Adam Handling - Losing Everything, Making £148k a Day, Winning Great British Menu and 2 Michelin

24:14Adam Handling:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

24:14Dan Pope:You know, there's only so much you can do, but you still take that very personal to be like, because I don't lose senior people very often. You know, all of our restaurants are headed up by people that have been with me since the dawn of time. And I love that ethos. They all have the same ethos. But you realize you've got to cut the head off that rotten fish to let the restaurant survive.

24:35Adam Handling:Yes.

24:36Dan Pope:And we had to do that.

24:37Adam Handling:Yes. When have you ever, I think there's, you know there's as you get bigger your brand gets bigger there can be a propensity to say yes to short-term revenue opportunities versus long and it's something i'm going through now versus long-term brand equity depth connection and again it's like you need money to keep the business afloat but also you need to protect the brand it's a fucking tricky thing yeah talk to me what's what's almost the worst thing you've said yes to was it was the worst business decision you've made where you've, not that you've cut it off like the game lines, but you said yes to something that kind of devalued the brand long-term.

25:15Dan Pope:I don't really think I have to be fair. I've said no to lots of things. One of them was the Scottish dairy company and they wanted to chuck ridiculous amounts of money at the group to be the ambassador of this specific one and do some content. And I said to my team, we need to do that. We really need that cash injection. You're talking like a hundred K. I really need that cash injection to the business. They're like, you do that, you're dead. You start to do this, it's game over. You don't have to say yes to everything. And people realize that you may get very financially wealthy in the quick time.

25:50Dan Pope:Longevity of your brand of being everlasting, like a Chanel, it's non-existent. You have to be strong, even when business is struggling, of who you say yes to, you end up saying no to more than you say yes to.

26:03Adam Handling:I was telling you, the brand strategy guy I'm working with, he's like, this year, you have to say no to literally 90 % of everything to keep the brand alive. It's fascinating.

26:11Dan Pope:But then you also find out that as much as that 90 % of revenue that you've said no to, the 10 % that you have will actually be better than the 90 % you've said no to, but it's really, really, really good stuff. You know, it's stuff that's going to enhance your brand. You're going to learn yourself as well. And both are going to work forward in a more harmonious manner where you can have them on your books for the next 10 years

26:35Adam Handling:rather than just a quick payout now yeah yeah yeah yeah i want to talk about the brand and sort of i think you said it's a collection of individual restaurants which i think is a beautiful way of putting it but i think i really believe a brand is a is an expression of self it's kind of an extension of the founder and it's so what i want to understand is really get into the the roots of yourself and then we can explore you know this 50 frog 50 letting the chefs do what they want to do I love that kind of exploit the frog and then explore, you know, in the panoply of different restaurants. But talk to me, like, how were you misunderstood as a kid growing up?

27:14Dan Pope:As a kid growing up, I was a horrible human being. I was, I was, yeah, I was, I wasn't, I wasn't, I wasn't very, I didn't give a crap about school. I didn't give a, I was very obnoxious. I was, I always wanted to be outside with my friends. I was sporty, but I didn't really care about family. I cared about myself and being with my friends outside and just causing havoc in school looking back at myself I would have disowned me as a child um something my mother says to me correctly but uh I think me experiencing that means how I'm going to make sure that my son doesn't turn into me when I was a kid everything that I was as a bad child I I but also being a negative child means that you have nowhere to encapsulate your energy for me schools are pointless they they are not for everyone they're probably for 25 of the population the rest of the stuff they are they need they need a specific angle of education that and sport and sparks um some sort of creating creation side and that doesn't need to be necessarily a vocation it could be anything but like what does what really gets you excited as a child and then run down that path everything else will come into play even if it was um chefing for me you still learn finance you still learn english because you're reading so many different things you're still learning all this stuff like that but you're you're you're bypassing the complete pointless stuff stuff that had no focus and i just made me act out as a child am i happy of doing it no i look back at myself and think my poor mum because my dad worked a lot what was the relationship with your mum and dad from say 12 to 17 my my i've always been a mummy's boy my dad was my dad was um very strict growing up he was a military man so he wasn't around a lot but i was around was he like sorry like sorry to interrupt like is he like on tour yeah yeah yeah yeah so he was um especially when i became 15 uh we were living in germany and it was 14 we left germany to come back to scotland when he went to go to Iraq and my mum wanted to move us to closer to the family in Dundee so I can do my final year of school and you know my mum is a my mum my mum's wonderful she looked after all of the children pretty much on her entire own kids only three but with one been able to still yeah so three but she did it she did it on her own she did it she cared about the children so much growing up and will actively, you know, I'm like her in terms of, we're not the most smartest when it comes to the traditional English or maths way of doing things.

