Neil Sebba, the managing director of healthy eating chain Tossed, does not take long when asked if he is a risk-taker.
“Yes: who buys a brand in Covid in a market that is completely dead?” he says, reflecting on the decision he and co-owner Angelina Harrisson took to buy the business out of administration in September 2020.
Sitting in Tossed’s Victoria Street branch in central London during the lunchtime rush, Sebba tucks into a cauliflower and harissa salad, a combination to which he says he has become addicted.
The shop is the picture of a modern food outlet. Dance music is pumped through the brightly lit interior while customers choose their custom-made salads or wraps on touchscreens, which offer nutritional information on every choice.
It is a scene that looked impossible four years ago, when Tossed nearly vanished completely. A casualty of Covid-19, the chain relied on the lunchtime office market, which was wiped out by lockdowns. Within months of the coronavirus outbreak, it had plunged into administration, closing its 14 stores and letting 260 employees go.
“Effectively, the music stopped, and you are thinking, do we have enough chairs to sit on?” he says. “I had to see if the business was viable, and then make everyone redundant and put the business into administration.”
It proved a defining moment for Sebba, who joined Tossed in 2010, five years after it was founded by the entrepreneur Vincent McKevitt.
His childhood was a world away from Tossed’s busy central London heartland: he grew up near the Suffolk village of Nayland. But trips to work with his father, the managing director of a property company, gave him a glimpse of City life, and he set his sights on a career in finance while at Warwick University.
After six years at accountancy firm BDO, he joined Cornerstone Corporate Finance, where he spent four years raising money for hospitality businesses, including Wagamama. “It frustrated me: you kept helping businesses to write up plans but never got to help them to carry them out,” Sebba says.
Disillusioned, he took the biggest risk of his life. Months away from his wedding, he wrote to McKevitt, unsolicited, to offer his services. He resigned from Cornerstone and worked for nothing to raise money for Tossed on the proviso that he would be made finance director if successful.
During Sebba’s nine years in charge of the numbers, after he’d raised the money, Tossed grew to 32 stores, including franchised outlets, across the UK, and two in Dubai. With Harrisson, he in effect began running the business.
And then Covid hit.
“It’s a weird situation. Everybody is on furlough and you become very isolated; it was very lonely,” he says. “It’s hard not to feel responsible, even though you clearly have no control over Covid, but you have people looking to you for answers.”
Tossed was not alone. Analysis from PwC in 2021 found that 17,500 chain store outlets disappeared as a direct result of Covid-19.
Sebba was determined that the Tossed brand would survive. He called Harrisson, who is now brand director, and suggested a relaunch.
The pair delved into their contacts books to raise £500,000, renegotiated leases and opened five shops in September 2020.
“We made the decision when there wasn’t even a vaccine: we were shooting blind,” he says.
By that winter, with the virus rampant, the pair doubled down, hunting for more shops. “Snow was covering London and I was walking around the city looking for new stores, with not a single other person around. It was like a 28 Days Later scenario,” he says.
The gamble paid off. Tossed now has 13 shops across London, offering salads marketed as “gym food”, hot curries and “big fat Greek” yoghurts. But Sebba is keen to stress the different environment it now operates in.
First, the move towards hybrid working has meant that there are many fewer people travelling into the city, particularly on Mondays and Fridays.
Sebba pulls across his laptop to call up the latest Transport for London data, which shows that, on 21 June, the number of Friday tube journeys was 3.56m, down from 4.54m on the same date in 2019.
“We’ve got fewer purchasing opportunities and you are basically trading on three and a half days a week,” says Sebba.
He adds that there is some evidence that commuters are willing to spend more than before on the days they travel in. However, the cost of living crisis has necessitated putting more affordable options on to menus: non-customised salads and wraps costing about £6 now sit alongside its typical salads, which are priced just under £10.
Meanwhile, costs have kept pressure on its balance sheet. “You’ve got inflationary pressure coming from food costs, inflation, living wage rates and the electric,” he says.
With footfall down, Sebba has built up Tossed’s deliveries business, which includes a kitchen in Canary Wharf. He says this market has also been bolstered by companies offering lunch to employees as a perk to get them to come into the office.
To help make the business more efficient, Tossed now uses the platform Stint to hire casual staff for brief periods to match footfall.
Stint works by offering people short shifts of two hours and more at retailers. In busy periods, when Tossed stores require 12 staff simultaneously, a third of these could be recruited through the app.
“It’s allowing us to marry labour resources better with demand,” says Sebba. “Without it, you’d be hard pushed to make the economics work, because of the way people are buying less frequently during the week.”
With Sebba’s changes, the economics are starting to work. It expects to be profitable this year for the first time since it went bust, after recording a £500,000 loss last year. Revenues are expected to hit more than £9m, up from £7.4m last year.
Sebba has his eyes on branching outside the central London lunch trade. “Our initial plan was to capture the core central London market and get the best locations we could,” he says. “We are now looking at other opportunities and types of location, whether it is travel, tourism or food courts, something different to explore.”
Given his record, don’t bet against him making this gamble work.
CV
Age 45
Family Wife and two children, aged six and 10.
Education BSc from University of Warwick.
Pay “Below market, but it’s all about growing the business.”
Last holiday Aberdyfi, Wales.
Best advice he’s been given “Pause, breathe, think. If it still feels right, stop wasting time – get on and do it.”
Biggest career mistake “Not saying ‘no’ quickly to things that you know are not for you.”
Phrase he overuses “Onwards and upwards.”
How he relaxes Cross-country running, yoga, family Sunday brunch or watching Ipswich Town.