C2S Spoke to Philip de Ternant, Managing Director, Creed Foodservice about the challenges and opportunities for 2021.
What Is your business looking like in 2021 – new opportunities/changes you have made/challenges still to overcome:
As I started to write the answer to this question over the New Year, many things, as has been the case during 2020, were still unknown. However I had optimism that with a deal done on Brexit, a vaccine being rolled out, a new normality would be on its way. Now updating this with the news of a 6 to 12 week lockdown, I now know 65% of our customers will be closed, with many of these clients having difficulty in paying us for product delivered in November and December, hopefully they will still be with us at Easter. In addition we have a mountain of chilled stock bought in for the return of schools now going out of date, with no one to sell it too, Christmas stocks left unsold that would have been bought by the hotels, restaurants and pubs we proudly serve and of course many of our team having to be furloughed once again. Clearly not the start to 2021 that we had planned.
What I do know is that I have a great team that will do whatever they can to deliver a great service to our clients as they have throughout 2020.
Our business unlike some foodservice wholesalers has a good customer mix, with 35%+ being care homes, hospices, hospitals and schools making us all essential workers, delivering food to these many establishments 2 and 3 times a week. The Hospitality clients of cafes, pubs, restaurants, theatres and hotels have all closed at sometime this year, some all year and some forever. We have had to accommodate their changing needs and requirements and they to some extent to ours. We have continued to invest in the business where we have needed to and where we know it will bring a competitive advantage and a return. The key area has been IT. Investing in a new ecommerce platform to start a B2C offering, selling restaurant quality food at supermarket prices to a new consumer customer either by click and collect or click and deliver. We have upgraded our B2B site and added a new PIM with up to 169 product attributes and images for each of our 6,500 skus We have invested in EDI to ease administration for clients and ourselves in placing orders, system to system. We have also reviewed our Wellbeing policies and looked to invest further in Mental Health Aiders to support our managers to make them more aware that everyone of their team is an individual.
What are your predictions for 2021 / What would you like to see happen in 2021
2021 will we know still not be a normal year, but it should be better for the majority of us. Easter is my next milestone, when hopefully hospitality opens up again and confidence to travel is with us once again. My hope still, is that the Government will give food wholesalers Business Rate Relief for 2020/21 as they have to many others. We will fight hard to keep our customers loyal and our competitors at bay. We will invest in our sales team to win new business and we will continue to invest in IT, giving us where possible that competitive edge.
Good Things to take Forward from 2020
We have learnt a lot, we have grown a lot and our teams have worked well and close together on the day to day, on internal and external customer service. We have cut our cloth and are lean with cost controls reviewed by everyone and we need to ensure ‘waste’ doesn’t slip back in without the right reason. We will continue to invest in the development of our people and their wellbeing, whilst ensuring all feel empowered to make the right decisions with pace.
2020 has been relentless, tedious and tiring in a way that is hard to describe. We have shared with our managers the importance of being mentally strong and what great managers and leaders should do, I believe it to be a list that can be shared in any business:
- They move on. They don’t waste time feeling sorry for themselves
- They embrace change. They welcome challenges
- They stay happy. They don’t waste energy on things they can’t control
- They are kind, fair and unafraid to speak up
- They are willing to take calculated risks
- They celebrate other peoples successes. They don’t resent that success.
Who Are Creed Foodservice?
Before Staverton-based Creed Foodservice grew into one of the UK’s leading independent family-owned foodservice wholesalers, the original family business was founded in 1972 with the first Linbar supermarket.
The move into ‘foodservice’ came as the Creed family saw an opportunity to supply caterers in and around the Cotswolds, thus Creed Catering Supplies was founded. In 1989 the retail supermarkets were sold and the first dedicated foodservice warehouse in Cheltenham was purchased. ‘Creed Foodservice’ was then launched to focus on supplying caterers with a product range across frozen, ambient, chilled, and non-food categories. In 2009 we invested in a purpose-built distribution centre in Derbyshire to maintain our industry-leading customer service, in line with our growth. This superb facility enables us to deliver flexible foodservice solutions throughout Gloucestershire and the UK to a growing customer base of independent and national accounts across hospitality, ‘destination leisure’, education and care sectors in the out of home market.
Great People, Great Place to Work
Since 2013, our business has invested in systems and people to further reinforce our brand message to ‘Believe In More’. Growth has come through our drive to deliver an enhanced customer experience with service excellence, a relevant, innovative and quality product range, and insight into its key market sectors.
In 2017, we strengthened our existing infrastructure with the opening of a new distribution centre in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire. Our business continues to grow, and we are continually investing in our people. This speaks for itself, as we were awarded a Best Companies ‘2 Star’ status and named as one of The Sunday Times Top 100 Best Companies to Work For in 2020.
Contact Creed Foodservice for all of your food requirements: https://www.creedfoodservice.co.uk/
Staverton Technology Park, Cheltenham Road, Staverton GL51 6TQ
