Baking & Snack - February 2015 - 32

2015 BAKING HALL OF FAME

Reaching New Heights
Cousins Jonathan, Brett and Ross Warburton transform
their family business into Britain's biggest bakery.
by Ryan Atkinson

Over the past 135 years, the Warburton family
advanced its business, growing it from a small
wing of a grocery store in Bolton, England, into
a successful wholesale bakery. But the fifth generation of Warburtons, the current leaders of the
business, has made quite a mark of its own.
Three cousins - Jonathan, Brett and Ross
Warburton - transformed Warburtons from a
mid-sized Lancashire business into the second
largest grocery brand in the UK, trailing only
Coca-Cola, according to The Grocer magazine.
For their leadership in guiding that dynamic
growth and the construction of high-tech bakeries, they are being inducted into the American
Society of Baking (ASB)'s Baking Hall of Fame.
It was in 1870 that Thomas Warburton and his
wife, Ellen, set up a small grocery shop in Bolton.
Six years later, Mrs. Warburton started baking to
fight off a slump in the grocery market. Her first
batch - four loaves of bread and six cakes - sold
out in less than an hour. Within two weeks, the
couple renamed the shop Warburtons the Bakers.
The business began to grow, seeing its fastest
expansion in the 1950s, when it acquired several
northern England bakeries. That expansion continued into the 1970s, when the fourth generation
of Warburtons welcomed royalty to the company's centenary anniversary.
When the trio of fifth-generation bakers
took over after their fathers' retirement in 1991,
Warburtons was already a successful, well-known
brand, having become the largest bakery in the
north of England in the mid-1970s. By investing
more than $580 million over the past decade in
building new bakeries, refurbishing others and
upgrading distribution, this generation of leadership has pushed Warburtons to new heights.
Those numbers include seven bakeries now operating with state-of-the-art technology, a bakery at
Bristol that can produce 1.5 million products per

32 Baking & Snack February 2015 / www.bakingandsnack.com

week and a new bakery at Bolton that claims to be
the most modern in Europe.
As a whole, Warburtons employs more than
4,500 people and boasts a voluntary turnover rate
of 5.16% per year. The company doubled in size
during the past decade and jumped from third to
first as the most popular bread in the UK, according to London's The Times. Warburtons is the first
bakery in the UK to move into the baked snack
category and the only company in the country to
produce baked pita chips.
Jonathan Warburton has served as CEO since
2001, overseeing the company's transition into a
national brand. He gained sales and marketing experience with Unilever before joining Warburtons
at age 23. He oversaw the development of
Warburtons' iconic ad campaign featuring family
members. He has held the role of joint managing
director and commercial director, laying out the
three cousins' strategy to take the business from a
regional brand to one that is truly national.
Brett Warburton began his professional career with RHM Foods after graduating from the
University of Kent. He initially joined the family
business as marketing manager for Warburtons
before becoming factory manager at the Bakewell
bakery. He later attended Harvard Business
School before returning to Warburtons, where he
eventually became executive director.
Ross Warburton began as an investment manager for Invesco after graduating from Oriel
College at the University of Oxford. He joined
Warburtons in 1985 and became executive chairman in 1991, serving in that role until stepping
down in 2001. He continues to play an active role
in the business while also having served as president of the Food and Drink Federation, where he
promoted the interests of the UK food manufacturing industry in conjunction with government
and other agencies.

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Baking & Snack - February 2015

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