Asking someone why they took an unpaid year off work and getting the reply: “slowly, slowly, one catches the monkey in the bush”, may seem like an odd start to an interview.
But this is how Amy Lance has come to define why she took a sabbatical from her job as a Waitrose buyer, spending three months with three different produce businesses in California, Senegal, and South Africa, as well as a post-harvest course at the prestigious college UC Davis.
It’s not about pace of life, Lance explains, although life in Senegal is certainly slow. The Senegalese proverb she quotes has come to represent her aspiration for understanding the produce supply chain – no longer happy with just seeing one viewpoint, that of the supermarket buyer or technical manager, Lance wanted to experience a product from seed, harvest, packhouse, marketing, retail and consumption.
“Working in retail for nine years, I was always exposed to the supply base, but in such small snippets. I was seeing the tip of the iceberg,” she says. “I felt a bit of a fraud in a way. I’d been working in retail and I love the industry, but actually I’ve never really got down and worked in the soil.
“One way I like to explain it is, as a buyer, you look at any crop and what you see is how much it costs, what volumes do you want, where is it from, does it taste nice. But then you look at it from a seed breeder’s perspective, or a grower, or a logistics manager – everyone in the supply chain has a different perspective or desire for that one product.”
Returning to the UK, 30-year-old Lance accepted a role as head of technical at fast-growing produce delivery business HelloFresh – a company she describes as “forward thinking” in terms of forming supply chains, and where she felt she could make more of a difference than in a rigid retail structure. But more on that later.
It’s clear Lance’s passion lies in creating a sustainable supply chain and ensuring value for producers, something she believes her new employer can offer. “There’s more value in the supply chain in models like HelloFresh,” she explains. “A carrot at the end of the retail supply chain has seen so much deflation, and I wanted to be working with someone in the UK supply industry who actually is adding inflation into the chain. And ultimately these guys are, because they’re saying to the customer: ‘Okay we’re giving you personalisation, and convenience, and you can have a carrot’. So that carrot is then worth something more.”
She says she had clear objectives for each aspect of her trip: using contacts from her retail career, in California she chose a husband and wife grower-marketing duo to learn how they communicate the story of produce to the local community; in Senegal she worked on a Barfoots farm helping to plant butternut squash and harvesting chillies; in South Africa she worked with marketing grower groups Stem Fruits and The Grape Company to better understand the global market.
It’s a far cry from the usual lifestyle of a supermarket buyer, something Lance says puzzled several of the companies she visited. She recalls being left in a squash field by a bemused farm manager in Senegal, who expected her to call within an hour after ‘having the experience’: she remained until the end of the shift.
“I wanted to work hard, I didn’t want anyone to think I was there as a supermarket buyer in a privileged position,” she says. “I wanted to learn from the packhouse ladies, and I think that’s what people struggled to understand sometimes.
“Was I there to test them, or to audit? No, I was there to learn from them – that was the main objective. I was there to have my ears open from everyone in the supply chain, not just the managers.”
Some lessons were hard learned. One day, she turned up to pick chillies in the heat in Senegal wearing a t-shirt, before noticing the other ladies were in full-length clothing on arms and legs. “I realised at the end of the day after my arms were burning for 12 long hours, that’s why you wear a long-sleeved t-shirt,” she smiles.
I ask if her belief in a fair deal for producers ever posed a conflict of interest with the cost-focused environment of commercial retail. “As a buyer, you always have pressures. But if you look at the pressure, you can make a plan as to how you’re going to deal with it,” she says. “If you say, ‘okay, I need a cost reduction, and the only way I can get that is by lowering the cost to growers’ – I think that’s a boring way of looking at it, because ultimately it’s not a challenge for me, and it’s not benefiting anyone.
“I liked the buying side, because I could have the pressure from my senior managers, but actually you can find a solution that will be beneficial to the producers and to Waitrose. There were a number of occasions I could actually get cheaper prices, but decided, because I was looking at the longer-term solution that it wasn’t the best decision to take. It was nice to be in the position with Waitrose supporting me on that. If I had clear objectives, I would meet the targets in slightly different ways.”
