The first Freshly Chopped store opened on Baggot Street, in Dublin, in May 2012. The idea was simple, a food outlet that could sell healthy food, fast.
Today the brand has stores nationwide across Ireland, as well as the UK, Netherlands and Cyprus. It has also rolled out a franchise across the Netherlands, Germany, France, Denmark, Belgium and Sweden. Freshly Chopped now sells over 2 million salads a year across all of its stores.
Yet, the chain also encountered challenges, leading to it entering the Small Companies Administrative Rescue Process, where it was acquired by the hospitality division of private equity firm KnightBridge. Its goal was to preserve what made Freshly Chopped fruitful while bringing it to a whole new audience.
“We acquired Freshly Chopped in late June, and commissioned an agency to give the brand a head-to-toe rebranding exercise,” says Ken Lim, CEO of Freshly Chopped. “The next step was to rebrand all the physical stores. Freshly Chopped was better known as a salad company, but when I first took over the company, my idea was that healthy eating can be more than just salad. When people do ‘Clean January’, or ‘Veganuary’, it is always framed as a compromise, giving up your favourite foods.”
Lim’s strategy was to create a clear message that healthy eating can also be fun. With a brand based on eating fresh food, that makes you happy.
“High quality, good proteins, good carbs, good calories,” Lim says. “We wanted to overturn the perception that healthy eating means you are giving up the joy of a great lunch.”
Under the new branding, Freshly Chopped has launched a rice bowl with more proteins and a combination of salad toppings. From there, Lim plans new ranges of products including marinated salmon and tuna.
“The core element is our Create Your Own bowls, and what sets us apart from the competition is that we have full customisability,” Lim tells us. “We encourage customers to use the brand offering to tailor a five-phase meal plan over a week.”
It is a plan targeted at young professionals and college students who want to look after themselves but do not have the luxury of time necessary to ensure they are eating healthily during a busy working day.
“We would recommend combinations, working with nutritionists and key influencers to suggest ways to use Freshly Chopped as part of their day-to-day meal plan,” says Lim.
A Fresh Approach
As well as crafting a new brand identity for Freshly Chopped, Lim had other challenges to overcome. The cost of energy, and the ingredients that Freshly Chopped uses, such as chicken, have been rising across Europe.
These are challenges that Freshly Chopped is addressing with the careful application of new technologies.
“In the last six months I have put a huge focus on upgrading all our technologies, including putting a new peeler system in place,” Lim says. “I am also implementing Business Intelligence 2, NORY’s AI-driven restaurant management software. It gives us a live insight into how the business is performing. It does not just benefit the business owner, but also helps the team to excel in their roles.”
Staff download the app, input their basic information and it generates a contract from a template, allowing for the management of working time availability, sales data, and track historical sales from week to week, using AI to forecast sales and use that to suggest a roster.
“It can do the same thing for key supplies, producing orders based on historical tracking and inventory levels and suggesting what you might need to order,” Lim says.
The changes Lim is introducing are cultural, as well as technological.
“We change the culture from top to bottom. Every store manager is brought into the mindset, we tell them what our challenges are, what our objectives are,” says Lim. “We have a partners’ equity system, and we share with them our methods for getting more sales. If the store does well, we have a profit-sharing scheme. This is how we try to change the mindset, so everyone from management to store management is fully motivated. They are not just working for the company, they are working for themselves.”
This culture is also why Lim makes sure to do the final interview for each new recruit himself.
“I would rather have the role empty than hire the wrong person, because the cost of hiring the wrong person is a lot higher,” Lim tells us. “I emphasise hiring the right person with the right mentality. Knowledge and skills can be trained and learned, but personality is very difficult to change.”
From there, retention is also a priority. We share a career progression plan with four or five different levels, offering a full picture for people looking at this career.
“Retention is easier if people enjoy the work environment and are with the right people and work for a company that appreciates them,” says Lim. “I always say to my senior management team, in two years’ time, whether you are working for me or someone else, I want you to walk out of the store feeling proud and accomplished. As long as you have seen a huge improvement in yourself, that is my accomplishment.”
The key is continuous, gradual improvement.
As Lim explains, “I do not believe in a huge improvement overnight. We look for a small improvement over time, day by day. If you improve by 1% a day, over 100 days that gets you to 100%.”
Looking forward, Lim sees more challenges ahead, but is also excited about how to meet those challenges while working on new ways for Freshly Chopped to enter the market.
“We have completed our rebranding. We are preparing an express version of the brand for convenience store consignment areas,” Lim says. “In the current landscape, consumers are constantly looking for new offerings. We are not building bricks and mortar alone, but also sharing fixed overheads over consignment areas. It means there is less pressure, it is sustainable with fewer sales.”
While Lim has preserved what made the Freshly Chopped brand a success, he also has revolutionary plans for the future of the chain.
“We are building a brand suitable for travel hubs, forecourts, and convenience stores,” Lim says. “We are also working on a retail range, because Freshly Chopped in Ireland has been around for years, giving it a strong household branding strength. We are looking forward to the UK market, expanding in the areas we have already mentioned, including big supermarkets with a food hall offering and convenience stores, as a way to bring footfall traction to the stores.”
It will be exciting to see where a business that brings such a fresh approach to everything it does goes next.
For more information please vitist: www.chopped.ie
