Jon Marlow joined Suffolk-based independent foodservice company Thomas Ridley in January 2024 at a very exciting time for growth and new opportunities, one year after the company was acquired by the Caterfood Buying Group.
Thomas Ridley Foodservice is BRCS certified and supplies more than 2,000 foodservice customers across East Anglia, London, Kent and the Southeast, ranging across education, healthcare, leisure and hospitality. The company also has a large eCommerce business, shipping bulk food and drink items all over the UK, and a strong Click and Collect offering for its Suffolk-based customers and businesses, who can both benefit from this local service.
Jon Marlow, Managing Director at Thomas Ridley, tells Wholesale Manager how he has got a great team of people and what benefits Thomas Ridley gets from being part of Caterfood.
Where have you worked before and what roles have you worked in?
I’ve come from an entirely food and drink background. I started my career going around pubs in South Wales for Carlsberg, I did a number of sales and marketing roles with Carlsberg and then after a few years, I changed to tea with Twinings. That was mainly looking after the grocers, but as time went on, I did more across the structure of the organisation. I have quite a lot of drinks in my background, I worked for Cafedirect coffee, Lucozade Ribena Suntory. And then most recently, Divine Chocolate, which is the ultra-ethical chocolate that’s been around 25 years and has been a catalyst for change in the cocoa industry. So, I have mainly done sales and marketing and have got more generalist as time has gone on, as you do. Then I had the great opportunity to come to Thomas Ridley to manage a bigger business that’s really established but is going through a new phase with new ownership.
What does your current role involve?
I’m managing director, so I lead the executive team here. There’s a bit of day-to-day management, but ultimately, it’s about removing barriers for the team to get their objectives done. If I can help unlock stuff, and simplify and make things easier, then that’s my job done – to help everyone achieve their potential whether they’re on the leadership team or working in the warehouse or driving a wagon. It’s just about improving everyone’s lot because if we have a happy ship, we’ll have a happy set of customers as well, I think.
What are your goals for what you want to achieve in the role?
It might sound corny, but I’d really like us to be recognised as the best foodservice wholesaler in the East of England and the southeast. I think we’ve got a load of strengths. One thing I’ve really seen since I’ve been here is our service levels are super high. And that’s really important when you’re a foodservice operator: you can’t create menus and sell product if you can’t get any through the door. It’s one of the things we’re really good at. With Caterfood behind us, we’re big and we have that stability, but we really know our customers. I sit and listen to our telesales and customer services people, and they have fantastic relationships. We are in the local area, and we know their businesses, that can’t be underestimated. All too often the conversation goes to how cheap are you and actually, there’s a whole lot more to it than that. That’s one of the things that Thomas Ridley is really good at.
How is Thomas Ridley performing as a business?
Really good. It was acquired just over 12 months ago after a huge number of years of family ownership, so it’s going to have a degree of change. But everyone seems to be incredibly positive and really up for it. One of the things I recognised when I came for interviews was, I was in reception and everyone was saying are you OK, who do you need to see? Everyone’s really friendly, and it’s got that family feel, but actually it’s also a business with people that really want to drive it forwards. We are profitable but we want to be more profitable, we want to grow through being great at what we do best. And that’s what’s really exciting.
Who are the new owners?
We’re owned by Caterfood buying group, which is ultimately Bidcorp. We’ve got that international stability, but we are very much an independently run business. I report into the chief executive of Caterfood buying group, but we’ve got a stable of seven or eight regional foodservice wholesalers. We’re all very different. We all have very different challenges because of our different geographies and we all service slightly different parts of the market. So, we have to be run independently, there is no one size fits all. We have to be tailored to those individual merits that we have.
What benefits does Thomas Ridley get from being part of Caterfood?
The stability is great. The fact that we’ve got expertise that we can call on if we need it, but what’s also exciting is we’re developing a range of Caterfood branded products. We’re still in an inflationary marketplace but the buying power that the Caterfood group gives us means we can allow our customers to perhaps compromise on price but not on quality. We’re bringing through hundreds of products under the Caterfood brand that are really good quality, and I’ve been to one of the benchmarking sessions. We are really discerning about the quality of products that we are willing to put on the roster. That’s a great strength for us to have because it allows us to build trust with our customers that we’re going to supply them with really great products, and we do.
How is your B2B eCommerce site performing?
Our eCommerce site was largely borne out of the pandemic. The business very quickly, in a very dynamic way, geared itself to supplying local people. We had click and collect, we also had couriers, wagons were deployed to a different route. Online is a really important channel for us, it’s doing really well, which is great. It’s a real point of difference because, whilst we’re a regional operator, we can sell some of our products nationally which is a great asset to have. We’ve got a great network of couriers, and we ship all over the country.
How many products does Thomas Ridley supply and what categories do they cover?
We’ve got about 8,000 in total, about 5,000 of which are food and drink. We also have quite an extensive range of quality tableware and earthenware products. Plus, all the normal stuff like foil and blue rolls and all the accoutrements that you need to run a foodservice business. We are very strong through our frozen offering. Frozen food is really developing and we’re working on some stuff at the moment that’s going to bring great quality to our customers but also serve to reduce waste. That’s really attractive: if you can get frozen product that’s as good as fresh or chilled and know that you’re not going to have any waste through the process, that’s a great asset to have as well.
Are there any new products in the ranges you want to talk about?
We are bringing exciting new products through all the time. One of the brands we’re working with is Redefine Meat, which obviously works on the back of the vegan trend. We’ve also got a great range of Devon ice cream that we’re bringing out for spring/summer 2024. It’s one of the things we’re working for, we recognise that a lot of our customers in our region have very high-end outlets and we need to be more foodie in our approach. The business is full of foodies, there’s some fantastic people who are really crazy about food. And we’re going to work to bring really interesting new products to our customers in the next few months.
How has the wholesale industry changed in recent years?
The first thing anyone says when we talk about the wholesale market and what drives it is price. Price is important, you can’t get away from that. But one of the things that’s also really important is service and the ability to get products to people when they want them. This is one of the things that we’re really good at, we have a great attention to detail and great customer service. We pick brilliantly, we deliver brilliantly, we have an extremely low level of returns or credits, so we know we’re doing things right. That’s really important, it is sometimes taken for granted. And I think the other thing that’s increasingly important, when you’ve got the purse strings being tightened, people are going out perhaps less frequently, but when they do go out or when they buy some food on the go, they want it to be really high quality. So having the quality products and also having a diverse range and a great offering of ingredients, that’s really important too. So, it’s about offering not just great price, but great service and really, really good products and that’s one of the things that we excel at.
Is there anything you want to add?
Just that we’ve got a great team of people here. I have been so impressed; we’ve got about 240 people here in the building and in the warehouse and driving our lorries and everyone I’ve met has been great. We had our award ceremony in the second week of January, and it’s a really rare event where both employees and their partners attend. And I think that’s just symbolic of the sort of business that Thomas Ridley is, we have great people who really care for each other, and they care for their customers. I think that’s fantastic
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