After welcoming five new members into the Country Range Group (CRG) in 2024, CRG has kicked off 2025 in a similar positive fashion after Valley Foods were announced as its latest foodservice wholesale member.
The arrival of Valley Foods means the Group now consists of 15 member businesses and 17 wholesalers, who together cover the whole of the UK, Ireland, coastal Spain, Portugal and Jersey.
With an annual turnover of £14 million and over 5,500 products in the portfolio, Valley Foods employs 50 people and has 18 vans supplying the dedicated chefs and cooks working across the public catering and hospitality sectors in Jersey.
Helen Clackett, Director at Valley Foods, and Country Range Group Chief Executive Martin Ward, tell Wholesale Manager how the new partnership will benefit both parties.
Can you tell us a bit about yourselves, where you’ve worked before, and what roles you’ve worked in?
Martin: I started with the Country Range Group as a buyer in 2002, so I’ve been with the Group for 23 years now. Prior to that, I was a buyer in food manufacturing for about five years after graduation. I became the Trading Director of CRG about 10 years ago and was promoted to the role of the Chief Executive about three years ago. I have always worked in procurement and the food industry so if somebody asks me what I do, I tell them I’m a buyer that runs a buying group.
Helen: Following training and college, I ran my own outside catering business for fourteen years. The business escalated massively and I was running a wide range of corporate and private events. With a young family and kids, I realised that the hours and work just weren’t sustainable so I took on a role at our original business Farm Pack. I began assisting with administration and then used my experience to help other departments. Before long I was moved to the buying side of the business and I have now been carrying out that role for a quarter of a century.
Martin: Farm Pack was originally a member of the Country Range Group in the late 1990s and early 2000s. In 2003, Helen and her husband Andrew sold the business, bringing their journey full circle. After the sale, they continued working with Farm Pack and its new owners for two to three years before moving on to join another business in Jersey called Valley Foods.
Helen: Valley was already established as a business from 1981 but it was not particularly successful at the time. Can you tell us what your current role involves and what your goals are for what you want to achieve in the role?
Martin: We are a group of 17 wholesalers and I am responsible for all aspects of the Group. I’m still involved in some of the procurement and key contracts. I’m the only non-member, director of the group and have overall responsibility so that involves liaising with our members, stakeholders and key suppliers. Today we had a trading meeting, so I’m also involved in that, but I run the Country Range board as well. Whether we’re bringing new members in, such as Valley Foods, launching new campaigns and NPD or maintaining compliance and the Group discipline, there is never a quiet day. In addition to my role liaising with our members, I’m also responsible for managing the day-to-day work of our twenty employees and growing central office team.
Helen: I carry out the majority of the buying including frozen, chilled and ambient but my other weekly jobs include payroll, purchase ledger and credit control. When we took on the business it was relatively small, and as we have grown, I’ve continued doing a lot of jobs that I haven’t managed to delegate yet!
Martin: I may be biased but I honestly believe that we’re already the best foodservice buying group in the UK so my passion each and every day is not just to maintain standards but to continuously improve them and aim higher. My key goal at present is making sure that we harness the scale of what we’ve achieved over the last few years and continue to deliver more benefits back to our membership.
Helen: I’d like to echo that with our business. I think we’ve grown our business to be one of the most successful wholesalers on the island, and we want to maintain that and grow it, keeping that momentum this year. Joining the Country Range Group will massively benefit us with their buying power, the respect they have from suppliers and by working with other innovative members who have similar goals and objectives.
Martin: In terms of the benefits we provide our members, first and foremost, it’s about the buying and making sure that we’re as competitive as we possibly can be. There are also other benefits though. For example, we have a full promotion schedule and promotional brochure. We have the Stir it up magazine that is published nine times a year, and we bring all the members together through our exciting schedule of events. Also, there’s the intangible benefits, where our members can learn from each other, share best practice and motivate each other to improve and grow.
We’ve got businesses that turn over £250 million, and some that are turning over £15 million. There will be businesses there that want to get from 15 to 20 to 30 to 40 and some of the businesses have already done that. There’s a lot of best practice, and a lot of learnings to share. For example, somebody might put on a WhatsApp group that they’re building a new freezer and questions will be asked like ‘who did you use for your new freezer? How much did you pay for your concrete and who did you use for that?’. ‘We’re looking at moving to cages, how did you do that? We do our pick like this, how do you do your pick? What’s your bank interest?’ It’s right down to that sort of detail, it’s very detailed and very open, transparent and everyone is very willing to share. It creates a strong team spirit and unity within the Group without any egos. Martin, do you have targets to grow the membership further? Is it a numbers game, trying to grow as many members as possible?
Martin: No, it’s all about quality, not quantity. It’s about like-minded wholesalers and people that want to be part of a fraternity, sharing information. If you came into our Group and you don’t want to share, then you’re in the wrong group. We want businesses that want to put that volume through the Group, because we all know that longer term, putting the volume through the Group is going to benefit everybody. We do have rules, structures and disciplines. The rules have been written by the members because they are commercial rules that ultimately benefit them. Helen, how far is the geographical reach of your business?
Helen: We’re on Jersey, so it’s 45 square miles. There is a lot of competition on the island, so we have to be on our toes at all times. Who, what, why, and where are the questions that we are constantly asking because there’s always a competitor snapping at our heels. I think when you’re successful, you’ll be targeted by your competitors, and that’s where we are now. So, we are working hard to maintain standards, improve systems and grow our business. Do you have an e-commerce site for your customers?
