Food for thought

from Noticed Magazine Spring 2022 from School Notices

Cricket’s heroine

Noticed meets Charlie Bigham, the man who has liked making a meal of it since setting up his eponymous food empire in 1996.

Can you remember eating your first Charlie Bigham pie/lasagne/curry? His range of meals has been trading since 1996, ever since Bigham jacked in a job as a management consultant on projects involving art galleries and theatres. Despite working with “interesting people all over the country”, he didn’t enjoy the theoretical aspect of projects

that might not come to fruition for five or ten years. “With food, feedback is pretty instant. Besides”, he wryly adds, “I wasn’t terribly good at working for other people”. He and his then girlfriend, now wife, textile designer Claire Worthington (check out her rather covetable range of wallpapers at claireworthington.com) decided that life was short and the world was large, invested in a campervan and headed off to India. While on their travels they discussed the “big questions”: whether to stay together and what the heck to do with the rest of their lives. The answer was marriage, four children and a food business that Bigham hopes will turnover £100 million in 2022.

Some of the meals from Charlie Bigham’s first batches are still on sale today, including a bestselling lasagne. Bigham’s description of it provides a pretty solid overview of his vision for all his recipes. “Properly made it’s a bloody good dish. But it can be terrible. The food industry in its wisdom destroyed it and

turned it into slop made with horses”. Bigham repeatedly, and often heatedly, explains that his brand is absolutely not part of the aforementioned food industry “obsessed with making things cheaper, faster and longer

Above: Charlie’s best selling lasagne Below: Campaign poster artwork illustrated by Emily Sutton

I certainly didn’t want horrible muck in a plastic bowl that had to go in a microwave which I didn’t own in the first place

lasting - all the things that shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near food”. He explains that he started his business as a frustrated consumer who loves cooking but has the odd day when he doesn’t want to cook from scratch – and “I certainly didn’t want horrible muck in a plastic bowl that had to go in a microwave which I didn’t own in the first place”. He acknowledges that selling food in a packet to people who don’t really like buying packaged food provided a few early communication challenges.

It took a few years to get noticed by a “naturally sceptical” audience, but momentum built and he’s proud of being ahead of the times, not least with signature wooden packaging. Millions of plastic and metal trays have been saved, and an independent report proved that Charlie Bigham packaging was twice as sustainable as their nearest rivals’. “Kind of funny, though in some ways we wish others would copy us, but if they did it would be harder for us to stand out”.

As to food trends, Bigham doesn’t believe in following the zeitgeist. “Just because fermented food is terribly fashionable doesn’t mean we are the right people to be making it”. He’s pleased to have earned B Corp certification, which evolved through an innate belief in practices like recycling and buying green electricity. The business has been put under a microscope, resulting in learning a lot of new stuff. “Historically I just made a decision – green energy is the right thing to do so why talk about it? But as a business grows you realise it’s a good idea to take people on the journey with you”. Sustainability is key, with water treatment plants and solar panels installed in his Quarry Kitchen food factory in Somerset, itself a RIBA award winner.

Similarly, working with charities is core to the business. “We have various criteria - food and education-based and we like to give decent amounts of money and work closely with the team to grow their ambitions”. Over the years the team has supported, among others, Classrooms in the Clouds in Nepal, City Harvest in London and Chefs in Schools.

As to his school days, Bigham says it was “fairly boring” and he always feels sorry for people whose school days were the best of their lives – “Is it downhill from 18?” But this didn’t stop him becoming Entrepreneur in Residence at Milton Abbey for 2020/21, following in the footsteps of Cath Kidston and Johnnie Boden. His advice to young entrepreneurs to start now. “So many people prevaricate because - stuck in a loop of

L-R: Cherry Bakewell Pudding, Charlie’s hearty Steak & Ale Pie The beautiful and sustainable Dulcote Quarry kitchens

earning a salary and feeling it’s too risky to go alone. If it goes wrong it goes wrong and it can be the spur to try something else. And if you find working for yourself too stressful you can go back into a job”. While he doesn’t have a motto for life he does like to “trot out” to employees to try and be a little bit better every day, because when you look back over a year you discover that you have made advances in your recycling, computer systems and impact on the planet.

He identifies Covid as an interesting time with ramifications still to come. “We’ve been very lucky and on the right side of the fence. Friends with brilliant restaurant businesses, through no fault of their own, have been cut off at the knees, while we have grown faster than we normally would.”

Charlie with wife Claire in their garden

So many people prevaricate - stuck in a loop of earning a salary and feeling it’s too risky to go alone. If it goes wrong, it goes wrong and it can be the spur to try something else.

Charlie Bigham’s meals are available in all the UK’s large supermarkets. Find out at bighams.com And he describes how things have been “unbelievably” hard for the team because making food from home doesn’t work, while suppliers are falling over and prices around the world are going up.

As Bigham notes, everybody eats. And as most of us appreciate a night off cooking every now and then, it looks as though our appetite for a home-style meal we haven’t had to chop and sauté ourselves is set to continue – especially knowing that it won’t contain horsemeat.

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