Jason Wouhra CEO, Lioncroft Wholesale

The head of one of the UK’s biggest food and drink wholesalers is passionate about helping small business thrive in the face of tough competition.

- By Jessica Murray

Walking the aisles of his 120,000 sq ft warehouse, Jason Wouhra gestures towards boxes of crisps, of every conceivable brand and flavour, stacked high on towering 15m-tall shelves.

"We sell £18m worth of crisps every year. Just crisps," he says.

"Millions of boxes of food and drink come through here. We're restocking every day. Yesterday, when I came into work, there were already eight lorries parked up on the street waiting to get in."

Wouhra is CEO of Lioncroft Wholesale, one of the country's biggest wholesalers, selling food and drinks products to over 10,000 businesses across the Midlands and farther afield from its Birmingham and Wolverhampton depots.

Many of these customers are owners of independent corner shops, often husband-and-wife teams taking it in turns to man the shop and stock the shelves. His huge cash and carry on the edge of the Aston Expressway in north Birmingham has become an important social hub for them working in an increasingly tough market.

"It's a very hard game to be in. You can imagine, a lot of these stores open at six in the morning and close at 10 at night. And they're working with very small margins, there isn't any fat to cut," he says.

"And progressively, over the last two decades, they've faced head-on competition from big rivals, like the Tesco and Sainsbury's of the world. But independent shops are the heart of their communities. We can't afford to lose that, because it would fundamentally change the landscape of consumer choice in the UK."

Wouhra says there has been a growing trend since Covid for people to manage their money by buying smaller baskets more frequently, rather than doing a big weekly shop, and corner shops have benefited from this.