Hello and welcome to Storytelling For Business, the podcast that helps you build better customer relationships by telling stories your clients want to hear. I'm Katie Flamman. I'm a voiceover artist specialising in corporate storytelling. I've worked with clients like Sainsbury's, Able and Cole and Schwartz, helping them to share brand stories and business developments. But why is business storytelling important? What makes a great story and how can storytelling create leads for businesses and build lasting client relationships? I'm on a mission to find out the answers and I'll be sharing my discoveries along the way.

In today's episode, we're talking food retail with entrepreneur and coach Mark Turnbull from Turnbull's of Alnwick. So let's get started. Mark Turnbull's story is what you might call a classic. His family Butchers Turnbull's of Alnwick was founded in 1880 when Queen Victoria was on the throne. The electric lights were a wacky new invention, and the average wage was £42 a year. It's hard to believe then that six generations later, Mark's business is still thriving despite competition from supermarkets, society, pressures to eat less meat, and of course the pandemic. So let's find out the next chapter in this story of resilience and reinvention. Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Hi Katie, how are you?

I'm really good, thanks. Thank you so much for being here.

Oh, you're very welcome. Thanks for having us.

Well, I want to start by just finding out what is your business? Can you tell me a little bit more about it?

So I think as you said in the introduction, we were actually established back in 1880 by a guy called Roger Turnbull, who I think was my great-great grand business, was then passed down to my great-grand and his brother Moody and John Turnbull was then passed down to my Grand Bobby Turnbull. Then my dad, John and his two brothers, Roger and Peter Turnbull, took over the business in mid-1970s. I think I would be about five or six, mid to late 1970s. They actually acquired the shop next door in Alnwick Town Centre in a little town in Northumberland, and they knocked the two shops into one and we became a much bigger shop and we expanded back in late 1970s.

We opened a sandwich bar, which looking back's really interesting. It was probably quite forward thinking at the time. I don't feel I'll always give my dad and his two brothers enough credit for where they put the business back in the day, if that makes sense. And we also opened a green grocery, so we became a bit of a mini food hall, if you like, I guess back in the late seventies. I joined the business in 1987.

So how old were you then?

I was 16. So, it's funny because I've reflected on this quite a bit lately, just out of interest more than anything. But I did walk away from school with, at the time was six, I think it was five or six O levels, including a grade A English literature. Back in the day, you could get a grade A English literature, even though your language wasn't very good. I always struggled with my spelling at school. And anyway, I walked away with six O levels, so I probably could have gone on to do university and stuff like that, but it was never an option in my head. From about the age of 14, I'd worked Saturdays and school holidays. I used to get paid a pound an hour and I could work-

Don't spend it all at once.

Oh yeah. But then I could get my money, I could go through the Newcastle City Centre and I was into clothes as a 16 year old. I was into music. I loved the Pet Shop Boys. The Pet Shop Boys were just massive in my life back in 1987. So I'd spend my money on records, cassette, CDs as they started coming in and clothes. I guess I was blinded by that a little bit back then, and that was just I'd made my mind up at 16. I was going to work in the family business.

Was it ever an option at all from your parents? Was there pressure on your parents to just take over or was it just kind of naturally organic, this is what's happening?

I would say it was naturally organic. There was certainly never any pressure. It was a decision I made. I've never regretted that decision.

It's really interesting because I'm talking to all kinds of different businesses and kind of startups and people who just run the business by themselves. And to have that story, that history of the family business behind you, do you think it made it difficult going forward to try and reinvent things? I mean, you talked about your forward thinking dad and his brothers opening up a sandwich shop, and how have you found that in terms of the pressure maybe from the family or that weight of history?

Yeah, I was just about to say I've never felt any pressure whatsoever. It's just not in my nature really. I do what I do. It was a natural progression, I guess. As I look back, it's almost like I was charging ahead without thinking where the business had come from at times.

Yeah, always looking to the future.