29:56Dan Pope:She's exactly the same as I am. My dad, my brother and sister, they're all the same. They're like geeky smart where they can get that. But when it comes to common sense, perhaps they don't have as much as me and my mom. But you know, the, the, the, my mom, my mom tried to work hard with me because she was a pain in the bottom when she was younger too. So she'll, she'll make me do extra English lessons and maths lessons and things like that. And it just, her dream was because she never went to university, all the children go to university. It's in Scotland, it's free and be successful. Chefing was never part of the pathway to my career, to my future.

30:29Dan Pope:But for my dad, he saw that university was not for me at all. So I told my mom, I was like, mom, I'm not going to, I'm not going to school. I get kicked out all the time. It's not for me. It's just wasting your time. it's wasted mine what can i do with my life and she says if you get an apprenticeship while you can still learn and doing a vocational skill you can leave school and you don't have to go to university that's the only way university or that or get out the house that is all and i was like oh perfect she's managed to change her tune slightly so i told my dad but i was like if you find anything we'll we'll go and do some interviews together so i found the first apprenticeship program that I'd ever seen.

31:06Dan Pope:And it was for an apprentice chef in Glen Eagles hotel in Scotland. Had no idea people lived that way in Glen Eagles was magical. I told my dad, my dad was like, let's go. Don't tell your mom. We'll do it together. Wore his suit, had three different interviews. I was mind blowing by the professionalism of hospitality in Glen Eagles. Again, like I said, I'm just a guy from Dundee. This was mind blowing. And I was so inspired by how everything ran, how everyone was calm and how everything was passionate and fire. So when you're in the kitchen in there, it was bloody intense. You know, they don't make kitchens like that anymore.

31:43Dan Pope:I'll tell you that for free. It was a little bit rough, but they would not let anyone fail. Now, the great thing I love about a kitchen is a good kitchen is controlled by everyone succeeding, not by one failing to the other one to get a step up on. I hate kitchens like that. They're the ones who fail. Glen Eagle's was exactly like that. They wanted every single chef in that single restaurant to succeed and be the best they possibly can. And whenever a chef failed, they were removed, but they didn't like it. It's still a business at the end of the day. You can only take a horse to water so many times.

32:18Dan Pope:They would teach them and teach them and change them sections and then teach them and teach them and teach them. They had a training school there as well for the chefs. It was phenomenal. And I loved the fact that no one would ever give up on me there. And then I just got inspired. I got inspired to learn and study. So I started buying books because I'm like, this is so cool. You know, I'm tasting things. I was a fussy eater as well growing up, but I'm tasting things I now like, but I've always detested as a child. Why is that? So I want to learn about it because it's something that is really exciting me.

32:49Dan Pope:There's something in my mouth. And then from that angle, I got really geekily infected into what makes food taste good. Skills will come. I was shit. until I was like maybe 24. So like 10 years into my, just under 10 years into my apprentice and where I left there, 10 years into being a chef-ish is when I started to be a good chef. But I wanted to learn not about the mid-chefing. I wanted to learn about how to make flavor, how to make the best sauce, but also understand knowledge. So when someone says a sachet sauce, what's in it? This is this. I wanted to learn the classics in every single one.

33:25Dan Pope:So I literally, I had to travel at 45 minutes from my house to Glen Eagle's every day. there, well, an hour and a half there and back. And I got three books from my chef, Repertoire de la Cuisine, The Practical Cookery, and the, oh my God, I forgot the name. Is it LaRousse? Oh my God, I forgot it. Huge book. LaRousse Gastronomic. Yeah, that is the book. Yeah. Haven't picked it up in a while though. But I would study them three books together because they were all very cross-referency and learn about the history of things. So I'm such a geek when it comes to history.

33:57Adam Handling:Such a geek.

33:58Dan Pope:I love it so much of food. And from there, my passion to always succeed and have that same mindset of my team always has to succeed. Everyone has to be the best they can. That's how I was trained. That's how I like to train. Was pretty much the foundations of how I've still got the same team that my first restaurant had now, 10 years later.