Was she unique within the buying team to be fighting for the long-term vision? A long laugh, before she replies: “That’s the thing, I wanted to keep the energy and not be disheartened by having to create these arguments all the time. That takes a lot of energy to be able to create all those business plans, and justify yourself all the time, rather than just being believed. And that’s where actually moving to a more innovative and dynamic forward-thinking business, I think it will suit me better.”
In an ageing industry that relies on experience, it’s refreshing to meet someone as dynamic and open-minded as Lance, never mind the fact she’s a new addition to women in senior produce positions. As she puts it: “I want to be one of the young people in the industry saying, ‘actually, how can we do things differently. Let’s get it out there to consumers’. And that’s where HelloFresh in their marketing are an amazing company to do that.”
Moving from a premium retailer to an arguably high-end delivery service, perhaps Lance is restricting herself to selling produce to the well off. She pauses to get her thoughts in order – a characteristic that reoccurs as she considers each question thoughtfully and at length. “I don’t want to say something out of turn here, but my opinion is that I don’t think price is the biggest barrier.
“I think that convenience and accessibility are the bigger barriers. If you look at the price of a carrot, a potato or an onion, you can do a lot with a number of cheap root vegetables, or brassicas. There are a lot of very accessible price points out there. With the deflation we’ve seen in the market over the last few years, I really don’t think it’s the price that is restricting that trade.”
Having cut her teeth in two major retailers, Lance is also well aware of the commercial issues surrounding price – and she has ideas about where it’s better to focus efforts. “I think looking at cost and margin is a very dangerous place to try and impact, because there’s so many different aspects. Instead, we should look for a halo effect from a number of retailers’ marketing, NPD and buying strategy. If a retailer wants to be a healthy retailer, then every aspect of their strategy should come under that umbrella.”
She also believes one of the biggest opportunities is driving convenience at a lower price point, such as basic preparation of veg like sweet potatoes, squash, onions and carrots. “It’s making sure that retailers are giving affordable options in the convenience market, as well as wholehead, which is difficult, because ultimately they’ve got to make money out of something. It’s about opening the convenience market to a wider group of people, rather than it always being seen as a premium option.”
Since her return to the UK, Lance’s journey to learn more about the produce industry hasn’t ended – she’s a regular face at conferences, and she’s been consulting for the Food Foundation’s new veg consumption campaign. “Increasing fresh produce consumption in the UK is something I’m really passionate about and really want to drive,” she says, explaining how HelloFresh is part of this, despite its small market share.
“As a retailer, you really struggle to get people to buy weird and wonderful stuff. If you look at the wider Europe, kohlrabi is a massive product. Consumption is really quite considerable. But getting customers to buy a kohlrabi at British retailers is a nightmare. It just sits on the shelf and wastes.”
A company like HelloFresh can put kohlrabi in a box, and make it an ingredient in a meal, she continues. “It gives customers access to products they might not have tried before. And maybe those customers are millenials and more likely to use social media, and if they are, they’re the people who are trendsetting. If they’re putting kohlrabi onto social media it drives a trend throughout the whole supply chain and eventually into retail.”
Lance’s long-term view of the supply chain and consumption trends is reflected in her own career plans – she calls the last year “life rather than work experience”, and says one of the best things has been the relationships that already she can take with her to the next role. Fully immersed as she is, this is one face that’s here to stay.
Amy Lance: CV snapshot
• Graduated from the University of Southampton with a degree in biomedical sciences
• Joined Tesco as a technologist on produce
• Transferred to Waitrose for a technical manager role in varietal development
• Moved to buying team at Waitrose where she spent three years
• A year unpaid sabbatical with produce businesses in North America, Senegal and South Africa
• Consultant at Food Foundation
• Joined HelloFresh as head of technical in May 2017
What’s cooking at HelloFresh?
- Based in Shoreditch, London, with a new packing depot at Banbury
- Established in nine countries internationally
- Gousto and Abel & Cole are competitors
- Won its first retail listing in Sainsbury’s this year
- Fastest-growing company in Europe, according to a report in the Financial Times
- The company was co-founded by current CEO Dominik Richter, who previously worked for Goldman Sachs
- HelloFresh has recently opened a pop-up store at Old Street station in London, and has a high-profile advertising campaign in Tube stations and on billboards
