“We should do more than we talk. So many people don’t. I think there’s a real dignity in tangible work”
Riverford founder and outspoken veg box pioneer Guy Watson tells Ruth Chandler that staying true to his beliefs is what has made him successful
‘‘Despite owning a company recently valued at £6 million, founder of organic delivery company Riverford Guy Watson is far happier growing a vegetable rather than a business. And still more at home in the great outdoors than in the boardroom. Just behind the Field Kitchen restaurant on his farm near Totnes in Devon, he is in his element on this bright winter afternoon, grazing on the salads in a polytunnel. The cause of most excitement is the bitter puntarelle. “You can make a Roman dish with its buds,” he says, “slicing them quite finely, plunging them into icy cold water so they curl up, draining them and then adding anchovy, chilli and garlic.”
RICH PICKINGS
This enterprise has been delighting its customers with a variety of freshly harvested, reassuringly muddy produce since 1993 when he personally dropped off boxes at friends’ houses, driving down to Plymouth, up to Tavistock and across Dartmoor again. Back then, it was a low-key affair, serving only 30 customers, just a strand of a concern that also supplied wholesalers. Now, Riverford visits close to 50,000 doorsteps a week and has four regional farms across England, along with a network of other organic growers.
The offering has evolved since the early days’ rough-and-ready no-choice version; now, there are myriad box options, plus its online shop sells everything from noodles to Riverford’s own-label yogurt. “The market has become more sophisticated, with greater choice. We may have gone a bit too far,” Guy says. One of the points of difference though, is that at this time of year, Riverford’s farm in the Vendée on the south-west coast of France helps plug what is known as the Hungry Gap (when winter crops have dwindled and spring ones are not yet ready), bringing pickings forward by around six weeks, so lettuces are available as early as March.
ROOTED IN FARMING
Guy’s career in agriculture began at an early age, alongside his four older siblings, Louise, Rachel, Ben and Oliver – all of whom are also still involved – on their parents’ tenant farm, called Riverford. This is where father John Watson, a freshly demobbed, innovative first-generation farmer, and mother Gillian, an excellent cook, instilled a lifelong passion in Guy for good food. “Mum was 30 years ahead of her time – making bacon, butter, bread and charcuterie, while everyone else was turning to processed foods.” John was experimental, determined to do things his own way; he loved pigs and tried to keep them in the best possible conditions while others chained them in hideous stalls. Unsurprisingly, Guy also developed his strong work ethic growing up: “Status in our household was gained through being useful, so we helped out with the cows, mucked out and collected eggs.”
CITY LIMITS
Family life wasn’t entirely idyllic: the Watsons were permanently on the edge of bankruptcy. Guy didn’t simply grow up and take on the farm either. In fact, the inspiration for his vegetable-growing venture came as much from his wild time as a twentysomething in the Big Apple as it did from his childhood in rural Devon. After graduating from Oxford with a degree in agricultural and forestry science, he landed a job in London as a management consultant, which later took him to New York. There, he discovered the farmers’ market at Union Square and, through his job, he spotted a future trend for organic agriculture. “I also learned how brutal free markets can be. The idea that all you have to do is sell something cheaper than your neighbour is just crap. There’ll always be someone who can do it for less, and the only people who are going to be OK are those who control the markets. I think that’s when I formed the view you had to sell your product to the end consumer, not through a global market.”
BACK DOWN TO EARTH
Returning to the family farm in December 1986 for Christmas, Guy intended to go back to New York in the
new year, but decided it was time to quit the fun and grow up. Seeing old friends confirmed what he and his colleagues had predicted across the pond; some were turning their hands to growing vegetables organically. Having relinquished the right to inherit the tenancy from his father, Guy knew that he needed to do something on a small scale and under his own management, so he began planting leeks and brussels sprouts on three acres of Riverford Farm’s land. “I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, but somehow I got it pretty spot on.” A bad case of leek rust almost drove him to spray the crop, but he was determined to stick with organic practice, aided by the fact one of his brothers had recently been in hospital with paraquat ( herbicide) poisoning. His integrity was rewarded several weeks later when a very cold spell cleared up the problem instead.
