The Bartlett name is one of the most famous in British fresh produce. From its Airdrie beginnings, the family has built a reputation for providing some of the finest vegetables and potatoes available on the country’s supermarket shelves.
Yet while the spotlight invariably falls upon Ronnie and his business Albert Bartlett, with its celebrity-filled TV ads and expansion into the States, his brother Alan has been quietly building up one of the largest and most successful root vegetable businesses in the land.
Shying away from the sort of attention that seems to follow Ronnie’s company around, Alan has kept a low profile and concentrated on establishing himself as a premier supplier of carrots and parsnips. But now, just maybe, and with a new generation coming through, Alan Bartlett & Sons is ready to step out of the shadows and gain some of the publicity it deserves.
The spark for this new philosophy is the arrival into the business of Alan’s twin sons, Toby and Oliver, 22, who are now ready to pick up the reins and take a full part in the running of the operation. While Toby is more concerned with the commercial side, Oliver is focusing on farming, and Alan has insisted that both learn the business from the ground up, putting in the hard hours on the farm and in the packhouse to understand the way the trade works.
“It was always the idea to come into the business at some point, but we weren’t really sure when,” Toby explains. “We came in straight from school and I was in the factory for six months.” Oliver adds that he had gone to university but hadn’t enjoyed it and dropped out to come back to the farm. “I left on a Wednesday morning and was working on the same night,” he recalls with a smile.
Alan Bartlett himself started with the family business in Airdrie at 17, before moving south to Chatteris, Cambridgeshire in 1982 with the intention of staying no more than a fortnight. Instead, he’s still there and taking a hands-on role over 30 years later. And he’s in no doubt that he sees the future of the firm as a family affair: “My dad gave it [his business] to me so why can’t I give it to them?” he asks.
Nevertheless there are some integral figures to the operation of the business that don’t carry the Bartlett name, and none more so than director Terry Hawthorn, whose 21 years in the business make him more than just a mentor to the two young lads.
“Alan has headed the business up and driven it and now it’s a process of handing over to these two guys who are starting to take a full and active role in the business, and they are the ones that will have the vision to take it forward. I think that’s important,” he explains. “They’ll have the same energy and drive that Alan’s always had. I’m part of that too.”
Alan himself is happy to stay quiet and let his team do the talking. His pride in his sons and confidence in his management team is clear, but he’s not afraid to rebut rumours that he and Ronnie had fallen out when the two Bartlett businesses split four years ago. So do the two brothers still get along? “We still speak every day on the phone,” he insists, leaving no room for doubt.
Hawthorn adds that the decision to split was one based purely on practicality. “We still share best practice and try to work together as we’ve always done,” he explains. “We’ll continue to do that. It was far from a fallout in June 2009; it was just the right thing to do. You could see with Rooster and the way the business was going – Ronnie’s children were starting to come into the business, just as these two guys [Toby and Oliver] were here. Geographically we were miles apart. It was just the right thing to do.”
While Albert Bartlett has had the eye-catching PR push, Alan Bartlett & Sons has been no slouch in innovating its business either. It has just completed the installation of the largest roof-mounted solar panel array in the country, and has begun diversifying its portfolio into processed goods such as soups.
It’s a new venture for the company, and while nobody has any grand designs to take on the likes of the New York Soup Co, it does make for a useful sideline. “We’ve always wanted to be the best at what we do without diversifying and staying with that core product,” explains Hawthorn. “We didn’t want to be all things to all men, but to be the best at that product. But you do have to grow and try to look outside that product and add value to the business. One of the things was the by-product. So the soup idea was born.
“One of the things with soup is it is a different theatre in which to operate. You’ve got 14-21 days shelf life, while we’re used to three to four days [for fresh]. We are aware there’s a lot of work to be done to establish it, and it’s quite a competitive market. We are not looking to be the next New Covent Garden or Heinz. It’s an addition to our business. It complements what we’re doing as a fresh produce grower.”
The soups have been in Tesco – Alan Bartlett’s major customer – since the beginning of the year and it’s early days to get much feedback yet, but it fits with the new philosophy of the company to build a brand of its own. It follows on the back of the first branded bushy topped carrots on the high street and, though the company is keeping its cards close to its chest, there are plans to do more.
“The ambition is that people in the high street actually want to go out and buy a Bartlett carrot,” says Hawthorn. “It’s a quality product. Now we’ve got the bushy tops out there we’re looking to expand that with the other brands and parsnips for the restaurant trade. And the ambition would still be to have a more high-profile branded range in the high street. But to complement the mainstay own-brand of the supermarkets.”
It certainly ties in with an innate understanding of the consumer that is echoed by the development of initiatives such as Bartlett’s Direct, a service that lets the company supply direct to restaurants and the catering trade. And a further sign of progress came with the purchase of the business of the now defunct Watton Produce in 2011, an acquisition that has added 30 per cent to the company’s carrot-producing capacity and allowed it to expand by mirroring its Chatteris operations north of the border.
It all shapes up for a rosy future, and at a time when there are serious question marks over who the next generation is going to be, this is one company where the future is set to be passed into two pairs of very capable hands.
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