A foodie-inspired move

Nick Hastilow (pictured below), group managing director at the well-known specialist supplier of global foods, Leathams, tells us about their recent new office move and the reasons behind it…

MULTI-SITE OPERATION

Here at Leathams, we’ve been inspiring and delighting our customers with a range of innovative and high quality foods from around the world for over 40 years. For 30 of those years, our combined head office and logistics centre was in South Bermondsey, London. However, after many happy years there, the growth of the business meant we needed to look for new solutions suitable for the next quarter of a century!

Finding the right locations and sites was key. Food is special to us, whether it be creating speciality branded ingredients or providing specialist sourcing solutions, we do it because we want to help our customers and their customers discover great food. When it was time to make the move, we always knew it would be great to move our head office closer to a more foodie part of town. And so, we are really excited to be in our new London base near Tower Bridge, just south of the river, in the grade II Listed Circle Building.

We also knew we would take the opportunity to focus the operational part of the business in a location that best suited today’s national distribution network. Hence our simultaneous move to a newly constructed 30,000ft ambient and chilled logistics centre close to the M25 in Dartford. Together with our frozen distribution centre in Chelmsford and sales hubs in Nottingham and Kent, this means we are now a truly multi-site operation!

Fit For Purpose

Our new London head office has been designed with our colleagues, customers and suppliers all front of mind.

As soon as you walk in, you can see our main presentation kitchen. In fact, the whole layout has been built around this carefully designed space, which together with refrigerated stores and separate R&D area, is completely focused on providing the perfect environment for customer and supplier engagement.

The fit out of the kitchen enables us to replicate many of the preparation techniques of our customers, but perhaps our favourite bit of kit is the pizza oven with which we’ve had a lot of fun, trying out loads of delicious topping options. And of course, the office is also a very visible sign in our ongoing investment in our colleagues, by ensuring they have a great place to work and collaborate.

Well Connected

When we were planning the move, in addition to being near the Bermondsey and Borough ‘foodie action’, we wanted to be near great transport links too. So being only 10 minutes’ walk from both London Bridge stations and Bermondsey tube station is perfect for colleagues to come to work and for customers and suppliers to spend time with us too.

We all know the food and hospitality industry has had a challenging couple of years. Here at Leathams we are completely committed to helping our customers grow, whether they are restaurants, pubs, food manufacturers, wholesalers, contract caterers, fast food outlets or coffee shops.

We feel that our new premises, and particularly our London office, show that we are full-on for making this happen with our specially selected range of high quality food. Since opening at the Circle in March 2022 we have welcomed over 100 customers and suppliers, and it’s been a fantastic experience to help inspire them with delicious and value-added products and hear about all the development opportunities... Now we can’t wait to welcome the next 100!

Bring A Dish To Life

If you want the uncompromising taste of the original and best slow roasted tomato look no further than SunBlush.®

Our unique 8-hour cooking process gives our tomatoes their rich, signature avour which will elevate any dish to the next level.

Our Roquito range is bursting with flavour, hot & sweet with a sharp twist.

Whether your adding texture to any dish with our pepper pearls or drizzling on some Hot Honey, Roquito will be the perfect finisher with a fiery kick.