Can fast food be healthy and affordable? The trio behind restaurant chain Leon set out to test that theory. So far, it's worked like a dream
Fans of healthy food can thank the M4 for Leon. It was the experience of charging up and down the motorway from London to a client in Newbury that spurred on management consultants John Vincent and Henry Dimbleby to launch their healthy fast-food business in partnership with chef Allegra McEvedy. "What crystallised the idea was standing in front of neon-lit chiller cabinets and trying to decide what I'd least mind having to eat—or going to KFC and eating fried food," says Dimbleby.
McEvedy, a long-term friend of Dimbleby's, had been working as a chef for years, but harboured an ambition to cook for the masses, not just an exclusive few. She worked at the River Café in London and Robert de Niro's Tribeca Grill in New York, before she returned to London to run a community centre restaurant. "You don't have to have Michelin stars to make a difference as a chef," she says. "Good food is a right; everyone should be able to eat seasonally and to eat well for a fiver."
The trio started speaking seriously about the plans in 2003 and in July 2004 the first Leon (named after Vincent's father) opened in Carnaby Street in London's West End. In hindsight the idea of a healthy fast-food chain seems a blindingly obvious gap in an otherwise saturated London restaurant market, but not everyone was convinced when they first heard about the idea. "Some said it was a really great idea, but others said that if it were possible it would have been done already," says Dimbleby, who is the son of cookery writer Josceline Dimbleby and TV presenter David Dimbleby, and a former chef himself. Evidently the sceptics were wrong because four years and a sack full of glowing reviews later—The Times' Giles Coren called it "the fast food of the future"—London now has eight Leon restaurants and many more planned. The first outside the capital opens in Bristol this autumn.
The Leon team refuse to accept compromise. "All the things that are good for you—like mung bean salad, wet and woolly service at organic cafes and jogging in the rain—involve some degree of sacrifice, and everything that is lovely—like fast cars and foreign holidays—involves guilt. You are always in the position where you either feel guilty or you are giving something up," says Dimbleby. "Leon is like the Good Life, where there should be no compromise between what is good and what is lovely and beautiful," adds Vincent.
Ironically, they found their inspiration in Burger King and McDonald's. "We thought that if we looked at them and replicated the things they do well and changed the things that were maybe a little bit broken, we might have an opportunity," says Vincent. From working the tills and flipping burgers at a fast food outlet a friend franchised, they worked out the processes and mechanisms required, and how to manage speed and output.
The inspiration is evident in Leon restaurants. The main difference is, of course, what goes through the food chutes. "You know when you are eating Leon food," says McEvedy. "It is gutsy and bold—it is meant to make you go 'Yum!' rather than just shovelling in your lunch and not thinking about it." Moroccan meatballs, super-food salads, falafel, wraps, soups and smoothies are just a few of the healthy items on the seasonally changing menu, which also lists if items are wheat free, have low GI or contain good sugars. But for Vincent the main emphasis is not on the health aspect. "The fact that our food is healthy should be a given, but first and foremost Leon is a place where you get real food quickly," he says.
Another factor that separates Leon from other fast-food joints is each restaurant's own personality. Books and board games pack the bookshelves and the furniture is a random but welcoming selection. Experience in marketing, including a stint with Procter & Gamble, means Vincent naturally wears the marketing and branding hat. He explains the most important thing for Leon was to be human. "We wanted a brand that was non-corporate. Because we wanted Leon to represent an idea and for it not to be so rigid that it represented some descriptive corporate identity, there are no corporate colours or logo," he says. "When you go into a Leon restaurant, we want you to feel like you are standing in the gateway to a better world."
At their first venture in Carnaby Street, Dimbleby and Vincent managed front of house while McEvedy worked the kitchen. It was an exhausting time, but the hard work paid off: after just six months Leon won the Observer Food Monthly award for best newcomer of the year. "To get that recognition was so nice because we were exhausted and nearly going under. It was a real penny-counting time," says McEvedy.
