With all the ‘noise’ surrounding food and hospitality in London at present – restaurants opening every day, new fast and casual dining concepts arriving every week – it’s easy to overlook the organisations that have been operating, developing and growing successfully for a period of years – and are more than capable of competing with the ‘incomers’.
One such is Vital Ingredient, the first movers – as far back as 2001 – in creating a store that allows you to eat just way you want to, using the ingredients you actually want to eat, all freshly prepared in front of you.
H&C News was therefore pleased to have the opportunity to meet Alex Heynes, Founder and Managing Director, and Paul Oberschneider, financier and property entrepreneur, who partnered with Alex in 2011.
£2.75 million expansion funding secured
And Vital Ingredient is far from standing still: founded in 2001, it had grown to 5 outlets by 2008, and its model ensured that it worked through the early years of the recession unscathed. Paul’s arrival has contributed to the opening of a further 6 stores.
Vital Ingredient is now set to double again in size, having secured a £2.75 million finance package from the Santander Corporate and Commercial Breakthrough programme, of which £1.25 million is specifically growth capital finance. The Breakthrough programme is aimed at businesses turning over between £500,000 and £10 million.
This finance will not only open new stores, it will help to establish a new central distribution unit to help reduce purchasing costs, as well as reduce space requirements in the stores.
Alex Heynes comments on the funding:
“Trying to access finance that allows you to invest in your business is hard for a company of this size. Typically investors either want to take a slice of your company, or are only offering to new ventures. Santander’s Breakthrough programme offers us a real alternative, allowing us to top-up what we could access through traditional bank finance with funding based on our future success.”
Prepared each day in their own kitchens
Vital Ingredient’s ‘Eat Your Way’ concept allows customers to build their own meals by selecting from fresh, low calorie, healthy ingredients, supported by speedy service.
The ingredients are still delivered and prepared each day in their own kitchens, which is the reason everything always looks and tastes so good.
For breakfast, an increasing number of customers now create their own, perfectly composed breakfast bowl from over 40 ingredients – and you can have the breakfast of champions with their Brekii Bowls.
Breakfast and morning coffee sales continue to grow steadily, and are now up to 15% of revenue, with coffee sourced up to and beyond Fairtrade standards.
For lunch, you can choose from 7 different bases, 45 fresh ingredients and 10 homemade dressings to make your perfect salad. There’s also a huge range of delicious soups, hotboxes & ramens, as well as a great choice of healthy ready to go ‘super’ salads, wraps, healthy ‘raw’ pots, snacks and interesting and healthy homemade desserts.
All in all, a great range of choices that is constantly evolving and responding to customer demand and suggestions.
The market
Vital Ingredient provides busy professional Londoners (though it may move further afield in future) with healthy eating options – ‘good food fast’ – in areas with a busy lunch and increasing breakfast trade. The customer demographic is carefully studied and understood, which means that not every area of London that’s well-serviced with food outlets is appropriate – even if competitors such as Pret a Manger and Itsu are trading there.
There’s no doubt that the customers respond to the healthy options, the fresh ingredients, the preparation in the well-equipped kitchens, and the high service (and therefore staffing) levels. Quality is important at every level: smiling, efficient service makes the experience of buying lunch a pleasurable one – even in a queue – where customers can relax and look forward to their meal.
And the increasing requirement for allergen free ingredients and dishes is not the problem for Vital Ingredient that it is for many other outlets, opening up a significant and growing market for it.
Property requirements
It is also clear that Vital Ingredient has plenty of room for expansion – if it can find the right property: Paul comments that patience and perseverance is necessary with the present shortage of suitable properties, whilst some of the rents proposed are simply too high to be sustainable.
It seems likely, therefore, that Starbucks’ retreat from locations with excessive rents will be followed by others in the hospitality business who are paying too highly.
For the future, and whilst continuing to seek 700 to 1500 square feet of sale as area in an outlet, Vital Ingredient may be looking further afield: perhaps outside Central London, even in transport hubs or shopping centres – but only if and where they can use the model that already works so well.
Content, community, commerce
There’s a mantra in the publishing and information world today that to be successful, modern media businesses need to deliver on these three levels. It’s Interesting to note how well they apply to Vital Ingredient and its business success:
Content – the menu, the food on display and sampled, and customer satisfaction as evidenced by revenue and outlet growth, all demonstrate that Vital Ingredient is getting its offering right. And it’s also clear that it constantly re-examines its menu to ensure that it delivers what customers want.
Community – many organisations pay lip service to building customer loyalty, but it’s even more valuable when customers have a daily requirement (breakfast, coffee, lunch…). Vital Ingredient recognises the value, and uses social media to communicate and engage with customers in and around each store location.
Commerce – it’s not enough to have ‘presence’ or profile, the proof is in customers actually spending money with you. With individual store turnover levels as much as £20k in a week, Vital Ingredient is certainly delivering on both customer and revenue numbers.
As readers will have realised, H&C News is impressed by Vital Ingredient, its offering and delivery: we will watch with interest as it expands and develops, confident that it will remain focussed on the standards and values that deliver Content, Community, and Commerce.
About the Breakthrough programme
The Growth Capital loan is part of Santander’s Breakthrough programme which aims to support fast-growth small businesses to help them accelerate their growth potential. As well as funding, Breakthrough offers companies access to trade missions, business masterclasses, networking events and support in areas such as finance and marketing.
The programme is aimed at businesses with a turnover of between £500,000 and £10 million per annum with demonstrated growth of 20% or more in turnover, profit or employment. Breakthrough aims to help these businesses fulfil their growth potential to create jobs and stimulate supply-chain demand and a private sector led recovery via a programme of both capital and support. Breakthrough is part of Santander Corporate & Commercial.
Santander Corporate & Commercial provides dedicated relationship banking support to businesses with a turnover of more than £250,000 through the bank’s 33 regional corporate business centres located across the UK. It is part of Santander UK plc, a full-service retail and commercial bank providing services to 25 million customers, with more than 1,300 branches. Santander UK is a wholly owned subsidiary of Banco Santander, managed autonomously, with its own local management team.
www.santanderbreakthrough.co.uk
There’s a mantra in the publishing and information world today that to be successful, modern media businesses need to deliver on these three levels. It’s Interesting to note how well they apply to Vital Ingredient and its business success:
Content – the menu, the food on display and sampled, and customer satisfaction as evidenced by revenue and outlet growth, all demonstrate that Vital Ingredient is getting its offering right. And it’s also clear that it constantly re-examines its menu to ensure that it delivers what customers want.
Community – many organisations pay lip service to building customer loyalty, but it’s even more valuable when customers have a daily requirement (breakfast, coffee, lunch…). Vital Ingredient recognises the value, and uses social media to communicate and engage with customers in and around each store location.
Commerce – it’s not enough to have ‘presence’ or profile, the proof is in customers actually spending money with you. With individual store turnover levels as much as £20k in a week, Vital Ingredient is certainly delivering on both customer and revenue numbers.
As readers will have realised, H&C News is impressed by Vital Ingredient, its offering and delivery: we will watch with interest as it expands and develops, confident that it will remain focussed on the standards and values that deliver Content, Community, and Commerce.