Member Spotlight: The Lentilist

Independent hospitality is a mosaic of culture and cuisine that celebrates individuality and attracts people from all walks of life. There is no such thing as an ‘average’ independent eatery, and that statement certainly rings true when it comes to mobile, health-focused business The Lentilist.

Proprietor Nathan Street boasts a wealth of experience working with food and in hospitality – having spent 23 years as a chef in the military working on various ships and shore bases, another six cooking for UK NATO representatives in Belgium as well as a stint in London cooking for the Vice Chief of Defence Staff, he decided it was time to set up his own catering venture.

Having worked with food so extensively, Nathan knew he wanted to bring some goodness to the masses in the form of healthy food options to serve at events. He recalls attending a few festivals and being disappointed with the lack of healthy food options on offer and while this is “changing a bit now, I just felt like it was time to shake it up a bit. It’s about offering a bit more balance – when you’ve been at a festival for four days, you want something a bit healthier and there isn’t always that option.”

Nathan admits he’s always been passionate about curries, about spice and Asian food in particular, where lentils form a key component of so many dishes, like dhals. He identified lentils as being an “underutilised ingredient”, and liked how a “lentil doesn’t really taste of much so it’s an easy thing to flavour, but it has good nutritional properties – and it makes a banging curry!”

Core ingredient settled on, now Nathan just needed a name for the business – something that represented what he’d be offering the public, while also generating intrigue and standing the business apart. After cycling through a procession of ideas that seemed already taken, Nathan was describing his aims with the business to a friend who promptly suggested it was “a bit mentalist”, and lightning struck: The Lentilist was christened, along with accompanying slogan ‘it’s time to go a little bit lentil’.

Now fully equipped, The Lentilist was ready to make a splash on the festival and event circuit. Providing fully accessible, vegetarian and vegan food, Nathan initially slathered his stand with vegan flags to highlight this, but it may have been more of a hindrance than a help as Nathan feels “you’re always fighting a stigmatism with that because it can make people avoid it more – it promotes a very strong reaction from people and will turn a few off who otherwise might eat with you.” He has found that people will happily eat and engage with his vegan offerings, but he doesn’t advertise the business as being vegan in that way anymore.

To help attract the punters, Nathan keeps “pretty decent music” in rotation and will buzz around with little taster pots for people to try, where they’ll state what the dish is, but not whether it’s vegan or not (unless asked of course), and this is proving a successful method, as “9 times out of 10, once someone tries it, they do buy it.” As they say, the proof is firmly in the pudding!

Having been trading as The Lentilist since August 2022, Nathan admits that in his “first year I just jumped on and took whatever I could get – some good, some bad.” Trial by fire is standard procedure when embarking on this kind of adventure and it has served the business well as this approach has allowed them to “find their feet” and he is cautiously avoiding trying to rush into big events and taking on too much too soon. The plan is to work on smaller events, get the exposure and look to scale things up.

As he puts it: “I’ve come into this a bit later in life – I’m nearly 50 now – but I’ve got all that experience behind me, and I realise it’s going to be three to five years before I see any actual return from it. So the focus is on getting my name out there at the moment.”

Of course running your own business is going to bring about some stress, but equally it can be extremely rewarding: “I’ve had people travelling to events from miles away just because they’ve eaten my food before and want to come and eat it again which is amazing”. Being able to break the barrier of transaction and actually just enjoy conversing with people at events, and the knowledge that Nathan has fed people healthy, nourishing concoctions similarly are rewarding elements. The ability food has to unlock memories and connect an older generation with a food that was a building block of lots of dishes in years gone by, due to its affordability and availability, is quite momentous a thing to provide.

A lot is made of competition between caterers at events, but Nathan finds this can be propagated far more by organisers who can book a few vendors serving the same cuisines. He tries to actively avoid peddling the same meals as a fellow trader as this can cause unnecessary competition: “All I’m doing is taking away from them when I could just have my other dishes that no one else is doing – I’m very conscious of the fact we’ve all got to work together and try make a living.”

As much as catering can be a rewarding venture, people encounter a fair amount of challenges on their journeys and The Lentilist has had their share – Nathan touts weather as being the biggest, as it often is in the UK: “I think I did seven events in a row at markets where it just rained nonstop and were battered by heavy winds, and times like that you start questioning ‘is this for me?’ but you’ve got to persevere and realise not every day is going to be like that.”

And like pretty much every catering business, costs have been a notable challenge in the current climate. Lentils are typically a fairly cheap ingredient but “have pretty much doubled in price since last year.” Furthermore, he’s noticed the price of pitch fees increasing which can make trading at an event or festival even more of a gamble. He’s kept his pricing the same since he started The Lentilist and feels that it is a fair price he offers, but notes this can be tricky when at an event or festival and there are other vegan vendors selling things at a lower price where obviously adjustments must be made.

Above all, “you’ve got to stay true to what you do.” For Nathan this business is all about offering accessible food, dishes that can be offered as vegan, gluten-free, allergen free – essentially an offering that everybody can eat. He actively tries to “stay away from processed foods/ingredients as much as possible and keeps the business as sustainable as possible” – even though it costs more to do so, as he wants the business to be “as ethical as possible.”

The Lentilist have four main dishes, but vary how they are served – in a meal box with rice and toppings, or in a burrito style wrap, for example – “the beauty of it is that people can customise the dish however they want.”

Simple enough, but this goes a long way to expand the horizons and potential of experiences customers can find when they come to sample some wares. For someone who has not eaten with him before, the one dish he’d most recommend is the sweet potato cauliflower curry – which absolutely sounds a winner in my book – and is often the most popular fixture on his menu.

So what’s the plan for the future? Nathan’s “been invited back to all of the festivals he traded at in 2023” which is great news and helping to get the business to where he wants to be – so he’s not “scrambling around for business.” He touts a desire for the operation to become self-sustaining, so it can provide him a work-life balance that would mean enduring full summers worth of trade so he can enjoy some proper downtime through the winter.

Furthermore, one aim is to get the business to the point where he can start selling some products based on The Lentilist, such as bottles of his own sauce and spice kits, so people can enjoy that same flavour and quality from home.

To find out more about The Lentilist and follow their journey, click here. For more member interviews and relevant industry updates click here.