REBEL WITH A CAUSE
Guy developed his well documented distaste for supermarkets when he began dealing with them direct. In 1990, he received a phone call from a Safeway buyer requesting his presence at a meeting on the Thursday of that week. When he explained that he’d be in London at the weekend and asked if there was any chance he could come in on the Friday, the phone went dead. Calling back, he said, “I think we must have been cut off”, but the man replied, “No, sonny, when we whistle, you jump.” Guy took a sledgehammer to the packhouse he had just built and told himself that no one would ever treat him in that way. This is one of the many instances in his career when he has adhered to his favourite piece of Walt Whitman advice: ‘ Dismiss what insults your soul.’
The veg nerd, as he describes himself, has always been a maverick when it comes to running his business. “It has to be done – that consulting thing where you get everyone on board with a decision – but I find it so frustrating when I know what to do. Last week I exploded and more or less said ‘It’s my f**king business and we’re just not doing that’.” So, no doubt much to their relief, he invites his senior management team to join him for one-on-one walks around his land to minimise big meetings. “One of my values is that we should do more than we talk. So many people don’t. I think there’s a real dignity in tangible work.”
THE ACCIDENTAL ENTREPRENEUR
Guy is decidedly humble about the rise of Riverford. “I think there’s always been a demand for vegetables like grandad used to grow, and when we started up, that need wasn’t being met by anyone. It was low-hanging fruit. Sales really took off in 2001. We were in the right place at the right time, so much of business is luck.” He didn’t, however, plan to create such a vast enterprise. “I never wanted a big business,” he says, genuinely baffled at his own accomplishment. “I tried
“Growing up, status in our household was gained through being useful, so we mucked out and collected eggs”
really hard to keep it small, but it just grew. I hoped that each of the farms would have different names and be run independently, but it didn’t work.” Despite the success of the Riverford identity, another of Guy’s (many) dislikes are brands: “Most are full of sh* t, just spinning out a lie.”
He’s never been shy about speaking out – his weekly veg box newsletters are testament to that – even when it comes to publicly disagreeing with his dairy farmer brother on the subject of badger culling on their land recently (Guy was anti, Oliver, pro). Paradoxically, he dislikes conflict. “I’ve a kind of addiction to being controversial, to shocking people. It’s one of the things I least like about myself. I’m trying to change.”
THE HOME FRONT
So, how does this complicated character relax? By tending his crop of beloved globe artichokes, of course. “They’re beautiful perennials and you can cut them right down and they spring back up.” He savours time alone and spaces in his day when he can choose what to do: “Call it what you like, call it mindfulness – that can come while stroking a horse, picking produce or going for a walk. I had an extraordinary moment with a bull the other day. We seemed to make friends and he let me rub away at his back. It was one of the most incredible experiences of the year.”
He was in Cornwall at the time with Geetie SinghWatson, his wife of three years and an organic pioneer in her own right, who founded London’s The Duke of Cambridge, the first and only certified organic pub in Britain, which has now joined forces with Riverford. Both unions have inevitably highlighted how closely Guy’s life and work are intertwined: “Sometimes, when I’m lying in the bath with Geetie, we end up talking about work at 11 o’clock at night.” Their house’s rustic style reveals Guy’s modest taste despite his wealth: the worktop in part of the kitchen is a former snooker table; the fire escape was crafted out of recycled materials. The setting is stunning: “I wake up every morning surrounded by 140 acres of farmland and look out onto my neighbour’s South Devon cows and I just love them and the sense of peace they bring.”
Guy is about to free up more time in his schedule to enjoy the view, plus more sailing and surfing, as he plans to sell Riverford. But, as you might anticipate, he’s not about to surrender 30 years of ethical business practice to the next venture capitalist who comes along. “In October 2007, when Abel & Cole sold, we were approached twice a week by snakeskin city types. I had a very visceral reaction to the whole thing and publicly said I’d never do it.” The answer: employee ownership – in order to protect Riverford’s founding values – due to take place in May, with Guy retaining 26% of shares.
You might think that he would be tired of vegetables and desperate to focus on something else once he is able to do so, but he harbours ambitions to explore alternative ways of growing – complex systems involving more perennial plants, partly inspired by some of the resourceful, knowledgeable and skilful farmers he has visited in Uganda. It seems Guy Watson is destined to think outside the box.