34:19Adam Handling:Well, it does. I wanted to go into self to explore the brand, you know, today. and it is that, it's that, that was your sink or swim moment. That was your frog moment. The way you swim is by doing the extra work, by reading on the bus or whatever.

34:33Dan Pope:Yeah.

34:34Adam Handling:What other things, because you had such, your rise, because you're so young still, is kind of wild. What were you, you know, you line up a hundred chefs, not even a hundred businessmen, they won't have the level of success you've had. If you were to line up a hundred people, what do you think you've done differently? What's your unique edge that's allowed you to get ahead versus other people inspire a small amount of people and forget the rest i think unpack that

35:01Dan Pope:so for instance everyone always everyone always wants to be another chef's best friend you know they want to they want to please every single person in the industry and then they they you know they go out they party they they're always with each other they they bum off each other award ceremonies all of that i didn't give a crap about that i picked five five seven people that work in my group and we became the most, you know, tight team you can ever imagine. We became best friends. We became family. And I know we're not by blood, but we spend more time with each other than we do our partners. We, uh, we will do anything for each other.

35:38Dan Pope:They are my future. I surrounded myself with them sort of people that knew how to do the specific parts of the business better than I ever could. If a chef thinks they can do everything, every part of a business, you will not last over a year you will fail you will fall flat on your face so remove yourself from them situations where the chef is the rock star of any industry bullshit you're really not

36:02Adam Handling:you can cook some good food anyone can cook anyone can cook but it's about how you can maintain a

36:09Dan Pope:team to continually thrive be positive so i run by inspiration education motivation them three them three names in a circle of honesty so you have to tell people your directions tell them it's an inspiration education motivation yeah what's the hardest of those three to to crack um the inspiration is the hardest one i'd say because you have bad days sometimes

36:33Adam Handling:but you can't tell your team that any examples of that uh well more so like uh you know there's

36:41Dan Pope:plenty of bad things that have happened everywhere you know the the social media could be mean at sometimes newspapers can be mean journalists could be mean you could have a someone passing your family there you can have an argument with your partner there's financial issues is a huge problem personally for lots of people including myself back in the day so that trying to walk into a business and not allow anyone to know you have a single problem every single day is probably the hardest thing but you need to do it you are the leader specific systems you put in place to

37:12Adam Handling:do that so i'm fucking hopeless at that so i'll say to my team you know we've got a team of six who run this well then yeah with some consultants seven and if something's going pete tong i'll let everyone know but it's kind of like i'm trying to get better at that it's almost what is it the whole thing in between stimulus and response is space and in that space is freedom it's the victor victor frankl quote i'm my there's no gap with me bruv like it's just like straight chaos yeah

37:38Dan Pope:I used to be the same. How did you, like, what have you done to, like... Drive. I drive more. So I drive it, yeah, in my car to and from the restaurants. And from that way, that gives me a little bit worm on my own. I'm not on a tube crammed in like a sardines where I can't think and I have to listen to music because I don't want to talk to anyone. And I'm surrounded by negative people because everyone's fucking miserable on the tube. I'm in my car where I can zone into whatever I need to zone into. Do I need to overthink something? Do I need to unpick something? Do I need to call Nicola and say, because Nicola's my number two, Nicola, I have this idea.

38:10Dan Pope:Let's me and you have an hour to get there, unpick something, recreate something so that we can then go back to the team with. She's like, yeah, sure. Any time of day. She's phenomenal. Smartest woman I've ever met in my life.

38:19Adam Handling:Really? Yeah. Why so?

38:21Dan Pope:She started off as my operations coordinator.

38:24Adam Handling:Right.

38:25Dan Pope:Is she from?

38:26Adam Handling:Not from hospitality.

38:27Dan Pope:Oh, really? No, no, not from hospitality. Her dream is to always be a publicist. So as one of the dreams of her life, she, she ripped my three books. She's her own. The publicist was like, we'll do it for you. She's like, no, it's my dream. If I'm in hospitality, I'm going to write this bloody book. And she knows me better than anyone. Uh, but no, she started off as operations coordinator when we were opening frog in Covent Garden. And we had a little bit of a problem with my COO. Again, these are all learning curves for me. You go from little restaurant where it costs you 300 ,000 to open to the next restaurant that costs you 5 million to open.

