With work on a newly installed development kitchen almost complete, three plasma television screens being erected across the building and several technical initiatives well on their way to fruition, there is no shortage of investment taking place at Reynolds’ Hertfordshire base.
On top of that, the recently formed board of directors now creates a solid foundation on which the business can continue to grow and seek further opportunities in the foodservice market.
“We have been striving to get into this strong position for a number of years,” explains managing director Tony Reynolds. “Things have really moved on dramatically here, because of what we have seen in the market and because we have listened to our customers and their different ideas of where produce fits into the world of foodservice. We recognise that we have to be successful in what we do to enable us to reinvest in our business.”
Reynolds prides himself on his traditional greengrocer mindset - a trait he shares with commercial director Paul Collins, who heads up the sales and procurement teams. “A traditional managing director gets out of bed in the morning thinking about how to run a business to deliver the right results,” says Reynolds. “But I get out of bed each day as a greengrocer, which is one of the quirky things about Reynolds - we are still very much focused on produce, but this focus has allowed us to move into areas that we had never dreamed of.”
While fruit and vegetables remain the core of the business, Reynolds now offers fish and meat through third-party suppliers and from its depots across the country supplies cheese, dairy, olives and more to its foodservice customers.
“Fruit and veg is so emotive and requires such control over the way you get it from field to plate as quickly as possible,” says Reynolds. “If you compare this to other food categories, for example meat or dairy, as greengrocers we are pretty dynamic. Within fresh produce there are so many sub-divisions with regards to how the product reacts to different temperatures and seasonality. It is potentially so complicated - however, through the expertise of the Reynolds team, we manage this on behalf of the customer.
“Now we have built a team of directors from other food fields, quite deliberately, to complement our greengrocer skills. They have embraced our passion for fresh produce but then they measure our performance through spreadsheets, take away what the greengrocer does and turn that into a mathematical equation. Because of the diversity of what we are dealing with, this creates a really flexible system. Looking after the business and the creative side of that development, and then turning that into good practice, is crucial.”
Along with Reynolds and Collins, the board also comprises an operations director, a finance director and an HR director, plus technical director Ian Booth. He has worked for Reynolds for 10 years on and off in both a permanent role and an advisory capacity, and took the directorship in August 2008. Booth was instrumental in helping the firm secure British Retail Consortium (BRC) certification and assisted with the company’s move from its former site at New Spitalfields Market to Waltham Cross in September 2005.
Reynolds has also made huge inroads into its environmental credentials in recent years, and Booth is talking to chefs and suppliers on a regular basis to establish how together they can reduce their carbon footprint.
“We have a huge responsibility to show a code of good practice,” he says. “We were at the forefront of managing our environmental obligations and sharing this with our customers.”
The firm has adhered to the British standard BS8555 for the last two years, and is using this as a phased approach to gaining ISO 14001 certification, which it plans to achieve later in the year.
“Transport efficiencies play a huge part in this,” says Booth. “We regularly review the efficiencies of the fleet, through monitoring miles per gallon and training on good driving practices through SmartDrive cameras in the vehicle cabs. Through our fuel storage capabilities, we are able to use biofuel in all vehicles. We also have new vehicles that have been modified in terms of insulation so that they require less chilling, and have implemented a route planning system with Paragon so that drivers are always taking the most efficient route.”
Along with recycling in the warehouse, the company is also working on a project with its suppliers to examine different types of packaging and how to reduce that, and is continually looking into local supply, depending on seasonality.
Reynolds operates to the BRC Global Standard for Food. This has been held at the highest grade since 2000. Where available, the firm’s suppliers are GlobalGAP or equivalent-accredited, as the majority also pack for retailers and food manufacturers. Sedex and similar ethical sourcing initiatives are also in the pipeline, as some of Reynolds’ fruit, for example some of its bananas, are already Fairtrade-certified.
All staff, regardless of where they will work in the business, must complete a food hygiene training course before they start and they are encouraged to regularly go down to the warehouse to find out what is going on across the business. The implementation of health and safety standard OHSAS18001 is also on the cards.
“Our customers expect more and more information about how we are set up,” explains Reynolds. “Some of our customers have grown with us into very successful firms, and their ethics have rubbed off on us. Their supply chain has to meet their standards and we have to invest to meet their expectations and, where possible, beat them.”
Each morning, Reynolds walks the floor to get a feel for how the business is performing, and then representatives from each of the functions in the business meet at 7.30am sharp every day for a meeting entirely focused on the firm’s quality and service drivers. “This meeting can get emotional, as it is the most important meeting of the day,” says Reynolds. “Quality and service mean so much to us and we must manage by exception.
“The diversity of our customers and our location on the edge of London have been key factors in the growth of the company. We have grown up from the Old Spitalfields Market, and we are very aware of London as a leading foodie centre. It is the most competitive market you could ever want to be in. The capital’s markets are competing against each other every day and your make-up is cultivated by respect for your competition. We have to be on our game every day.”
The firm supplies a wide base of customers and Reynolds says that while some foodservice sectors are performing well, that is not the case across the board. “A lot of people are struggling at the moment and some of our clients have not survived the recession,” he says. “But some of our business has actually seen growth in the current climate.”
Reynolds, which alongside the Waltham Cross headquarters operates branches in Manchester, the Midlands, Bristol and Scotland, has clear lines of communication which make the business very reactive to any changes. An overall depot manager is responsible for the day-to-day running of the various branches.
“Some of the staff at our other branches have been with us for a very long time and they form an intrinsic part of the business, making us a national chain,” says Reynolds. “We simply couldn’t do this without those other branches. They get on with what they have to do but communication between the businesses is strong and very focused on the day-to-day operations. We have a very simplistic style and structure and are very conscious of not complicating that, and keeping our business lean and organic.”
With many of Reynolds’ customers now re-engineering their menus, there has been a change in the types of products growing in demand over the last year, explains Reynolds. The company is just completing work on a development kitchen in its Waltham Cross base, which it will use for holding updates with its suppliers and customers, bringing the two together and showing them their options in terms of changing their menus. The Craft Guild of Chefs has also expressed an interest in running some master classes for school leavers at the kitchen, offering skills sessions in fruit and vegetables. “We want to educate young adults to get them into the food industry and give them the necessary knowledge to do that,” says Reynolds.
Another significant investment undertaken recently has been the implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) team. “Since we moved here in September 2005, the ERP team has been the most important change we have made,” says Reynolds. “We now have a dedicated team of 20 just in this area, as well as the equipment required to ensure successful implementation.
“But this is about recognising what we have to do to be better than we are. This is such a time-critical business that we need to keep growing and remain flexible.”
Reynolds is keen to point out that the business has grown organically, without buy-outs or acquisitions. “This is quite unique for the size of business we are in fruit and vegetables,” he says. “We might look at acquisitions in the future, so it is important to have an ERP system in place that we can easily integrate. This is crucial to our long-term strategy, as we are a very tight margin business.”
Reynolds is constantly assessing what it needs to improve on as a business. “Sometimes we also have to remember what it is that we have got right,” says Reynolds. “But there is nothing holding us back. We have now got a great opportunity to push the business on.”
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