John Said started out with a career in aviation before joining the family business and becoming the chief executive of Fresh Select, which supplies vegetables to local and overseas markets. The 51-year-old talks to Charlene Macaulay.
Tell me about your family.
I have three daughters – twins who are 27 years old, and our youngest, who is 23 years old. One of them is working in London as a marketing executive for Amex, her twin sister works for Mecca Cosmetics here in Melbourne and our youngest is an advertising executive for a fairly large company in Melbourne.
I’ve been married to my wife Sandra for nearly 30 years. We met through an introduction. She was fooling around with me, trying to say that she was out with some girlfriends on a hen’s night, and she showed me this engagement ring and I was really cocky and said “if that’s the kind of ring you’ve got, that person’s not worth marrying”, so that was a bit of a laugh. Here we are today, nearly 30 years on, and it’s good. It’s really good.
Tell me the Fresh Select story.
My wife’s family have always been in retail, they’ve been selling groceries for three generations. When I met Sandra, I was an aircraft maintenance engineer, but going to the market with her brother and getting a feel for what was going on was quite a buzz. I loved that whole sense of trade, and the interesting dynamics of getting up early in the morning, getting out there, fighting for your food, coming home and selling it. There was a discussion after we were married that I could join the family business, so I did.
Through travelling overseas and understanding what the global market was, I soon realised that innovation was key. Our first breakthrough in innovation happened 20 years ago, and it was simply bagging iceberg lettuce. Coles were interested … we started with 24 boxes of lettuce with them, today we do in the vicinity of 20,000 boxes a week with them.
What was behind the decision to base the business in Werribee South?
Werribee South was actually home to the two families; I lived here, so did my business partner. Werribee was, and still is, the salad bowl of Australia. The fertile soils that we have here are just amazing for growing produce.
You recently starred in some Coles and My Kitchen Rules TV advertisements. How did you find that experience?
The experience was good fun, and they were very patient. We made a thousand mistakes –acting is not easy!
Do you cook? What’s your signature dish?
I love cooking, cooking’s become somewhat of a passion. I guess I’m a self-confessed risotto fan – I love cooking a truffle risotto that I serve in a wheel of parmagiana cheese, it’s just divine.
Do you have a favourite vegetable?
It’s obviously broccoli, and cauliflower is a very close second. In fact, to be fair to cauliflower, it’s probably in no particular order.
