Overall ranking: 26 (57)
Contract catering ranking: 5 (11)

William Baxter - Snapshot
William Baxter is deputy chief executive of BaxterStorey, the UK’s fifth largest contract caterer and its biggest independent player. It was formed in November 2004 from the merger of Berkshire-based Wilson Storey Halliday with Buckinghamshire-based BaxterSmith.

The company, which began trading in January 2005, had an annual turnover of £102m in 2005, up from £86.5m the previous year. It currently employs 3,550 staff and operates 160 contracts across 280 sites in the UK and Ireland which focus on the business and industry sector. Clients include Barclays, DaimlerChrysler, Marks & Spencer, Nokia and Selfridges.

William Baxter is in charge of the marketing and sales operation where he oversees client retention, supplier relations, in-house teamwork and customer satisfaction.

William Baxter - Career guide
William Baxter, now in his mid-forties, started as a pot washer and waiter at the Selfridge hotel in Oxford Street in 1978. Between 1979 and 1982, he gained his HND in hotel and catering institutional management before joining P&O’s Sutcliffe Catering as an assistant manager. Baxter rose through the ranks to become area manager of the Thames Valley.

He left in 1987 to form Baxter & Platts with former Sutcliffe area manager Robert Platts. The pair sold the company to Granada in 1997 for an estimated £16m and Baxter stayed on as executive chairman.

Baxter teamed up with Mike Smith (his managing director at Baxter & Platts) to form BaxterSmith in May 2000. A Scottish division was launched in 2002 that had 24 contracts when it was sold to its managing director Alan Aitken shortly before the merger with Wilson Halliday Storey in November 2004.

William Baxter - What we think
William Baxter has clocked up more than 25 years experience in the contract catering arena and has founded two highly successful companies that set the benchmark for aspiring food service entrepreneurs.
 
At Sutcliffe Catering, Baxter was area manager of 17 sites in the West End of London by the age of 23 and was soon overseeing 50 sites as area manager for the Thames Valley.

His first venture, Baxter & Platts, quickly established a reputation as a quality business offering a fair deal to clients and staff. Its ability to forge long-lasting partnerships with clients was underlined by the fact that it did not lose a contract until 1995. William Baxter won Caterer and Hotelkeeper’s Catey Food Service Caterer of the Year in 1997.

When he sold the company to Granada, it had 130 contracts and a £23m turnover. When Baxter left in September 1999, it had grown to a £90m turnover operation with more than 300 contracts and 4,000 staff.

He repeated his success with BaxterSmith, where his partner and managing director Mike Smith scooped the Catey Food Service Cater of the Year in 2004 and the company won the Springboard award for Best Student Placement Provider. The group had a £30m turnover when it merged with Wilson Storey Halliday in autumn 2004 to become the UK’s fifth largest player.

“We can provide the best of both worlds – the resources of a big company yet the nimbleness of a small one,” Baxter said of the merger.

In its first year, the group added 30 new contracts worth £16m and by April this year had reached an annual turnover of £130m, with Baxter achieving a 100% client retention rate. BaxterStorey anticipates growth of 10% to 15% per annum.

The group came 62nd in the Sunday Times Profit Track listing of Britain’s fastest-growing companies thanks to a profit growth rate of up to 66% a year, from a combined £899,000 in 2001 to £4.1m in 2004.

William Baxter – Further Information

BaxterStorey company profile from CatererSearch

BaxterStorey official website

Read more about the CatererSearch 100, the list of the most influential people here