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Three young women - all from the same year group at school - are gearing up to take the helm of major local players spanning tourism, retail and farming.
Family businesses are notoriously tricky - studies show the majority don't survive past the third generation, and those that do tend to have their top positions dominated by older men.
In fact, just one in ten firms favour female leaders in their succession planning - but times are changing.
Express met up with a trio of Jersey girls breaking the mould and making a success of succession...
After returning from nine months of travels across South East Asia and South America, Francesca Le Feuvre thought her blossoming career in investments was “for the long haul” - that is, until her father broke both of his legs.
Pictured: Francesca Le Feuvre is a business development officer for Jersey Adventures.
“He was doing some maintenance on the house, and he fell… It wasn’t until I went to see him in hospital and he was kind of drugged up on morphine that he made the proposition. He was about to turn 60 and wanted to draw back from the business.
“We had never had ‘the conversation’ before, believe it or not.”
Fast-forward six months, and Francesca has swapped suits for welly boots working as a business development officer for Jersey Adventures, under whose umbrella falls the vastly successful aMaizin! Adventure Park.
The business, which turns 20 this year, started when she was just eight years old.
“Back then, my dad had left farming due to the decrease in the farming industry. It was all he’d ever known. He was severely dyslexic and left school very early. And his dad’s dad’s dad’s dad’s dad was in farming - it’s in his blood.
“He took a step back and thought, ‘What can I do?’ And came up with the concept of agro-tourism. [The aMaizin! Maze] was born out of the ashes of his farming career and the two of them working together - my mum being the brains and my dad being the brawn. I’m immensely proud of them. They’re amazing,” Francesca reflects.
Pictured: aMaizin! Adventure Park started when Francesca was just eight.
As the business bloomed, she says she found herself helping out at the family attraction “every weekend, every summer holiday” from the age of 13, mostly in the shop but also doing “bits and bobs” elsewhere.
It was an activity she enjoyed, but it never crossed Francesca’s mind that this might one day lead to a permanent career until things reached crunch point.
“It was a bit of a shock to all three of us involved. My mum said, ‘If this is going to happen, we need you by Halloween. It’s a massive time for us, so hand in your resignation Monday.’ This was a Saturday.”
Though made at speed, it was by no means an easy decision.
“I think seeing your parents work seven days a week and put everything into a business, you have to consider, ‘Is that what I want for myself?’
Pictured: Francesca says she hasn't found adapting too challenging.
“I’m naturally a hard worker anyway, so I thought, ‘If I’m going to be working hard on something, might as well be something I’m invested in and care about.’”
As if the contrast from an office environment to a play park offering tractor rides and a playful cast of animals - ranging from hand-reared rabbits to cheeky Anglo-Nubian goats and even a miniature Shetland named Dougall - couldn’t be any more stark to begin with, the working week itself has an entirely different shape, at one point even extending to 14 days.
But Francesca says she hasn’t found adapting too challenging.
“In my early 20s, I used to live for the weekend. Now I always work one day in the weekend! Weirdly enough, I just forget. I get to Monday and feel extra smug,” Francesca laughs, joking that she now gets to avoid the ‘Monday blues’.
Despite the industry differences, the former fixed assets trader says her corporate know-how has stood her in good stead in surprising ways.
Pictured: Francesca says her career in investments taught her to be diligent.
“The nature of my previous work definitely taught me to be diligent, but I think where they helped me the most is that every role I’ve ever done has been very client-facing. It’s central to any work I’ve ever done.
"It always revolves around the client, which I really love. I love interacting with people, it’s definitely the favourite part of my working life.”
Enthusing about the most “rewarding” part of the career swap, she continues: “When children are back at school, we get a lot of the toddlers in during the week. It’s so sweet, and they start to know you by name. And I get to see my nephew and my family every day.”
But - myth-busting time - being around family doesn’t mean an easier ride.
If anything, Francesca muses, “I think my parents are almost harder on me than the other staff because they expect a higher calibre of work and for me to set a precedent others need to follow.”
Pictured: Being around family doesn’t mean an easier ride, Francesca says.
To earn her seat, she’s been working over the past six months across all areas of the business, trying to gain an in-depth knowledge of how her parents keep such a “well oiled machine”.
“A month on catering, a month on retail, I’m currently in the office then time in maintenance, time with the park rangers. I need to learn the role from the floor upwards… You can’t manage unless you’ve walked in the shoes of the people who are working for you.”
And gaining respect is key - “That objective is number one, letting others know you’re a hard worker and assisting in any way possible.”
It’s a viewpoint shared by Vienna Bakery Assistant Manager of just over two years, Sarah Dodge.
“You don’t want to look like the child of the boss that just walks in and has an amazing time of it. You almost feel you have to work twice as hard just to prove you’re willing to put the effort in, you’re not there for an easy ride,” she says.
Pictured: Sarah Dodge has been the Assistant Manager at Vienna Bakery for just over two years.
Though her father, David, would argue she was ‘born and bread’ for the industry, Sarah never imagined herself in a leadership role at one of the island’s largest and best-loved bakeries.
“My dad always tells a story of when I was a baby I could walk, but I was in my nappy. When he’d get up really early to go to work, I’d always get out of bed and waddle out to him in the kitchen and find him when he was on his way out. He always tells that story and says I’m an early riser because bakers are really early risers.”
