Keith Abel: 'We went from losing money to making £4.5m a year in 18 months'

Welcome to Small Business Snippets, the podcast from SmallBusiness.co.uk. Today’s guest is Keith Abel, founder of Abel & Cole and chairman of Freddie's Flowers.

We discuss the how he got the idea for Abel & Cole and what advice he has for entrepreneurs.

This episode was brought to you in partnership with UPS.

You can also visit smallbusiness.co.uk for more on starting your own business. 

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Keith Abel podcast transcript

Hello. My name is Tim Adler and I am the editor of SmallBusiness.co.uk. On today's Small Business Snippets podcast, we're talking to Keith Abel, chairman of Freddie's Flowers and founder of Abel & Cole, the organic door-to-door vegetable box delivery business that became a phenomenon in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

He's going to be talking about how he began the business, literally as a one-man band, how it grew and the lessons he learned along the way and the advice that he would have for small business owners.

Keith, I know that for you this is a long story. Where did the idea for Abel & Cole come from?

Keith: So back in the days of Margaret Thatcher and the miners’ strike, I was at Leeds University and I went on a trip with a couple of people who you know, to Africa. And we missed our flight back and we had to get another one. So, I had to borrow some money. And that basically was my term’s grant cheque. So, I went up to Leeds with no money during the miners’ strike. I got a job selling potatoes door-to-door. I had sold fire extinguishers from the age of 16 and I was taught how to be a good door-to-door salesman.

So, I went to see this guy who's building up potato rounds, a bit like milk rounds. I said to him, ‘I’m the best salesman you've ever employed’. He went, ‘Right, lad. I know someone who can sell 85 bags of potatoes in a day. How many can you sell?’ I said I'll sell 100. He said, ‘You’re done. Get 100, I'll give you £50. You get 99, I'll give you nowt. You up for it?’ I said, ‘Yep, definitely.’ It was 10 o'clock at night, I was out there.

I'm very glad that I could sell a hundred bags and I get £50 – £13 rent, 50p a pint and fags were just 50p a packet. For a whole term, I lived on my Saturday job selling potatoes door-to-door. I left Leeds went to law school, passed my exams. I went to bar school. I fell in love, unrequited, concentrating a little bit too much on that and not enough on the exams. Failed my exams. Furious father. Kind of kicked me out and I thought, OK, those days, no minimum wage. I got £3.50 an hour price tagging Christmas cards in the basement of Selfridges. I couldn’t face it, so I thought ‘Sod it, no one's doing th