38:59Dan Pope:You're going to get a little excited and be a little bit more passionate rather than logical and i surrounded myself with people that weren't quite ready then this is restaurant number two so wasn't quite intertwined ready yet and the budget got majorly screwed over majorly screwed we fucked up on everything well to be fair i would it's my responsibility but it wasn't my area to look after it was her specific area we all put we all put um uh our eggs in our own little baskets but we write on everything so So basically it's like, you have to take care of this. You have to take care of this. You have to take care of this.

39:32Dan Pope:Let's come to the finishing line together. And you allow people to have some sort of ownership in a business, not by adding finance, by adding responsibility and tasks that will make the final outcome be successful. I think that's very important. And messed up big time. So I had to let her go. The day she started, she had to do payroll for the group. Young, young girl, she was only, how old was she? Like 24 or something like that when she first started working for me. she was fucking terrified of me because she just saw the stress that I was portraying this is again after COVID it all changed but saw the stress that I was portraying over deadlines not being hit we were supposed to open in May we opened in September the hundreds of thousands over spilling you know the usual scenario and I asked her years later why the fuck did you stay working for me she goes all my friends told me to get out but I didn't want to let anyone down or not have anyone.

40:28Dan Pope:So I said, I'm only going to be with you in her own mind for a few months and just to get you set up and then I'll leave because this is toxic. This is horrible. And then I was like, so why the hell are you still here? Like nearly 10 years later, she goes, because you inspired me. Your constant drive to always make the best out of specific people is the only reason why I'm still here. And she grew from operations coordinator to operations director, to COO, to exec director of the entire company. she is the smartest person who learned on the job as well over this specific field but um had that vision in her eyes so like i said inspire a small select people and make them be the best they possibly can she was very geekly smart so something i was never really good at and then from there we then obviously had steven who'd worked he's now worked for me for what has he worked for me 18 years yeah the chef of uh lock and tyne um who was the chef director at the time He then went to got kids, realized traveling was difficult, and then now bases himself in Lock and Tyne.

41:28Dan Pope:Jamie, who's been with me for 15 years, he's now the chef's director. Kelvin, the beverage director, been with me before he once started, so like 10 years. George, round about the same, a little less actually, nine. And I think everyone was nowhere near their position of what they were. Everyone has been internally promoted because they love what the visions are and that whole connecting that we have as a senior team. We don't micromanage. We've got GMs on every site. each of the managers each of my directors will deal with them if i ever have to call someone in for a meeting in my office they shit their pants because it's not normal yeah i don't micromanage i allow people to succeed by allowing them not to truly make mistakes but also be told before one's about to happen if you go down that route you're gonna fuck up you know that right yeah and if it's not legal we'll allow them to make that mistake if you've told them but if it's legal they get point blank no you're not doing it that way yeah yeah but surround yourself with a small amount of people that you can really be close to and be not afraid to be told they're the only people in my group that can say adam this is a fucking stupid idea in them words anyone else

42:34Adam Handling:says that to me they'll be out but like been some fucking stupid ideas oh my god so many uh the

42:39Dan Pope:the chocolate shop when we opened that that was nicola's project as well because it's a lot of legal stuff a lot of um we've never really done uh retail products before and the amount of issues that you have with everything especially nutritional values of of a product that continually changes is a nightmare um and it was the packaging for example the packaging which we spent what 200k on in the first order uh we wanted something but i wanted something completely different i wanted this bizarre thing and she's she's she's like no what did you want in your head i wanted uh i wanted things like imagine opening a hermese box that's my that's what i wanted that vision of if i'm going to do my first chocolates the Hermes was the brand that we were we always pick another brand to piggyback on and our inspiration frog is like Chanel timeless so nothing changes seasonality in terms of Christmas Halloween Valentine's Day the food changes seasonality but the environment doesn't it's timeless a season will never dictate how that restaurant is going to run what about ugly butterfly what's that based on ugly butterfly wasn't really based on a brand as such but the um the artist katie j dobson so her art is all about nature and about location done with real things so we wanted to create a brand where we can use surplus food from our first hotel at the time and we can repurpose it give all the revenue to charity not the profits the revenue so we'll take the the costs ourselves and uh gave it to felix project so a charity that was repurposing food waste from big suppliers to feed vulnerable people that couldn't quite afford it food banks yeah all of that sort of stuff and the envision was there is no such thing as an ugly butterfly there is no such thing as food waste food waste is an opportunity or laziness and we use that we use that theme pretty much around art so the logo is an art piece that she created and And I fell in love with the brand and then asked, can I buy the rights to this piece of art?

