Pork and Rice: Ideal mix for snackers who want to make serious pigs of themselves

he sty’s the limit: Rice’s eureka moment was to realise there were no good versions of Peperami
Matt Writtle
Alex Lawson @MrAlexLawson15 January 2018

George Rice is a man who made his name through bunnies, and has turned his attention to pigs. The entrepreneur’s first career was defined by nifty sales of the late Hugh Hefner’s long-eared Playboy logo, and his second is focused on porky products.

He’s thrown himself into it: Serious Pig’s headquarters are shaped like a large pigsty, under the arches beneath Peckham Rye station. Trains thunder overhead as Rice — whose style is more sleeves-rolled-up-practical than hipster despite the beard — hobbles around the small manufacturing and packing factory (he’s done his back in).

Serious Pig has rapidly evolved from a vague pub idea to create a “posh Peperami” to a smart, edgy brand stocked nationwide with a heavyweight cavalry of backers. Its products, which include snacking salami and his crispy crackling answer to pork scratchings, are stocked in upmarket haunts such as Fortnum & Mason, Whole Foods and Heston Blumenthal’s two pubs in Bray. And Tesco has just put it on its “incubator programme” of brands it nurtures, marking a break into the mainstream.

The Junction Tavern in Kentish Town provided the backdrop for Rice, and co-founder Johnny Bradshaw, to formulate the brand, unimpressed by the meaty sandwich-box snack of choice, the Peperami. “The eureka moment was that there’s no good version of that product. Every other product, there’s a spectrum of quality you can buy. If it’s a watch, you can spend £20 on this,” he says, pointing to his Casio. “Or you can spend £20,000. It’s quite unusual to find a product that doesn’t fit to that.”

Rice was intent on creating a version of a French saucisson, with signature flourishes such as black pepper, chilli and paprika, to accompany booze. He went through a string of manufacturers and packaging suppliers as he grew the brand, eventually moving, in 2015, to the small, tightly packed factory where the meat — largely procured from East Anglia — is finely cut, dried and packaged.

This modest south London enclave, pristine amid the greasy hum of neighbouring car mechanics, feels a world away from Rice’s early career. Growing up in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, he left college “thinking I was equipped to set up a business but I wasn’t — I didn’t know which way the world went round”.

His furniture design business quickly failed. Plunging into the city’s famed textile trade, he joined the empire of its leading light, Paul Smith, as self-styled “head of buttons”. “I always looked up to him. He gave me a lot of inspiration to go it alone,” Rice says of Smith. He then joined an ex-colleague in a venture which would give him his entrepreneurial nous, building a fashion brand from products featuring that famous bunny.

“We took £2 million turnover to £8 million within three years but the risk, which happened, was that Playboy got greedy and licensed the hell out of [the logo]. Any credibility that we had built up on the fashion side was completely unravelled by the plastic hairdryers.”

Rice sold his house, travelled through Asia and headed to London on his return. “I thought ‘I’ll be all right, I’ll be able to get a job back in fashion’,” he recalls. “But it was the credit crunch, my contacts were useless, they were all homeless!”

The Serious Pig (very nearly named Duke of Pork) venture followed. Rice, the “boss hog” quickly established the brand in the premium pub trade, and has broadened it from there. “The phone started ringing and it was a deli here or a farm shop there. It’s an impulse purchase. A couple of years ago, we sold 250,000 to easyJet who had us in their meal boxes for a season.” Those who thought pigs can’t fly were proved wrong.

Rice set about assembling a crack team of backers and says the brand is now “match fit” and growing. Using a crowdfunding platform for wealthy types, he raised £125,000 to grow the business. James Watt, the BrewDog founder, invested his own funds and has helped to tutor Rice as well as linking up his booming beer brand for promotions (next week, there’s a string of Pass the Pigs tournaments in BrewDog pubs). And, the great-great-grandson of the founder of Marks & Spencer, Michael Marks, joins ex-Cable & Wireless boss Tony Rice (no relation) and ex-Asda legal counsel Nick Cooper on its board. Rice is refreshingly frank on their motives: “One day we might be acquired by someone, let’s not pretend that an investor doesn’t want to have an exit and they’re there for the love. Private equity would be on the radar to begin with, depending on how big we were, maybe a food brand. It certainly won’t be a manufacturer.” He pauses, and adds: “But we have a hell of a lot of work left to do.”

MORE ABOUT