Guy Watson never really felt satisfied with his job as a management consultant
in the 1980s. Although he travelled the world he came to realise being an
employee and working in an office didn’t suit him.
“I just fell into consultancy really. All my mates were doing it or going into
the City. I knew I would never be a good employee. I was always having new
business ideas for our clients but I had to keep holding my tongue.”
Soon Watson’s thoughts turned to the Devon farm on which he grew up. “I’m a
farmer’s son, I grew up on a farm and I had worked on them. I came home one
Christmas knowing I wanted out — and just decided not to go back to New
York.”
Meeting some local organic farmers sparked his interest. “It seemed like a bit
of an emerging market and I had always had my suspicions about the intensive
use of chemicals. My brother had been in hospital from using pesticides and
I had never liked handling them myself. Here were some successful farmers
who were getting pretty high outputs from low chemical inputs. They were not
making a fortune but they were managing to survive.”
Watson leased some land from his father but realised he had a lot to learn.
“It was incredibly hard work and I made a lot of mistakes,” he said. “I
didn’t know that much about growing things organically.
“Some old boys admired what I was trying to do and gave me advice. It was
never easy, though — just when you thought you had found a solution to the
latest problem you’d be struck by pests, disease or weeds.
“We had some disastrous experiences trying to grow strawberries and another
near disaster with leeks, which suffered a kind of fungal rot. All the while
the chemical salesmen were whispering in my ear.”
Things did improve as Watson came to appreciate the delicate interactions of
soil and plants and of methods that helped rather than hindered this. “The
more you understand the eco system of the soil and your crops and how they
fit together the easier it becomes,” he said.
Watson started increasing his sales, serving a few London wholesalers and a
supermarket, which came calling in 1991. “I did do some business with them
but they were so unpleasant to deal with. I could see neighbours who were
commodity producers who were being driven down to the last cent on their
produce.”
Unwilling to be under anyone’s thumb, Watson began delivering a few boxes of
vegetables to local households each week in a beaten-up Citroën. “The first
boxes were a pretty crude offering, but when I met the customers it was
immediately obvious that they were interested in where the food was from and
in what it tasted like,” he said. “There was this pent-up demand for this
connection with how produce was grown.”
Within a year the business had 200 customers and 800 after three years. “I did
all those deliveries myself and I grew steadily more passionate about what
we were doing. It was growing almost entirely by word of mouth.”
In 2001 Watson sat down with his staff and they agreed to put all their
efforts into growing the box-delivery scheme. Franchising deliveries to
specific areas enabled Watson to prime the business to grow 80% year on year
for the next three years.
Forming joint ventures with farmers in other regions was how Watson solved the
problem of making the food as local as possible and of keeping up with
demand. “We were running just to keep up. It was pretty stressful but
incredibly exciting,” he said.
Riverford employs 260 staff and has 100 franchisees, making 47,000 deliveries
a week to homes in England and South Wales. Sales this year reached £33m. As
the business grew, the challenge for Watson was to prevent it from losing
its soul.
He has spent a lot of time lately thinking about the future of Riverford.
Leaving it and its employees in good shape is important to him when he steps
down, some time in the next five to 10 years, he said.
“I’ve committed to leave the business as a stakeholder-owned business along
the John Lewis model. I plan to sell it for something like four times
profits, although I don’t want to lumber the new venture with debts so I
plan to loan it money if necessary. I’ll probably put half the money from
the sale in a trust and half in my pocket.
“It’s important to have the confidence to stick to your values,” said Watson,
48. “Money is not the most important thing to me or most people.
“If I shafted the local farmers for every last penny I would not be able to go
to my local pub and look them in the face.”
