Site visit: Grazing

Sam Hurst, chief executive officer of Grazing, tells Henry Norman how the company’s CPU-focused concept has hit the post-pandemic zeitgeist in the London B&I scene...

“We’ve almost doubled our turnover now compared to where we were pre-Covid. That’s purely off the back of our model, our flexible approach. They tell us what they want, when they need it, and we provide it.”

I’m in a cutting-edge Kings Cross-based client site, talking to Sam Hurst, the genial founder of Grazing. Like all of his company’s contracts, it is based in the capital, and like many of them, it specialises in finance.

There is some intriguing talk of the client innovatively utilising algorithms, though there are still just enough human stock jocks milling around to require feeding. This, however, isn’t a problem – reduced and fluctuating customer numbers are, crucially, an aspect of business and industry (B&I) that Grazing has neatly turned to its advantage.

The reason for this is the unique approach this this “accidental caterer” has organically evolved into, having originally launched as a London high street operator back in 2007. “We started out doing great food from farm to table but in a quick-service environment,” Hurst recalls. “What we were doing, it was super-popular… though it was haemorrhaging cash. People loved us, the bank manager not so much!”

However, the tide began to turn when local offices came in saying that they really liked the offer, to the extent that they would like it to be delivered direct to them. “I’d love to tell you that it was a great business plan and this all started with a vision, but it evolved purely be accident,” Hurst laughs. “We are accidental caterers.”

He had opened three cafés by this point but had started to conclude that it was “a bit brutal on the high street”. Hence, in 2009, the company built its first website where people could order online, which Hurst says was ahead of the likes of Marks & Spencer and Pret in this regard. “I’m pretty sure even Deliveroo was a couple of years later. We didn’t invent it – but I’d like to say we were early pioneers.”

Then followed a slice of luck that would seal Hurst’s decision to move fully from cafés into contract catering. “Purely by accident, one of the customers we were delivering sandwiches to said that he had catering on site, but it wasn’t really working because the kitchen facilities were too small,” he recalls. “It just so happened that they were in Bank and we were around the corner. I told him we could cook it and send it around to them, serve it up and they could all enjoy great food.

“It accidentally evolved from there and we still have that customer to this day. And that’s how it began. We subsequently closed the cafés, moved to a purpose-built, larger CPU [central production kitchen] and the rest is history, as they say.”

The system that Grazing has settled upon is simple. All of its dishes are prepared at its kitchen in Bermondsey, where it has been based since 2017. It is just south of the river, though crucially it is central enough that the constantly changing food offer – the most any dish, even fish and chips, appears on the menu at any site is four times a year – can be delivered quickly to it clients, most of which are in the City nearby.

Another crucial evolution is that an impressive 90% of these deliveries are made on zero-emission cargo bikes, which is advantageous for a number of reasons. “We can do about a 45-minute journey from here by bike, and we know those journeys are almost always identical,” Hurst explains. “They can navigate their way through traffic, they can go down bike and bus lanes, so they really aren’t affected like vans are. We’re very precise about that. That was a really debilitating factor in the early days when we used vans.

“They are amazing workhorses. We can load them up with food for a couple of hundred people and get them from here to basically anywhere in central London.”

One exception is a Chiswick-based contract – but that is taken care of by a small finishing kitchen stationed there. The food, Hurst explains, is regened on site after being sent over from the CPU.

The move to (semi) pedal power isn’t just positive from a practical perspective either. It also, of course, helps with Grazing’s attempts to be greener – though Hurst recalls that this was a core a part of its ethos from the very beginning.

“From day one, I always wanted to build the business in the right way,” he says. “We try and build in every little piece as well as we can, but now we have taken it a step further.”

Among a number of impressive examples, the most innovative is its electricity sourcing policy. Hurst explains how he has effectively cut out the middleman by using a peer-to-peer platform to obtain the rest of the power that is required for the bikes. “If someone has got some solar panels or wind turbines and they want to sell their energy, the platform connects us to them, we agree a price and then we buy it directly from them. We can then pass those savings on to our clients.”

These clients are clearly central to Grazing’s whole proposition, as is emphasised when I finish our illuminating chat by asking Hurst what his plans are for the future. “We want to grow, though we’ve already had this amazing growth trajectory since we came back from Covid. It came back much faster than expected and our model, which I have been saying is going to be big, has suddenly become quite popular! Lots of people are piling into this space now, which is fine, as this space is big enough for a lot of players in it and we’ve been doing it for a long, long time.”

This is how Grazing has been able to expand while many other B&I-reliant businesses have stalled. The secret has been in turning the problems that the pandemic created to its advantage.

“We’ve got a sweet spot,” Hurst explains. “We are specialist rather than a generalist, so we really specialise in clients of a certain size who want free-issue catering.

“It works really well, certainly with sub-500 people locations typically, where it wouldn’t make sense for them to open a kitchen or a traditional contract catering model on site, but they still want restaurant-quality food. There must be something between a Deliveroo delivery and a full, in-house, directors’ dining offer.”

This model has really come into its own now, with the number of office workers reduced, along with the number of days they are typically present. “They don’t necessarily need to be there five days a week, because we know people aren’t going to be there five days,” Hurst reasons. “But at their peak, we can feed all of them, and at their quietest we can dial it down and just look after a few of them.”

Just how relevant Grazing’s CPU-centred proposition has become is emphasised by the fact that Hurst admits: “I have turned down more business in the last 12, 24 months than I’ve probably sold in the last 10 years. It’s a painful thing to do – but I also know that I’ve got to meet these promises to my clients. The plan now is to double in size over the next four years or so.”

This will be achieved by crucially creating capacity before more work is taken on, and Hurst is already in talks to take on at least one more arch at the company’s Bermondsey base. “The next stage is, we’ve rebuilt this great team after Covid, we now need to build a bit more infrastructure,” he says. “We’re in a nice position now where we’re on that fast-growth trajectory, and we just want to continue on that but manage it very carefully.”

This altruistic approach it typical of Hurst – whether applied to economics or the environment – as he concludes: “It’s all about doing business in the right way.”

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