7 minute read
Simply making delicious food to-go
SIMPLY LUNCH I PROFILE
Each day across Britain, when hunger pangs hit and their kitchen is out of reach, people purchase readymade food. And in hundreds of thousands of those transactions, the meal exchanging hands is one made by artisanal manufacturer Simply Lunch. But with tastes constantly evolving and environmental concerns omnipresent, how is this family-run business adapting? Marketing and Branding Manager William Page sat down with Richard Hagan to talk about the business of feeding Britain.
Simply Lunch, based in Croydon in the UK, is a leading food to-go manufacturer supplying nutritious food products throughout the country.
The company’s mission statement is bold and clear: to improve lives through food that is good for the planet and good for you.
From burgers to the big time
Simply Lunch was founded in 1979 by the dynamic husband and wife team of Terry and Julie Page, beginning life as a humble takeaway burger van, coincidentally located around five miles from the company’s present day headquarters.
By the early 2000s, the business was growing and was on the hunt for new opportunities. It found them in the form of the rapidly rising food to-go market.
Having decided to pivot from their food truck into the burgeoning food to-go industry, Terry and Julie’s three sons joined the business and got to work building Simply Lunch into the major food production business that it is today, with 85,000 sqft of factory space across two sites.
The company moved into its current facility in 2015 and, thanks to its 300 highly skilled staff, along with several internal improvements, its production lines are now capable of producing up to 500,000 products per week. And in the last financial year, the
company produced 20 million products; an impressive milestone by any measure.
According to Marketing and Branding Manager, William Page, the company’s success can be traced back to one key ingredient: “We’ve always prided ourselves on our quality,” he emphasised. “We serve high-quality, handcrafted food, and that’s a characteristic that goes back to the burger van days. It’s helped us to develop a holistic but also great-tasting approach to eating.”
In addition to the company’s impressive production facilities, Simply Lunch owns two other sites. One is a dedicated picking and dispatch facility and the other is its distribution facility, located a few steps away from there. These two sites significantly widened the company’s distribution network. To ensure products are delivered fresh and on time to resellers each day, Simply Lunch acquired a courier company in mid-2022.
Simply Lunch supplies its products directly to resellers including coffee shops, coffee vans, events, higher education institutions, secondary schools and many other establishments.
Packaging a premium product
The company recently introduced a brand new premium food range. Called ‘Simply Special’, the range is an evolution of the company’s previous ‘Signature’ range and is differentiated by both the food itself and the revolutionary packaging it’s sold in.
“It’s a bit different to your standard sandwich skillet,” Mr Page explained. “It comes in a square box rather than a cardboard triangle, and the plastic insert has been replaced by a cardboard nested tray. This has saved 15 tons of plastic per year.”
The packaging is further differentiated by some funky artwork as well as, importantly, a bio cellulose window. “It’s a bio plastic created from plant materials,” he revealed. “We started using this cellulose in 2018 when it was still a relatively new technology. We were one of the first food to-go suppliers to introduce it into our boxes, but today we’re seeing it used more
SIMPLY LUNCH I PROFILE
and more throughout the industry. It’s just another reminder that we are a leader in the UK’s food to-go market.”
While this cellulose is a far superior alternative to traditional plastic, Simply Lunch still regards it as an interim solution until a better material emerges from the packaging industry. It’s all part of the company’s focus on sustainability and protecting the environment.
“Packaging is unavoidable in our industry,” Mr Page noted. “Our primary need for it is to showcase the quality of our product and to make our food safe. But as a business, recyclable packaging must not just be used once and get discarded, because then too many of the planet’s resources are wasted. Being able to provide a product where the pack can be recycled and reused up to eight times is really important to us and frankly, I don’t see why people – including our customers – wouldn’t opt for that.”
But according to Mr Page, getting up to this idyllic standard requires a huge amount of effort from all parties involved, “because right now, the infrastructure of recycling in the UK is not as advanced as it needs to be,” he said.
The Simply Special range is available right now from any of Simply Lunch’s vendors but given its premium price bracket, it is mainly targeted for resale through vendors like larger businesses, independent coffee shops, contract caterers and similar.
Simply sustainable and delicious
At Simply Lunch, sustainability isn’t just a buzzword thrown around the boardroom but a concept that is actively pursued throughout its business. “We’re always trying to make our products more environmentally friendly,” said Mr Page. “
As part of these efforts, the company has firm plans to fit solar panels to its factory roof to offset rising energy costs, and is exploring automation to improve its efficiency within the factory itself. “Automation is not something we’re hugely keen on because we’re very proud of our handcrafted products, but this remains one of those things we have to consider as a business in order to remain competitive.”
Of course, sustainability also means ensuring the longevity of its business and in that sense, the company is heavily focused on developing new products to meet shifting consumer demands.
“People are more open to more adventurous flavours; they’re experimenting with different flavours and that suits us because it’s in line with how we run our business,” Mr Page remarked.
Simply Lunch has a dedicated team of five responsible for creating new products for testing.
“We try to match trends that we see in the industry; we go on food safaris to see what’s out there and what people are doing,” he added. “Core sandwiches like BLTs and the classic tuna cucumber
will always be our lead sellers, but people are far more willing to be experimental versus ten years ago.”
In line with this, the company schedules four new product launches every year.
“The themes of the range stay familiar; at Christmas we’ll do traditional flavours like turkey and cranberry, but for the other launches, we’ll be more adventurous,” remarked Mr Page. “In January we look for something slightly healthier in line with the typical, ‘New Year, New Me’ trend. But they can also be tied to current events like the FIFA World Cup when, for example, we changed all of the rolls in our bacon rolls, to a poppy seeded roll in the shape of a football, to give our consumers something familiar and fun.”
Progress all in the family
Simply Lunch has substantial growth plans for the future in order to cater for constantly increasing demand. By the end of 2022, the business expects turnover to reach £30 million alongside an increase in its capacity of 25%, including a move into beautiful new offices.
Working for this family business with a long history, Mr Page and his brothers have embraced the metaphorical large shoes that they need to fill.
“I enjoy the fact that every day has its own challenges and I enjoy working in a business that’s trying to do better for the planet and for future generations; it’s a positive philosophy that resonates with me. And I’m very lucky to be working with my family, getting to see my brothers and parents every day.” n
