Family knows the secret to success

Nov 5 2007 by Peter McCusker, The Journal

Being an established family business with an established brand doesn’t guarantee success. Alastair Gilmour discovers that at Mark Toney’s there’s a mystery ingredient as well.

AS IF running a business weren’t tough enough, the unique position a family concern finds itself in gives it another layer of grit.

Succession planning, conflict resolution, communication, leadership and the whole subject of ownership can be positive attributes for company flexibility.

On the other hand, private enterprise is littered with examples of huge rifts and complications arising because, basically, you can’t choose your relatives. Fortunately, one of the North-East’s longest-surviving and most admired companies has spent 105 years in the kinship camp – and there’s no reason to think the next century-and-a-bit will be any different.

The name Mark Toney is synonymous with “quality and service since 1902” and not only because the ice-cream maker and café operator uses the phrase in its logo.

It’s one of those marques that inspires confidence, accomplishment, comfort, love and trust – the self-same attributes that keep families together.

Mark Toney operates five ice-cream parlours and cafés in Newcastle city centre, with a North Tyneside factory supplying the renowned frozen products and is also the base of a burgeoning wholesale and retail operation.

Living together and working together can create complications, of course. Expectations are high. Anthony Marcantonio, Mark Toney’s third-generation boss, shows a fleeting air of wistfulness when he says: “As the only son, it was absolutely expected that I would go into the family business; I had no choice whatsoever.”

He is enormously proud of the company he runs with his sister Angela and his wife Anne and, if pressed, probably wouldn’t have had it any other way, but hindsight clears one future potential hurdle in a candid manner.

Anthony says: “There’s no way I want to force our son Andrew into the business like that. He has just done a degree in business studies at Sheffield and wants a gap year.

“What we think he should do is work somewhere for a few years – which I didn’t do. It’s short-sighted to come straight in (to a family business) and I would have probably benefited from going out and about.”

Andrew’s older brother Stephen is an established IT specialist in London and the younger Matthew has a couple of years of teenage kicks left before he decides exactly what to do, so family loyalty may eventually prove too strong for the 22-year-old.

“I did business studies at Newcastle Polytechnic,” says Anthony. “I had to work in the shop as well, so I couldn’t go away to study and had to stay locally. My dad went straight into the business himself. When he was young he was offered apprenticeship terms by Newcastle United, but my grandfather just ripped the letter up and threw it away, saying ‘get yourself into the business’.”

Football hero in the family? Another reason for the wistful expression which Anthony converts into an impressive resumé of 1969 Newcastle United Inter Cities Fairs Cup results.

“Vitoria Setubal 5-1 at home,” he says. “Rangers 2-0 and Ujpesti Dosza 3-0 at St James’s Park. Then we were losing 2-0 at half-time in the away leg.” By now he’s involving Andrew at the other end of the office. “Losing 2-0 at half-time,” he repeats.

“I remember it well, June 11 1969; it was the night before my French O-level oral exam and I was supposed to be revising. I had to switch the radio off, I couldn’t listen to it. I still didn’t get my revision done.”

Those were the days when United players would troop to Mark Toney’s Percy Street premises, ostensibly for lunch. There were other attractions, however. Anthony says: “Ron McGarry, Wyn Davies, Ollie Burton, Bobby Moncur and Alan Foggon all used to come in. My dad George – you might remember the big fella at Percy Street – was a big racing man and it was a bit of a centre for gambling. There used to be a hot phone in the café; jockeys would phone up with tips and a lot of the footballers would come in for them. It was a different world then.

“Now we’re open seven days and evenings a week. These days you have to do more and more yourself to be more efficient, but I enjoy doing it. My dad was still working in the shop when he was 83 or 84.”

The Mark Toney story actually began before the 1902 arrival in Newcastle from Italy of Anthony Marcantonio’s grandfather Antonio. As a teenager in the late 19th Century he spent five years in England working with his father before the pair returned to their homeland. He came back with a young wife, Angela, and young child, the story being that Newcastle was as far as their fare would take them. Six more children followed.

“Most of the Italian families that came over at that time were from the same small area of the country between Rome and Naples,” says Anthony. “They were peasants, the going was hard, there really was a lot of hardship and decline. They heard there was a lot of business to be had in England and America – all through word of mouth.

“The Forte family came from that little area. Charles Forte (later to become head of the Trust Houses Forte group) had a lot of relations who went up to Scotland. There are still a lot of Fortes there, but he’s the most famous of the immigrants who came over and made good in catering, ice-cream and fish-and-chip shop businesses.

“They saw a gap in the market. The Italians had a big skill in ice-cream making; maybe the first ones who came over here knew how to do it and told them back home: ‘Hey, they love this product over here.’

“We’ve just been up to Scotland and there are still a lot more family businesses in the Italian ice-cream, coffee shop and catering business there. They’ve almost disappeared here. When you get down to the third and fourth generation of a family, some of them really don’t want to take the business on. Plus, a lot of them were set in their ways – anybody in business will tell you if you don’t change you’ll get left behind.

“We’re not immune from that by any means – there are so many places opening up in Newcastle, but what you’ve got to do is tighten your belt, get your head down and weather out the storm. It’s hard going; business nowadays is a lot more difficult to run, there’s so much red tape, so many more regulations and so many things to think about. Unless you’re a big business with specialists in many areas you get bogged down in admin and new regulations. That’s where a lot of small businesses struggle because they don’t have the specialists to work with.

“More and more you’re seeing more chains, the Starbucks and the Costas. They don’t buy from us; they don’t use local suppliers at all, they all have national deals. But where we do well is in the Italian restaurants, Indian restaurants, Chinese restaurants and all the other outlets and hotels which are still independent and still buy from us.

