John Vincent (1990) is co-founder and CEO of the healthy fast-food chain LEON, and his response to the global pandemic has been exemplary. In this blog John explains his thinking behind continuing to work and his motivation to ‘save jobs, feed Britain and better serve the NHS’.
A week into the coronavirus lockdown, a strategy consulting firm produced an analysis of which industries would be worst hit by the crisis.
At the top of the list of the most effected industries, they concluded, was the hospitality industry. They were not wrong.
Even before the Chancellor promised to pay 80% of salaries of those earning up to £30,000, the industry had begun to shut its doors, and both the furloughing and the lockdown decision made it impossible for most people in our industry to trade.
On the day following the prime minister’s announcement that people should stay at home and not travel, I had two options: join the industry and close our doors or stay open in order to feed those working in hospitals and doing essential work.
From the very beginning of this crisis I knew that I owed my team clarity on what we were doing and why. I consistently stated our three objectives: to feed Britain, to serve the NHS and to save jobs.
A week into the coronavirus lockdown, a strategy consulting firm produced an analysis of which industries would be worst hit by the crisis.
At the top of the list of the most effected industries, they concluded, was the hospitality industry. They were not wrong.
Even before the Chancellor promised to pay 80% of salaries of those earning up to £30,000, the industry had begun to shut its doors, and both the furloughing and the lockdown decision made it impossible for most people in our industry to trade.
On the day following the prime minister’s announcement that people should stay at home and not travel, I had two options: join the industry and close our doors or stay open in order to feed those working in hospitals and doing essential work.
From the very beginning of this crisis I knew that I owed my team clarity on what we were doing and why. I consistently stated our three objectives: to feed Britain, to serve the NHS and to save jobs.
We had already become a popular destination for those working on the Frontline to treat not just coronavirus patients but also all of the other patients in the hospitals. We have extended our normal 15% discount for NHS staff to 50%, and when others on the High Street closed their doors, the critical care and other teams became even more dependent on us for their food.
Our country’s supply chain in the UK is like an aeroplane with two independent engines
What has become increasingly apparent as a result of the recent events is that our country’s supply chain in the UK is like an aeroplane with two independent engines.
The supermarkets and their suppliers are almost entirely independent from the producers that supply the restaurants. And those restaurants are now closed. Each side of the food industry is ruled by different cultures, with different types of ingredients, different packaging, different procedures and protocols, and different sets of relationships.
On any ‘normal’ (by which I mean pre-virus) day fifty million meals are consumed outside people’s houses at work, in office canteens, in schools and restaurants. On the one hand, the entire industry that supplies these meals is collapsing as a result of being confined to our homes. And on the other, the supermarkets cannot cope.
Furthermore, for a wholesaler of produce that used to serve the restaurant industry it is very difficult to divert its produce to the supermarkets because of the very different ways in which the two sides of the food industry work.
In order to save jobs, feed Britain and better serve the NHS, we needed to do three things.
First, we needed to turn our restaurants into shops selling essential produce, as well as to continue our takeaway offer.
Second, we needed to form a team dedicated to getting food to the doctors and nurses working in critical care teams — individual hot meals taken right into the wards in which they are working in challenging conditions for very long hours, often unable to remove their protective gear.
Third, we decided to create a new e-commerce service for home delivery, a platform that allowed people at home to get access to restaurant-quality ready meals and produce — which in turn provides a channel for all of those businesses that traditionally supply to restaurants.
As I write this, on 15 April, our restaurants that are now open have been converted to shops.
With actors Damian Lewis and Helen McCrory we raised £1m for the campaign FeedNHS to provide NHS workers with healthy meals; and Matt Lucas donated his Baked Potato song and its revenues to feed NHS.
LEON is now part of a Consortium that is providing 100,000 meals a week to doctors and nurses. We also have a website called Feed Britain which promises to be an important vehicle to link food service businesses with people in their homes.
Behind all of these statistics there are incredibly touching human stories. A father of an A&E nurse who was at home recovering from COVID-19 emailed me to share how grateful he was for what we are doing with FeedNHS, providing food to NHS workers like his daughter. Another woman wrote to me to say that she had been unable to get food at the silver hour at a local supermarket because it was full of young people. She told me how grateful she was to be served the food from Feed Britain.
No amount of team building events could teach my team what we are learning during this process
I have, through all of this, been mindful of the principles I have written about in Winning not Fighting. In this book I explained the main messages of the ancient Chinese martial art Wing Tsun, which I practise. The principles have encouraged me to not see life as a battle or a fight. Instead, we can learn from the Taoist and Zen Buddhist principles of knowing yourself, staying relaxed, positivity and recognising that whatever happens one has the freedom and responsibility to turn it to one’s advantage and to the advantage of society. Wing Tsun also teaches the importance of expecting to be punched. While others created ‘War Rooms’ I encouraged my teams to learn from water not war — to flow, to be transparent and to constantly learn, redirect and adjust.
No amount of team building events could teach my team what we are learning during this process. I expect that the lessons learned from this experience will have a fundamental and lasting impact on our culture.
I have been blessed by the support of my investors, people like Fersen Lambranho from GP Investments, who remind me and my team that if we act with love, we will know how to do the right thing. This is incredible to hear from an investor — and if all investors had the same mindset the world would be richer in many ways.
Find out more about LEON’s activities on their website: leon.co.
John Vincent will be one of the panel speakers at the 2020 Johnian Society Day, taking place online. View the full programme and sign up for the event on our website.