POD, the healthy fast food concept has appointed Tim Bartram as its new finance director and said that customer visits are up over 10% across its 23-strong estate in the year to date.
Bartram has joined the company from the board of Morrison Facilities Services, having previously occupied a senior finance role at Talk Talk.
His appointment comes after the company strengthened its marketing team with Sarah Neary becoming its new brand manager.
Founder and chief executive Tim Hall told M&C Report: “I was particularly keen to appoint a finance director with wide experience outside as well as inside consumer facing and retail business such that he could build a department utilising processes and systems from both sides of the fence.
“I am currently focused on creating a management structure and series of operating processes to support our continued expansion as well as ensuring the existing estate maximises it’s performance and growth potential and Tim will play a key part in that process.”
Hall said the group was “pretty happy” with the first two months of 2013.
He said: “Customer visits are up over 10% across the pod estate despite sentiment in the city (where tow/three of our outlets are) being pretty negative. We’re also hearing loud and clear that customers are getting pretty savvy at differentiating between brands that are using ‘health’ as a marketing gimmick and those for whom it’s baked into their DNA and I think there is a sense of customers rewarding brands like us for our integrity in these areas.
“Having said that, customers overall are still very price sensitive, partly as job stability is so fragile and partly because 2012 was a year of celebration and I think there’s a collective financial hangover from it all.”
