A video is playing on a vast screen above the atrium of Marks & Spencer’s headquarters in Paddington, West London. The first images come from the retailer’s new TV Christmas food advertisement, starring Dawn French dancing amid tables laden with fare from the M&S ‘merry menu’.
A visitor to the offices murmurs under his breath ‘it’s not just any old food, it’s M&S Christmas food’ citing the grocer’s slogan.
The video then cuts to shots of staff and shops, overlaid with exhortations to be always striving for better in grocery, clothing, capital allocation and every other area.
Stuart Machin, chief executive of M&S still professes himself to be ‘positively dissatisfied’ despite the 43 per cent bounce in the share price since January, and the 17 per cent jump in half-year profits to £408 million.
These numbers, which were higher than analysts’ forecasts, show that the turnaround at the retailer is proceeding at full pace.
French fancies: Actress Dawn French sparkles in M&S’s Christmas advert
But the retailer is leaving nothing to chance. After all, this High Street bellwether’s share price is still 20 per cent down over a decade.
Kathryn Turner, food product development director, has presided over improvements in everything from Christmas sandwiches to the turkey dinner with all the trimmings, and vegetables that can be cooked in just an hour.
As I sit down to try some of these dishes with Machin and Turner in the kitchens at the headquarters, it is clear there will be a lot more raising of the bar, with lessons learnt from perfecting the sandwich bread and prepared vegetables dishes such as cauliflower cheese applied to products for all seasons.
The strategy behind this is driven by a twin principle. Machin and Turner recite it together: ‘Taking quality out is never an option. If in doubt, engineer in more quality.’
They acknowledge that their exacting process can be testing for suppliers. But the tribulations can create a deep connection. Machin says: ‘Our suppliers are so proud; they see themselves as part of M&S.’
The detail-orientated chief executive, neatly dressed, as always, in M&S clothing, is fresh from talking to the Press and City analysts about the results and the outlook for Christmas and beyond. Also on the agenda is the fall-out from the Budget which is set to add billions in costs for businesses. M&S alone faces £120 million a year in additional taxes and costs in the wake of the Budget’s increases to employer national insurance contributions and the minimum wage.
Machin says this will not immediately result in higher prices, but the extra burden will nevertheless present a dilemma next year.
For the moment, however, he is focused on Christmas 2024 and how the M&S food team are trying to make it memorable.
The oddness of eating pigs in blankets in early November is quickly replaced by astonishment at the huge investment made in this dish. As Machin says: ‘We own pigs in blankets’.
‘Positively dissatisfied’: Boss Stuart Machin
A £2 million investment has been made in a double wrapping of the best bacon around a premium sausage, as a single strip tends to unravel, which looks less good and somehow isn’t as tasty. The turnaround of Marks & Spencer is being built on big strategic moves, such as the reorganisation of the 1,500 or so stores, but also on such tiny but important tweaks to the goods on sale.
I am reminded of another mantra ‘retail is detail’, as Machin, Turner and I move to the Christmas sandwiches. Turner outlines the ‘reset’ of the sandwiches in the Shelter range, which benefits the homelessness charity.
The bread has been upgraded in a painstaking process involving varieties of flour and baking times. The stuffing layer contains only the finest Italian chestnuts.
The array of Christmas party snacks displays the same devotion to apparently minor elements that can prove a major point of difference. The mini-burger is a tiny version of the ‘Best Of’ premium range burger. The prawn toast is hand-made in Vietnam.
If your Christmas hosts greet you with a glass of white mulled wine, you will know this is an idea from the top. Machin says: ‘Mulled wine is usually red, but I tasted a white mulled wine at a Christmas market in Germany and knew we had to have one.’
He has reintroduced the Dutch drink advocaat, made from eggs, sugar and brandy, to cater for the new nostalgia for snowball cocktails made using the drink.
The upgrades to the ranges of food for Christmas and the rest of the year are often inspired by cultural shifts. Members of the M&S grub squad constantly monitor competitors’ dishes, but also the trends on TikTok and Instagram.
Bark, a brittle confection of very thin layers of different types of melted chocolate, is the social media snack du jour. Marks & Spencer is delivering its version alongside another social media favourite – Muddles. This is almonds coated in caramel and chocolate created by a small baker in Somerset.
For millions of Marks & Spencer’s regular and irregular 32.5 million customers it wouldn’t be Christmas without traditional cake, pudding and mince pies. But, as Machin and Turner explain, people under the age of 34 are less fond of vine fruits, the raisins and sultanas that are the basis of these staples.
So M&S has launched puddings such as an improved chocolate Yule log, containing the best Madagascan chocolate. Panettone, the Italian Christmas favourite, is the ever-more-popular substitute for Christmas cake.
Kathryn Turner, a 30-year M&S veteran, says the family-owned Italian bakery that produces the panetto suspends the dough for eight hours to help it expand. This ensures the texture is soft and squashy, rather than crumbly, making the cake easy to dip in a strong cup of coffee, Italian-style. Machin and I do just that.
The acknowledgement of changing Christmas dining and other eating patterns is altering the demographic of Marks & Spencer’s clientele, which has tended to be older. Machin says: ‘We are getting more young families who come to us for the weekly shop, rather than just the nice little bits they used to pick up at Marks.’
This is thanks to its cheaper Remarksable range, but also to lowering the price of items if they don’t display at least the same quality and value as those of rivals.
If Britons are willing to spend more this Christmas in search of something special by way of food, Machin and his team say they are up for the challenge.
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