, but it was then that that Chris revealed the answer to a conundrum facing many family firms.
That challenge was how to maintain a strong family presence and place for family members in a business that also required non-family members to rise through the ranks if it was to truly thrive.
He addressed the issues of growth and succession within the firm by employing a team of non-family senior executives, creating a family board and an executive board.
It allowed him, together with the non-family executive directors, to run the company and meet the shareholders on the family board quarterly to discuss progress.
“This game changing structure allowed Chris to nurture a professional team within a pre-existing family hierarchy enabling non-family members to have real power in the company, thereby resolving an issue that is identified as a major stumbling block in the growth of family businesses,” said Barnes.
At the same time the business was also investing, most notably in a purpose-built distribution centre in Derbyshire to maintain our industry-leading customer service, in line with our growth.
But it was also investing in something that would trigger a whole change of approach this article is all about. It was also investing in his own leadership skills.
In 2012 Chris graduated from QuoLux’s 10-month long leadership and business growth program, LEAD™, integrating much of his learning into Creed Foodservice, including business planning, employee engagement and the introduction of a lean team.
It was foundation block for the firm it is today. All of the three other Creed brothers Steve, Phil and Paul, were soon following him on the programme and that led to positions as executive and non-executive positions on the firm’s board.
Phil Vickery, of Gloucester and England Rugby fame – and an investor in Creed - also followed too.
And sales and marketing director Miles Roberts also went through the programme before succeeding Chris in January this year. The QuoLux programmes had become a right of passage and an enduring catalyst. More staff are currently working their way through the QuoLux route right now.
It put an new onus on each member of management show consistent leadership.
It was about creating that culture Holmes earlier referred to as “challenging” but “something that works”.
When the sale was announced Chris had this to say: “Creed’s ethos and business approach remain at the heart of our operations.
“Creed has thrived on family values for over 50 years and our people, culture and values remain woven into the fabric of our extended business.
“This move strengthens our position within the market, offering the best possible outcome for our business, people and customers.”
Barnes said: “If you are in any doubt about the value of culture you can look at the sale of Creed Foodservice.
“Not only has it got an extremely high multiple for the business, the company that has aquired them is putting its own food service under Creed Foodservice.
“It is an amazing deal and it underlines the quality of the leadership team they created at Creed.”