John Vincent buying Leon back from Asda is being framed as a comeback story. Founder returns. Vision restored. Magic reignited.
That framing is comforting. It is also incomplete.
Because what the Leon story really says is that there’s a structural problem in how we build and scale organisations. Underpin talks endlessly about systems, process, governance and professionalisation. But we rarely talk honestly about what happens when the person who holds the centre leaves.
Leon did not fail because halloumi got thinner or sandwiches appeared on the menu. It failed because the thing that made decisions coherent disappeared.
Vincent says, “In a crisis you need a pilot in full control.” He’s right. But the more uncomfortable truth is this: Leon never built a cockpit that worked without him in it.
That is not a criticism of him as a founder. It is a warning to everyone else.
Founder mentality is not nostalgia. It is accountability
When Vincent talks about running Leon “like a corner shop” or obsessing over problems from early morning to late at night, it is easy to dismiss this as romantic founder mythmaking.
It isn’t.
Founder mentality is not about vibes. It is about decision ownership. It is about someone caring enough to notice when the toilets slip, the menu drifts, the standards blur and the original promise gets quietly traded for scale.
As Allegra McEvedy puts it, under corporate ownership “all the points of difference slowly got shaved away”.
That shaving does not happen through malice. It happens through optimisation. Through sensible decisions that, taken individually, make perfect sense. Slight cost reductions. Slight simplifications. Slight broadening of appeal.
Until the thing that made the business distinctive is gone.
Scale can be evil
Leon’s rapid expansion pre-Covid was hailed as success. More stores. More revenue. More presence.
But scale is not neutral. Every new outlet stretches culture. Every new layer dilutes judgement. Every acquisition introduces distance between decision and consequence.
When Vincent says, “We want to be the best food company in the world but don’t want to be the biggest,” he is articulating something many boards still refuse to accept.
Growth is not always progress.
Businesses rarely die because demand disappears. They die because they lose the ability to say no.
Systems cannot replace judgement
Leon under Asda had systems. It had reporting lines. It had financial oversight. What it lacked was someone with the authority and instinct to say, “This is no longer Leon.”
Vincent admits, “I didn’t imbue enough understanding in the company of how to sustain itself without me.”
That sentence matters.
Because most founders are told to make themselves redundant as quickly as possible. To systemise. To delegate. To step back.
Very few are told to embed judgement, not just process.
You can write manuals for coffee timing. You cannot spreadsheet taste, pride or care.
Culture does not survive handover unless you design for it
The most interesting part of this story is not the turnaround plan. It is the confession.
Leon was built by people who cared about everything, from branding to loos. That level of care is fragile. It does not survive ownership change unless it is deliberately protected.
Too many organisations confuse culture with branding and values statements. Culture is actually the accumulated pattern of what gets challenged and what gets tolerated.
When founders leave without codifying that pattern, the business does not collapse overnight. It slowly forgets itself.
The real lesson for leaders
This is not an argument against selling, scaling or stepping away. It is an argument for honesty.
If your business only works when you are in the room, that is not a failure. It is information.
Your job is not to disappear. Your job is to decide what must never be diluted, who is trusted to defend it, and how power is exercised when you are not there.
Leon’s revival might work. It might not. Hospitality is brutal and the economics are unforgiving.
But Vincent is right about one thing.
If every Leon is to be magical, someone has to be responsible for the magic.
And magic, in business, is just another word for care backed by authority.
Most companies do not fail because the market turns. They fail because nobody is left who feels personally accountable for what good looks like.
That is the part worth paying attention to.