Paul Haigney, operations director, Pasta King
I'm in sales-pitch mode now, but Pasta King really is a fabulous business - although in the general scheme of things, we're a minnow swimming with some very big sharks!
The concept is unique yet incredibly simple, we provide fast, nutritious, pasta-based meals that customers without decent kitchen facilities or culinary skills can serve up in seconds. The potential market is massive and the figures speak for themselves: in 2004, we turned over £2.8M, in 2005, £4.1M, in 2006 £5.9M. This year, we have set a target of £9M.
You might think anyone can cook pasta and make a sauce. But what we offer is a complete concept that is hot, fresh and portable. We operate much more like a kitchen than a factory: we blend tomato base sauces and custom-made béchamel sauces with other ingredients, such as chicken and vegetables, and vacuum seal them in pouches.
These are then chilled and packed into cardboard boxes, which are delivered - with pasta, branded pots and serving equipment and sold to consumers, who hire our counter top or free-standing pasta bars. The bars are provided on loan by us: there's no contract and no fee for this; customers simply plug in the bars and serve the pasta. Our unique selling point is the quality of our sauces.
We invest time in training our customers' staff, at no cost to them, and deliver direct to their premises. The minimum order is 18 pouches and they can select whatever combination of sauces they require from a range of 35 varieties. This is very useful for caterers trying to avoid menu fatigue.
All that it remains for customers to do to meet the lunchtime rush is to heat up the sauce and refresh the pre-cooked pasta so that they can simply take a Pasta King pot, spoon in some pasta and pour over the sauce.In this way, four or five customers can be served with a piping hot meal every minute. The sauces have been designed for healthy eating and we have worked hard to ensure they are low in salt and fat, as well as being GM and trans fat free. We also provide a range of vegetarian options and sauces suitable for coeliacs.
Our meals appeal to consumers, young and old. Schools, hospitals, leisure centres and banks are among those buying into the concept because it allows them to make a decent margin without generating waste and they can provide good quality, nutritionally balanced tasty food with minimum effort.
I joined Geest when it was growing rapidly in the late 1980s, after completing a degree in chemistry at Aston University. After seven years in production management, I moved on to operations manager roles at Kitchen Range Foods, Campbell's Grocery Products and Solway Foods before moving into interim management with companies such as Ferndale Foods, Tayto, Tinsley and Telfer Foods.
This was fascinating because I got to observe so many different processes. I also became aware that people are often constrained by their own vision and experiences if they don't move around and see how other firms deal with similar problems.
I joined Pasta King as operations director in 2004 and became a shareholder in the business last summer after a management buy-out, along with the chairman Ashley Levinson and the md Sue Davenport, which was financed by Matrix Private Equity Partners and HSBC.
I have always been very passionate about this business and now I have a stake in it I am even more determined to make it successful!
Green machine
We've driven down operating costs in the last couple of years, chiefly through waste management initiatives. Even if you are a small company, there are things you can do to help the environment. You can even save money by doing the right thing.
For example, we used to buy our tomato sauce base in 3kg steel tins, which meant a very high packaging-to-product ratio and a horrendous bill as we were sending them all off to landfill. For every 16t delivery of 3kg tins, we were generating a tonne of waste just in sauce and steel!
Today, we buy our base sauce in 195kg drums, which are emptied into a portable vat that is connected to our depositors.Using a foot operated switch, we now pump fixed quantities of sauce directly into the pouches, replacing the manual filling process, which was inaccurate and laborious. The drums are then sent off for recycling.
Just switching to the drums saved us more than £33,000 in the first year in reduced sauce wastage alone, as each small tin we used contained residual sauce. In 2004, we sent 117t to landfill; in 2005, we sent 60t, despite an increase in sales of 49% over the same period.
As for capacity utilisation, I am confident we could double our current throughput of 12t of sauce a day at our current premises.This is largely through productivity gains from working with Devon & Cornwall Business Link.
They have been brilliant for Pasta King, not just in terms of all the productivity and environmental work, but also by helping us with training at all levels of the business.
Our throughput per man-hour has doubled over the last 12 months after we worked with them. Our contact there, Rob Kinna, must have been good: he even managed to persuade the dragons on the TV show Dragons' Den to invest in his business! I get a real buzz out of this job and I am really excited about the potential of the business. There are so many things we could do, such as developing new concepts, exploring vending, expanding into noodles, launching in Continental Europe and experimenting with new sources of protein or chilled microwaveable pots.
As far as outlets are concerned, there are growth opportunities in schools, universities, businesses, hospitals and high street outlets. At the moment, we're barely scratching the surface. The key will be pursuing those opportunities that give us the best return on investment. We are still a pretty small company and we haven't got the resources to do everything at once so our focus is on growing our current business and on how we can keep delighting our customers.
We're growing incredibly fast, but we are also a capital-intensive business operating in the cost sector, so we have to be careful not to run before we can walk. Many businesses that expand too quickly run into trouble.
My priority is to stay fleet of foot and responsive, which is critical whether you are supplying schools or large international catering groups.
You have to be sales and marketing driven, not production driven. That's one benefit of being small. You can react to opportunities. Once you stop changing and improving, you're dead and buried.
INTERVIEW BY ELAINE WATSON
FACTORY FACTS
Location: Pasta King UK, Plantation House, Milber Trading Estate, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 4SG Tel: 01626 334480
Concept: Pasta bars with a selection of sauces
Output: 12t of sauce a day
Employees: 69, including 14 remote sales staff
Turnover: £5.9M in 2006; estimates £9M in 2007
Customers: catering sector, schools, hospitals, businesses
PERSONAL
Name: Paul Haigney
Age: 42
Career highlights: "So many good experiences ... the highlight was probably buying into Pasta King and achieving BRC grade A last year." Joined Geest in late 1980s, had roles at Kitchen Range Foods, Campbell's and Solway Foods followed by interim contracts at Ferndale Foods, Tayto, Tinsley and Telfer Foods
Domestics: Married to Janet with two daughters: Isabelle (nine), Victoria (six)
Outside work: Badminton, cricket and golf