Traders of a lost art
Greg Wallace is probably one of London's best-kept secrets. A man with a mission to supply the capital's top restaurants with British-grown salads, he is fast becoming to fresh produce what Michael Caine is to the movies.
The analogy is not so far-fetched - a cheeky cockney, his prowess at lunch and gift of the gab are fabled; no one knows the London eating scene or the city's chefs better.
It was not always so. "I was a van driver for a chemical firm in Bermonsey and needed an extra job to pay the mortgage on a flat I'd just bought," Wallace says. "I started working in the market and managed to convince someone to let me be a salesman - not easy when you're a manual worker with no prospects."
This turned out to be the breakthrough he needed. Five years later, in October 1989, he borrowed £15,000 from a friend's grandfather and together they set up their own fresh-produce business, George Allan, targeting "sexy" restaurants which he identified "by walking the pavements of London". Today, with a new partner, 20 staff, 130 restaurants on the books and a £4m turnover, he can't go places fast enough.
How did he manage it? "The reason we're successful, frankly, is not that we're so good, but the competition is so bad," Wallace says. "The normal way of operating is to make one delivery a day. We deliver two, sometimes three times a day - the phones don't stop ringing from 6am to lunch time - and we get to our customers fast. We work on the principle you're only as good as your last delivery. Our chefs know they can rely on us.
"The other thing is you can't treat food like a commodity. I eat out all the time, always in my customers' restaurants and always with chefs. It's my life. I go out with chefs when I'm not working. Even my wife is a chef."
Doing things differently by changing the rules of the game has become Wallace's hallmark. "Chefs need new things constantly," he says. "We buy produce direct from Italy and Thailand. No one else does that because it's too much hassle, but it means we can offer everything from wild rocket, proper plum tomatoes and fresh canellini beans, to fresh turmeric, banana leaves, holy basil and Thai shallots."
Another first, and impossible to copy, are the weekly market reports. The brainchild of one of his employees, Charlie, these have been described as "scandalous" and "better than page three". They are an eclectic mix of product information ("asparagus could cost a tenner by Friday") spiked with saucy cartoons, poke-in-the-eye swipes at Fay Maschler, Jonathan Meades et al, and are reputed to be the most-read and-faxed pieces of paper among kitchens. All this, however, is a sideshow compared with his latest and most ambitious scheme.
"I was listening to Rowley Leigh at the Chef's conference a couple of years ago bemoaning the lack of British-grown produce and why, if you can get produce from northern France, you can't get it from southern England," he says. "It got me thinking. He had to be right but I hadn't got a clue where to start. I was totally ignorant about the growing end.
"I began by phoning every grower in Henrietta Green's Food Lover's Guide to Britain and made a list of anyone who seemed friendly and was prepared to talk. I spent the next 18 months going round the country seeing them all."
What he discovered was a fragmented industry where Covent Garden was a dirty word to small growers, and supermarkets had a virtual monopoly over large growers. "If a grower sends stuff to Covent Garden," Wallace says, "what often happens is that the wholesaler tries to sell it, tells the grower how much he's sold and takes his cut. Anything that isn't sold, the grower doesn't get paid for.
"What I did was offer to buy the produce ‘first'. This is much more risky - if it's not up to scratch, you're stuck with it - but it makes better business sense because it shows commitment. I told the growers I wanted quality produce, that chefs are interested in freshness and flavour. They didn't need to make it look pretty, or wrap it in fancy packaging or be uniform size - they couldn't believe it!
"Buying direct from growers makes it cheaper for my customers. What I'm actually trying to do is a Henry Ford - make expensive things cheap. By working with the growers and encouraging them to grow what I know chefs want, it makes it easy for both sides. Chefs ought to be able to buy unusual salad leaves as they do cucumbers. This way they can."
The transition from Michael Caine to Henry Ford is not, however, as easy as it sounds. "It's difficult because it's different," says Wallace. "It takes a lot of time and energy. I get aggro from both sides instead of one, and have had to persuade my staff, who are not used to buying produce before they see it, my backing British idea is a good one."
But the results are showing through. He has contracts with three British growers: Charles Secret in Godalming, Surrey, one in Yorkshire, and another in Kent. All his headed salads - some 3,000 heads per week - are British-grown. This includes lollo, oak leaf, redina, frisée, batavia, white lollo and red cos.
Allan's offers a mouthwatering selection of home-grown Japanese, Chinese and other leaves too, all of which grow well in this country - mizuna, red mustard leaves, turnip greens, pak choi, choi sum and bok choi, shungiku, rocket, wild rocket, green purslane and baby spinach, to name a few.
Having got the growing bug, Wallace is now conducting tests of new leaves in conjunction with Brodgale Horticultural Trust in Faversham, Kent. Next year, he'll be tackling herbs and plans to extend his range of British produce. "I want to have as much produce as I can specifically grown for us," he says. "Chefs want it and appreciate it."
He's also hatching a plan to take chefs out to his growers by bus so they can see for themselves what's going on down on the farm. He is dreaming of the day when he's dealing in so much British produce that he could set up his own market garden supplying chefs directly.
Not bad for a bloke who describes himself as bald with reading glasses and a bit of a beer gut. And, believe it or not, before his recent move to his new home in Mortlake, in south-west London, he had never lived in a house with a garden!