Yeah, absolutely. And back in I think 1988, I'd been in there about a year and we started... I'd always been into computers, strangely enough, I guess it probably explains a lot when it comes to being hands-on as a butcher. I'm certainly not the country's best butcher. In fact, I've no desire to be known as a great butcher. I can do everything I need to do. I've learned it all, but always had an interest in computers. And I think back in 1988, we had introduced computers, which at the time we were probably quite forward thinking. We got payroll, we were one of Sage, everybody that has heard of Sage, Accountancy Sage payroll, we were one of Sage's first clients back in 1988 or something. And I drove all of that forward. So I very quickly at a young age at about 17 got involved on the actual business side of things.

So do you think of yourself as a business owner, an entrepreneur or a butcher or something else?

A business owner and entrepreneur first. Butchery just happens to be, food retail just happens to be the vehicle that I've got into and it is what I know best. I look back as well, I guess my mom, when I was growing up, she had a bookshop. So I remember growing up being very little and she owned a bookshop and we used to spend school holidays, we'd be sat in the bookshop sometimes. I have vague memories of that. And then when we were a little bit older, she opened a fitness centre, she did our training down in London. She became a fitness instructor, and this was probably early eighties, which once again, she was very forward thinking. So I guess I had a bit of an entrepreneurial background. I'd grown up seeing my mom and dad drive businesses forward. So it's probably had an impact on the direction I took.

So take me on a virtual tour of your food hall. If you come in through the door, what sights and smells assault your senses when you step inside?

So the vision behind the food hall, we very much wanted it to be, I didn't want to call it the Turnbull's Northumbrian Food Hall. It didn't really at the time feel maybe wanted something a little bit more sexier or trendier, I don't know, than Turnbull's Northumbrian Food Hall. But we had to run with it in the end because it summed up what we wanted to do. We wanted to showcase local Northumbrian produce. Northumberland has got much better at doing it. Places like Scotland, Wales, Yorkshire, regional food through the 2000s, 2010 onwards started real growth because they'd pumped some money in. Northumberland County Council actually did a great job or have done a great job over the last probably 6 to 10 years, I guess certainly the last decade of driving forward the Northumberland food brand. So we wanted the food hall to be a showcase of Northumbrian food. Obviously it started-

What is it? What is Northumbrian food? Sorry to interrupt you.

So you walk through the door, we've got fresh fruit and vegetables, for example. We will buy Northumbrian. It's quite difficult at the minute. I think I have leeks and Swedes in there. I've strawberries from Spain. So it's like wherever possible we want to showcase local food, fruit and veg. Obviously all our meat, our beef, our lamb, we buy still out of the local auction mart. Pigs, we buy from local abattoirs. We deal direct with some farmers both in Northumberland and we buy some out the borders. Now, Northumbrian actually stretches from the Hull to Edinburgh. I don't know whether you knew that. So Northumbrian legally gives us a slightly bigger area to work with. We buy a lot of cattle-

Which is helpful, I'm sure.

...direct out the farms in the borders. We get some fantastic beef. We've built up a great relationship with the farmer up in the borders. So all the meat is local. Then we take that meat and then we process it into things such as bacon, sausages, we do pies, cooked meats. So a whole range of things. And then on top of that, we sell a lot of local cheeses, dairy produce. So I guess the idea is that, we are not a supermarket first and foremost, we are very much a specialty retailer, but at the same time, we want you to be able to cook a fantastic meal using wherever possible local ingredients. I guess that's the aim. But once again, the idea in the homeware and gift section is we want to wherever possible, showcase local people's local craft, wherever possible. So the business grew and grew and grew. And I now tell the story that it was the journey of a family butcher to a million pound food hall. So that was the journey from the mid-nineties.

The food hall location. If we fast forward to probably about 2014, 2015, the business had grown to such a size where it was, where did we go from there? What was the next step. Alnwick as a town as probably many market towns around the UK was developing out of town. I think it was about 2008. There was a big Sainsbury's and Argos had opened. There'd been a big sports centre had opened at the-

So kind of retail parks.

Yeah, so it was very much going down retail parks and the town centre was definitely in decline. I would always give a positive message out that the town centre was the life and soul of Alnwick. And I guess deep down my business brain was constantly asking the question, where is this going? Where is this going?

I don't know if it's too dramatic to say adapt or die, but you decided that the next chapter in your business story needed to be an out of town food hall and is the food hall thriving?