Thinking otherwise, she pursued her favourite subject, chemistry, at university before working at a trust company and then travelling.
It was while abroad she finally felt like it was the “right time” to make the change, so emailed her dad about the idea.
Pictured: Sarah decided to join the family business while abroad.
“I told him, ‘I think this is going to be my next step.’ And I think he was shocked, but quite relieved,” Sarah recalls.
The bakery itself is founded on rich tradition.
Sarah’s grandfather, Bob, managed Orvis’ Bakery in Beresford Street before going on to found Vienna Bakery with wife Peggy in a continental-style premises in Georgetown in 1960.
In the years to come, the bakery charmed the island with its viennoisserie, going on to secure a space in the Central Market and supplying local stores, restaurants and hotels around the island with everything from crusty breads to delicate yet elaborate pastries and trendy hybrids like the ‘duffin’.
Pictured: For Sarah, the bakery is imbued with memories of feasting on chocolate brownies at weekends, eyeing up chocolate éclairs, and a sense of “home”.
For Sarah, the place is imbued with memories of feasting on chocolate brownies at weekends, eyeing up chocolate éclairs, and a sense of “home”.
“I think that’s what makes me enjoy it so much, because it’s a part of the family.”
Sarah, who learned the ins and outs of the business by “slotting in to help out” everywhere from bookkeeping to bread packing, says she’s hyper-conscious of Vienna’s history, but is nonetheless keen to “carry on the family traditions of the bakery while trying to modernise it”.
Among her little success stories so far are “streamlining” the invoice system - “it used to be a case of printing them all out and folding them up and posting or handing out with each delivery” - and using her scientific skillset to better prep the bakery for its annual audit.
“Food safety and chemistry safety are very similar, so I made that a lot tidier.”
Pictured: For now, Sarah doesn’t have a defined picture of what her Vienna Bakery ‘ascent’ will look like.
Thanks to the trust and close relationships involved in working with family, pushing for change - something that could in some circumstances backfire - is a much easier process.
“In other jobs you might be scared to talk to your boss and say what you actually think. With my dad, I can say, ‘This is happening and I don’t think it’s right.’ You don’t need to hold anything back.”
Indeed, a close and honest bond is key in ensuring longevity of a family business - research shows internal conflicts (60% being trust and communication-related) are more likely than external forces to cause trouble in intergenerational organisations.
For these reasons, many don’t survive past the third generation.
For now, Sarah doesn’t have a defined picture of what her Vienna Bakery ‘ascent’ will look like, but says that, while she can feeling responsibility “building”, she is delighting in “step by step” learning more about the crucial part of her heritage and helping secure its future.
Pictured: Becky is technically the first female gearing up to take charge at Lodge Farm in nearly eight decades.
Succession isn’t something that’s fully crossed farmer Becky Houzé’s mind yet either – though she describes the idea of passing Lodge Farm to a fifth generation as a “nice thought”.
These days, the farm supplies Jersey Dairy and is home to 220 cows, 120 young stock, and a small enterprise of rearing Aberdeen Angus-cross beef.
Its history dates back to the 1940s, when it was bought up by Becky’s great-great grandparents and taken over by successive sons. Technically, Becky is the first female gearing up to take charge in nearly eight decades.
However, she says that women have always been involved in agriculture - only mislabelled.
Pictured: The history of Lodge Farm dates back to the 1940s.
Despite spending years picking daffodils and taking on other hard-going farm work, on top of homemaking duties, Becky says her nanny never called herself a ‘farmer.’
“Times haven’t changed. Women have always been on the farm, but they always used to consider themselves the 'farmer’s wife’, rather than the ‘farmer’ - she was a farmer!” Becky, who takes great pride in the title, laughs.
She always knew she wanted to go into farming, leaving school early to pursue a specialist course at Harper Adams, where she says the majority of her colleagues were “brought up on family farms.”
“You find very few people actually go into it,” Becky adds, noting that staffing is currently a major issue: “Kids today on the island either want to go into finance or other types of office jobs, so for local talents we are struggling so we have to get skilled labour in from overseas.”
Pictured: Becky always knew she wanted to go into farming.
It’s one of the key reasons she has pushed for “investment in technology” - some of which inspired by work experience in the US through her course - to boost productivity and yield.
So successful have Becky’s measures been that she’s become known locally for her enterprising digital farm, which even includes ‘fitbits’ for the whole herd to monitor their health and wellbeing.
But while productivity boosters certainly help, the family link - which acts as a quality mark in many islanders’ eyes - is essential for securing longevity in a challenging climate.
Video: Becky has pushed for “investment in technology” at the farm.
“You’ve got that incentive to teach the next generation because you know they’re going to be the next generation building up the business that you’ve grown.”
When the going gets tough in a family business, cutting and running isn’t an option. Life and work are a blend - “you’re always on call, and farm always comes first.”
But beyond securing an income for future generations, this attitude offers something even more profound for the island as a whole. Numbers of dairy farms are dwindling, and the ones left are mostly family-run.
“We’re feeding the growing population. It’s essential that people do go out and take over these family farms to keep food security.”
It is these little dynasties, built on heritage, that are keeping fresh, local produce on our shelves.
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