As jobs go, James Orr’s takes the biscuit. Or 52 slightly different varieties of biscuit, at his last tasting. Orr is the entrepreneur behind Crosta & Mollica, the Italian food brand he has spent the past 13 years building into a £42 million-a-year empire.
He flies to Italy every three or four weeks, scouring their best bakeries and kitchens to find the best sweet biscuits and savoury snacks to add to his range.
“It’s definitely a job that involves eating a lot of Italian food,” Orr, who is 50, laughs. He reckons he’s tried thousands of breadsticks over the years - and his taste buds are clearly spot on: the entrepreneur's annual grissini sales would stretch around the world when placed end-to-end.
Crosta & Mollica’s black and white stripy packaging has become a staple in foodie Londoners’ kitchens.
The company itself is light: “we don’t own any production sites, but work with a large number of different Italian producers, from small,family-owned bakeries in Puglia who make our grissini, to technology-packed industrial kitchens which retain the traditional ways of producing at scale.”
It all started when Orr, who lives in Clapham and Guernsey, studied agriculture at university then secured a first job at a firm importing Italian peaches and nectarines for Sainsbury’s. “They sent me around Italy and that’s when I started to meet the farmers. I was travelling from region toregion, and learnt first-hand how much love Italians put into crafting their food. I believed the UK deserved a better quality of at-home Italian food - our supermarket shelves at the time had disparate brands, quality, and prices - no range on a shelf that was tied together. And I could see the way to do it.”
So after, as Orr puts it, “moonlighting for a while” he quit his job in 2009, and spent 12 months finding suppliers and creating a brand: “I had no money so I roped in a friend and together we came up with a basic black andwhite branding.” He speculatively contacted a Waitrose buyer, who “very generously guided me through the development of my distant Italian dream into a commercial proposition.”
When Crosta & Mollica - it translates as crust and crumb in Italian - launched in 2010, the first products were Pane Pugliese and Torinesibreadsticks. “I spent a long, long time cultivating a great relationship with suppliers. That’s what made the difference.”
Dealing with Italian suppliers also meant navigating Italy’s unspoken rules: “I learnt - the hard way - that in a certain hotel in Naples, ifyou park you Fiat 500 outside the reception desk, it will be stolen. This happened to me twice before I realised it wasn’t just unlucky! It was a nightmare because you can’t simply tell the Hertz desk - I had to go to the local police station, fill in forms, and missed my flights home.”
Whilst many start-ups today are hungry for big funding pots from the start, Orr was far more cautious. “It was important to me that we wereprofitable from day one. Initially in 2009 I put in £50,000, from my savings and an Amex card. Then I remortgaged my home around two years later to continue to grow the business.” Sticking to steady, organic growth meant Crosta &Mollica has not - until this month - raised funds: “we have a strong balance sheet and the business is cash generative.”
Turnover hit £5 million by 2016 - then came the Brexit vote. “The EU referendum was a defining moment for us - the pound devalued overnight,causing our margins to disappear. It left us with no choice but to ask our suppliers to cut prices, and increase our prices to customers."
Orr worked hard to reassure European colleagues, and managed to grow the business to £22 million revenues by 2020 – when, of course, came the pandemic.
“The early reports of Covid 19 in Europe began in Italy - our UK warehouses started to become uncomfortable with lorries arriving from Italy and were refusing drivers permission to get out of their cabs,” Orr recalls. Demand soared, though: “we benefited from increased consumer demand seeking restaurant-qualityfood in the comfort of the home.”
Crosta & Mollica is now sold across Waitrose, Sainsbury’s, Tesco, Morrisons, Co-op, Ocado and elsewhere; sales grew 35% last year, withnew frozen desserts, gelato, pasta and sauces, plus ready meals. International expansion to France, Holland, Belgium, Ireland and Luxembourg now provides 12% of revenues.
This month it sealed investment from private equity backer Perwyn, which involved food industry veteran David Milner joining as chair."I’m still enjoying the business as much as the day that I started it,” says Orr, “but we are significantly larger than I ever dreamed we would be.”
Founded: 2009
Turnover: £42 million
HQ: ClaphamStaff: 25