Helen: Yes, we have a fantastic online site. We have a small online retail offering and we even deliver to homes as well. It’s a shared site so our wholesale customers use it as well and there’s a little bit of a crossover of products, which works for both. We help chefs with an app which they use for ordering and we provide tablets if they struggle using the app on their phone. Around 60% or 65% of our orders are placed online now. How digital is your business, and do you offer any IT support for your members e.g. ordering apps, online support, delivery tracking?
Helen: Very much. Where we can, we’re encouraging people to use those.
Martin: I’d say most of our members are up to as much as 70% online. They share best practice when it comes to that as well, in terms of what they’re doing and what they’re investing in, as well as the different providers that they’re using. Helen, how many products does your business supply, and what categories do you cover?
Helen: Upwards of 5,500 lines. We cover most categories from butchery to fresh produce to non-food and everything else in between. We even recently launched an unassailable fresh fish offering. Martin, how many products does Country Range Group supply and what categories does it cover?
Martin: We don’t physically buy anything but negotiate all the terms and the prices for our members. The members do the physical buying. We have terms with over 400 different suppliers, and we focus on frozen, ambient, chilled and non-food. Roughly across the Group, 38% of our purchases are ambient, 32% are frozen, 25% are chilled and 5% are non-food. That gives you a good idea of the breakdown and where our focus is. We don’t cover fresh meat and fruit and veg, although our members will purchase this seasonally from local suppliers and farms. Members do talk to each other about those areas of procurement, but we focus on those key four foodservice areas.
The Country Range brand is worth about £150 million in sales value and continues to grow year–on-year. We have over 700 products in the Country Range brand portfolio across ambient, frozen, chilled and non-food. It’s tiered so it’s not just a Country Range brand, it’s Country Range Group own brands. The Country Range brand is the main piece, but then we have a premium tier brand called Signature by Country Range with this full portfolio launching this spring. A few products have already been launched but driving awareness and sales of the Signature range will be a key focus in 2025. We have a third tier called Catering Essentials, which is an entry level brand and was launched at the beginning of last year. With many kitchens struggling with increased energy and ingredients costs, our Catering Essentials brand has been a huge success and help to chefs. The Catering Essentials and Signature brands will be limited in terms of the range but there is definitely room for all three brands following research with our customers and our members. What promotional offers do you run?
Martin: We run central promotions across 11 promotional periods. We bring the core of our own brands and branded products together, and then we produce standard promotions for each individual member, who will then brand it for their own business. For example, it will be a Valley Foods branded promotion but they have the ability to add their own local offers at the back of that promotion as well. We also have the Stir it up magazine, which provides articles, features and reports on the key sectors, news, tips, recipes, trends and business boosting advice. How do you think the wholesale industry has changed in recent years?
Helen: For us on Jersey, the tourism industry was massive in the 1960s, 1970s and into the 1980s. That has changed massively now as there are far less hotels. But there’s an awful lot of restaurants, cafés and coffee shops. Eating out is a huge part of island life in Jersey, so there are many restaurants that need supplying to feed, sustain and entertain 110,000 people on the island. It is a different market today. There’s still hotel business and there is still a bit of a spike in the summer months, but not the gigantic spikes that we used to see.
Martin: In terms of the overall wholesale industry, I think we’ve definitely experienced various post-pandemic effects. In fact, I think there’s been more change in the last two years than there was in the 20 years before that. As businesses mature and get bigger, they have to make decisions in terms of what they do next. Do they invest, change or even sell? Like in many industries, and like in many different areas of life, Covid has changed that mindset in terms of what’s next.
If we look at our businesses, four of them sold in the last two years. Thomas Ridley, Harvest Fine Foods, and Turner Price have all sold to Bidcorp, while Caterite sold to Metro. They most likely did it for a very good reason because there wasn’t planned succession within the business and had probably taken the business as far as they could. I imagine Covid made them think differently about what they wanted to do in their own lives. Post-Covid, they perhaps put value back into the businesses and got a very good deal for themselves. I think the Country Range Group has played a crucial role in helping to raise the value and in making those businesses as successful as they could be, so that the owners could have an exit strategy that suited them.
Since the acquisitions, we have been able to become a little bit more open in terms of growing our membership and having new conversations with interested parties. In 2024, we brought eight wholesalers into the group, which is fairly unprecedented. This has resulted in big change and we’re delighted that our Group is bigger today than it’s ever been. We ended 2024 close to £1billion in terms of the Group turnover of our members. I expect 2025 to be somewhere in the region of £1.2 billion or £1.25 billion.
Are we looking for new members? Yes, but they’ve got to be the right fit. There are groups out there for whom it seems to be a numbers game, but for us, it’s not. It’s all about the quality of the members that we bring in and the fit that they have within our Group. If you’re going to be a member of the Country Range Group, you will gain plenty of value but you’ve got to add value as well. That doesn’t always fit for everybody, but I think that with bringing in eight wholesalers in the last 12 months, it obviously works for a lot of the more successful, growing wholesalers. Do you have anything to add?
Helen: We’re probably one of the smaller members of the Group but I’d like to think that we were asked to rejoin because of our experience, work ethic, amazing people and recent success.
Martin: I think because Valley Foods had been members of the Group previously as part of Farm Park, we didn’t really have to explain how we operate. They know how we operate, and they know the benefits that they get by operating in that way. It was quite an easy conversation and we don’t intend to bring in anybody else into the Group in Jersey.
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