BIG INTERVIEW: Lucky Saint MD is well healed in business and fun

Her CV is impressive, not only is she the managing director and partner at alcohol-free beer brand Lucky Saint, she is also a Hospitality Sector Council member for the Department for Business & Trade, non-executive director of the British Beer & Pub Association (BBPA) and chair of the FBI (Family Business & Independents) to, genuinely, name just a few.

Operating a business her way results in a feelgood factor for staff while sales are flying for Lucky Saint.

She has always loved to work and began when she was 16, having been instilled with the ethic having “great grafting parents” and began her career at Tesco where she was a buyer.

“You had to work in store for six months and I was at Cheshunt Extra, in Hertfordshire, which, at the time, was the CEO Terry Leahy’s local store,” she explains.

“It was intense pressure but an amazing training ground. And I worked really hard to prove myself to a very sceptical retail team and then went over the table to be in ‘brand’ at Innocent Drinks and I was so much happier to be able to be really enthusiastic and that really suited me.”

Fell in love with beer

A move to Diageo followed where Heal worked as head of commercial for 70% of her time in Africa – this was across 12 countries in beer and RTDs. She recalls: “That’s where I really fell in love with beer and then Graze (healthy snack brand) was interesting because we were the first brand to go from clicks to bricks. No other brand had done that before and it was an absolute rocket ship went from nought to £33m in three years.

“The big reason I came to Lucky Saint was I wanted to work in UK hospitality and it’s exceeded all my expectations. I’ve just fallen in love with it.”

Heal talks about the highlights of her career, which aren’t restricted to Lucky Saint…

They involve “that magic combo of winning commercially but doing the right thing. An example from my early career was the Innocent bobble hat campaign where they hats were knitted and put on top of bottles – it was called the Big Knit.

“I took it national for the first time in the mid-noughties and when it was sold in Sainsbury’s, they co-funded the 50p donation that went to what was, at the time, Age Concern. Really excitingly, 25% of those hats were knitted by Sainsbury’s colleagues. We raised £100,000 for Age Concern, won a Prince’s Trust award at the Royal Albert Hall, which was presented to me by Prince Charles and Al Gore.

“Lucky Saint has just been absolutely amazing. I joined six years ago. We were a team of five and we were very most recently on The Morning Advertiser’s Drinks List with the number four brand in the low & no beer category.

“From joining six years ago to where we are now has been just incredible. We’re the most loved alcohol-free beer brand in the UK. We have been since records began three years ago. We’re the UK’s number one dedicated alcohol-free beer brand and the only one in the top 20, which is dedicated and independent but, importantly, we’re in The Times Best Places to Work list and we’ve got incredibly high staff retention figures.

“At Lucky Saint, she says there is a lovely motto that states: Break rules, honour traditions and do the right thing well – that’s what we’re trying to do as a brand and certainly that’s what I’m trying to do as a leader.”

Pride is taken by what happens to all employees too. Heal says: “All my proudest achievements are team-based such as watching them develop and possibly even leave their current job and do something else, somewhere else. I’m very motivated to win commercially but also to see people rise around me and I spend a lot of my time supporting people to do that in and outside of Lucky Saint.”

Conversely, she doesn’t think about low points at all, stating the only thing that could be deemed anything near would be when a previous boss’s values did not align with hers but they retired shortly after so any issues ended quickly.

Make the boat go faster

The balancing of work and home life is a key aspect taken seriously at Lucky Saint. Heal has two daughters (six and eight) and says the way she makes it work is: “Having a really clear ambition and strategy at Lucky Saint because that just makes the boat go faster and it means we’re incredibly efficient with our time when we are working.

“Also, when I met Luke [Boase], the founder of Lucky Saint, we aligned and agreed very quickly it would always be family first – and we lead with that in the business. No one has to ask or even question if they want to go to their child’s or their nephew’s assembly or sports day. They just do it without having to even think about it.”

She adds prioritising recovery is important too. This means weekends are a sacred time when Heal can be with her partner and two daughters to allow her time to switch off and recharge. She admits she will still think about work but a ‘no communication’ policy gives everyone a reason to completely rest.

Heal puts the most pressure on herself but says she has got a lot better at taking time to celebrate the wins when they come up and “smelling the roses”. She adds: “I really like the expression ‘these are the good old days’ and just reminding ourselves every day that what we’re doing is very, very special.”

