Boxpark’s CEO on how to scale up a business in a downturn

Reces­sion? What reces­sion? Despite the grim eco­nom­ic out­look for its sec­tor, which has scarce­ly recov­ered from the ham­mer­ing it took from Covid, Box­park is forg­ing ahead this year. Its CEO, Simon Cham­pi­on, has an ambi­tious growth strat­e­gy that will take the com­pa­ny way beyond its home turf.

Cham­pi­on is clear­ly enthused by the plan and the oppor­tu­ni­ties it will cre­ate. But he’s also real­is­tic about the chal­lenges of expand­ing the enter­prise, which has achieved suc­cess part­ly by form­ing strong ties with small local busi­ness­es. For one thing, such rela­tion­ships aren’t estab­lished overnight.

The firm, which repur­pos­es old ship­ping con­tain­ers and stor­age units as food, retail and enter­tain­ment venues, has three loca­tions in Lon­don. At the orig­i­nal Box­park site (estab­lished in 2011) and com­pa­ny HQ in Shored­itch, he speaks effu­sive­ly about the impor­tance of giv­ing a “leg-up to inde­pen­dent traders”.

This trendy East End dis­trict is about as diverse and cos­mopoli­tan as it gets in the UK. Cham­pi­on says that Box­park venues always aim to reflect their sur­round­ings. Point­ing out that Argen­tin­ian, Malaysian and Jamaican food options exist “with­in a few sec­onds’ walk of each oth­er” here, he adds that a “sense of com­mu­ni­ty informs every­thing we do.”

A char­tered accoun­tant, Cham­pi­on joined Box­park as CFO in 2018 before tak­ing over from founder-CEO Roger Wade in 2021. Wade sold a major­i­ty stake to Lloyds Devel­op­ment Cap­i­tal (LDC), the pri­vate equi­ty arm of Lloyds Bank­ing Group, for about £40m, but he has retained equi­ty and now serves as a non-exec­u­tive direc­tor. 

While LDC’s invest­ment has enabled the busi­ness to devel­op in many ways, Cham­pi­on stress­es that the firm remains com­mit­ted to its founder’s orig­i­nal vision. He describes Wade as “a great men­tor”.

Boxpark’s focus is on inde­pen­dent and “high­ly spe­cial­ist” traders. As Cham­pi­on explains: “We’re hap­py and proud to be that step­ping stone from the street-food mar­ket. Some­one who’s sell­ing from a stall might dream of own­ing their own restau­rant, but it costs them too much to set up. Their skill is cre­at­ing incred­i­ble food. So they pay us a small deposit, we fit them out with a kitchen, they pay us a per­cent­age of their rev­enue and they’re good to go.”

While he stress­es that Box­park would nev­er con­sid­er hav­ing well-known chains such as Cos­ta Cof­fee or Sub­way on its premis­es, it is not averse to col­lab­o­rat­ing with big names in oth­er ways. “We worked with Google as a brand part­ner dur­ing the World Cup and we’ve worked with the Lad­bible Group on media projects. We pro­mote them; they pro­mote us,” Cham­pi­on says. “We also have a part­ner­ship with Crys­tal Palace [the foot­ball club local to Box­park Croy­don]. But, from a food per­spec­tive, this will always be about inde­pen­dent traders.” 

Taking the brand to Bristol and Liverpool

Box­park is prepar­ing to open two malls far from the cap­i­tal this year. It’s set to trans­form the old O&M Sheds in Bris­tol Har­bour, while in Liv­er­pool it will adapt the Cains Brew­ery Vil­lage in the Baltic Tri­an­gle dis­trict.

“We looked at more than 300 loca­tions. These are very much just the first two,” Cham­pi­on says. “The idea is to add many more, open­ing two or three sites a year. We want to take on inter­est­ing archi­tec­ture that has the poten­tial to become icon­ic.”

Expand­ing the firm’s oper­a­tions beyond the con­fines of the M25 will present Cham­pi­on with some new prac­ti­cal chal­lenges, as he explains: “Geography’s going to be an issue. It’s impor­tant that every loca­tion meets the stan­dards that we demand and our cus­tomers have come to expect. Right now, I can do my month­ly site inspec­tions in one day. With dif­fer­ent cities, that won’t hap­pen.”

Cham­pi­on pre­dicts that the new venues will cre­ate “hun­dreds” of job oppor­tu­ni­ties at those loca­tions, but he thinks it is impor­tant for new gen­er­al man­agers to spend some time at HQ “so that they can real­ly get a feel” for the business’s his­to­ry and cul­ture.

Nonethe­less, he appre­ci­ates that “every mar­ket is dif­fer­ent. We want a con­sis­tent stan­dard of food qual­i­ty and ser­vice, of course, but we know from months and months of research that each loca­tion will have its own pref­er­ences.” 

