Interview: Peter Langsam
On 28 September 2019, devastating flames engulfed the warehouse and offices of Marigold Health Foods — an event which rocked the industry and left it with one less distributor. Now, five years after the fire, Rosie Greenaway speaks with Marigold’s managing director, Peter Langsam, about the past, present and future of one of the industry’s most established, cherished and resilient businesses.
Marigold: five years after the fire
When the phone rings in the middle of the night it’s rarely good news. Saturday 28 September 2019 was no exception. In the early hours Peter Langsam was woken by a call which would alter the course of Marigold Health Foods and change the face of the health food industry.
Dressing hastily, Langsam drove to HQ to find 12 fire engines tackling the blaze. But efforts were futile, and while thankfully nobody was injured or killed, damage to the building was irreparable. A single act of arson ended Marigold’s distribution operations and forced it to radically trim its 120-strong staff and pivot the business. Langsam describes the period that followed as ‘an awful time’ of adjustment and repositioning: “It was a traumatic event for everyone.”
Faced with no police prosecution, insufficient insurance payouts and the financial and logistical complexities of moving sites, Marigold’s initial intention of restarting its distribution services was quickly halted.
Having always been economically cautious, its savings were in robust health, enabling the payment of all debts to suppliers and a three-month redundancy package to all but a few essential staff who remained to settle accounts and take Marigold forward as a brand. “I think it was the right thing to do as a company in order to continue. We had a well-loved brand going on in the background that we were selling both to the independent trade and to the vast majority of supermarkets.”
By moving logistics to a third-party warehouse, and with a 95% reduced staff in tow, Marigold the brand lived on without much disruption. Modelling itself as it always has — by viewing suppliers and customers as partners and treating them with respect and fairness — Marigold continues to enjoy a positive reputation. But this is by no means the path it would have chosen, and while Langsam feels immense gratitude for the industry’s support, the sudden change was a bitter pill to swallow for the five remaining employees.
The MD remembers Marigold’s distribution days fondly, when at its peak it carried 4,500 chilled and ambient lines, spanning 300 brands. “I really miss them. [It] was incredibly intensive people-power-wise to run that operation. We were making 700 to 800 deliveries a week. We were conducive as a route to market for start-up brands; we were very supportive of small brands coming from the UK or abroad. Our approach has always been about being open with our information and open with customers and suppliers. It was quite a busy and exciting business at the time.”
“There are a lot of great distributors in the industry. I think collectively they have not been able to fully plug the hole that was left by Marigold’s demise, and that’s a bad thing for everybody. ”
But nostalgia hasn’t stopped Langsam finding peace with his new reality, nor does it ignite any ambition to begin distributing again. Time and a great deal of acceptance later, the MD is upbeat about Marigold’s position in the market, and laser focused on the brand’s goals. “Managing the brand is different to running the distribution — it’s a different set of skills. It has taken quite a lot of adjustment for all of us. The community and the excitement and the million headaches a day [are in] the past. But it continues to be a fantastic company. It doesn’t have the scale it did before and the number of personalities, but I think the spirit of Marigold remains exactly as it was. I feel really — as do all of us — happy and fortunate to be working in the natural health food industry. We never take it for granted.”
The fire left an undeniable hole in the health food industry. So has it ever fully recovered? Careful to remain modest and convey the respect he clearly feels for his former competitors, Langsam says he doesn’t believe so. “I don’t mean to say Marigold was great and Suma, CLF, Infinity and Queenswood can’t do the job. There are a lot of great distributors in the industry. I think collectively they have not been able to fully plug the hole that was left by Marigold’s demise, and that’s a bad thing for everybody.
“We were a unique and strong business which placed a lot of emphasis on our customers and our relationships with suppliers. I think we provided a very good service. We had a lot of innovative, smaller brands that were not necessarily available elsewhere — by choice, not because we imposed some type of monopoly. [The fire] damaged a lot of brands. It damaged our retail customers who had to try to find goods elsewhere and either couldn’t or those other distributors — rightly or wrongly — were unable to cope with a drastic increase in custom. And then you have Brexit and Tree of Life/The Health Store going out of business and it has just become a more challenging, more limited environment for the flow of goods, quite frankly.”
Among the many lessons dealt to Marigold over the past five years is empathy. Langsam says the team understands how difficult today’s market is for distributors. “Now they’re not our competitors, they’re simply our customers and we know exactly their challenges and what they provide the industry.”
The lean team of five has been joined by two marketing and social media freelancers, who are developing the brand’s consumer interaction — timely, given how much there is to celebrate about Marigold today. Continually ‘striving to improve’ and build on its strong heritage, the brand has evolved from vegetarian to vegan and has moved production from Europe to The Midlands, reducing carbon footprint and enabling sales of organic products to Europe. ‘Huge investment’ has facilitated packaging changes; tin bases have been replaced by card bases, making tubs fully domestically recyclable and lighter on transport costs and emissions. Palm oil has been ditched in favour of sunflower and rapeseed, and new products have joined the range in the form of ‘guilt-free’ snacks.
Entering the snack sector
Launched in January, Marigold’s Popcorn Plus line was initially created as a vehicle for sampling Engevita Yeast Flakes at NOPEX and was such a hit, it became a permanent fixture, bringing popcorn lovers a dose of protein, fibre, iron, B12 and vitamin D with a hint of sea salt and a mild cheesy flavour, all in 94 calories. This last point earns it the seal of approval for schoolchildren, for whom there is a 100 calorie limit on snacks brought from home. “It ticks so many boxes. It’s doing very well in the independent trade. We’re working on a sharing bag now [and] have ideas for other flavours.”
Talk to Langsam and you’ll get the sense that the future looks decidedly bright for Marigold. While vegan, natural and clean label remain paramount, he has aspirations to extend the number of organic products bearing Marigold’s name. Further vegan ‘flavour boosters’ are in the pipeline to help amateur chefs improve their home cooking. There are new markets to pursue, too. And the brand will continue to share its good fortune; prudent financial management allows a ‘significant portion’ of profit to be donated annually to charities close to employees’ hearts, and what little food waste the company generates is absorbed by The Felix Project.
Remembering fondly the great numbers of former Marigold staff whose jobs became the fire’s collateral damage, the MD expresses pride at what this new iteration of Marigold has achieved ‘despite a lot of challenges’. Looking to 2025 and beyond, he is embracing the company’s past, present and future, and guiding the brand in what he hopes will be a prosperous, ‘responsible’ direction, continually contributing positively to the health food trade — an industry he and the team are as dedicated to now as the day Marigold was born in 1978.
By Rosie Greenaway, editor