“We’re not just in ice-cream but do a range of frozen desserts including a couple of Italian leading brands which we specialise in.

“It allows us to offer a wider range and it’s a little bit more profitable. We’ve still got five retail units but our biggest growth area at the moment is in the wholesale business.

“We’re also moving into the retail side with ice-cream in Asda.”

A tie-up with Newcastle United (the association seems to have never been far away over 105 years) has seen Mark Toney produce black-and-white ice-cream for the club restaurants which is also stocked by 10 Asda stores across the North-East. The white is vanilla and the black is blackcurrant flavour, by the way.

Anthony says: “We’ve been a member of Northumbrian Larder for a few years now and we’re in Asda, so that’s a bit of a diversification in that we weren’t doing it a few years ago. It’s part of a ‘local buying’ scheme. Northumbrian Larder is funded by One NorthEast to work on behalf of small food producers in the region. The large supermarkets don’t want to deal with individual businesses, it’s too much admin, but this local hub means we now have 20-plus products in supermarkets.

“Local produce is a big, big thing and we were one of the first to get into it.

“Asda surveyed its customers and asked what was the most important thing for them. Price was first, promotions were second but what came out third was local sourcing. They’ve gone into it in a big way and because they’re keen to get local brands on board there are a lot of other supermarkets doing the same. We’re going to see Tesco on Thursday.

“You hear these stories about how it’s difficult to supply the supermarkets and that they really tie you down on price and they’re villains to deal with, but it’s a different story on local sourcing because the boot’s on the other foot. They’re keen to get local brands in so it’s a good time to be a small local brand with a good name. Tesco approached Northumbrian Larder – which a few years ago would have been unheard of.

“It’s an opportunity that was never there before. You’ve got to show you’ve got a professional set-up with all the proper practices and you’ve got to look the part. We’ve got good professional-looking packaging which sits easily alongside the national brands. We use Sumo locally for our design work and the designer Paul Rea – his family were in the ice-cream business.”

The Mark Toney management team – or should that be family pow-wow? – feels it’s at a size that it is comfortable with. Expansion and development in associated areas brings its own risks through stretching finances and exposure to outside influences taking their share of the cake.

“We’ve been on four or five shops in Newcastle for many, many years,” says Anthony. “I suppose other businesses would have tried to push on and open more units. We’re just a small family firm operating in the centre of Newcastle and getting on with our wholesale business. Rightly or wrongly we keep it at that size as it’s easily manageable in the set-up we have.

“We’ve got a chance to improve the business on the wholesale side where we’ve already got the infrastructure, the premises and the equipment. It doesn’t involve capital outlay, the structure is in place. The way forward is to keep our cafés on their toes, keep them looking the part and expand in low-risk, more-opportunity areas.”

There’s another element to the Mark Toney success story – sandwich fillings.

Anthony’s wife Anne says: “I got an email last week from an ex-pat Geordie in America who was trying to make French salad sandwiches ‘like Mark Toney’s’ and just couldn’t get it right. She asked what the magic ingredient was.”

Neither she nor Anthony could put their finger on the missing “link” – in families things just get done.

“The biggest success story was the cheese savoury sandwich,” says Anthony.

“It was invented by my Auntie Angela about 50 years ago. She came up with the recipe and the name just for use in our shops. Now you can travel the whole country and get them. We got them in Scotland last week and you can get them in London; Greggs sell them all over the country.”

The secret of success for family businesses may lie in allowing successors to find their own feet first (though starting at the sharp end has done no harm for the Mark Toney dynasty if Anthony, George and Antonio Marcantonio are anything to go by). There is a mystery ingredient, after all. The label on our French Salad sandwich reads: “Eggs, chopped pork, cucumber, tomato, lettuce, celery, onion and salad cream”.

But what it doesn’t say is: “Add 105 years of commitment and solidarity.”

It was absolutely expected that I would go into the family business; I had no choice

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The Questionnaire

What car do you drive?

Santa Fe 4x4

What’s your favourite restaurant?

De Pisis at the Bauer Il Palazzo on a terrace overlooking the Grand Canal in Venice, plus all the many local restaurants that buy from us.

Who or what makes you laugh?

Fawlty Towers and Monty Python.

What’s your favourite book?

Bill Bryson: A Short History of Nearly Everything.

What was the last album you bought?

Robert Plant and Alison Krauss: Raising Sand.

What’s your ideal job, other than the one you’ve got?

Musician and composer.

If you had a talking parrot, what’s the first thing you would teach it to say?

Yes, dear.

What’s your greatest fear?

Approaching old age and retirement.

What’s the best piece of business advice you have ever received?

If you stand still in business you go backwards.

What’s the worst piece of business advice?

I don’t know – I never listen to anyone, anyway. Just joking, I trust my own instincts.

What’s your poison?

Red wine.

What newspapers do you read, other than The Journal?

The Telegraph.

How much was your first pay packet and what was it for?

Working in the family business while still at school. Can’t remember the pay – probably nothing.

How do you keep fit?

Exercise bike and walking.

What’s your most irritating habit?

I don’t know, you’ll have to ask my wife, Anne.

What’s your biggest extravagance?

Holidays – travelling to new and exciting destinations.

Which historical or fictional character do you identify with/admire?

Hercule Poirot.

Which four famous people would you most like to dine with?

Christopher Columbus and Walt Disney (historical); Paul McCartney and Terry Wogan (current).

How would you like to be remembered?

Fondly.