F&D Heroes Issue 1

Food and drink visionaries
We chat to Food & Drink Heroes partner Visionary Food Solutions to find out
how they support food and drink brands, and what this year has been like for
the industry.
Against the backdrop of the challenges brought by
the Covid-19 pandemic, the food and drink industry
has seen a huge mix of results. Some have been
utterly decimated, especially those operating in the
hospitality space. Others, however, have flourished.
“The ones who understood the challenges also
understood the opportunities,” says Gareth Hobbs,
the managing director of Visionary Food Solutions.
Visionary is a full business support provider operating
in the food and drink sector. Having launched
five years ago, it works with young brands to give
specialist commercial support required to enter and
expand into the retail and foodservice markets, and to
export internationally.
Visionary was recently announced as a partner
for Food & Drink Heroes. So, we decided to have a
(virtual) sit down with Gareth and head of foodservice,
Dan Head, to find out more about what they do, what
it’s been like for the industry in recent months, and
why they’re supporting us.
Rollercoaster ride
“Between March and May we were working with
our clients to mitigate the circumstances that we
were in,” Dan starts. “We almost turned into a crisis
management provider.”
Visionary saw its clients lose listings, having planned
listings pushed back or delayed indefinitely. One client
saw its revenue drop 95% in two weeks. It resulted in
Visionary too losing a lot of business very quickly.
“We shifted from being retail and foodservice
consultants to general business consultants,” Dan
adds. “When things started to get back to normal,
that’s when we shifted back to our original role and
started to rebuild. We were speaking to distributors and
speaking to customers to get those plans in place.”
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