Leeds millionaire businessman fears for Kirkgate Market future

Feb 11, 2012 Peter Rabbit General News Comments Off on Leeds millionaire businessman fears for Kirkgate Market future

February 11, 2012 Yorkshire Evening Post

Millionaire Jeff Cains began “The trouble is that all the tradition has been taken out of that market.

Millionaire businessman Jeff Cains reckons he owes his success to his early years on Leeds Market. Now he tells Grant Woodward why he fears for its future.

When Jeff Cains quit Leeds in the early 1970s he left with just a few quid in his pocket and had to thumb his way down the M1.

Three or so decades later he returns to his home city as a multi-millionaire with six houses, a fleet of luxury cars and a string of lucrative businesses to his name.

But despite his fortune, the 65-year-old Hunslet-born tycoon remains true to his roots.

And he reckons all his success can be put down to an apprenticeship served on the stalls of Leeds’s famous Kirkgate Market.

“When I was a lad I used to love to go fishing and to subsidise my hobby I went down to the market looking for work,” recalls Jeff, whose company British Crown Security Services rakes in £80,000 a month.

“I was taken on by Vince and Ray Brooksbank who had a fruit and veg stall. The pair of them were market gurus in those days.

“The queues at their stall would start forming at 8.30 in the morning and were still there at six at night. I was just a gopher, but they taught me everything I needed to know about how to run a business.”

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