DENIS Lynn, chairman of Finnebrogue Artisan, was named entrepreneur of the year at the UK Grocer Gold Awards, which was held digitally this year due to Covid 19 restrictions.
Hosted by Grocer editor Adam Leyland, the award is for a leader in food who has recognised an opportunity or met an unsatisfied demand and shown the necessary commitment, leadership and self-belief either to create a new and successful business or to radically improve or turn around the performance of an existing one.
In leading Finnebrogue, Lynn has overseen Finnebrogue’s extraordinary growth over the last decade. His innovation, and in particular, the launch of the firm's nitrite-free bacon, has firmly established Finnebrogue Artisan as a trailblazer in food production.
He has established Naked Bacon - the first mass-produced bacon in the UK made without the cancer-causing chemicals - as the biggest brand of bacon in the UK since its launch in January 2018.
Starting out in 1985 by selling pizzas and pies out of a van, he quickly realised to be successful he needed to maximise volume and margin. In discovering a new French fry, he became the largest customer of Lord Chips in Europe and used the money he made to buy the beautiful Finnebrogue estate in 1991.
During the 1990s he was a beef farmer and then a deer farmer. Denis established Finnebrogue as the largest farmer and processor of deer in the UK, supplying Michelin star restaurants, top supermarkets and celebrity chefs.
Since then, he has been at the heart of many food revolutions, from the posh dog to the immensely successful nitrite-free bacon. He has grown the business’s turnover to £150 million – producing premium sausages, bacon, ham, venison, and wagyu beef burgers - and now employs 870 staff.
In the last five years alone, he has opened three state of the art factories, and is due to open the firm’s fourth next month - a new £25 million production site for next generation plant-based food.
In 2018, the Institute of Directors named Denis the UK’s most innovative director of the year.
