How the UK’s new king built an organic food brand

For years, King Charles prepared to assume the role of monarch after the historic reign of Queen Elizabeth. Meanwhile, he held another job: owner of a profitable business.

Charles – long a passionate supporter of environmental causes – founded Duchy Originals in 1990, when he was the Prince of Wales, to market produce from his farm. It has since become the UK’s largest organic food and drink brand, as per the company. In the year to March 2021, Duchy Originals earned almost £3.6 million ($4.1 million) before taxes.

The brand has had its ups and downs. But it has thrived since entering into a partnership with Waitrose in 2009. The luxury supermarket chain now has the exclusive right to sell products under the Duchy name, and shoppers can find salmon, sausages, milk, carrots and blueberries under the name. “Waitrose Duchy Organic” in its stores.

“It has become a very successful business,” said Andrew Bloch, a London-based public relations specialist. “You can feel with this brand there is heart and soul behind it.”

The future is uncertain, however. Control of the Duchy Originals brand is up in the air during a period of national mourning that culminated in the Queen’s state funeral on Monday.

“We will contact the Royal House about future arrangements when the time is right to do so,” said a Waitrose spokesperson.

Ownership of Duchy Originals will likely pass to Charles’ eldest son Prince William, who also inherits the separate Duchy of Cornwall estate – worth around £1bn ($1.2bn). And although the prince studied organic farming, he is likely to be less practical than his father.

“He’s going to be interested, but he’s going to trust others to run him,” said Sally Bedell Smith, biographer and author of “Charles: The Misunderstood Prince.”

a passion project

Charles spent decades preaching the benefits of organic farming and protecting the environment, even before such issues became mainstream causes.

In 1985, he converted Home Farm, near his Highgrove estate in Gloucestershire, to an all-organic system. The Duchy Originals venture emerged five years later.

“Since the early 1980s, when I had the responsibility of managing some land in my own right at Highgrove, I have wanted to focus on an approach to food production that would avoid the impact of the prevailing, conventional system of industrialized agriculture, which is increasingly clear, is having a disastrous effect on soil fertility, biodiversity, and animal and human health,” Charles told Country Life magazine in 2021.

The first Duchy Originals product was an oatmeal cookie sold in 1992. Initially, the branded items were only found in luxury stores such as Harrods and Fortnum & Mason, although they later expanded to stores such as Waitrose, which cater to shoppers. richer, but it has many more locations.

The business was on rocky ground in its early days, Smith wrote in his book. It took on a lot of debt, and Duchy Originals had to look for new producers and manufacturers when it became too big to rely on Highgrove alone.

His luck later improved, according to Smith. She reported that when Charles visited the British embassy in Spain in 2004, he burst out with gift-wrapped goods, announcing, “I’m a millionaire in my own right, you know!”

Waitrose enters the scene

An ill-fated attempt to expand into the United States, however, combined with the onset of the global financial crisis, brought the business to the brink of collapse.

Facing millions of pounds in losses in 2009, Charles turned to Waitrose, which gave him a lifeline by agreeing to serve as exclusive distributor.

That marked the end of the prince’s ambitions for a major presence in the US market, but the beginning of a robust turnaround in the business’ prospects.

“The rescue of Waitrose during the financial crisis in September 2009 was absolutely vital,” Smith said.

By 2017, 25 years after the oatmeal biscuit debut, the range had expanded to 300 products, including fruit, vegetables, meat and beer, and annual sales reached £200m ($231m). More than 30 countries around the world, including the United States, Germany, Japan and Australia, received exports of selected products.

Charles has access to vast personal wealth through his land and property portfolio, but he has never directly profited from the Duchy Originals business. All royalties collected from Waitrose were donated to charitable causes. In its 2019 annual report, the company said it has raised more than £30m ($35m) since closing the licensing deal with Waitrose.

“He has provided a very substantial income stream for his foundation and has helped fund his charity work as well as promoting organic products,” Smith said.

Still, the venture was not without controversy. A variety of herbal remedies, including the “Herbals Detox Tincture” blend of artichoke and dandelion, have been accused by an alternative medicine expert as based on “total quackery”. A regulatory agency later said online ads for two of the herbal medicines in the line were misleading and instructed Duchy Originals to change the wording.

William’s new venture?

Changes have been afoot in recent years as Charles prepared to take the throne. In 2020, his staff said he would not renew the lease on the sprawling Home Farm, but would continue to farm organically at the late Queen’s Sandringham Estate in Norfolk, which he had begun managing in 2017.

Observers now believe William will take over the reins of Duchy Originals and its partnership with Waitrose, part of his new responsibilities as Duke of Cornwall.

“I think there will be a tension between his new role as King Charles III and what he can and cannot do,” said Bloch, who has also worked voluntarily with the Charles’ Prince’s Trust charity. “Prince William is likely to take over.”

In his first address to the nation as king, Charles acknowledged that his responsibilities will change.

“It will no longer be possible to devote so much of my time and energy to charities and issues that I care so deeply about,” he said. “But I know this important work will continue in the trusted hands of others.”

William spent a lot of time on the Highgrove estate growing up and enrolled in a course in agricultural management at Cambridge University in 2014. Still, Smith doesn’t think he’ll be too involved in the details of the deal.

“I wouldn’t have thought he’d get into the minutiae of what Charles did,” she said.