KEEPING UP WITH THE JONES’ -
FROM £50 WEEK TO £50 MILLION ENTERPRISE

1st July 2006 marks the fifteenth anniversary of staff catering firm, Charlton House, founded by a former school dinner lady, Robyn Jones, and her husband, Tim, a chartered accountant.

The pair established Charlton House in the summer of 1991. Robyn worked initially in their spare bedroom, armed only with a telephone directory, a telephone, a wallpaper-pasting table for a desk and banana boxes as filing cabinets. Tim managed the accounts while keeping on his day job as group financial director of RWS Group plc, one of Europe’s largest technical translation companies. It was at the height of a recession, and they launched the business on the strength of a £50 weekly Government enterprise allowance.

Fifteen years on, the mother and father of two are running a £50 million enterprise, with annual turnover projected to leap to £80 million by 2009.

Charlton House is now the largest independent contract caterer in the UK to have grown without acquisitions. Clients include Her Majesty’s Treasury, the Royal Society of British Architects and the corporate headquarters of BUPA, Sony (United Kingdom) Ltd and Network Rail.

44-year-old Robyn and her husband, Tim, wholly own the company. They have never once sought finance, and all of their business growth has occurred organically, through recommendation and extension to existing business.

The company is known for its cutting edge approach to food in the workplace. Robyn Jones (chief executive) and Tim Jones (chairman and finance director) employ 1,350 people nationwide across 135 staff restaurant sites.

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