Helping local food producers taste national success

Apr 7 2008 by Graeme King, The Journal

The task of putting North East food and drink on all the nation’s top tables is a big one, but County Durham-born Jack Jeffery just might have the experience and nous to get the job done. Graeme King met him at his hilltop home.

SUCH has been the long and varied nature of Jack Jeffery’s career, he now talks of even the most daunting and challenging issues in the same measured tones.

Whether dining at the Mansion House in the City of London, chairing one of the dozens of bodies he has been asked to lead, or taking on the future of the region’s food and drink industry, little seems to faze him.

At 78, most of us have long since stopped worrying about ascending to new peaks of achievement, but he seems hugely enthused by his role with the North East Food & Drink Group.

The group has a four-year contract with regional development agency One NorthEast with some pretty stretching targets ahead of it.

The aim is to take the region’s best produce and get it used, liked and respected UK wide, and abroad. The group wants to get North East produce sold in all the big supermarkets and in delicatessens around the country.

There are also targets about our produce becoming first choice in cafes, bars and restaurants – and for the quality of regional produce to be a driver of the tourist economy too -– as a reason for people to visit the region.

So not much to ask, but Jeffery also wants to take the group on from its current status and ensure it has a long- term future by making it more financially independent, rather than reliant on public sector funding.

A quick perusal of this man’s CV gives a fair indication of his appetite for achievement.

Having grown up on a farm where the family made its living selling produce from a market garden, Jeffery seems to have enjoyed quite an idyllic childhood, with space to play and importantly the benefit of intelligent and motivated parents and grandparents who allowed him to achieve his potential.

Speaking at his home of 12 years at Hedley on the Hill in the far south of Northumberland, he says: “I grew up on the other side of the Derwent valley from here, near Stanley.

“My grandfather was a big influence on me. He was a trade union official in local government and became an alderman of Durham County Council many, many years ago.

“My father was a plasterer – a good craftsman and a very intelligent man. He did the Observer Everyman crossword on a Sunday in half an hour.

“We lived in my grandfather’s house for the first years of my life, in Clough Dene. I was brought up on a farm, with a market garden and an orchard.

“I attended Stanley Grammar School, and then I did national service before going to King’s College in Newcastle to study chemistry and bacteriology. There was a stint in the coal board, learning his craft and working on a project to research the removal of contaminants from waste water at coking plants.

Then a big move arrived – taking him all the way down to the home counties in 1961 to work in the water industry, and he never looked back.

He says: “I always wanted to be a manager. Never saw myself as a scientist. I saw myself from a very young age as a manager. It’s about people and motivation. I was not terribly interested in columns of figures.

“The first part of my career was about where there was a job available when I first left university. I enjoyed research, enjoyed solving problems, but I quickly got interested in the operation of the treatment plant.

“I moved fairly quickly from that job into management, and then on to being managing director.”

Jeffery enjoyed a successful career in the water industry and got involved with many industry bodies, including becoming a member of the Worshipful Company of Plumbers, which saw him attending high profile events, including one at the Lord Mayor of London’s official residence in the capital at the Mansion House.

But after more than 40 years in the South East, Jeffery and his wife Deborah decided to return to his North East roots.

He says: “I moved back up here in 1996, we built this house here, and I gradually became more involved in the region again, initially through contacts at Durham County Cricket Club.

“I was also a member of the graduate society in the university, I became a director of the Durham Waste Management board and County Durham Environmental Trust, which supports all kinds of generally quite small local initiatives.

“Around 18 months ago, I took the chair of Northumbrian Larder. The key thing was to prepare a bid for the contract tender that One North East was putting together.

“I was asked if I would let my name go forward, by a man I had known for some years. They were looking for a new chairman, and would I be interested?

“I don’t think I would have thought of myself doing that. It was a different field, not something I had much knowledge of – though I like good food and nice wine.

“However I’m fortunate that in the general manager, Sandy Duncan, I have someone with vast practical experience. My role is to ensure the organisation is effective and well organised.

“It’s an ambitious programme we put to One NorthEast, but clearly I think it’s achievable or I would not put my name to it.

“I have had meeting after meeting with various sub-regional groups, all contributing to the regional economic strategy.

“The tricky thing is to find ways of getting the best out of those relationships as there’s a large number of organisations all with overlapping responsibilities and objectives.

“It’s about seeing how we can operate most effectively and efficiently. If we can get ourselves known and communicate what we are trying to do, then we will be doing a job.

“For example, if someone goes to Business Link wanting food related help, they could be directed to us. We are all trying to find the right organisation to find the help food producers and catering establishments are looking for.”

Jeffery has clearly formulated ideas as to how the food and drink industry can be assisted in reaching a wider market and making a larger contribution to the regional economy.

He says: “There is a need to demonstrate high quality in the products we produce. It’s not enough to have good products, you need to demonstrate the quality through accreditation.

“And we need to make producers aware of what they need to do, to meet the high standards expected by bodies like the Food Standards Agency.”

But for all the good intentions of Jeffery and his colleagues getting our produce up the agenda, do we not need a greater critical mass in the food and drink industry?

With a larger pyramid of regional producers, that in itself will help find the quality surely?

Jeffery is not sure the question is simply about size.

“As a principle, yes, if we get more people establishing businesses, that ought to be good.

“But we also need to give advice on market potential in particular fields.

“As a body, we have a feel for market opportunities, and it would be remiss of us if we were encouraging people to enter a field that was already over crowded.

“We need to try to develop the market. We can work with members to promote local food, persuade hotels and restaurants to stock it – in partnership with people like The Journal on Taste, and support local producers wherever possible – then we can expand the market.

“You just have to look around. Even in the time I’ve lived back up here, I have seen a big improvement in the standards of local food, the standard of restaurants.

“It’s an indicator that the whole area of food and drink has moved up the agenda. Even here in the village at Hedley, The Feathers always had a good reputation, but now the new man has built on that and it has become more of a restaurant than a pub.

“His menus include on the back a map of the region and the locations where he buys the ingredients from – that sort of thing is brilliant in developing interest in local food.”

Jeffery is also of the belief that the world’s growing awareness of the importance of the environmental agenda may help the North East Food & Drink Group with its mission.

He says: “One of the factors in the shift from local food in the past was the availability of out of season foods from wherever they came from in the world.

“Now people are looking more at sustainability, CO2 emissions – all those things. There is a climate for looking at things a bit differently. So I think we are pushing at an open door.”

Jeffery is also keen to pursue a more commercial angle to his group’s approach – since public sector funding is becoming harder to come by.

He says: “We need to develop a commercial income stream – it is very important the regional food group, three years from now, can fulfil the needs of the food producers in a commercial way.

“Public sector funding has been vital to prime the pump, but this four-year contract we have now ought to give an opportunity for the things we do to help the bottom line.

“As people recognise the need to be aware of regulatory pressures, training will become more important. The legal requirement for accreditation in the food industry has not been fully understood.

“There is also scope in providing opportunities for food producers to display their wares.

“I was recently at an international food exhibition at Docklands in London. We took a stand there and charged producers to go, which gave them the opportunity to meet their potential market.

“There is scope to develop that sort of thing, but we need to be sure what people want.”

So the cause of North East food and drink seems well set to shift up the regional agenda, and its chairman is determined to see it succeed.

He concludes: “The key point I want to make is the importance of all of us working together to ensure the North-East progresses and that my little bit, the Regional Food & Drink Group, contributes to that prosperity.”