Black Bee Honey's Paul Webb on what founders get wrong about measuring success

Black Bee Honey passed £1m in annual turnover this summer, with sales up 49% on the year before. The Somerset brand, founded in 2017 by Paul Webb and Chris Barnes, sells single-origin British honey from its own apiaries and a network of more than 15 bee farmers. It was set up as an alternative to the blended honey that fills most supermarket shelves.

A faster route to those figures was always available. "We would be able to drastically improve margins and sales if we opted for imports," Webb says.

Instead, the founders committed from the start to sourcing only British honey, "to support those beekeepers and stand behind the quality of UK honey".

That decision is the clearest example of Webb's argument that revenue and growth matter, but founders also need to decide early what else counts as success, and be willing to pay for it.

Looking beyond the financials

Black Bee's finance rhythm is conventional. Each month Webb and the company's fractional finance director review revenue against budget, gross margin, operating costs against budget and net working capital.

What's changing is what sits alongside it. "We're starting to look at tracking other forms of company health outside of the financials, which can be equally as important," Webb says, "such as social and environmental performance."

Black Bee is already a certified B Corp and an accredited Living Wage employer, and the business now reviews those measures on the same monthly cycle as the financials.

Giving back

Since 2020 Black Bee has given 2% of turnover to creating and managing wildflower meadows, through a partnership with the charity Plantlife. The brand says that has created more than 40 acres of meadow so far.

A pledge tied to profit costs nothing in a year without one. Webb says that is exactly why Black Bee chose turnover. "We've been dipping in and out of profit for a while and only just going into sustainable profit, so using a percentage of profit could be an empty gesture," he says. "This is a commitment to having a real positive environmental impact."

"It can feel expensive quite often, but that also means it's significant," Webb says. "It sharpens our focus for profitability and discipline to make sure we can accommodate it."

Supply is the real limit

Supply is where growth and Black Bee's commitments meet most directly. A bad harvest, or a farmer needing a better price, can hit a business built on a small network of British suppliers.

Webb's answer is to widen the network rather than squeeze it. "We're always on the lookout for more bee farmers to mitigate issues with harvests with individual suppliers and absorb price increases," he says.

"For sustainable and significant growth we have to nurture those relationships and demonstrate to bee farmers how we’re playing a part in the improvement of an industry which has been crippled by imports and adulteration. That appears to be working so far," he says, "but supply is our biggest challenge."

The cost of chasing growth

Webb is open that Black Bee's own projections were built around speed. "Scaling fast was built into the projections, partly to attract investors," he says. It was also the founders' ambition to get British honey back into the supermarket.

His warning is that a growth-only scorecard costs more than it shows. "Focusing purely on financial performance and growth can inhibit the creative and human elements of a company which make it unique and thrive."

If he were starting again, he would set three measures on day one: sustainable growth, clarity on the vision, and investment in team, culture and planet.

"You need to be clear on why you're doing it and stick to that vision," he says, "otherwise it will be a very tough ride."