products, promotions & people
The entrepreneurial Simon Lyons (pictured above, and left with Yvonne Williamson) has big ambitions for the B-Street format
OCKS ELI MUST-ST
“The Tesco at the top B-STREET D ondsey er ves Berm England Pres of the road has a massive m bramble ja round table with all the e& le Champagn sourdoughs on it, and Jam & Tipp jam when it’s full it looks like strawberry Belshazzar’s Feast.” ee ff Volcano co Williamson joined Lyons y’s cheddar Montgomer in 2014, not long after he opened B-Street Deli, ux ughs Brie de Mea after a year as department white sourdo brown and ad he A ad re B manager for fresh food at brownie lt & caramel Selfridges in Oxford Street. Galeta sea sa She also has several years’ Velvet cake Galeta Red retail experience with Harvey Scotch eggs The Finest Fayre Nichols and worked in the ecco (from Organic pros rough-and-tumble world of ) Knotted Vine recruitment before that. e (The Fresh ng ra Where Lyons is Antipasti Olive Co) flamboyant, driven and esh ives (The Fr entrepreneurial, Williamson Nocellara ol ) brings some of the harder Olive Co ocolate management skills, as well as ons fresh ch Mannabonb that blue-chip retail background lami a – Jesus sa Pierre Oteiz ) – and a handy knowledge of Co Cheese (The Ham & Selfridges’ supplier base. They he rma ham (T Pa seem a good combination. 24-month o an zi ra G Casa “I came in as GM to se Co) Ham & Chee introduce new products, and also
more on the management side, doing staff development, training, giving people clear objectives they can work to,” Williamson tells me, while the ever-hospitable Lyons (his parents were hoteliers) is fixing me another G&T. “Retail is tough – I know that from Selfridges and from hearing about [its sister company] Fortnums,” she says. “At Christmas, everything is available online – where there are no crowds to deal with.” That’s one reason why trying to succeed with just a traditional deli offer is “dicey”, she tells me, and Lyons confirms that B-Street Deli has shifted closer to
foodservice than he first envisaged, despite his intimate knowledge of the area. “I’ve been on this site for 11 years. It was my flower shop originally – I fell into floristry when I first came to London – and I was one of the first retailers in the street before it turned into a real foodie place.” He still has his Igloo Flowers business, which today includes an outlet in The Shard and has a contract to supply the landmark building’s Shangri La hotel. But when he was operating his original flower shop in Bermondsey Street he saw a gap developing for that seven-days-a-week food offer that Borough and Maltby Street were not filling. So, two years ago, he spent £80,000 converting the florists into B-Street Deli, combining his own design flair – particularly his love of wood, which comes across in Isabelle Plasschaert’s images of the shop in these pages – with those of Vol.16 Issue 8 · September 2015
85