Fixed price is right

At 36, Mark Boothright runs one of the UK's largest national independent contract caterers, with a turnover of £7m set to quadruple growth in two to five years.

Set up with a £14,000 loan from his father, 7 Day Catering has come a long way in the 14 years since it began as a small vending business. Boothright used to listen to clients grumbling about their catering contractors. "In the end I realised that someone in the marketplace was not doing it right," he recalls.

Deciding he could do better, Boothright set his sights on catering and won his first contract in 1995. He feels his success is due mainly to his offering the client fixed-price contracts, a pioneering move at a time when cost-plus contracts were the norm and fixed-price were a risk.

"I was the first catering contractor to offer fixed price, which was considered risky," he says. "But there's only a risk if you haven't done your homework, budgeted correctly and taken time to manage the contract. With fixed price there is no discount and no distrust. From the beginning we've made sure that operations managers run no more than 12 units, which gives them quality time to manage the contract."

Before founding his company Boothright worked for Cadbury as a sales executive, which taught him how large companies motivate staff: "With fixed price, the better you are, the more you sell. This means offering incentives to the staff to outperform. We did this from day one and it works well."

Business grew swiftly, from 22 contracts in 1998 to 67 in 2000, with plans to add a further 30-35 over the next 12 months. Ninety per cent of contracts are business and industry, mostly blue-chip companies such as Ikea. But Boothright has not yet started serious expansion.

"Three years ago we identified that the marketplace was changing," he says. "The big boys were buying up all the independents. We reckoned this would take three years to complete and then there would a be a vacuum. The other independents are mostly regionally based - we believe we are the only one that operates in England, Scotland and Wales - so we decided to spend three years putting the infrastructure in place to take advantage of what we saw as a chance for rapid growth."

In 1997, Boothright sold the vending side for more than £500,000 and invested in building a young team. This included David Griffiths, operations director, and Barry Wainwright, sales director, both of whom have contract catering backgrounds.

The future looks bright. "There are lots of opportunities. Many clients are turning to the independent caterers, having found themselves with the large players they did not choose. We're already seeing a fallout from clients after the Eurest/Granada merger."