So it is now, but it's been a journey. So we opened, we take it back where it was a rollercoaster ride to get there and I guess what I've learned is that you don't double in size overnight and it's easy. That isn't going to happen. Brought a designer in to design the food hall who had come highly recommended. His costs spiralled out of control to the point where we couldn't afford it and I think it cost us £10,000 just to get out of... We had to pay them £10,000 just for some plans that they drawn up. So I literally ended up as being project manager. This was before we'd even stepped on site to start kitting the place out. So we delayed and eventually we got in in October, 2019 to start kitting the place out. My initial goal when I look back was crazy, but it was to take an empty shell and to kit the place out in six weeks and people kept telling us I couldn't do it.

And as your costs start spiralling, you deal with them. I do chuckle when I look back on how we managed, A large focus of the finance was on NatWest. We'd applied for £150,000 NatWest loan, came through weeks after we'd opened, weeks after we'd opened, just before Christmas I think we managed to get the money through. So in the meantime, I got the bank of dad, literally went to my dad and said, "Dad got this problem. NatWest loan hasn't come through. Can you help us out?" And my dad's lived and breathed the business all his life and he didn't mind at all. He just handed-

This is hot.

Cashed his pensions in and handed over £150,000. Sorry, I do get a bit emotional when I tell this story. So that was great. We had the £150,000. The problem was when the £150,000 came through from NatWest, I'd spent that already. We'd overspent and I'd used... So when the NatWest money came in, so I'd actually spent my dad's £150,000. The overspend came from the-

Katie Flamman 13:08:

That is pressure.

That's pressure. At that point, that was pressure. We'd focused on getting open for Christmas and literally from the 6th of September till the 24th of... Sorry, the 6th of December till the 24th of December, the focus was just on Christmas. Then we had to get New Year out the way. And then January, it's kind of like the calm after the storm, it's our quietest month. So we hit January. Now M&S hasn't opened. M&S planned their opening for the end of January, beginning of February. So for eight weeks we literally sat, there is a Starbucks drive-through on the estate. They'd opened probably about three weeks before us-

But nothing else?

Mark Turnbull 13:49:

Nothing else, nothing else there at all. No M&S, just Turnbull's and Starbucks. So we actually, when I look back, I'm quite proud of how we managed to trade, but what was worrying for myself that I didn't share with anybody at the time was that the two businesses, the town centre shop and this brand new food hall were trading at similar levels. So it was like all of a sudden you've got these little doubts in the back of your mind saying, have we made a mistake here? We doubled in size and all of a sudden the town centre shop and this brand new food hall trading at similar levels. So this was in January.

January, 2020,

January, 2020, I went away skiing, myself and my son. I got back and two key members of staff handed the notice in. It was a Friday morning. I got the phone call, two key members. There was a full-time baker and a full-time butcher. And the butcher had been with us for 20 years. We'd lost a few key members of staff, which we knew we would because it was a change in business. But this was a blow in February for me personally. So I had all these challenges, two key members, and I remember going to bed every night in February and literally, my mum brought us up as a religious person, but I don't go to church and I don't really pray. But I can tell you in February of 2020, every night I went to bed and said a prayer every night.

And my prayer, I wasn't bothered about the food or the business or anything. All I wanted was to get my dad's money back. At that point, nothing else mattered, just wanted to get my dad's money back. And every night I would go to bed and it's funny and that I've got to be careful how I put this, but COVID wasn't sent by God to save Turnbull's, but COVID did save Turnbull's and it got my dad his money back and it's not something I'm proud of because I know a lot of businesses struggled through Covid. So I have to be careful how I share this story. But for me personally, it saved our business.

There was three crucial things happened to us that saved the business in 2020. The first one was, we'd set this up as two separate businesses. Both businesses got a grant of 25,000 pounds. So 50,000 pounds had come in and then I remember driving through listening to Five Live and they announced the government bounce back loans. Now what we've got to remember is I'd spent about three or four months trying to borrow £150,000 off NatWest and literally I got back from the fruit and vegetable market. I picked the phone up and phoned our finance director and I said to Trisha, I said, bounce back loans. She literally applied one £50,000 loan for each company and by the end of the day we had a £100,000 in the bank account.

