Thorogoods marks 50 years at NCGM

Fresh produce wholesaler S Thorogood & Son this week marked 50 years at New Covent Garden Market’s (NCGM) Nine Elms site.

The firm was among the new tenants to start trading when this historic market first opened its doors at its new location on the south bank of the river Thames in London on 11 November 1974.

The expanded Thorogood Group – today led by Andrew Thorogood – is still a major force at NCGM. It is also the only wholesale business that has a presence in all three of London’s major fruit and vegetable wholesale markets.

The Thorogood family has been growing and selling high-quality British fresh produce since 1922.

Farming origins

Andrew grew up as part of a farming business with 10 partners who were all family members.

“We were mostly hand-harvested vegetable farmers, right through the salad range, the brassicas, carrots and potatoes,” says Andrew. “The farms were mainly in Essex, but we had one farm in each of Norfolk and Suffolk.”

It was Andrew’s great grandfather who started the wholesale business in Borough Market in 1922, which used to take roughly a third of the family farms’ product. Andrew’s father, Jim, took over the Borough stand from his uncle Frank in 1961.

“In 1974, everyone had the opportunity to move to New Covent Garden Market. I was 16 at the time,” says Andrew. “My father organised the move from Borough to here, and for the first few years, stayed in control.

”My cousin Chris was also a salesman at Borough and came to NCGM for the first 10 years. He used to go home and work on the farm too, and got to a stage when he felt it wasn’t worth carrying on. He thought the whole business should withdraw from wholesale altogether and concentrate on farming. That was when I said I’d like to step in and take it on, as I thought there was a real future in it. I took over in 1984, so 40 years ago.”

Split decision

The family farming operation S Thorogood & Son split up in 1996, but the separate partners all retained the name S Thorogood & Son and – for a time – still sent product to the, by now, burgeoning wholesale businesses.

“We purchased a site in New Spitalfields when that opened in 1991, and expanded that in the mid-90s. In 1993, we also bought a lease of a firm that had closed down at Western International,” says Andrew.

“It’s progressed pretty well. There are always ups and downs – [getting the right] people are always the main challenge. When I’d just bought Western, I really thought I had the blueprint to open in 10 different cities around the country. Then I had a few different issues with staff at a couple of the sites, so I reined back and I’ve never ventured outside London.”

Back to British

Thorogood has always maintained its focus on homegrown product and Andrew believes that now could be the time to rekindle the relationships with its family farms.

“I don’t have anything directly to do with the farms now. They are all still in the family, apart from the one in Norfolk. But I think now perhaps we’ll start to see things go back the other way because it’s becoming more difficult to find English produce for the market of the right quality,” he explains.

“Most of the product the family farms grow now is wheat barley or oilseed rape, but we still grow potatoes, some of them sold here, and one of the partners grows a lot of asparagus, which we also sell.

“But we are trying to get them to produce more. They have the land, but it’s not straightforward [to start growing a fresh produce crop]. You’ve got a lot of set up costs, you need machinery you wouldn’t use for anything else, you’ve got to staff it.”

Andrew believes the way forward for wholesalers is to increase the volume of British product available.

“We have tried to persuade our existing growers to do more and become part of our system,” he says. “It’s about persuading people to do what we need and sometimes getting financially involved - I think that will become more important in the future too.”

Wholesale strength

Meanwhile, the Thorogood wholesale business continues to perform strongly. “Last year was our best ever across all three sites. The fact that we specialise in British has definitely helped us in the last three or four years. The growth of farm shops has also helped us – we serve more than 100,” Andrew says.

Its New Covent Garden business serves retail and catering customers in a 50:50 split, says Andrew, which is very different to most. “At New Spitalfields though, the catering to retail balance is around 30:70, and at Western it’s 20:80, which illustrates the difference between the markets. It’s a nice balance to have.”

Catering growth

Over the years, the group has also expanded in different, more organic ways. “We had a bad debt at the NCGM stand and took over the customer’s [catering] business in 1991,” says Andrew.

“I instinctively knew we had to be on the catering side of the business, not because I worried about the wholesale side, it just gave us a better balance,” he says. “Catering businesses have a completely different structure, different margin expectations, different seasonality.

“The two elements of the business can support each other as they don’t always go down or up at the same time.”

Its next moves took the group into the world of fungi and bolted on another catering firm. “We wanted to expand both sides of the firm at NCGM, without favouring one or the other, so we took on Mushroom Man in 2021 to extend the balance and range of our wholesale business, having also taken on [catering business] Rushton’s two years before,” Andrew says.

And that is not necessarily the last of Thorogood’s expansions. “We want to push on,” says Andrew. “My son William is gradually taking over more responsibility for the business. He’s based at NCGM, although he works across all of our companies. We still foresee organic growth.”

Andrew emphasises that he has “absolutely loved” his 40 years in the wholesale market business. “I’ve never had a problem getting up in the morning and it is so varied,” he says. “I’m lucky that I’m always looking at something different – that’s very exciting.”