When becoming managing director of Lucky Saint, Heal was surprised by two things: Firstly, that less is always more. Again, she recalls a quote – this time from Albert Einstein – ‘if you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough’. She continues: “And I say the phrase ‘if I had more time, I would have written a short letter’ over and over again about how important communication is. Communication isn’t what’s said, it’s what’s remembered, so I take the time to think about what I say and keep it clear.

“When our on-trade director Will Snowden started, he gave me the book Setting The Table by Danny Meyer, and said it’s the bible of hospitality and I absolutely loved it. I really liked the idea for those who have read it, that my job is mainly is to keep the salt shaker in the middle of the table every single day using constant gentle pressure.”

Heal says the second surprise was how important it is to have fun. “I joined Lucky Saint to experience the benefits of working in UK hospitality and it has exceeded my hopes,” she says. “It’s hard but the payouts are amazing and I work with incredible people in and outside Lucky Saint.

“I always get such great feedback. Will Beckett, who’s the founder of Hawksmoor, said when we launched Lucky Saint on draught, ‘Emma, you’ve made it fun to go to the pub again‘, and I get the most wonderful DMs talking about how important the role of Lucky Saint is in people’s lives.”

The Lucky Saint MD offers three pieces of advice for someone wanting to achieve the status she has. Firstly, she says you need to be useful – so think how you could add value and what projects you could take off your boss.

Next is to stretch yourself. She explains she has an image of two circles. One is small and is your comfort zone while the big one is ‘where the magic happens’ – so the trick is to say yes to stuff that scares you or makes you feel a bit sick because that’s where you’re going to slingshot your personal growth.

And thirdly, one must get really comfortable with financials and commercial metrics. She explains: “When I was on holiday in my 20s, I went on a girls holiday to Ibiza and at the pool in the daytime, I was literally with the book Finance For Non-Financial Managers, making notes.

“And when I was at Graze, I used to cover up the commentary and the management accounts, and stare at the P&Ls, the cash flow, the balance sheets and come up with my own commentary and then check my homework, and I would sit down with the CFO once a week and go through all the acronyms that I didn’t understand and really lean into it. People are very scared about this stuff but knowledge is power and data is really important.”

Lots of opportunities

In her own time, Heal lifts weights three times a week to help achieve her ‘healthy body, healthy mind’ ethos and also runs in Bushy Park, south-west London, every week, and she remains “curious and creative” by listening to podcasts, reading, going to galleries and exhibitions.

Of course, being the big boss of a company can leave one feeling lonely. To this question, Heal states: “It doesn’t have to be and it does take a bit of an effort but, for me, there’s lots of opportunities out there.”

She says being part of the number of industry bodies she is involved with is really helpful. To this end, she is on the board of the BBPA and the Hospitality Sector Council, and in the All-Party Parliamentary Beer Group too.

Heal also has a “personal board” that allows her to meet with seven other CEOs, 10 times a year. “It’s Chatham House Rules so I can be my full self and table anything, whether it’s work or personal,” she states.

Then there’s some “amazing communities out there” and highlights Raising The Glass, which is a community for women in drinks and she is also involved in a large number of WhatsApp groups such as SMEs, low & no, women founders, ex-Innocent people and Lucky Saint’s three main investors, who are venture capitalists. She says: “They’re all useful so it doesn’t have to be lonely. There’s lots out there. It just takes a little bit of effort.”

Lucky Saint operates a pub – The Lucky Saint – in Marylebone, which opened three years ago and is small wet-led site. “The thing that’s really working for us is we do a small number of things but we do them really well,” Heal says. “We focus on quality drinks – alcoholic and non-alcoholic – and we’re independent so we can hunt down the very best and serve them brilliantly.”

Heal concludes with what she perceives as excellent leadership: “I listen more than I speak. I spend lots of time with the team. I’m in the pubs, I’m walking supermarket aisles. I love listening to the team, listening to consumers, I’m a big fan of Simon Sinek’s book Leaders Eat Last, and inevitably, someone in the room has the same idea as me but it’s obviously much more empowering for them to say it first and I can agree with them, so recognising when something was done really well and saying thank you.

“And I ‘pay it forward’. Internally, that means creating dedicated time for personal developments for the team and giving lots of example-led actionable feedback. Externally, that looks like the industry bodies I’m on and the boards I’m on all sharing ideas, sharing learnings and connecting people, which I love doing.

“Ultimately, it’s about enjoying seeing others win and thrive.”