Head of food Jennie Beaumont on what Leon is cooking up for Christmas

The head of food at Leon tells Maria Mellor how the restaurant group gets into the Christmas spirit with new product development

What has been your career journey?

I’ve been with Leon for about 10 months, but before that I was part of the team that brought the Tim Hortons brand to the UK and established the menu. Prior to that I was at Costa, where I looked after the cake and impulse counters.

What’s on the menu at Leon this Christmas?

We’ve gone all out this year. There’s the Turkey Christmassaman Curry. We’ve had that on our menu for the past couple of years, and it’s back with an upgrade for 2023. It’s roasted turkey in a coconut milk sauce with flavours of galangal, cardamom, ginger and lemongrass. We serve it on our Leon brown rice and, this year, we’ve added more value in the form of some pink sauerkraut and crispy onions. We’re really chuffed with how Christmassy it tastes as we’ve also got roasted potatoes and carrots in the recipe. It's a really hearty curry but not too spicy – it’s like Boxing Day come early.

Then the real star of the show is our Festive Feast Wrap. We use the same turkey recipe but braised in a miso and porcini gravy ahead of wrapping it into our trademark khobez wrap. It’s is a bit of a beast in that it’s also got Cos lettuce, spinach, cranberry and orange sauce, pork and herb stuffing balls, bacon, crispy onions and Leon aïoli too.

Then the third product is the miso and porcini gravy sold separately in a pot. It’s vegetarian, so it’s made of porcini, miso, red wine vinegar and vegetable stock. It’s got all the umami flavours and a real Christmassy note. It’s such a great add on to our baked fries or crispy chicken nuggets.

How do you decide what products go on the Christmas menu?

In new product development it’s always about Christmas. We’re either analysing how sales went last year or thinking about what we’re going to do next year and then we’re assessing the results of this year as they come in.

We’ve started to see sales from the first day of our launch [15 November], and we will look at those numbers really closely [to plan next year’s menu]. We probably start putting some ideas down on paper about eight months ahead of Christmas and then the hands-on developing and engaging with our suppliers is probably six months out.

Part of that timeline is the approval of the product. We have a cross-functional approval process for any products that come out of the development kitchen to make sure we’re happy from a commercial point of view as well as in terms of food safety and operations. Once everybody is happy we double-check with our guests to make sure that, if we’re bringing a product back, we’ve addressed any big concerns. Then we’ll do some consumer panels at our head office to ensure the products are better than last year and something people are prepared to spend their hard-earned cash on.

What logistical considerations have to be made?

We have to develop something that fits the price point. It’s an operational consideration to deliver consistent, high-quality products, so we embed that into the development process early on. We’re passionate about making sure we never disappoint a guest by having an inconsistency.

There are a number of Christmas products out there that you can have every year and we felt we could offer something great with the warmth of our products but also with a point of difference.

How do you discover trends?

We keep an eye on what our competitors are doing and we’re really lucky in that our offices are just down the road from Borough Market in London, so we keep an eye on what’s going on there. We also look at high-end restaurants to see what flavour profiles are coming through, and we’ve always got a pile of cookbooks on our desks and are constantly looking at those for ideas.

We also use a lot of food trends data from the Food People. We saw porcini and miso emerging as a trend probably two years ago, and we felt that now was the right time to bring it into our menu.

What about after Christmas?

We’re very excited by our January launches. I’ve spent 10 months coming up with a fantastic plant-powered range, but I can’t divulge the details just yet!