Bread business provides dough for group's expansion

Trade NamesThe Spicers of Navan have used their loaves as the backbone of their business interests for over 170 years, writes Rose Doyle

Spicer, a name filled with resonances of baking and spices, seems a suitable one for a family business which has been providing bread in one form or another since 1834.

That was the year a John Spicer of Navan first set up in the Co Meath town as a miller, a beginning that would lead, in time, to a lot of work and a fair bit of innovation, and today's diversified family business.

The Spicers are still in and around Navan, running their own and Country Mill brand of Irish quality bread, as well as L'Artisan, which makes handmade breads and desserts, their Cooper's Fine Food Brand and outlet, and there's a company interest in a pub with restaurant.

A lot has changed but a lot, too, has stayed the same. The man heading today's company is the seventh John Spicer to do so; John being an all-time family name. Filled with energy and ideas this 21st century John Spicer is as representative of the time he lives in as were any of his forebears over the last 172 years. He brings energy to the telling of the family/business story.

"We were millers first," he explains, "and always Navan people, going back to the 1700s and my great, great, great, great grandfather John Spicer." He grins. "You can see us in the cemetery, the early Spicers. Theories about the name vary between Spitzer as the origin and Epicier, French for grocer."

The scene thus set he goes on. "We had three or four mills in the Navan environs - we were a family of entrepreneurs from early on. "

This seems a modest enough claim given Slater's Topographical and Commercial Directory of Ireland for 1856 proclaiming how that era's John Spicer "conducted coal, corn, flour, timber and seed businesses at Academy Street, Navan". It was this man's son, another John (born 1853, died 1922), who first brought the family into the bakery business - and much more.

His obituary in the Meath Chronicle of 1922 said he was "the dominating figure in the business life of Meath and one whose industrial activities extended far beyond the borders of his native county". After his father's death he "struck out into paths unknown in the industrial life of this country".

This generation's John is modestly low-key about his forebear's achievements. "I believe he started the bakery so as he would have a defined market for his flour. This was in the late 1890s; he bought the bakery from Luke Smith at Boyne Road, Navan. He was also involved in setting up the port mill in Dublin Port. Over a period of time, running into the 1930s and 1940s, the mills went down and the bakeries rose in prominence in the family business."

Before this happened, however, John Spicer had set up branches of the business in Balbriggan, Kells and Trim.

In 1897 an opening announcement in the Meath Chronicle "begged to intimate to the General Public of Kells and District" that Messrs John Spicer & Co Ltd, Navan, had "opened their new wholesale and retail premises at Castle Street, Kells, for the sale of meal, flour, offals, bread and confectionery".

In 1915, just two years after the Boyne Navigation Company went into liquidation, John Spicer bought the canal linking Drogheda and Navan. Built between 1780 and 1800, necessary repairs and improvements cost him a pretty penny, an investment which backfired when wartime restrictions severely cut back his trading activities.

He owned three mills: one off Abbey Road; one off the Boyne Road; and the third to the rear of Navan's Ludlow Street.

But a 1919 fire burned down the mill off Ludlow Street and brought disaster both to the company and the town.

That entrepreneurial John Spicer also installed electric lighting in his varied premises; this before Navan itself had electric lighting. His energy was prodigious; he farmed and owned an hotel too.

"My grandfather came into the business in 1922," John Spicer goes on, "and assumed more of a holding position on things. He was a good, steady rock kind of person, that's my memory of him anyway. His father had been the real entrepreneur. My grandfather John had five children with my grandmother Pauline, four of them girls and my father, John, in the middle."

And so we come to the more recent history of the Spicers of Navan. "Dad came into the business pre-war," John says. "He was a captain in the Royal Artillery. He'd gone to school in Stoneyhurst and then to the Bakery School in London, came back to Ireland before the war, then went off to war when it broke out. He was in Normandy on the second day of the D-Day landings and was injured at Caen, when his ear drum burst. Relative to what he saw there, it was a small injury but he was sent home anyway."

His father "got heavily stuck into the business", extended and modernised the bakery at Boyne Road. "By 1970 we had bakeries in Navan, Kells, Trim and Balbriggan. He'd started an animal feed mill in Navan and had five bakery shops in those towns too. There were an awful lot of bakeries back then, making good bread too. You didn't have supermarkets, the road infrastructure was bad, getting around wasn't easy and people tended to be loyal to local bakeries. People ate more bread too."

His father (born 1914) met and married Elizabeth Fogarty (born 1943) in 1967 and they had six children; the present day John Spicer was born in 1970. "I'm the second eldest of three boys and three girls. My older sister is Gwendoline and after me there's Patrick, Kevin, Joanna and Clare. When my father took over he began expanding - the bakery grew to the point where it was covering mid and north Leinster. He stuck with the bakery business and worked very hard. I'm the only one of my siblings to go into the business.

"Dad was getting old and retired in 1992/'93 and my mother acted as caretaker of the business until such time as I grew up and wanted to stop doing wild things! She told me I'd 10 years to sow wild oats but that if I didn't come in, then the business might be gone. She was wise and had a very, very good guy called Adrian McGrane running things for her. His father before him had come from running the bakery in Kells. This business is not just to do with our family line - other family lines come into it as well."

Before joining the company, John Spicer studied chemical engineering, taught science and maths for a couple of years and, realising he "wanted to be in the company", did a postgrad business degree via the Open University. When he came to the business in 1998 he "spent three years learning from Adrian McGrane, who was general manager. Adrian moved sideways in 2001 to run a pub/garage we'd bought."

By the end of 2002 John Spicer was putting his own mark on and expanding the company. At the end of that year (together with his wife, Cheryl) Cooper's Fine Foods was set up. As of three months ago this is in Navan's shopping centre.

"The plan is to grow it in its present place," John says, "and then to franchise it. Cheryl did all the research and she had great flair. Coopers sells cheese, Parma ham, pâtés and bakery goods. Also, about three years ago, I started L'Artisan which we distribute in Dublin in upper-end coffee shops and hotels. We've about 25 people employed in the Navan bakery which, because we've grown so much, is about to move to Mullaghboy Industrial Estate, Navan."

John and Cheryl Spicer have two sons, Craigh and Jack, and though he says it's "too early yet to know", John Spicer hopes one or both will go into the business, so that it "won't go out of the family".