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Chief executive Dave Brooks is passionate that Finsbury Food lives up to its stated mission of being ‘the best at what we do’. That mantra and his enthusiasm for the sector are delivering appetising growth.

Interims for the half to December from the premium and low-fat cake maker certainly made shareholders salivate, revealing a 70 per cent pre-tax profits rise to £1.2 million on turnover lifted 12 per cent to £32.8 million. All in a challenging market, with Brooks’ palpable passion clearly at play.

‘When you’re enthusiastic about the job you’re in, going to work isn’t a chore,’ he enthuses. ‘I love the food sector because everyone can relate to it, whether you are a cleaner or have a loftier job title. And that is because every one of them has a relationship with the products.’

Following his studies, Brooks began his career working for the local council, but failed to find a calling there. ‘I’d better get out of here I thought, I don’t want to be here all my life,’ he remembers, with a hint of relief. He moved on to personal care specialist Kimberly Clark, where he first caught the manufacturing bug.

‘The appeal with manufacturing is that you have a tangible end product,’ explains Brooks. ‘You start off with 20 things and end up with one product which is real. Unless you run a chicken farm… then it works the other way round.’

Brooks first made a splash in food with a successful five-year stint at Brake Brothers, where he grew sales from £8 million, operating from just two sites, to a business generating revenues of £60 million from nine sites.

At Brakes, Brooks met ‘mentor’ Richard Ashness. ‘I was his boy,’ he recounts, ‘and when he left to look for other opportunities, he told me that once he found the right thing, he would give me a call.’

Success and the city
The ‘right thing’ was just around the corner in the shape of baker Memory Lane Cakes, where Brooks took the mantle as managing director in 1999. By 2002, he had converted annual losses of £2 million into profits of £2 million, ‘and then along came Finsbury!’

After reversing into AIM-listed Megalomedia for £9.5 million, the group changed its name to Finsbury Food Group and Brooks calmly assumed the role of chief executive, seemingly unfazed by the demands of quoted company life.

‘I’ve always found the city side of the business pretty straightforward. There’s an air of mystique about it, but I make sure I’m well advised about what we can and cannot do and I find that talking about the business comes naturally,’ he explains, ‘because in the Square Mile, the most important thing is to know your business really well.’

‘I was with Memory Lane before the reversal, which meant that I could talk to analysts with confidence. If you know your business, you are the specialist and they are the generalists.’

Strategy, growth and ambition

Brooks strategy is to make sure the business is succeeding, ‘so that we don’t need to hype it. We understand consumer trends and we only undertake activities that we can be the best at.’

Finsbury has four main growth drivers according to Brooks – innovation, delivering products promptly and efficiently, consistent quality and offering competitive terms. ‘Once you have those four things in place, you’re in a pretty good position.’

‘We’ve got a good business here, that we’ve all worked bloody hard for and we want to see it thrive and flourish.’ In a recent update, Brooks told the market profits for the year to June would likely beat the forecast £2.1 million. Not bad going for a man who admits to never having been consumed with ambition. Rather than by pointing and telling people where to go, Brooks it seems is leading by example, as the adage goes.

Finsbury Food Group	AIM	£16.46m	32.00p	-3.50p
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