So disgusted by what happened to Leon, its founder has bought it back

In recent years, the quality of food at Leon has nosedived. Once a bastion of chic, healthier high street fast food thanks to fish finger wraps, a relatively pioneering “superfood salad”, and rice and veg boxes, Leon started struggling, its reputation damaged and its brand compromised. A report in February found Leon lost £60 million in the four years it was owned by the EG Group, a company that integrated it into its budget supermarket chain Asda two years later.

Leon’s is a meandering tale. Founded by John Vincent, Henry Dimbleby and Allegra McEvedy in 2004, the chain started strong, helping to popularise such necessary delights as harissa and sumac. It made headlines, received celebrity backing and, six months in, was even named “best new restaurant” in the prestigious Observer Food Monthly awards. On the judging panel? Rick Stein, Gordon Ramsay, Nigel Slater, Heston Blumenthal, Ruth Rogers and Jay Rayner. Not an easy bunch to impress.

Vincent tells Evening Standard that things looked bright for a decade: “We were growing strongly until about 2019. Between 2014 and 2020, we had a 45 per cent increase in sales. We were doing well, and it wasn’t a case of competition. The market was strong and we were a major leader.”

Leon’s market position probably started waning before the takeover by EG Group, then owned by the billionaire Issa brothers, who turned a single Blackburn petrol station into a global empire; their priorities might not be top tier food. Figures show Leon restaurants have made a pre-tax loss every year since 2016, although it’s hard to quantify given rapid expansion, and then the pandemic.

Either way, Vincent, having witnessed a triumphant fall from grace, bought his beloved Leon back in 2025. The businessman, who drives a “clapped out Seat Leon” — “it just makes sense,” he says — paid between £30m and £50m, at least half of what he sold it for (£100m), and wants to see the restaurant rediscover its old charm, re-energise the business and channel what made it exciting in the first place.

“It got bad,” admits Vincent. “The food was downgraded. There are so many costs in this industry, and if you have a supermarket mentality, you start to cut costs. It’s a very different mindset. When you start to value-engineer food, things go wrong. Someone in a boardroom might think, ‘maybe people won’t notice if we take a lemon out, or swap olive oil for half olive oil, half rapeseed’. It tells in the end.”

Vincent is candid. Take Leon’s feted lunchtime wraps. He explains the halloumi was changed from “thick, juicy” batons to thinner strands; that the fish fingers in the famous flatbread were reduced in size. “All these changes have an impact,” he says. “Nothing feels fresh. Nothing feels generous. It went from a hospitality business to a supermarket.”

Vincent says it wasn’t just the food. “They didn’t invest in training. When your number one focus is to make money, I don’t think you have a real purpose. You can pull back on ingredients and labour and think it will be positive, but in the end, you fall off a cliff. Eventually the customer will tell you to ‘f*** off’.”

Vincent muses that as soon as PowerPoint dominates a restaurant, “you get f***ed”, because boardrooms aren’t where hospitality should live. It’s about confidence, he says, and about staying true to your “ethos”. Leon was always about salads, rice boxes and breakfast pots. The CEO says when the restaurant started experimenting with sandwiches (the pulled turkey and mustard mayo ciabatta was particularly upsetting) he had to act.

“I bought it back — I own it all now,” he says. He never really wanted to sell it anyway: “I had a nice time, obviously, we did well. But it was very stressful operating Leon before, and the pandemic really hurt. I was knackered. By the time someone offered the money, I just thought, ‘f*** it’. I was reading the paper and finding out about all these things going wrong, so I wanted to hide, to be a recluse and not care.”

Clearly, “not caring” doesn’t work in the food game. Vincent does: he says he cleaned out his bank account taking Leon back (we’d wager he has a bit of money still knocking about…). Simply, he says, he wants Leon “to exist,” because it “means something — there’s a spirit to Leon beyond transaction”.

“It’s not about the money anyway,” he suggests. It’s a sentiment you hear a lot from successful business people, but Vincent’s saying it all the same, adamantly too, with zeal, panache: “It’s f***ing scary, this, but I believe in it and I believe it’s the right thing to do. I don’t care if I end up in a log cabin. So long as my kids are looked after. Health is the most important thing and I’m not motivated by money. But I do want Leon to be successful. It’ll screw me financially if it doesn’t work.”

Vincent compares the restaurant chain to his old car — “the clutch needs sorting” — but insists it’s the right thing to do. “I got so many messages when I bought it back — people said they’re so glad I did it.”

Vincent explains it’s about reintroducing seasonality, fresh ingredients and the menu items that made Leon famous in the first place. “We’re building better relationships with farmers; we’re a family business again,” he says. “No, we’re not a little independent, but there needs to be a sense of community and staff need to recognise it’s a good place to work.

“We’re rolling out new team member contracts. We’re asking our staff, ‘what is your dream and how can we help?’ One wants to be an archaeologist, so we set up a day where they attended a local dig. Another wants to be a nutritionist so we had them shadow our own head of nutrition, Carole Symons.”

I ask Vincent what the starting wage is at Leon these days. It’s £12.75. And what the star menu items are that have been brought back, or soon will be. One is the superfood salad. Another is the chocolate mousse. “Just give people what they want,” Vincent chimes.

It’s impossible to tell whether it’ll work. Vincent talks a good game. He’s even building his own chicken farm, “somewhere between Red Tractor standard and free range”. To integrate free range chicken fully, by the way, would see the rice boxes rise from £8.75 to about £14. “Nobody would pay that.” Still, Leon might yet fly again.