So there's my dad's £150,000 coming into the business. Yeah, the VAT had become a big problem for us because there were massive VAT costs in setting the food hall up and we managed to defer the VAT payment because of COVID. And that was the third thing that allowed us to save the business. Of course what happened is all of a sudden everybody who was being told not to go to work was stuck at home. The weather was fantastic. They announced furlough and all of a sudden everybody's at home with nothing to do. What did they start doing? They started cooking at home. The restaurants were shut..

And I remember a good friend of mine, he said, "For all these years we thought supermarkets has been our mainstream competition and actual fact they weren't our competition, restaurants were our competition."

That's so interesting.

Yeah, you would be going in on a Monday and you were selling more steak on a Monday than what you'd ever sold on a Saturday before because every day was the same. So quite literally our business took off. Into June, we thought we were busy then. I don't know whether you remember, things slightly opened up for the summer.

In the summer, uh-um.

But of course there was no international travel. So what happened is everybody decided to come on holiday to Northumberland.

It's a very beautiful part of the world, isn't it?

Absolutely. I mean the tourism industry for us in Northumberland, it's huge. The coastline is just beautiful. Coast and castles. We always get great weather, but it's never as bad as what people make it out to be. The summer of 2020, the weather was fantastic. So we got overrun. People couldn't go abroad, bed and breakfast hotel, everybody was selling out and we thought we were busy in the summer of 2020 we thought we'd gone to an unbelievable level. 2021, we hadn't gone to an unbelievable level. 2021, we went to an even higher level. 2022, it ramped up again. So every year we just got busier and busier and busier. So COVID was definitely the tipping point. What would've happened without COVID, I'm sure we'd have been fine. I'm sure the summer would've come and I'm sure we'd have traded successfully. But in my head, back in February of 2020, I didn't think we were going to make in the summer. So quite literally at the time it did save the business and it kind of answered my prayers in a sort of roundabout way.

Well, I don't know about praying, but it seems to me you owe your success to maybe some lucky breaks, but some strong business skills as well. And I think we make our own luck. And one of your major strengths is marketing, isn't it?

The key advice to any business is whether you're in food retail or whatever you do is the key is to market your business. You can be the best at what you do, but if nobody knows about it, you're never going to grow your business. That would definitely be the advice.

How important is your story to that marketing?

Stories? It's much more interesting to listen to somebody talk, who's got stories to tell? And when it comes to marketing your own business, it's the same. So I always want to tell a story. We do every year, we do a pork pie festival. Pork pies, they're not massive for us, but when we do pork pie festival, we literally sell lots of pork pies, but we do a range of about eight different pork pies and we decided to do Britain's most expensive pork pie. I've had this idea in my head for a long, long time and I have a marketing guy now who does everything for us and he'd run with it in August, 2022.

So what goes into Britain's most expensive pork pie?

Well, yeah, this is the thing. I was-

Caviar.

There was caviar in it funny enough. So, I hadn't done any of the work behind it. My pork pie would've been completely different to the one we did, which worried us because I don't think it would've been the best pork pie, but there was caviar literally on the top of the pork pie.

That's hilarious.

Anyway, we made the pie. We made one for each shop and sold it at a price of a £100, £99.99 I think or something, a £100 effectively. And Matthew put it out on social media and within five minutes he came to see us and he said, "Mark, we've got a problem here." Said, "Somebody's just replied to the comment, how dare you do Britain's most expensive pork pie when we're in the middle of a cost of living crisis." Because this was all just kicking off back in August last year, and literally it was an oversight. So he'd told this great story because he was the marketing guy, but he hadn't covered off this... When you tell a story, you have to think these things through, and we hadn't thought it through properly, but instantly, and this is where you've sometimes just got to think on your feet.

I said, "Look, we haven't thought this through, but here's what I'm going to say to you. If we sell that pork pie, we don't want the hundred quid for it. Let's just give it to the local food bank." So literally he replied to the comment on social media and explained this, and it's funny, when we were only doing it as a bit of fun to create a story that we could put out to the media and get some-

Publicity.

