News: Kennedy’s Confection Moving on
Since Angus Kennedy, our previous editor, has now handed his role over to me, many readers have been asking what he will be doing after so long in the confectionery industry. So I put the questions to him myself. By Chris Shaw.
Angus, you’ve spent most of your life within the industry. Kennedy’s Confection is a family business and you were introduced to the market at an early age? Chris, you wouldn’t believe how crazy it was all those years ago when I was a flare-trousered 13 year old! My late mother, Margaret Lang, who many readers will fondly remember, was the editor and liked her drink! Kennedy’s was run at home and fuelled on booze, candy and mad dogs that ate the post! I used to pack the magazines by hand into all the envelopes in the cellar for pocket money.
It was so unusual that I am writing a book about how confectionery influenced my life and how I have noticed, after all these years, that it has influenced the lives of countless thousands of others.
Chris, we had sweets piled up high in every room, so I took them to school to trade for pens, trump cards and all sorts of useful items. I guess that’s how I learned to sell and trade. But seriously, I have met so many people and have learned so much that its time to do something new with the 30 years of knowledge.
As a child surrounded by chocolate it must have been a dream. What were the highlights for you? Oh yes, those sweet mountains piled high in the lounge! My parents would return from Cologne from iSM with car boot-fulls of candy and sweets. I used to run to the car and empty the boot and we would throw them in a pile and I would set to work testing them! I do the same thing with my children now. Some things never change. But I know how a 10 year old feels when his dad comes home with a car full of biscuits, chocolates and candies.
You’ve decided to move on from your role as editor of Kennedy’s Confection. Can you tell us what you’re up to now, and what has driven you to continue this quest? We all have purpose in life and the first purpose is to realise you actually have one! Well, then it gets interesting. You then you have to go out and find your purpose! Not an easy job, but that is the purpose of life! If life was easy it wouldn’t be worth living, right?
In my early years I fell into a family business and wondered why I was there. I have done everything now in publishing: writing; selling; designing; accounts; subscriptions; events; and of course writing Candid, the back page. There I wrote the most unusual pieces. Actually, most of my writing had nothing to do with confectionery, which oddly, was why it was liked! I started to enjoy a mini following and it all clicked; my purpose I mean. People actually liked my writing and I was writing crazy stuff and it should not have been in a business journal.
6 Kennedy’s Confection September 2012 “
success is the ability to be happy with the process of trying to become successful
So you as the editor now rightly started to make Kennedy’s Confection more technical and not a springboard for my philosophical ideas! So I set about with the aim to reach a wider audience which I am working on now, while at the same time working in Kennedy’s on the new Chocolate Industry Network.
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Why do you feel that the time is now right to change? Well, you helped me a start! For the first time Kennedy’s has a really good editor that I can trust. In a deeper sense we all have a calling, we are called every day but I started listening, we all have a plan and, man plans - God laughs. It’s all meant to be. Well, I subscribe more and more to this idea that you have to let yourself become what it is that you were supposed to be. You know when it comes and it’s wonderful, but you need faith in yourself and to master the art of patience. Things start happening in the end that you cannot plan. It’s then you know it’s the time. For example, I have been asked to go on Channel 4 TV to make chocolates! I didn’t plan that, I set things up so it could happen but I had no idea that the television company would call me. Isn’t life beautiful! Then a very large chocolate producer invited me to their kitchen for a day’s training. One thing triggers another and it starts. That’s when you know you have to let it happen and be a ‘yes man’ to fate.
A friend also has a friend who is a literary agent and heard about my TV work and – look, I am no superstar or ego tripper,
kennedysconfection.com
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