Souped-up success story now dishing up healthy kids meals

WILD GEESE: John StapletonCo-founder and managing director of Little Dish, London

IF, AS BEETHOVEN said, “only the pure of heart can make good soup” then John Stapleton is pure indeed.

Founding the New Covent Garden Soup Company in London in 1987, a company sold a decade later for £22 million, his soup was not only good but profitable. It’s a success he credits to happenstance.

“People ask me at talks about careers, ‘how do you plan your career?’ but I’m not really the person to ask,” says the Roscommon native.

Graduating with a degree in industrial microbiology from UCD in 1986, a time when “things were very bleak”, he says leaving Ireland was a natural step. Opting for a Masters in Food Science and Technology at Reading University, a career in food for this farmer’s son seemed like a safe bet.

“I thought food is essential. It’s not a fad, it’s not going to go away so there’s got to be some security in that.”

Determined not to spend his career “in a white coat”, a chance meeting in the final months of his course with Andrew Palmer, a stockbroker who thought there might be money in fresh soup, proved pivotal.

“Purely by accident I bumped into him. We went down the pub for lunch and stayed until closing time. He was a pure entrepreneur and I was a pure scientist but we got on really well and decided to implement the idea.”

Believing that the canned and packet versions on the market were a poor imitation of real soup, the pair set about creating a fresh alternative. Convincing retailers that punters would buy soup from chilled cabinets and not the soup aisle where they’d always found it was one of the biggest hurdles.

“It was a big ask. We had lots of really difficult conversations with retailers,” recalls Stapleton.

Patenting a process that made the soup safe with the minimum of processing, in 1988 the pair persuaded Waitrose to give their product a trial run in 50 stores. Things took off from there.

In the weeks after the product hit the shelves, Stapleton recalls his excitement when a friend from home came to visit and they spotted a customer picking up his soup in Waitrose.

“We followed them the whole way to the checkout to make sure they bought it. We were jumping up and down and high-fiving each other saying ‘hey, someone’s just bought my soup’.”

Selling the company in 1997 to Daniels, which still owns the brand, Stapleton says while the venture was “a long slog”, its shareholders “got out quite happy in the end”. Having established the new fresh soup category in the UK, Stapleton’s next move was to take the idea Stateside; something by his own admission was less successful.

“There’s less of a perception there that fresh equals quality,” he says. “In the States with a refrigerated product with a short shelf life they kind of think, ‘that’s not convenient’ . . . they are quite happy with the quality they get from frozen food.”

He says the lack of a national chilled distribution system was also a stumbling block and $4 million invested to build the company’s own factory took a long time to claw back.

“It took us four years to break even and in the end, that was just a bit too long,” he says. “Long story short, we pulled out but that was another interesting learning experience.”

After doing some consultancy work back in the UK for a few years, Stapleton hit on his current venture. At a time when Jamie Oliver was campaigning for better food for school children, Stapleton was put in touch with his current business partner Hillary Graves and in 2006, the pair founded Little Dish, a range of nutritionally balanced ready meals for children.

“We put a lot of emphasis on provenance and make sure our ingredients come from reputable sources. We have dieticians who look at nutritional composition to make sure it’s exactly right for children of that age.”

The company is now backed by the team behind the Innocent Drinks range and is stocked in Waitrose, Tesco and Sainsbury’s in the UK and in Tesco and Superquinn in Ireland.

He says sales have been buoyant in the last 18 months. “In 2011, we hit about £7.9 million in revenues and in any one week, we feed about 100,000 kids.”

Does he think parents feel guilty about buying pre-packed food for their children?

“Absolutely, but you can’t keep going on about it . . . there is no point in saying ‘buy Little Dish because you’ll feel less guilty’ because who is to say you should feel guilty in the first place?

“We try to be reassuring. We’re not suggesting you have this seven days a week but this is the best possible healthy alternative, short of making it yourself. If you don’t have time, Little Dish is just a helping hand. It’s healthy, it tastes good and your kid will like it.”

Of his experience of working in the UK he says: “Irish people are very well thought of. You’ve got to prove yourself of course, but it gets you in the door.”

He also thinks the Celtic Tiger has brought positives. “It has given Irish people a lot more self confidence . . . if they went abroad, they didn’t feel inferior. That element of inferiority in the ’50s, ’60s and even the ’80s when I left, that’s not the case any more.”

And he is praising of his adopted country’s respect for entrepreneurship. “The UK has great respect for enterprise. If you can show you’ve got a good idea and the right approach to make it work, success speaks for itself.”

The UK has great respect for enterprise. If you can show you’ve got a good idea and the right approach to make it work, success speaks for itself