The potato category has a problem. In fact, if you listen to some very vociferous growers this season, it has a number of problems. But chief among them has to be the long-term decline in consumption, something which both AHDB Potatoes (formerly the Potato Council) and individual companies themselves are doing their best to tackle.
Nowhere is that effort more apparent than at Branston, the own-label supermarket supplier which is going out of its way to enthuse kids in particular about potatoes and help them make lasting dietary decisions. Taking the reins on this strategy is James Truscott, the former sales and marketing manager who was promoted to managing director this year after long-serving incumbent Graeme Beattie stepped down from his post.
Truscott is not long into the top job when we meet at the company’s head office in Lincoln, but he has been long enough at the supplier to know what the problems of the industry are and what he wants to do to tackle them.
“You’ve got a finished product people love, and most people have a favourite potato they can wax lyrical about,” he explains.
“What we see at the moment, though, is a wall of beige when you go into the supermarket, so that isn’t the same inspirational feeling people get when they see the finished product on the shelf. We have to bring a lot of that inspiration to life at the shelf edge.”
As an own-label supplier, you would imagine Branston’s influence to be limited, but Truscott insists that in fact the opposite is the case. “A good private-label relationship has always been highly collaborative, much more so than a typical branded relationship. The difference now is that level of collaboration and transparency is going into other areas. There’s a much more transparent conversation over the true cost of what we do, and that’s different to before.”
While a complete reinvention of the potato fixture seems some way off, Branston has been exerting its influence in other areas. Its flagship six-figure initiative has been its Billy Branston’s Amazing Potato Factory, a double-decker bus that tours the region teaching kids about potatoes and cookery. The project has been a spectacular success, with almost 10,000 children already having set foot on the bus, which is fully booked until the end of the year. Born out of Tesco’s Eat Happy campaign, the bus has become a beast in its own right, with Branston predicting that interest is so high it could easily be booked out until the end of 2017 – and that is before it even tackles other regions of the country.
But why run a promotion that doesn’t even boost brand awareness of Branston products? “We are a big enough player that if the market is healthy then it will be good news for us,” Truscott explains. “And so at that level it is somewhat selfless, but we should expect to see some benefit. Unless you act and change something the market will carry on declining.”
That decline is not black and white, with strong sales of jackets and small, faster-cook potatoes, demonstrating the growing importance of convenience. In the maincrop white sector, though, Truscott says the industry needs to do “a better job for customers” by coming up with a smaller list of varieties that offer year-round consistency for the consumer.
As with other suppliers, Branston’s recent financial figures – the company made a healthy £10.4 million pre-tax profit on a reduced turnover of £115m – caused some grumbles of consternation among British growers. Truscott prefers to place the results in the context of the highly volatile and undulating potato industry though, in which companies’ fortunes and profitability can swing wildly, and feels that it all averages out over the longer term.
But he acknowledges the market is not ideal. “Market pricing over time has been very sawtooth, and therefore farmers’ and packers’ profitability have similarly been very erratic. We experience that, growers experience that. This year, contract pricing is low, and therefore that is a tough year for a grower. If it’s a difficult harvesting season, it could be completely different next year. The point is that at the moment it’s a year-to-year experience, but everyone that’s in it today is in it for the long term, so you look past the odd bad year because you believe over the long-term you can make a return.”
It all has to be in balance, he points out: “You can’t just pay everyone more and make everybody nice and comfortable and profitable if it means the end retailer is then uncompetitive and loses market share. It’s about making the whole thing work. So there has to be a return for everybody, enough for you to continue to reinvest in your business and make it better next year. But it’s not as simple as just paying more money, you have to get better at the supply chain bit as well.”
Nevertheless, Truscott recognises the importance of keeping growers on side, particularly at a time when they could be tempted to switch to solar farms or AD, and he believes Branston is doing more than most to ensure its 115 producer group growers remain enthused and profitable. That includes a significant investment in technology and information sharing, with live data capture shared instantly via tablet, from harvest all the way to storage, to allow growers to benchmark and improve.
There’s also a big push to bolster the burgeoning Cornish potato market, with Branston earmarking a major marketing spend as it looks to make Cornwall “the new Jersey”. The Mallorcan crop is opening up opportunities too, while new developments in packaging are set to bring extra shelf life.
Truscott sums up the potato market perfectly. “From the outside it looks nice and simple. In reality it’s the most complex area of produce I’ve experienced. That makes it great fun, challenging and different. But it’s way more complicated than it appears.”
Getting that balance between pleasing growers, retailers, consumers and still making a margin for yourself is the challenge that will separate the good from the very best, and that’s where Branston intends to be.
Meet the new man in marketing
Branston’s new marketing manager, George Christoudias, had only been in the job six weeks when FPJ went to visit. The former Bakkavor commercial and NPD controller has worked in a variety of roles across chilled, ready-to-eat, convenience and produce, but insists his heart is in the fresh produce business.
“I was excited to return to the produce industry,” he says. “There’s something more complete about it in terms of the visibility and management of the whole supply chain. That doesn’t exist in as much detail in convenience. What attracted me to Branston was the pace the business works at, the way it likes to innovate and think differently. There’s a good challenge in potatoes. In terms of ambitions we have a business with a good customer base, and we are making sure we have very good plans in place.”
Busman’s Holiday
The Branston bus has been a huge hit, both with kids and their teachers who get to take a back seat while their classes are taught all about provenance and cooking.
It’s less about Branston itself than developing understanding of varieties like Maris Pipers, King Edwards and so on, according to marketer Jonathan Corbett of The Little Big Voice. “You could feasibly run a fleet of these things and have them booked up for years and years,” he says.
“What’s being delivered is genuine marketing and education of schoolchildren that they actually want and the schools appreciate. It fits in with the curriculum and is relevant, both in terms of building recognition for Branston and the potato industry as a whole. It’s a really powerful tool.”
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