42 Monday May 23 2022 | the times
Business
would probably be doing a 40 per
cent return on capital. We may have
one in Austin [Texas], one in Portland
[Oregon], one in one in LA, one in
Boston, one or two in London. If you
look at Eataly, that model has clearly
been demonstrated as something that
can be scaled.”
AVA will incubate a series of
independent businesses that Vincent
and his team of chief executives at
his new venture-building vehicle,
called The Longhouse, will create.
“Think about the Apple Store or
NikeTown. They are showcases for
the brand. So it could be that we take
the fast-food element of AVA and we
scale and franchise it as a
standalone business. We might take
the juice bars and do the same. We
might take the ready-meals and sell
those in supermarkets or direct to
homes through ecommerce
fulfilment.”
The Longhouse also will focus on
two other areas of interest to Vincent:
mental health and self-management;
and technology. He already backs an
app called Ed Can Help, developed by
Ed Sim, a cognitive behavioural
psychotherapist, that uses sound
therapy to help people to manage
post-traumatic stress disorder.
Vincent, who has ADHD, is also
eyeing early stage clean battery
technology.
He said: “Private equity companies
don’t like working with strange
engineers, artists and poets from
outside of London. And they don’t
like the suits. I think my forte is in
linking scientists, poets, engineers,
with money, branding and scalability.”
The new venture will be a means to
showcase his environmental and freeJohn Vincent, who co-founded Leon,More than just a gardener’s
dream, AVA could be a star
J
ohn Vincent is back. The co-
founder and former chief
executive of Leon has spent
the year since the healthy fast-
food chain’s £100 million sale
planning what to do next. And now
he wants to bend your ear.
His idea is to build AVA into a
brand that becomes synonymous withplant-based products. It will start with
entertainment-led department stores
that will act as incubators for
businesses that develop the AVA
name, but its aim “is to be the Nike of
plants”.
Vincent, 50, who is looking for like-
minded executives, scientists,
engineers, poets and investors to join
him, is investing a significant amount
of the £13 million he received for his
15 per cent stake in Leon, the
restaurant chain that he started in
2004 with Henry Dimbleby, his fellow
management consultant, and Allegra
McEvedy, the chef. Known for its
seasonal, Mediterranean-inspired
dishes, it had 70 restaurants and more
than 2,000 staff at the time of the sale
to EG Group, the petrol forecourts
group run by the billionaire brothers
Mohsin and Zuber Issa, who also own
Asda alongside TDR Capital, their
private equity partner.
His new vision is a grand one,
influenced by his study over the past
decade of Eastern religions. It has led
him to hone his view of what business
should be and it is not the version
taught at Harvard Business School, or
even Bain, his former employer. He
rejects the western business
leadership language of war and
conflict, with his thinking laid out in
his book Winning Not Fighting, co-
written with Sifu Julian Hitch, a
master of wing tsun, the ancient
martial art practised by Bruce Lee.
For AVA, he sees a giant banana
plant-shaped gap in the market for
helping people to reconnect with
nature. Existing plant-based food
brands — think Quorn, Impossible
Burger and Oatly — did not bridge
the gap, he said. “They’re great
products, but they’re basically a label
attached to a product. What I’m
trying to do is to celebrate and
unleash the power of plants, for
everything that they can do for us.”
Drawing confidence from the
popularity of the Eataly emporiums
of all things Italian — one opened
near Liverpool Street station in c
central London last year — Vincent
envisages extravagant temples
focused entirely on plant-based
nourishment — like a NikeTown or
Disneyland for plants, with
restaurants, ready-meals, clothing,
furniture, groceries and
delicatessens. All the AVA-branded
products will be made in-house.
“Think Fortnum & Mason,” he said.
“You won’t be able to get the products
elsewhere.”
He is toying with the idea of
offering membership, appealing to
people who want to work in a “Kew
Gardens-style environment”, and if
all goes to plan there will be museum-
style curation of the science of plants,
with films, presentations and debates.
Rob Verkerk, a sustainability scientist
and the founder of the Alliance for
Natural Health, is on board. A
celebrity chef may soon join him. “It’s
basically got every single thing I
could think of that is sexy about
plants,” Vincent said.
A website will go live “towards the
end of May”, but the opening of the
first emporium is some way off.
“There’s a site that we’re talking to at
the moment, but they’re still at least
two and a half years off
development,” Vincent said. “If we go
to West End, say Oxford Street, we
could probably do it within a year.”
What does success look like? “ItT
enterprise
network
branding
The man behind the
Leon restaurants chain
is planning to build
the ‘Nike of plants’,
reports Richard Tyler
Business Times Enterprise Network