Guy Singh-Watson, 66, still keeps some of the old hoes and seed drills he used to plant and pick the first leeks at his fledgling business 40 years ago. A decades-old tractor nicknamed "the beast," which a local mechanic now refuses to mend, sits in a field at the sprawling Devon headquarters of his organic vegetable box company, Riverford.
Riverford boxes start at £20 and are delivered to 70,000 customers a week. The company's turnover rose 6 per cent last year to £117 million, at a time when supermarkets and their suppliers are under growing pressure to cut costs.
Singh-Watson, who was known as Guy Watson before marrying gastropub entrepreneur Geetie Singh in 2014, admits he sometimes looks back in wonder. "Sometimes I think how on earth did this all happen?" he said. "I meet people in the pub I paid 50p for a bag of carrots in the 1980s or remember my first child buried in artichoke seeds as I pushed down a pram planting them every metre."
From consultancy to three acres
The seeds for Riverford were planted in 1985, when Singh-Watson returned to his parents' farm, which had been primarily a dairy and livestock operation since the early 1950s. He quit a career in management consultancy and, a year later, planted his first three acres of organic vegetables.
In the early days he would pull vegetables from the ground and have them in local greengrocers by 9am, while also selling produce from the back of his Citroen 2CV in the Devon town of Totnes. He launched Riverford in 1987, and what he calls "extraordinary growth" followed in the late 1990s as organic food became aspirational.
Being 'robbed blind' by wholesalers
Expansion brought setbacks, particularly when Singh-Watson began selling to organic wholesalers in London. "They robbed me blind," he recalled. "One took all my one-year profits, declared himself bankrupt and was trading somewhere else the next day."
He described the experience as an "eye-opener" for a naive Devon farm boy. "As I got more worldly wise, I was determined I'd never treat another human being with the ritualistic contempt of how a supermarket buyer treats farmers," he said. Twenty years after launch, Riverford had reached around £30 million in sales, at a time when the UK was one of Europe's largest organic markets.
Handing the business to its workers
Singh-Watson sold 74 per cent of his Riverford shares to an employee trust in 2018, before selling his final stake in 2023 for £9.8 million. Before doing so, he wrote Riverford's supplier charter, pledging not to replicate the "wasteful and abusive" relationships he had experienced with supermarket buyers.
"I would like to see supermarkets copy it," he said. "The world would be a better place if those relationships were humane." Riverford is now fully owned by more than 1,000 employees and is one of the UK's most significant examples of employee ownership.
"For the most part it's been an absolute success," he said. "Giving a larger number of people a say has helped us make better decisions and consult more widely. The best decisions are when you look at a problem from many angles. If you have people with many views and backgrounds they are more able to do it than a board."
Campaigning on farming and tax
Singh-Watson has been a campaigner since taking the government to court in 1999 over genetically modified crops. He remains outspoken about intensive farming and is leading a UK campaign to ban the weedkiller glyphosate during harvest time.
"I am a controversial figure," he admitted. "I'm in favour of farmers paying inheritance tax, it didn't make me many friends locally." He wants to see farming thrive, especially mixed smaller farms, and believes Riverford has played its part. "Quite a number of our suppliers wouldn't be in business today without Riverford," he said. "It's a source of immense pride."
Building trust with customers
Singh-Watson also takes pride in the company's relationship with its customers. "Trust at Riverford has been built up over 40 years," he said. "A lot of people come by recommendation and word of mouth. If you are asking people to pay a third more for their food, they have to believe that you are doing things in a better way."
Lessons from 40 years in the business
Asked for the best business advice he had received, Singh-Watson said it was to really know your customer, understanding how they cook their vegetables, what works in their kitchen, what their children eat and where the product fits into their lives.
On his biggest mistake, he said: "I am a farmyard philosopher and have probably been a bit too guided. I'm glad that the world I want to live in has driven a lot of decisions as opposed to what is most commercially savvy."
His first leadership lesson came from John, his first employee, who still manages Riverford's farms. "What you have to understand is that not everyone is like you, and thank God!" John told him. Singh-Watson said he was much younger and tremendously driven at the time, and "probably couldn't understand why people couldn't pick leeks as fast as me. And John was absolutely right."
He named his own ignorance about organic farming as his biggest challenge, having grown up knowing only what was grown in his mother's garden. He said he had to figure it out himself by visiting other organic growers in the UK, and travelled often to the Netherlands, where growers were welcoming and where he said the farming community "is still just that."
Singh-Watson's book, The Riverford Cookbook: Easy Evenings, is due to be published on October 1.
