Metcalfe is the visionary co-founder of Pret a Manger, an accomplished creative genius who excels in product development and marketing and has built not just Pret but also itsu, a chain of Asian-inspired food outlets, into strong recognisable brands.
</p >
Jakobi is a driven, well-educated and commercially-orientated young buck with a head for figures, finance and sales. </p >
The two are working on Metcalfe’s Food Company, a healthy snacks brand which supplies food under the Metcalfe’s skinny and itsu [grocery] brands.</p >
“We have quite a unique relationship,” Jakobi explains when I meet him at an itsu store under the company’s offices in Westminster. </p >
“We have very different qualities. He’s extremely creative, he’s not numbers orientated, whereas my background is in finance.</p >
He’s a visionary, he comes in every day to the office with new ideas ‘How can we improve this product What about the packaging ‘ – and you know some of those ideas don’t work because commercially they don’t make sense.</p >
But he has that creativity which no one else has, which is a big asset it’s just a case of managing that creativity. </p >
The roots of a partnership</strong ></p >
The origins of the pair’s partnership lies in Jakobi’s decision to shun a career in finance and instead look to create a more entrepreneurial attitude in the food industry. </p >
The thing I hated about Wall Street was these large corporations, the politics, the hierarchy,” he says. </p >
Having been around very likeminded, entrepreneurial people at university, I started my own company, and it happened to be a food snacks company. </p >
Jakobi spotted a gap in the market for healthy food in cinemas and developed a product called Pod Bites</a >” – dry roasted edamame beans covered in chocolate or yoghurt. </p >
He looked at the the itsu brand Metcalfe had created and thought that the products fitted well with the healthy Asian-inspired theme. </p >
Continues on page two..</h4 >
Convincing Metcalfe to take an interest wasn’t easy but after three months of phone calls and unreturned emails Jakobi was finally invited to meet Julian and eventually offered the job of Managing Director at Metcalfe’s along with a slice of equity.</p >
Since then growth has been impressive. Jakobi says the company has doubled or tripled in size every year but those kinds of multiples will be difficult to maintain.</p >
Obviously it’s easy to do that when your turnover is quite small,” he says. When you’re turning over 15 or 20m you’re not going to triple every year we’re not in the tech industry. Food is much more stable. </p >
Innovation will be key to maintaining momentum</strong ></p >
“We’ve always been very innovative,” Jakobi says. That’s what Julian is all about. If you look at our range we’re always first to market with everything we do. </p >
Metcalfe’s also plans to grow through international trade, with plans for a European launch in the next few months and Itsu’s expansion into New York on the cards.</p >
Jakobi’s driven, entrepreneurial approach is noticeably mirrored in his young staff, whose average age is 26 and half of whom are Oxbridge educated.</p >
It’s not a deliberate strategy but what I found is that the average person in the food industry is pretty disappointing,” he says.</p >
But whilst the brightest graduates have in the past typically gone into finance, law or accounting, Jakobi says many are now looking for jobs which may pay less but that they will get more satisfaction from.</p >
A lot of people are considering other industries, especially young exciting startups,” he says.</p >
Training up a crop of bright, young entrepreneurial talent has a lot of benefits, but Jakobi admits it also has its risks.</p >
It’s been difficult finding the right people but then your biggest worry is about losing them, that they’re going to get poached by some of the bigger companies that are looking to us as the innovative young brand out there,” he says.</p >
To combat this the company has put in place an employee share options scheme, which Jakobi hopes will encourage staff to pitch in for the long haul.</p >
