“From the moment it’s harvested, fresh produce is dying. We’re delivering a dying product, we’ve got to make sure we get it to the customer before its dead,” says Nigel Harris, md of Fresh Direct. While that kind of dramatic statement might not be very likely to make it onto the marketing posters for the fresh produce sector, its refreshing honesty and simplicity sums up exactly why Fresh Direct is an award-winning, respected company.
Discipline and consistency are the cornerstones of the company. “I’m very proud of the consistency of our products,” says Harris, “and that’s down to our relationships with our suppliers. We look for longevity in our relationships with them, we want to develop together.”
The strength Fresh Direct finds in those relationships also extends to its own staff, he says, and he is keen to keep the business motivated and moving forward. “The company is young and energetic. Our staff really care about making the business work.”
To aid that enthusiasm and energy, Harris says there has been heavy investment in the company: “We like having new vehicles on the road and smart uniforms, it’s good to be offering high quality product in a smart vehicle with a well-presented driver. And the staff have a nice, new vehicle to drive rather than having to go out in an old dog.”
Ensuring that discipline is maintained is a primary focus, and that also extends to keeping the warehouse aisles free of waste and rubbish. “There’s a lot of pride in our business,” he adds.
The seeds of Fresh Direct were sown 30 years ago, when Harris’ father, John Harris, and his business partner Bill Hawkins set up a mobile grocery shop in the Oxford area. Over the years the business has evolved and adapted to meet the changing requirements of the marketplace. With the rise of the supermarkets, the business saw which way the wind was blowing and moved, at first, into wholesale and then into the catering arena.
The business is now entirely devoted to foodservice, supplying fresh fruit, vegetables and salads to everyone from small independent operators to large groups, chains and local authorities.
Harris joined the business full-time in 1988, although he was far from a stranger to the company. “I’d been working in the business since the age of six, polishing apples and riding about with the lorry drivers.”
His full-time arrival in the ranks, though, prompted a renewed emphasis: “At the time there were a lot of wholesalers, and catering wholesalers all chasing similar contracts. We decided to implement a strategic plan, identifying the customers we needed to take the business forward.”
Since then the business has grown considerably, moving to its present site in Bicester in 2000, with the opening of its Inspiration depot. This was then followed in 2004 with the arrival of the Innovation depot.
“Our business focuses on two core areas,” says Harris. “Radial delivery, dealing with the chefs direct, and centralised distribution. We decided to separate the two businesses and built our Innovation depot to focus on CD, leaving Inspiration to serve the radial operators.”
While the two facilities offer a combined space of 140,000 square feet, Harris and his team have made a clever innovation with their facilities by expanding upwards through the use of mezzanine floors. “It’s all about making the most of your available space,” says Harris. “Why expand outward when you can expand up?”
Another opportunity for expansion came with the chance to purchase facilities in Manchester, giving Fresh Direct the ability to improve its radial distribution to cover the entire country.
However, all this expansion has been dwarfed by the company’s most recent move, when it acquired Caterfresh, a major part of the foodservice operations of fresh produce giant Redbridge.
That acquisition has seen the company’s turnover leap from £55 million a year to more than £80m. Despite Harris’s dislike of summing up issues with numbers (“turnover never equates to profit,” he points out), that is still an impressive leap.
The deal between the two companies had been on the cards for some time, he says: “They are two similar businesses sharing a similar customer base, with similar people and management styles. We’d been working together for a number of years and collaborating on a number of joint contracts. It was inevitable that the businesses would one day join together. We just weren’t sure how that would happen.”
But happen it has, and Harris reckons the merger of the two businesses is almost complete, with very little in the way of teething troubles. “It’s amazing how quickly the business fitted together. I would say we’re about 70 per cent of the way there in the process of merging the two.”
Part of the reason the process has proved to be so smooth was the amount of planning that went into the acquisition. “We’d been talking to Redbridge for some time, so on the day it happened, the plans were all in place.” To aid the process, he says all staff at both companies were given gifts and plenty of information to ensure everyone was well informed.
A key strength of Redbridge is its procurement operations and understanding of produce, says Harris. “It seemed the logical thing to do to put Caterfresh together with Fresh Direct and let Redbridge focus on procurement and give the business support with its buying activities.”
As part of the deal, the two companies have created a joint world-wide procurement venture which will be managed by Redbridge.
However, while Redbridge has strength in procurement, Fresh Direct is also no slouch in that department, and Harris is keen to point out that it is not going to scrap its operations in that area without good reason. “We buy lemons and Redbridge buys lemons, what we’ve done is put those volumes together and explored the opportunities, but only if it makes commercial sense to do so, otherwise we’ll continue buying individually,” he says.
In the meantime, customer demands remain, as ever, about good quality, and good prices. However, he points to the fact that in foodservice, there is not one standard of product, generally the products have to fit the requirements of the customer. “One person might be looking for a blood-red tomato to slice and use that afternoon, while another might require a more backward tomato to store and use at a later date.”
