Jason Danciger, CEO - France, Ireland, Benelux & United Kingdom at Hana Group, discusses sustainable growth for food brands and what it takes to be an effective leader in F&B. 

Looking back over your career, what are the biggest leadership or commercial mistakes you repeatedly see food and drink businesses make as they grow?

Trying to do everything at same time and aiming to conquer all markets – focus on fewer avenues at start and gradually build up. Simplify approach so you have time to execute well.

What questions do founders and business leaders ask you most often when they're trying to scale their business?

How to enter new markets and scale quickly, mostly how to get big retailers often before proving model in smaller businesses

Many entrepreneurs focus on products and sales. How important is company culture when building a successful food and drink business?

Behind every good leader is a great team…people buy people so a positive culture helps drive sales and ensures team care about the product. The greatest asset you will ever own is your people.

In your experience, what separates businesses that achieve sustainable long-term growth from those that struggle to scale?

Kaizen – continuous improvement. It's in successful entrepreneurs DNA to be slightly impatient. Tenacity is one of the strongest values, believe in your people and products and never give up.

Innovation is often talked about as a competitive advantage. How can smaller food and drink businesses create a culture of innovation without significant resources?

Easy, just do one thing at a time. Once the launch and follow up tweaks are done then team can start on a second idea so there is always one idea in incubation, one launching and one being viewed whilst teams can relax and do one thing at a time. The only thing sure is more taxes, higher cost to employ and more bureaucracy. Food trends will continue to circle…

Looking ahead, what trends do you think food and drink business leaders should be preparing for over the next three to five years?

More weather variances with global warming, continues trend on health, sustainability and known provenance.

Can you share an example of a leadership or business decision that had a significant impact on an organisation, and what other founders can learn from it?

Ego can be useful in driving pride and confidence, but it can be a business killer too. Those leaders who don’t listen or involve their people generally do less well and make more mistakes. Those who do value teams input generally perform much better and are in business much longer.

If every food and drink entrepreneur could read just one piece of advice before growing their business, what would you want it to say?

Do what you love and your journey will be much more enjoyable.