Adopting a sophisticated marketing tool

The com­pa­ny is using a hi-tech mem­ber­ship scheme to build cus­tomer loy­al­ty. After down­load­ing a Box­park ‘black card’ on to their smart­phones, cus­tomers can access any of the company’s venues. Using the card, which works with var­i­ous QR codes and track­ing tech­nolo­gies, they can accrue loy­al­ty points with each pur­chase. These qual­i­fy them for a range of rewards, includ­ing dis­count­ed food or pri­or­i­ty access to Box­park-host­ed events.

“We’re con­stant­ly curat­ing the food offer­ing,” Cham­pi­on says. “If you were to bring a group of friends, you wouldn’t have to dis­cuss before­hand whether you’re going to an Ital­ian or a Chi­nese restau­rant, say, because you’d have options.”

He adds that the sites offer “a whole load of attrac­tions” to aug­ment the din­ing expe­ri­ence – from axe-throw­ing ses­sions to vir­tu­al-real­i­ty arcade games – and more than 1,800 live events a year. 

The insights that the black card offers the busi­ness have been empow­er­ing, accord­ing to Cham­pi­on, who says that this “data is king. It has to be GDPR-com­pli­ant, of course, but the more you know about your busi­ness, the bet­ter you’re going to run it.”

As a mar­ket­ing tool, the scheme is “incred­i­bly use­ful. If we can tell what a cus­tomer is most inter­est­ed in, we can ensure that we aren’t alert­ing them to offers they don’t want to hear about. If we know, for instance, that they often attend Box­park in Croy­don between cer­tain times on a match day for Crys­tal Palace, we can cus­tomise the con­tent they receive. It enables us to be much more tar­get­ed.”

Football, footfall and the future

Box­parks have estab­lished a rep­u­ta­tion for being venues where sports fans – par­tic­u­lar­ly foot­ball sup­port­ers – can gath­er and gen­er­ate a bois­ter­ous, sta­di­um-like atmos­phere while watch­ing big match­es on TV.

“It’s great when there are major tour­na­ments and peo­ple can get what­ev­er food they want and share the space with their friends,” says Cham­pi­on, who admits that it was “maybe a bit trick­i­er” to cre­ate that lev­el of ener­gy dur­ing the 2022 World Cup because it hap­pened in Decem­ber. The prob­a­ble solu­tion, in the case of future mid­win­ter tour­na­ments, would be to pro­vide more heat­ed and cov­ered space to warm up the crowds.

But Cham­pi­on (a life­long sup­port­er of Wat­ford FC) stress­es that Box­park offers far more than a chance for fans to gath­er en masse and watch the beau­ti­ful game on the big screen.

“Foot­ball is a big part of it, but it’s not just that. We’ve got music and poet­ry read­ings – there‘s a live lip-sync rap bat­tle at Croy­don this week. We have events all year round, which is some­thing we’re incred­i­bly proud of,” he says.

Although the com­pa­ny will keep explor­ing fur­ther retail and enter­tain­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties, he stress­es that its main focus will “always be food and drink. We might stock an inde­pen­dent cloth­ing store, for instance, but we wouldn’t both­er hav­ing a brand­ed out­let store, because peo­ple can sim­ply order online.” 

Acute­ly aware of the cost-of-liv­ing cri­sis and the impend­ing eco­nom­ic down­turn this year, Cham­pi­on says that keep­ing prices at rea­son­able lev­els will be a guid­ing prin­ci­ple for Box­park.

The Covid pan­dem­ic, he adds, has under­lined the fact that humans are “nat­u­ral­ly social ani­mals. The lock­downs were dif­fi­cult. When the restric­tions were lift­ed, we saw that peo­ple were des­per­ate to get back to us. The main thing we need to be is attrac­tive and afford­able enough for them to want – and be able – to keep com­ing. This is all about get­ting peo­ple through the door and ensur­ing that they can have what­ev­er expe­ri­ences they want, all in the same place.”

Recession? What recession? Despite the grim economic outlook for its sector, which has scarcely recovered from the hammering it took from Covid, Boxpark is forging ahead this year. Its CEO, Simon Champion, has an ambitious growth strategy that will take the company way beyond its home turf.

Champion is clearly enthused by the plan and the opportunities it will create. But he’s also realistic about the challenges of expanding the enterprise, which has achieved success partly by forming strong ties with small local businesses. For one thing, such relationships aren’t established overnight.

The firm, which repurposes old shipping containers and storage units as food, retail and entertainment venues, has three locations in London. At the original Boxpark site (established in 2011) and company HQ in Shoreditch, he speaks effusively about the importance of giving a “leg-up to independent traders”.