The UK’s largest food wholesale company, offers branded and private-label goods to more than 400,000 customers - around a fifth being independent retailers - and has 172 stores across the country, proving popular with pub licensees and restaurateurs, as well as independent convenience store and grocery operators.
In an Arena Face to Face interview with Alastair Stewart OBE the ITN newsman, Wilson told a gathering of top businessmen at the Dorchester Hotel in London how he gained invaluable experience previously serving as the chief executive on strategy and a member of the management team of Marks & Spencer.
Prior to this he spent time with other major groups including Argos and Arcadia having begun his career with Proctor & Gamble in 1986.
Joining Booker as an executive director in late 1998 and after the company’s merger with Iceland in June 2000, becoming an executive director of The Big Food Group, Wilson said: “Nowadays getting customer service perfected is key to the successful operation of Booker and we have continued to move forward in recent years, during difficult trading times, with organic growth within the company.”
Recalling the last time that he took the Arena stage five years ago as ‘Booker’s Turnaround Champion’, at the height of the recession, the cash & carry boss in a mild understatement said: “I knew then that ‘now it’s going to get interesting’, but it was pretty scary at the time. If you are not scared you do not understand the business – although we pulled through.”
Answering Stewart who said: “When you’re there and the company pillars are shaking, like others facing a financial nightmare, you have got to doubt your chances, but you didn’t,” Wilson replied: “You have got to get off your backside, highlight the pleasures of being in the cash & carry business by offering a wide range of customers the best possible standards of products and quality service with the necessary expertise.”