44:44Dan Pope:Wow. Which she kindly said yes to. So it was all built on that.

44:49Adam Handling:What about the Tartan Fox?

44:50Dan Pope:Tartan Fox was built on history. So a 400-year-old building.

44:54Adam Handling:Yeah.

44:55Dan Pope:31 years younger than the Taj Mahal. I love that fact. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But where it's, do you know what a group of...

45:00Adam Handling:Wait, so when was the Taj Mahal built?

45:07Dan Pope:1637, I think. this is what 1200s 1100 16 16 no 31 years younger so it's 1669 is when the building was built when you think about how wonderful british architecture is and how old it is it's

45:19Adam Handling:phenomenal there's a youtube channel i'll send it to your opinion whatsapp called the cultural tutor really i mean i go down these youtube curiosity holes basically and he goes to all the architecture in london and it just gives you a fucking appreciation yeah for how the british countryside and london and all the rich it's such a sort of it's like a marbling of all these new you know the gherkin the shard but then you right next to it's an old pub yeah where in the world has that it's so what it makes me i love london for that yeah me too um but what you're saying is is super interesting and actually super valuable for people because i think but let me tell you

45:56Dan Pope:about the fox name yes so so with with the titan fox do you know what uh do you know what a group

46:00Adam Handling:of foxes are cold oh my god we were talking about this last night oh really this is fucking weird so basically i was the gaff i was staying in there was loads of monkeys and we were googling weird names so my mate was so it's a troop of monkeys isn't it like a squatter fuck nice an earth oh yeah that was it yeah yeah an earth which is like perfect so we were like we're gonna dolphins is another one i don't know what fucking dolphins anyway yes yeah so then we were like this

46:25Dan Pope:is where we're building our farms it's all going to be about us we've got three farms there we've our chickens there we've got this beautiful barn that we've redeveloped that does like 30 people uh two a double tiered teepee that does 150 people and we're going to cook everything on fire but we're going to renovate the building back to its former beauty so it's going to be stone everywhere and that was the ethos and the ethos from the name came after the uh whilst the refurb was happening because we broke down a wall to to bring it back to stone and there was this painting on the wall that was majorly old and it was the fox's revenge meaning the name of what it was many moons ago and i thought you just discovered yeah yeah so i i i never keep the same name as what a previous business was but i i was like this is pretty cool because it's got a lot of history attached to it um revenge too negative for me tartan i'm british and then let's dive into how can we work with foxes?

47:22Dan Pope:And then we worked into by studying about all about foxes and it was all about earth. And we built our project based on that. We were never going to have farms there. It was never going to be about eating from the earth and it was never going to be about fire cooking. It all came out because we uncovered a piece of art.

47:37Adam Handling:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's just this natural, again, it's sort of, when you said piggyback off brands, it's, that's something that's really, the whole thing of, I love, someone told me this on the podcast, simple does not mean easy so it's a very simple concept like borrow off history really simple concept to borrow off chanel well no it's simple but doesn't it doesn't make it fucking easy it

48:01Dan Pope:makes it still really hard sometimes simple is more hard yeah exactly yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

48:05Adam Handling:simplification is the hardest thing ever it's like cutting cutting things down to its most pure essence is is really hard on the so just just to go into the sort of the the chanel versus hermes on so the original frog versus the chocolate shop just talk to me about like the brand brander sphere of of chanel the brander sphere of of hermes and how they just go into that a little

48:31Dan Pope:bit more because i think that's really fascinating i think when you look at chanel you look at and we always so our brands always target specific people the frog is pretty much to target a woman that was that's the the the target audience that we go for so we make it very feminine we make it very uh very light we make it very um welcoming for for for a girl really i i know i don't know if you can say that anymore but yeah it was designed for a lady and uh when you look at when you look at chanel you know its signature pieces without seeing that sea you know how it's um it will it will outlast time that brand will everything everything that they do will outlast time it will outlast seasons it doesn't really change in terms of you'll never see weird things on for Christmas or anything like that it stays what it is it's a true honest brand that is very proud of what they've created but you can also tell what it is without seeing the name frog we wanted to do just like that never going to be turned by Christmas by anything like that never going to be turned by Valentine's Day it's going to be completely seasonal in terms of the products we use in the way that it looks, but it's going to, it's going to always be reminiscent of, of the frog without even being in the frog.

