Market performer

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Levi Roots is quite tricky to interview. He’s engaging, interesting, amusing – and even the reggae music thumping out in his Caribbean ‘rasta’raunt’ in London’s Westfield shopping centre isn’t a problem. But our conversation is constantly interrupted by diners saying hello, praising the food or the atmosphere, shaking his hand, and asking for selfies. He obliges each time, scarcely missing a beat – because, despite the runaway success of his Reggae Reggae Sauce, Roots is, above all, a performer. 

He spent 30 years in the music business, touring the world with stars such as James Brown and Black Uhuru, and was nominated for a MOBO award in 1998, for his Free Your Mind album. He also used to play Sunday football with Bob Marley in Battersea Park – and one of the defining moments of his life was singing Happy Birthday to Nelson Mandela when he came to Brixton in 1994. 

Roots’ life story belongs firmly in the ‘poor boy made good’ canon. He is the youngest of five children, who – at the age of 11 – left Clarendon, Jamaica, and the cocooning care of his grandmother (who taught him to cook), to join his parents and siblings in London. Once there, he felt rejected by his father, got into music, got into trouble, got into Rastafarianism, got into cooking – and then, famously, got onto the BBC TV programme Dragons’ Den. There, he gave a performance that changed his life overnight.

It was 2007, and Roots – helped by his children – had been making and bottling his jerk spice barbecue sauce in his Brixton kitchen for 16 years. He sold it at Brixton market, the Notting Hill Carnival and small local outlets, including record shops, but knew there was a bigger market. When he sought funds to expand his manufacturing and distribution capacity, however, he was spurned repeatedly by banks and other investors, who judged the product to be ‘too black’, according to Roots. 

He refused to compromise the authenticity of the brand and made a virtue of it on Dragons’ Den (he’d been spotted in Brixton market by a BBC researcher, who suggested he apply to go on the show). Roots ascended the Den’s staircase singing and strumming his now famous Reggae Reggae Sauce song, and was pitch perfect – in every sense. His song captured the very essence of the Levi Roots brand, encapsulated in its end-line, ‘Put some music in your food’. 

“I was rubbish on Dragons’ Den,” he says, admitting he can’t watch it again. He clearly wasn’t: yes, he cocked up the figures (“I totally started to fall apart at that point”), but by then he’d made his mark. Peter Jones and Richard Farleigh committed the £50,000 he was seeking in exchange for 40% of the business. But while Farleigh was in it for the money – he made a 700% profit on his 20% stake when Roots bought it back 18 months later – Jones saw the potential of ‘brand Levi’. “Peter got it,” says Roots. “He bought into the whole package. He liked the sauce, but he liked me more. The others just saw the sauce.”

Flying off the shelf

Within a month, the sauce had a nationwide listing in Sainsbury’s, and sales exceeded the retailer’s expectations of 50,000 bottles a year, flying off the shelf at a rate of 40,000-50,000 a week and rapidly outselling Heinz Tomato Ketchup. The brand now spans a range of grocery categories, from sauces to snacks to soft drinks, and there are more than 50 products in the portfolio. 

Roots has written cookery books, had his own TV cookery series, and now has a BBC Radio 2 music show. He’s accumulated an estimated net worth of more than £35m, and star status. “If a black Rastaman from Brixton can make it, anybody can,” he says, marvelling at how far he’s come. 

An ambassador for The Prince’s Trust, Roots is invited to Buckingham Palace every year to address young people being presented with their Duke of Edinburgh Gold awards. “I walk through those gates, and everyone knows me – all the ushers, everyone,” he says. 

The embarrassment over the numbers on Dragons’ Den – he claimed he had an order for 2.5m litres of sauce, when it was actually 2,500 litres – taught him a valuable lesson. “You have to be the best of you, which means focusing on the part that you’re good at,” he says. “I’m good at music, and at making, marketing and selling the sauce. I dress well and I
speak well.” 

He’s surrounded himself with a team of experts to look after the rest. “I have one of the most fantastic accountants, and lawyers, who have taken care of the business almost since day one.”

His lawyer, Teja Picton Howell, proved invaluable 18 months in, when Roots had to defend a claim by a former friend and colleague that he’d stolen the sauce recipe. He won the case, but it lasted “two terrible years”, splitting his community and friends. Jones and AB World Foods, the manufacturer of his sauce, stuck by him, however – as did his supermarket customers and consumers. 

“I should have expected it,” he admits. “Teja warned me that people might take advantage. This guy was lurking in the background and I thought he would be fine; he’d been a friend for a long time, had a successful takeaway business in Brixton...”

As well as learning to pay more attention to his lawyer, Roots realised he needed new friends. While he’d never turn his back on his roots, he has had to adapt his lifestyle. “I used to try to be just Levi, the guy who could have a pint with the lads in Brixton and be cool. It took me a while to realise I couldn’t do that any more.”

It’s the reason his restaurant is in Westfield, not Brixton. He’s had to make other compromises, too. The perception among mainstream consumers that Caribbean food is very spicy puts them off eating and cooking it, Roots explains. So he’s had to ‘reinvent’ traditional Caribbean dishes – both in his cookery books and his rasta’raunt – to make them more ‘accessible’. 

He’s also broadened the appeal by featuring pork in recipes – Rastafarians don’t eat pork – and has changed the names of some dishes; the traditional Caribbean dish ‘curry goat’, for example, has been transposed into ‘goat curry’ on his menus. 

