For a man at the head of a food empire whose annual sales topped £153m during the pandemic, Charlie Bigham is surprisingly laid-back – and quick to laugh. But one thing he does take very seriously is his food.
“We’re a kitchen, not a factory, and we don’t make ready meals – we make food,” he tells me, kindly but firmly, when I arrive at his north-west London HQ to chat to him about where his business began. “When I started out, I wanted to make proper food with proper ingredients, made in a kitchen by people who care – not ‘operatives’. That’s where we started, and that’s where we still are today.”
