BUSINESS BIO

Where are you based? London

Key business markets: Food, retail and catering

Annual turnover: (2008) £4.4m

% of turnover which is trading income (as opposed to grants): 100%

Number of employees: 127

www.fifteen.net

ambassadors

Penny Newman

Penny Newman
  • Fifteen

  • 53

  • Chief executive

  • London

From The Body Shop to Cafédirect and now Jamie Oliver’s Fifteen, Social Enterprise Ambassador Penny Newman is helping social businesses to make it big – and make a big difference 

Penny Newman is a CEO who thrives on challenges and, having headed up of two of the social enterprise world’s biggest brands, she’s had plenty of those.

After a successful career in the private sector as marketing manager of the Body Shop she took the helm at fair trade hot drinks company Cafédirect and drove it through a time of expansion including a new business model.

More tea and coffee sold in the UK meant more wells, schools and roads for cooperative villages in the developing world. But, as with most companies, rapid expansion wasn’t possible without an injection of money from investors and it was at that point that Penny decided to get radical.

“I had a vision of turning our trading model into an ownership model,” Penny says, “so that the people who grew the products could be linked directly with people who bought the products.”

Instead of going to the stock market she went to her customers asking them to buy shares in the company through advertising on the back of Cafedirect’s product packaging. At the same time, she made it clear this would give farmers in the developing world ownership of the business too.

Now, as chief executive of Fifteen, the social enterprise restaurant made famous by Jamie Oliver and a series of TV shows, she is faced with a whole new set of challenges.

“Fifteen wants to raise people’s potential and give young people – especially those with disadvantage in their lives – an opportunity to find themselves, grow their self-esteem and their skills - using cooking and a love of food as a catalyst,” Penny says.

I am absolutely thrilled to have the opportunity to use my skills in another fantastic social enterprise, to help develop it further and to lead it to new commercial and social dimensions.

And it works.

Twenty-five year old Londoner Jodene Jordan started the apprenticeship programme in 2004. She had always loved food but never would have had the courage to go into what looked like a tough, male-dominated industry if it wasn’t for the Fifteen TV show and the supportive, non-judgmental atmosphere she saw on her TV screen.

Jodene says: “Fifteen has 100 per cent, definitely, changed people’s lives. I know people who have totally transformed their lives, who had nothing, that didn’t regard themselves at all, had no self-respect, no self-confidence, people in crime and drugs who just didn’t get on the right path and now they’re starting their own businesses.”

It’s an amazing testament but Penny wants to do even more. The traineeship programme has been shortened and made more intensive to take in even more apprentices and offer more hands-on support. The trainees are also doing more work with local schools and businesses, sharing their food skills and the health-benefits good cooking brings with the wider community. She is also looking to do more to share the experience of Fifteen London with the newer Fifteens.

After seven years Fifteen London has proved itself, surviving in the notoriously difficult restaurant business and inspiring other restaurants.

Penny’s stewardship skills and her passion for social business will no doubt result in many more great plates of food and many more inspired young people in the years to come.

“I am absolutely thrilled,” she says, “to have the opportunity to use my skills in another fantastic social enterprise, to help develop it further and to lead it to new commercial and social dimensions.”

Quick Facts

  • Fifteen London is rated as one of the top 100 UK restaurants and as of July 2009 has seen 65 young people from difficult backgrounds graduate as qualified chefs. Of the 65 graduates 74% work in the food industry – only 6% remain unemployed.
  • Fifteen has spawned a global chain of restaurants with eateries in Amsterdam, Melbourne and Cornwall. Globally this has resulted in 144 graduates – 81% work in food and only 2% are unemployed.
  • Of the trainees taken on at Fifteen London for the 2008/09 apprenticeship programme, almost 50% had drug and alcohol issues, close to 40% were young offenders and just under 10% had a history of housing issues including homelessness.

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