“I get ribbed for it, especially by the hard-core Rastas,” he says. “But I had to change my style to appeal to the mainstream. I can’t afford to be too precious. The question is how much you are willing to sell yourself without selling yourself out.”

Roots remains loyal to his original core consumers – the 16- to 30-year-olds who “have been driving the sauce ever since I started this.” He gives regular talks at schools, universities and prisons – he served time more than once in his youth for being “in the wrong place at the wrong time” – and is acutely conscious of his responsibility as a role model. 

“Whatever move I make, I always have this age group in mind,” he says, wary of going too corporate. “I don’t think they want to see me go ‘whoosh’ and buy up the whole thing like an idiot.”

Priceless mentoring

Roots’ values guide him, but he acknowledges the enormous influence of his mentor, Peter Jones, who has acted as a lodestar from the get-go. While others who inspired him, like Nelson Mandela and Bob Marley, metaphorically “promised me the money,” Jones “gave me the f***ing money,” he jokes. Important though the cash was, however, Jones’ mentorship and contacts have been priceless. 

It was he who made the call to Sainsbury’s boss Justin King that secured the first listing; who introduced Roots to AB World Foods,
a division of Associated British Foods, and who helped secure licensing agreements with brands including Birds Eye, Subway,
JD Wetherspoon, KFC, Domino’s Pizza and Slug & Lettuce. It was
also Jones who curbed Roots’ enthusiasm to rush ahead
too fast. 

“If I’d not had Peter to help me steer the ship, I’d probably have made a fool of the brand a long time ago,” he admits. No doubt, Jones’ influence curbed Roots’ ambitions in two key areas: restaurants and the US. 

He opened the Levi Roots Caribbean Smokehouse in Westfield in December 2015. Restaurants are a difficult market, but he “de-risked it” by doing it in partnership with Eren Ali, co-founder of Las Iguanas. Westfield is supposed to be the blueprint for other restaurants – he won’t say how many, only that Birmingham is (all being well) next on the list. 

“We should be on that ride right now, but this is proving the worst time for restaurants for 20-30 years,” Roots says. The Gaucho chain collapsed in July, putting 1,500 jobs at risk, while Prezzo, Jamie’s Italian, Byron and Carluccio’s have all announced plans to close some outlets this year. 

“We’re lucky we didn’t go on a mad expansion, because that’s been the downfall of many of them,” he adds.

Home potential

Roots had the US in his sights in 2011, when he wrote the book You Can Get It If You Really Want, a combination of memoir and guidance to other budding entrepreneurs, but overseas expansion is no longer on the agenda: “The UK market is much bigger than we thought.” 

He admits he “wafted along on the US dream” for a while, but realised he had underestimated the potential of the supermarkets – and opportunities in food service and in licensing – at home.

Because Dragons’ Den catapulted Roots into the spotlight, it’s easy to forget how much work he had done to develop the brand before then. He had a fully formed business plan and marketing strategy, and a strong local following. “Record shops were selling more sauce than music,” he recalls – and he thinks he would have got to where he is today without the dragons, “but more slowly”.

His plan was founded on thorough market research. “I literally tramped the streets of London, and my kids were doing the same in ‘the shires’,” he recalls. “You have to get out in the marketplace and get to know every inch of the terrain, however large or small your company is, and however big or little your plans are.” 

Roots spent a lot of time in Brixton market, testing out his sauce on the stallholders. “I’ve always said ‘tell me if something’s not right, but tell everybody else if something is right’,” he says. His research led him to another business adviser, Nadia Jones, who encouraged him to find out how the wider food industry worked by networking at trade shows and exhibitions. 

These days, he’s able to tap into the research resources of the big brands with which his business “is lucky enough” to work. But he’s still involved in product development: “No-one knows Caribbean food like I do,” he says.

Roots talks a lot about luck – and his success has come about, at least partly, because of being in the right place at the right time. But you make your own luck, and putting himself about, as he has always done and still does, inevitably throws him in the path of people who can help. Even prison proved “the right place” to some extent; it was there that he encountered a volunteer drama teacher who inspired his love of Shakespeare and encouraged him to read Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom. “She changed my life completely,” he says, explaining that, in prison, he shucked off his alter ego, Keith Valentine Graham (his birth name), to become his better self, Levi Roots. 

Roots, effectively, is the Levi Roots brand, so what would happen to the business if he fell under the proverbial bus – or, as he prefers to think of it, retired to Jamaica and sat on the beach all day drinking rum punch?

“People seem to think the food tastes better in the restaurant when I’m here,” he laughs – but doesn’t offer much clue as to how it might reduce its dependence on him. 

For now, his enthusiasm, energy and enjoyment seem undiminished. He’s constantly listening and learning, and takes every opportunity to share his experience with others. “One of my key messages is that there’s no such thing as mistakes,” he says. “It’s all about ‘feedback’.”

Roots is tickled pink by his success and the means it has provided to look after his family – including his eight children and his mother – and to indulge his weakness for Ozwald Boateng suits and silver jewellery. But you sense he’s also still basking in the feeling of vindication that Dragons’ Den conferred on him. 

“My dad didn’t believe in anything I did, while my mum believed in everything about me,” he says. “So I showed my dad – but the happiest feeling was to repay my mum’s faith in me. That felt like such a release, after many years of failure.”  

But you weren’t really failing, Levi, were you? “No,” he laughs; “I was ‘preparing’.”