The Observer award had a huge impact: revenue went up by 40 per cent and since then it has risen by another 40 per cent. According to McEvedy the success of Leon is just a part of a greater change in society. "We've definitely had some dark culinary years in this country, in the 1970s and 1980s," she says. "But we now have a very strong local and seasonal ethic and people are really starting to listen to things about organic and sustainable food." She predicts that Leon won't be the only restaurant to serve healthy fast food. "We don't want to be the only place. But we were the first to do it successfully in multiple restaurants and we hope to stay at the top," she says.
Dimbleby, as the chief executive, is responsible for the day-to-day running of the business and says that the hands-on experience of running the restaurant has proved crucial in maintaining staff satisfaction. "It helps enormously to have had that experience. The most powerful people in this business are behind the tills and cooking the food in the kitchen. They work ferociously hard for us and do an amazing job and having an understanding of that when you set up how to pay and reward people helps," he says.
McEvedy thinks their employees are happy, "bouncy", passionate and engaged because they buy into the ethos that good food should be available on every high street. "We don't have uniforms and we don't feed them any lines to say to the customers because it is important to us that they are themselves," she says. "We do have rules but mostly it is about respect." She does what she describes as the "heart and soul" training. "I explain where the dishes come from, the inspiration and the values and I go through the dishes at the seasonal tastings and take staff to the market," she says. "It is just about getting staff to think about what goes into the dishes and why I have put them together the way I have."
In a time of rapidly passing food fads and no shortage of bandwagons to jump on, the Leon team refuses to join in. The seasonal menu lets them stick to targets of sourcing 70 per cent of produce within the UK and 90 per cent within Europe. The remaining 10 per cent include products such as coffee, rice and chocolate, which are either Fairtrade or organic. But Leon restaurants are not entirely organic in output, a decision that goes back to the desire to serve the best food for the most people.
"You have to decide what is important for you and first and foremost what we want to do is to revolutionise fast food," says Dimbleby. "We want to do good food that anyone can afford, rather than just the rich housewives in Kensington." But that doesn't mean the quality is compromised. Chicken, for example, is free-range and comes from a family farm in Devon that Dimbleby and McEvedy regularly visit to make sure they are happy with the conditions the chickens come from. Their RSPCA good business award for maintaining high standards for animal welfare in the food industry is testament to their commitment. "We communicate very explicitly what we do and we don't pretend to have all the answers yet, but we are very honest," says Dimbleby. "You'll never see the words 'where possible' anywhere in Leon because what does that mean?" They insist they will not sell the successful business but, says Dimbleby, there will be exit points for investors along the way. Backers include industry heavyweights James Horler, who made his name with tapas chain La Tasca, Ian Neill from Wagamama and Gavyn Davies, the former BBC chairman who is a major investor through Active Capital, his private equity firm. They all offer valuable advice, but they have no direct influence on the direction of Leon. "We have very clever people on the board and we want to get as much input from our investors as possible, but Leon isn't done by committee. In other words we need it to be its own culture rather than the sum of the different cultures on the board," explains Vincent.
The lofty ambition is to open 2,020 restaurants worldwide by 2020. Vincent says there are 150—300 UK sites ripe for a Leon outlet, but property licensing is proving a considerable challenge. Commercial properties are zoned according to activity and while Prêt a Manger gets away with the A1 category for takeaway and retail properties, Leon—because it serves mainly hot food—falls into the A3 restaurant category, and A3 licenses are in short supply on Britain's high streets. "It is an antiquated law that the government should just hurry up and change," argues Vincent. "If we are going to help people to eat healthier food, [the government] has to wake up and recognise that Leon should be allowed to go into retail sites in the same way as firms such as Prêt a Manger, Coffee Republic or Benugo."
For McEvedy, keeping the consistency of the quality of the food as the company grows is crucial. "You are only as good as your last meatball. The minute the super-food salad isn't so super anymore you have a problem," she says. Vincent says that Leon is still a work in progress. "People have been very kind about the food, but we think it can be even better," he says.
As the chain grows to hundreds of branches, they face a massive challenge in keeping the independent small-business spirit. Is there a temptation to replicate the success in even more sites and then sit back and enjoy it for a bit? "I am really proud because I think we have managed to get to where we are without compromising," says Dimbleby. "The minute we compromise we could destroy the business overnight, because the essence of Leon is that you don't need to compromise." That'll be a no, then.
