keith's story
Abel & Cole began life in the basement of a house in South East London in 1988 when I rather rashly decided that life as a barrister was not for me (nothing to do with fact that my exam papers weren't up to scratch).
In those days it was Paul Cole and I, with our friend Jules and my Mum, flogging potatoes door to door. It was cold, physically hard work (we'd start at 2am each morning at New Covent Garden Market Garden Market to get the best spuds) but we had a great sense of pride when, at the end of our first day, we'd sold a ton of spuds in 10lb bags!
It was also a laugh a minute packing potatoes in the middle of the night, joking with South Londoners on their doorstep at breakfast time and always saving time for a quick beer on the way home.
Before long we were selling enough to start buying directly from farmers and one day a Devon farmer called Bernard Gauvier (we still buy from him) offered me some "organic" potatoes. Intriguing: I thought all plants were organic. "Ask the farms you currently buy from what they spray on them" said Bernard with his West Country twang.
So on my next trip to a farm in Kent the doors were pulled back on an enormous shed full of hundreds of bags covered with skulls and crossbones, and "danger - highly flammable" warnings.
The next day we were knocking on doors selling people either organic potatoes or "conventional" ones and in doing so explaining to people what "organic" meant. No prizes for guessing which ones people wanted.
I think this is the secret to Abel & Cole's success over the last few years: we believe that running a business is about building long-term, trusting and fair relationships between people, be it Gary who started delivering for us back in 1998 and now looks after our Brain Food office service, Nick Gosling who provides us with the most wonderful organic milk - and most importantly you, our customers, who are responsible for making sure we can pay our farmers in good time! We don't always get it right but we always try our hardest.
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It has also been a treat to witness and be a part of the success of organic food: one of the few areas of life where people don't just want things as cheap as possible but are prepared to pay a small premium for real, healthy, sustainable, quality food.