Key points
Although he won’t admit it, Jeremy Cooper is overhauling the organisation he accidentally became chief executive of in April this year.
Cooper, who prefers to be called Jez, is friendly, confident and has a very firm handshake. His confidence will come in handy no doubt, since he has lots to achieve if his five-year business plan for Freedom Food is to be a success.
Freedom Food, the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals’ (RSCPA’s) farm assurance scheme, has existed since 1994. At its 20th anniversary celebrations in September, Cooper announced, as part of his five-year plan, that the organisation would be changing its consumer-facing branding.
“The biggest reason consumers don’t buy Freedom Food products is because of their lack of awareness of it,” Cooper stresses.
As a matter of fact, a study commissioned by Freedom Food to assess consumer understanding of the brand revealed very few people actually knew what it was. Some associated it with ‘free-from foods’, while the majority couldn’t muster an explanation as to why there was a little blue and white logo on some of their food packaging.
Perhaps a change of tack will benefit Freedom Food. Its new branding is vibrant and has followed Freedom Food Australia’s successful lead, which is to smack the consumer between the eyes with a bright and colourful logo featuring the RSPCA’s name.
“The RSPCA has 96% prompted awareness from consumers and is the most recognised animal welfare charity in the UK … the new ‘RSPCA Assured’ logo will launch next year.”
But, how exactly did Freedom Food's ‘accidental’ boss come to announce the rebranding of a two decades-old farm assurance scheme, just five months after his appointment?
High-flyer (Return to top)
The former Royal Air Force (RAF) fuel specialist, who once worked on America’s Air Force One, came to the position as an interim chief executive in August last year. In the past two years, Freedom Food has had three bosses, which Cooper lists: “The original guy, Leigh Grant, was in for a number of years. David Squair took over from him, but retired – I hope there isn’t a trend emerging.”
After leaving the RAF, he worked for the retailers Tesco and Waitrose in various roles including operations management and branch management for more than 20 years.
Before coming to Freedom Food, he was working on a five-year strategic programme for a small- to medium-sized business and “I just came here to keep the ship running on a day-to-day basis.”
While he didn’t expect to be taking over the role of chief executive “on April Fools' Day of all days”, he did have an itch to take more control while he was the interim boss. “When you’re an interim manager, you’re just keeping things running, you don’t have massive amounts of authority, but it’s hard to think like that when you can see so many areas which you can make improvements.”
Freedom Food animals (Return to top)
More than 35,000 farm animals are produced under the Freedom Food scheme, which is the only UK assurance and food labelling scheme dedicated to improving farm animal welfare. Nearly 3,500 members work to the scheme’s guidelines, producing 2,000 products for supermarket shelves across the UK. But Cooper wants to do more and push the organisation harder over the next five years.
“We’ve touched the lives of more than 700M farm animals and we’re hoping to see that reach 1bn by 2020. We deal with 10 species of animal at the moment – including 70% of all Scottish salmon, 50% of laying hens and 32% of pigs – but we’re hoping to grow that to 15 species by 2020,” he says.
Cooper’s plans to increase the organisation’s coverage seems fairly straightforward, however, he has complicated his ambition by planning to make Freedom Food financially self-sufficient from the RSPCA. Funding from the RSPCA has varied over the years, but the organisation wouldn't be able to function without its help, admits Cooper.
“We need to stand on our own two feet and secure our own funding. We’re still going to be part of the RSPCA and a not-for-profit charity, but being financially self-sufficient would allow us to be more autonomous,” he adds. “It’s not a significant amount of money given to us by the RSPCA, but we need to start finding it ourselves.”
Tackling foodservice (Return to top)
Creating more market opportunities for Freedom Food is also on his five-year to-do list. Detailed plans of how to tap into the foodservice market were being drawn up, he says. “Foodservice is an interesting area for us, because historically we have been retail orientated, so when I came to the business, I identified that we were missing another third of opportunity by not being in the foodservice industry.”
It’s highly likely the organisation will be successful in breaking into the restaurant and catering trade. Last year, for instance, the fast food chain McDonald’s announced it would source 100% Freedom Food certified pork.
“We clearly had fantastic success when McDonald's went 100% Freedom Food pork, but we want to build on that,” reveals Cooper.
Some may expect a firm starting out in a new sector to begin small. Cooper, however, targeted the 35,000 employee strong foodservice distributor Sodexo. Now every private school Sodexo supplies in the UK uses Freedom Food pork, eggs, sausages and bacon.
“While the past two food firms we have started working with were major businesses, we are going to start taking one small step at a time, rather than getting carried away.”
As Cooper says, tackling the foodservice sector is a major part of his five-year plan, which he implemented as he felt there were some “fundamentals missing from the business”.
“Past chief executives have done a good job and helped Freedom Food reach a good place,” he says. “We’ve had a good reaction from the industry and changed the way some things are done. But, without my five-year plan, I don’t think things would be looking good for the next 20 years or beyond.”
Ethical statement (Return to top)
Although he is preparing to push the organisation forward and into new sectors, Cooper is still aware that Freedom Food isn’t right for every business, saying it all depends on a company’s ethical statement.
“We’re not about to lambast everybody and tell them what to do, but we want to make sure they have options to make informed choices.
“Freedom Food is about higher welfare and for a small increment in production costs, you can buy into a source of higher welfare.”
Cooper may not be about to scold other businesses with views that differ from Freedom Food’s, yet that’s arguably what its parent organisation has become well-known for. The media spotlight has led some to accuse the RSPCA of pursuing the wrong issues at great cost of time and money.
The organisation was recently criticised for wasting valuable court time by calling off a hunting prosecution at the 11th hour, while Gavin Grant, the chief executive who stepped down in February, was also accused of being 'too political' with his decision-making.
Yet, how the RSPCA is perceived by the media doesn’t seem to worry Cooper, despite plans to label Freedom Food products with ‘RSPCA Assured’ in the New Year.
“It would be wrong to comment on what’s been done in the past, but there are times when things should have been done differently.
“The RSPCA has been very supportive of us and it has done a lot to work up animal welfare standards. The negative press probably created difficult circumstances in the past, and it would be wrong of me to say that it hasn’t, but it’s never caused any problems while I’ve been here and I don’t expect it to happen either.”
For now, the accidental ceo has stamped his mark and will work to drive the credentials of Freedom Food more into the minds of consumers and businesses. He is aware that other farm assurance schemes, such as Red Tractor, have better brand awareness, but says: “Red Tractor has done an outstanding job and it has good consumer awareness. But you’ve got to remember that this isn’t about market share, it’s about improving the welfare of farm animals.”
Listen to our podcast in which Freedom Food chief executive Jeremy Cooper talks about the organisation’s plans to break into the foodservice sector.