My route to the top
Getting a scooter could be a smart move for Londoners who want to beat the congestion charge. When Ruston Toms got his, back in 1980, it marked the start of a varied and successful working life.
The joint managing director of Blue Apple Contract Catering smiles. "I won a moped in a village fête raffle when I was 17, which enabled me to take a part-time job 20 miles from home. It was a four-star hotel, quite posh. I liked the atmosphere," he recalls.
Since jumping on his moped, Toms has rarely stayed in one place for more than a year, gaining chef, sales and managerial skills. "I set myself a personal target of running my own business by the age of 35, and just about made it," he says. It's hard to imagine this composed character getting rattled. But wasn't going it alone nerve-racking?
Apparently not. Having blanched and peeled thousands of pistachio nuts as a commis chef, he then started a sandwich company that folded after six months. And working for Pizza Hut burnt him out, although he concedes that the training was excellent.
"I had the entrepreneurial spirit and was looking for a business partner who had the operational and analytical skills I was lacking. Within a year of meeting Brian Allanson at Initial we knew we wanted to start the business," says Toms, who brought sales talent to the partnership.
"It's always good to work for a Plc before you start on your own. You learn how to measure performance. But we weren't comfortable with climbing the corporate ladder and having our destiny mapped out.
"Starting Blue Apple wasn't a massive risk. We didn't borrow lots of money, not more than £30,000," he explains. In 1998-99, its first year of business, Blue Apple turned over £72,292. Today, with 15 contracts and 60 employees, it has annual sales of £2m, which Toms predicts will rise to £3m in the next financial year.
Part of the turnover growth will be organic, thanks in particular to a contract with EasyJet. The budget airline's merger with Go means Blue Apple will open and operate a second staff restaurant at Luton Airport in June to cater for an increase from 400 to 1,800 staff. Toms's taste for a fine ambience means Blue Apple sometimes spends part of the clients' budgets on specialist designers when setting up restaurants. "It's important if they want their staff to come back," he says.
Although last year's business was slow, Toms says the company has "a strong sales pipeline, and business and industry clients are prepared to pay a small premium for direct lines of communication with the owners". Toms studies high-street operators obsessively and records their prices into a palm-top computer. He is in talks with potential joint-venture partners to take Blue Apple on to the high street with a series of deli-style coffee shops.
By now you might be asking what a Home Counties boy is doing with a name like Ruston. Blame the parents. His father, a self-made chemical engineer, named his son, rather prophetically, after a type of industrial engine.
Blue Apple Contract Catering, Orchard House, 17 Lowther Road, Wokingham, Berkshire RG41 1JB.
Web:www.blue-apple.co.uk
How I Got There
1980-89: Commis chef at Pennyhill Park hotel, Bagshot, Surrey; commis waiter/chef at Frensham Pond hotel, Churt, Surrey; trainee manager with Pizza Hut Restaurants, London; assistant manager, Hotel & Catering Benevolent Association
1990: Catering manager at Gardner Merchant
1991-93: Sales executive at ACMS, a small independent caterer bought by Granada
1993-96: Business development manager, Pall Mall Catering Services
1996-98: Development manager with Initial Catering Services
1998-present: Joint managing director, Blue Apple Contract Catering
Up close and personal
Married, three sons aged seven, ten and thirteen
Home: Camberley, Surrey
Leisure interests: Triathalon, golf, sailing
Favourite films: Apollo 13, Some Like It Hot
Favourite TV: The Simpsons, Frasier, They Think It's All Over
Favourite music: Sex Pistols, opera: La Bohème, Frank Sinatra, Bobby Darin
Interests: PM Trust, a new charity that offers financial aid to 16- to 24-year-olds entering the hospitality industry. The trustees are Toms, chef Brian Turner, and Charlton House Catering Services managing director Robyn Jones.
Hospitality Action committee member
People who have inspired me: My father; Gary Katzler, founder of Berkeley Scott Recruitment; Jamie Oliver; the sailor Ellen MacArthur