The company has risen to that challenge to create a system which allows it to identify and categorise the various types of fruits and vegetables required by its diverse customer base. With tomatoes, the fruit is labelled four, five or six, with four being riper than six, says Harris.
In everything however, quality remains a pre-requisite, and not just cosmetically: “We try and sell a product that people will enjoy eating, rather than just looking good. It’s got to aesthetically please, but it’s got to taste like a tomato, not a cucumber. We try and find a point of difference in every product that we sell.”
The key to achieving this is through good relationships with its growers: “We’ll work with the growers on a one-to-one basis. We’ll give them the specification we want and then work with them to find the right variety that can deliver that for us. I think the growers are open to people who want to work with them.
Another way the company has worked to stay ahead of the competition and add value has been a heavy investment into product development, says Harris, opening a state-of-the-art kitchen development facility at its offices in Bicester. “We have three full-time development people who work with our customers to develop products to meet their requirements.”
The kitchen allows Fresh Direct to have an input into its customers’ menu planning, offering them the facilities to develop and test their offerings. “They’ve proved very popular and the kitchen is in use, five days a week now.”
Innovative ideas like the development kitchen are what keeps the company ahead, and also allows it to boost its business with existing clients. “Our customers have a plate and we’ll fight for our share of that,” says Harris. “On that plate there will be a steak, some frozen peas, frozen mash and some fresh baton carrots. We’ll look at that plate and work with the customers to see what solutions we can come up with, for instance replacing the frozen peas with fresh sliced runner beans, all the while looking at the cost and pack size etc.
“We can then bring up the fresh content from 10 per cent to around 40 to 50 per cent of that plate.” It also helps them keep their customers menus updated and fresh. “It doesn’t always have to be about broccoli and baton carrots,” Harris says.
There are also opportunities around seasonality and Fresh Direct works with its customers to keep them informed of what is available, and when. “Menus are often written about a year in advance, and often they don’t take into account what’s available and in season.
“We’ve seen a shift back to a more seasonal offering and we’re very pleased with that, it’s something we’ve been pushing for quite some time. Supermarkets have led people to expect produce all year round, but caterers are starting to say, ‘let’s see what’s available and what is going to taste really nice,” says Harris.
While quality and price are still bedfellows, he says the foodservice sector is not immune to the consumer trends that have been sweeping the retail sector. “What we’re seeing is a move towards a healthier offering, and that’s of benefit to us. People want really good quality fresh vegetables. We’re telling our customers how many portions towards 5 A DAY they have on their plates.”
Attitude to fresh produce in foodservice has also changed, he says. “It never used to be an integral part of the meal, a side salad was usually something that was left over and went in the bin. Now people are looking for something that’s part of the meal. They’re looking for good quality leaves with flavour - they want something that’s going to make the meal feel lighter and healthier.”
There has also been a shift in the types of products customers are looking for, with more exotic products, such as sweet potato and sugar snap peas, entering the mainstream. “Baby veg is now huge,” adds Harris. “The growth in that area has been incredible over the last few years.”
One of the biggest issues facing the sector isn’t so much price deflation, as the rising costs of logistics, says Harris. “To move beans from Kenya, we’ve got to pay a lot of money just to receive the beans. The costs are rising all the time. The cost of new vehicles doesn’t go down, or people, and the price of fuel isn’t going down.” He says the real challenge is the management of that logistics process.
Another step the company has taken to add value for its customers is to work with them to ensure they are getting the best value, at the best time. “We’ll work with them to manage their fresh produce offering. We make sure they know that there are expensive times of year to be buying things, and competitive times. Let’s use things when they’re in plentiful supply in our own country, rather than lug them from the south of France.”
That has extended to the company website, with a feature entitled “the good, the bad, and the ugly”, telling customers what products are good, what are only average (the bad) and which are to be avoided (the ugly).
Harris says one of the key reasons for the businesses success is that it does not all hang around one person. He is keen to attribute the company’s strong performance to its staff and management. “Our business is not run by one person, we have a board of 10 people and a management team of 50 people beneath them - they’re the people running the business, I just put in my own views. That’s why the business is successful. It’s a democracy, not a dictatorship.”
Added to this is an attitude of continual improvement, he says: “We’re very critical of what we do and that’s very healthy. We’ve never completely happy with the service we’re giving, there are always ways we can improve.”
The Re:fresh win was perhaps the icing on the cake for a company which continues to go from strength to strength, and Harris is not shy about that success. The award is flagged up everywhere throughout the company, from the sides of vehicles and buildings to its letter heads and website.
“People like to deal with award-winning companies,” adds Harris. “They give off an aura of success, so we are making sure people know of our win. We like to tell people when we’ve done well, but at the same time, we’ll also tell people when we’ve made mistakes. We want to be honest with our customers.”
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