Cambridge Cluster

Image via WikipediaCallestick Farm dairy ice cream was started in 1989 and has grown quickly supplying over 600 customers including Doble Quality Foods – Suppliers to Caterers in Cornwall and South Devon.  One look at the Callestick website and you can taste that delicious ice crea – Oh! the calories!

I like the message on the Callestick website to frozen food distributors “Frozen Food Distributors who are still buying and selling produce on price alone are being left behind. Offering bland, mass-market ice cream just won’t do – end customers are now demanding high quality, pure and natural ice creams in exciting flavours, made with only the finest ingredients and using time-honoured methods. Are you offering what they want?”.  It is quite a call to action.  Doble Quality Food only supplies the best, obviously!

Callestick can produce over 5,000 litres of ice-cream a day so that takes some eating.  However there is a little information on the owners – it is interesting to see how different each website is.  I wonder how this very impressive growth has been funded and how and why they set out to supply the nation rather than keeping to the South West.  Did they use a business plan resource and raise outside funding?  Of course, the disadvantage of the ice-cream business is that the distribution of the product is so costly whereas the best of Cambridge Cluster products can be delivered down an optical cable to the world.

Image via WikipediaJohn Mackay is founder, ceo and chair of Whole Foods which employs 54,000 people in the USA and UK. He had an anonymous blog with 1,400 posts over 8 years pushing the Whole Foods business. He has just been cleared of any wrong doing and blames it all on being highly competitive. However that trait also explains his success so he claims and, of course, it was the way he was brought up.

Mr Mackey admits to having spent much of the last year doing a “tremendous amount of personal growth work” including meditation, counselling and integrated breath work. I wonder how he treated he angel investors, if he had any.

It is always nice to be able to blame the family for your nasty traits – I am sure he wont pass them down to the next generation. I wonder if they all sit round together for an integrated breath session at meal times.

Now a public company, Whole Foods would be most unusual in the UK to have someone in the combined role of chair and ceo of a public company. I guess Sir Alan Sugar combines all three titles (including founder). Whole Foods would make a great Equity Fingerprint. It would be interesting to hear the views of his early investors, if he needed any.