04 Success stories


Strength through adversity


Peter McAllister, managing director of Falcon Foodservice Equipment, discusses the company’s response to the pandemic with Michael Jones and how its 200-year heritage and experience has helped make it future-fi t


How did Falcon weather the storm of the pandemic? What was your strategy? When I saw the UK Prime Minister’s speech on 23 March, announcing the fi rst lockdown, I realized we had to make some quick decisions. We had to balance remaining open and being able to support our customers with the need to protect the health and safety of our employees and public health. We decided to put a hold on our manufacturing,


which meant we could make our site Covid-secure very quickly. But we kept a small team in place for customer service, sales, fi nance and logistics to support and keep engaging with our customers. It was an easy decision at the time – and the support we got from Ali Group was fantastic – but it's one that has really served us well over the last 18 months. We became very good at multitasking. We


had strong levels of stock, so, we were able to supply a signifi cant amount of product without manufacturing. We had the fi nance team answering the phone, covering sales tasks. We were all mucking in. What has come out of this is a fantastic team spirit. In adversity, you learn a lot about your team and that spirit has continued as everybody else has returned to the business.


How was business aff ected? Some of our customers have been quiet, particularly those in hospitality, but many of our customers in the public sector, such as


42 Aliworld


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36  |  Page 37  |  Page 38  |  Page 39  |  Page 40  |  Page 41  |  Page 42  |  Page 43  |  Page 44  |  Page 45  |  Page 46  |  Page 47  |  Page 48  |  Page 49  |  Page 50  |  Page 51  |  Page 52  |  Page 53  |  Page 54  |  Page 55  |  Page 56  |  Page 57  |  Page 58  |  Page 59  |  Page 60  |  Page 61  |  Page 62  |  Page 63  |  Page 64  |  Page 65  |  Page 66  |  Page 67  |  Page 68  |  Page 69  |  Page 70  |  Page 71  |  Page 72  |  Page 73  |  Page 74  |  Page 75  |  Page 76  |  Page 77  |  Page 78  |  Page 79  |  Page 80  |  Page 81  |  Page 82  |  Page 83  |  Page 84  |  Page 85  |  Page 86  |  Page 87  |  Page 88  |  Page 89  |  Page 90  |  Page 91  |  Page 92  |  Page 93  |  Page 94  |  Page 95  |  Page 96  |  Page 97  |  Page 98  |  Page 99  |  Page 100