ENTREPENEUR the key to the company’s survival? “That is absolutely how we survived,” she says, “by looking at other areas we can venture into without moving away from the main focus. It is imperative that the company has that flexibility.” It is one of the reasons why the decision was made to drop the word “Catering” from the company name. “This other business probably only accounts for 5 to 10 per cent of what we do,” she says. “But we didn’t want to be synonymous with catering.” As for her own managerial experience, she admits that coming in as a family member to run the family business does set up extra challenges in terms of your relations with the workforce. Particularly when on the surface you do not appear to have the kind of engineering qualifications to run an engineering firm: Victoria’s father, by contrast, was forced to serve as an apprentice in another engineering firm before he was allowed in. “As a family member you have to work twice as hard for half as much to get that respect,” she says. “You have to earn it. I like to think I have done that. I get on really well with staff. They know I don’t have the technical capabilities that my dad or my granddad had, but I have got the best interests of the company at heart. They are very much my family – I know that sounds cheesy, but it is true. They have seen me grow up. They have confidence in me.” But it is in fact only in the last few years that that confidence was really put to the test. The last few years have been “all about survival, rather than growing.” That wasn’t necessarily the result of the recession. She says although this is the first recession she has been through where her customers have really “felt the hit”, Britain’s 11,000 chippies are “not doing too bad.” Some are even expanding through franchising. “People can’t afford to go out now, but they are still lazy, so they will have takeaways,” she says. “Fish and chips is recession-proof.” Nor, she says, has the industry been hit by the new emphasis on healthy eating. “Fish and chips is the healthiest of all takeaways,” she says. What did, however, hit the business was first
BUSINESS QUARTER | SPRING 12
SPRING 12
The last few years have been really tough but the staff have really pulled together and I have learned so much for the better the huge rise in commodity prices, particularly stainless steel, and then the bank manager coming in to say he was withdrawing the company’s overdraft facility virtually overnight. “The last few years have been really tough,” she says. “Previously we had always done all right. Now I know what it’s like to run a business when it’s not all right. But the staff have really pulled together. “In fact, I have learned so much for the better. I have had to re-evaluate the business and how we do things.” This re-evalutation has included effectively getting rid of the company’s telesales operation – most orders come through the internet these days. And Victoria has been introducing key performance indicators (KPIs) for the first time. “We had some KPIs through our ISO accreditation before but now we are all about production efficiencies and financial efficiencies right across the board.” As a result she feels that over the next financial year, which starts in August, for the first time in ages the company will be able to focus back on innovation. It already is, to a certain extent. “We have started bringing back in equipment we used to make years ago,” she says. “There’s a machine – called a little willy – that spins fat scraps and heats them off to take off the oil. The cost of oil has been going up and up, and it has really been eating into the bottom line of fish friers. So more and more customers have been asking if we still made the product. The amount was getting so high I realised we needed to start making it again. The machine is currently out on test and a prototype is launching soon.” As well as launching higher efficiency ranges which are at the top end of the market, she was pleased to see “the lads on the floor” come up with their own design for a more budget range too. “It’s only been on the
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market a couple of months but we are already seeing lots of orders,” she says. “It’s a real ‘what you see is what you get’ range.” The fact that the lads on the floor came to her to put forward their designs must surely show that, after all, they are comfortable with having a female boss. However, although she is heavily involved in encouraging schoolgirls to take up careers in engineering, and was very disappointed when the company’s first girl apprentice left early, she says she personally has hardly had to battle any sexism at all in her role. “There aren’t many glass ceilings there any more,” she says. “I have never seen them. If you really want something, you will go for it.” But there is one young lady Victoria certainly looks to guide; her five-year-old daughter Abigail. Because Victoria is a single mother, and despite them both having wide support from the family and friends, Abigail does spend a fair amount of time in the office – so much so that she has her own desk complete with executive chair and pink laptop. Victoria says she has certainly become accustomed to this. “She understands that if she wants the latest Barbie DVD then Mummy has to go to work and earn pennies for it,” says Victoria. “But she has never known any different.” And Abigail being there is starting to have an effect. “She emulates me,” says Victoria. “We recently had a bad break-in in the accounts office. Abigail walked in and started organising everybody else doing the clean up. She does little jobs for me – she opens the post and hands it around to everybody. A lot of women would disagree with what I am doing, but I am making the best of a situation I have found myself in.”And possibly building up another generation of Hopkins female leaders, you can’t help thinking. n