Attention on the back of it. So publicity, effectively we were buying publicity and the money from the pie was alright. We weren't bothered about selling the pie. In fact, I didn't want to sell the pie because I knew how bad it would taste. And we'd only made two and couldn't taste it. We should have made one and tried it first. So anyway, he'd replied to this comment to say that anybody who buys it, the money will be donated. And she came back and it was like we were, all of a sudden we were like golden balls, if that makes sense. David Beckham thing. We just transformed that comment and the next thing before we knew it within a day, it had appeared in every single national newspaper that I can think of around the country, either online or actual physical printed in the paper.

And I think we ended up doing about two or three radio interviews and we did a radio interview on Radio Newcastle and on the back of that we sold both pies, which was a challenge because the pies at that point had been sat in the counter for five days and I didn't think they would've tasted very good on day one. But fortunately, both people didn't want the pie. They just wanted to give the money to the food bank.

Lovely.

Anyway, in the end, it was a great story, we hadn't thought it through very well at the start, but it's a great example of how when you start telling stories, marvellous things can happen for your business.

You've come from a high street listed building to this amazing out of town food hall and both the businesses are now thriving. Where do you see your business story going next and where's the story going to go in the next five years?

That's a great question. So I do have a vision statement. One of the things that I've taken from a mastermind group across in America, retail mastermind group, we all have vision statements. So I know exactly where I'm going to be in five years time. The food hall will just continue as it is. I have no desire to open a chain of food halls. I'm quite happy with what we've got. Still a little bit of uncertainty, but the goal is to make our food hall one of the best independent food retail outlets in the UK. That remains the target. I think we're getting close.

You've won awards, haven't you?

We've won lots of awards over the years. The business is phenomenal. At times, it's been hard work. The last three years, there's been a lot of hard work to get there. For me personally, we've managed to take the town centre shop to a level where what I describe as run on rails, so everything just happened. The food hall I've had to drag there. So it's been hard work for everybody in the business to get it and it still is. This is a five year project and we're not there, we're not out the woods yet, but we know where we're going and the future certainly looks good now, but is a five year project and all the loans, all the finance we took was a five-year project.

We've developed this million pound food hall and we're getting close to the finish line. So we just want to keep developing that. We just want to get better and better at what we do. On top of that, I've started a coaching business. I'm now coaching around about six or seven independent food retail businesses and I've launched what I call the Retail Success Club. So, I guess the coaching side of the business is I've got this 25, 30 years of knowledge and I just want to share it and give it back to other people to allow them to drive their businesses forward. So that's a big part of the next five years as well for myself personally.

That's fantastic Mark, thank you so much. It's been really interesting talking to you and hearing kind of your storytelling perspective from both sides of it, your own personal family history story, your own business journey, and also how you use stories in your own marketing. So it has been really super talking to you and thank you so much.

Thank you.

So what did we learn from this episode? Today's key takeaways are One, even if your business is steeped in history, it's important to move with the times and be prepared to start a new chapter in your company's story and of course, to talk about it. Two, don't panic if a story gets out of control. When Mark was criticised for selling Britain's most expensive pork pie during a cost of living crisis, his team quickly responded to their audience and said they'd be donating the proceeds to the local food bank. The publicity was great and all it cost was well, quite a lot of caviar.

If you've enjoyed the podcast series so far and hopefully learned something to please like, subscribe, and share. Coming up in our next episode.

And we say on the website, look, none of us wear Rolexes, which we don't. We don't drive Ferraris, and there's nobody in the office called Tarquin.

That's independent financial advisor Dai Rose from Sterling Welsh. He knows a thing or two about how to avoid being pigeonholed and how to stand out from the crowd. There's lots more from Dai in episode 8 of Storytelling For Business: Authenticity, Owning Your Story. That's all for today. A massive thanks to my guest, Mark Turnbull. If you'd like to join Mark's Success Club for Retail business coaching, he'd love to hear from you, his contact details. And of course the website for Turnbull's of Alnwick are all in the show notes. And if you are looking for a voiceover artist to tell your story, please get in touch. You'll find my contact info in the show notes too. I'm Katie Flamman and this is Storytelling For Business. Until next time, goodbye.