49:46Dan Pope:So therefore you can see one of my dishes in another restaurant that I'm saying, doing a collaboration in, and they don't know I'm in the kitchen and they'll be like, this reminds me of the frog. Fuck yeah. That's my brand. When you can eat one of my dishes somewhere else and it reminds them of them when it actually is, you've done your job. So chicken butter, we have the staples, the caviar waffle, all of them specific things they are my that chanel suit yes you know they are that they are that reminds me of frog pivot timeless yeah obviously it gets enhanced we don't just keep a dish on for the 10 years the restaurant's been open it's been open eight years eight years the restaurant's been open it does go through a transformation but the the foundations of

50:25Adam Handling:flavor is always the same yeah yeah yeah because this is the explore versus exploit theory which I don't know who the fuck someone told me about it, but it's like a big marketing guy told me about it. But it's essentially when you've got a brand which is like super, super strong and you should exploit that for all it's worth. But then if you don't explore, you become... Actually, this is kind of so random. It's linked to bees. So bees would often, when they're hunting for honey, would go like 90 % would go and look for the... Go to the hive or where the honey is. the other 10 % would go over here and dance and to signify they found you honey.

51:04Adam Handling:And it's basically, it applies to business in the sense like keep doing this, keep the main thing, the main thing. But if you don't have this percentage of exploring new things, you become pass, pass, say, pallid, die. And I really want to get into this. So on the 50%, everything has to be 50 % frog.

51:23Dan Pope:Yep, the whole collection.

51:24Adam Handling:The whole collection. what are what are the brand values you have in place to lock that in first and then how do you allow your chefs to like bees you know yeah go and explore different things so the 50 frog is

51:39Dan Pope:all about being british yep being sustainable as possible being luxury and being timeless so the chicken butter and the stuff like that must be on all menus the other 50 and also how we run our kitchens. So within my kitchens, I don't care if you're in a pub, one of my pubs or you're in the Mission Star restaurant, you make a sauce, you make a bloody proper sauce. If you're making a carrot puree, you're using the recipe book from the group to make a carrot puree. You know, I'm not saying that all the dishes are the same. They can never afford the same proteins as the frog does in the pubs do. The price point's massively different.

52:12Dan Pope:But when it comes to the simple foundations of creating a dish like sauces, they're exactly the same. And I think that real drive for perfection in our group done by the chefs that are in these specific areas is so bloody romantic. And that's the fundamentals. You surround yourself by a few people, you grow together and you become great. You, you, you inspire them. Steven's been with me, like I said, 18 years. He, he, he helped me build my brand. So when I moved him to our very first pub, because his dream was always a pub and because he helped me get out of the hole I got in a lockdown and we made extra revenue, we bought this for him as a present.

52:46Dan Pope:So he had no idea he was getting a pub but he's his dream is always jamie's delicate he's uh and so's cleverson the head chef of frog he they're like a little teaspoon of puree on a plate nice and pretty steven's like fuck that give me a big spoon of pure on a plate i want a big piece of roasted meat or fish a wonderful sauce heavily up and you know he wants to he's geordie so he wants a plate of food so for him when i bought him this pub he was so thankful and i told him the name the lock in the time he's like why are you calling it that and I said well you've been he he was very worried at the beginning because he's always been by my side and I said I met you in Newcastle when I was the chef of the mall in Newcastle and then you followed me everywhere so the Tyne the river Tyne is through Newcastle and our lock is the Scottish waters and I writ on the back of the menu that's still there today in in writing that if he ever needs me and he sticks to water we'll always find each other sick so it's you know because i think a name must mean something to something so i'm picking up

53:49Adam Handling:like you've said romanticism quite a few times i think there's a deep romanticism to scottish literature scottish scotland yeah uh i think there's romanticism amazing brands like chanel uh her maze there's a there's a right but how you know i was trying to get into this frog like how do you think about romanticism in and almost like i don't know it's like some of the best writers are scottish some of the best fucking you know train spotting like ivan welsh like there's some really good writers like how do you think about that in your the way you kind of what you've just said with the finders by water the lock and the time but just go into that a bit more well i think

54:27Dan Pope:it's easy to use scottish stuff because it's pretty bloody good you know we have the best seafood the best fish the best game the best meat it's really quite easy to become i'm scottish be proud of it use it on all the menus apart from um apart from cornwall cornwall doesn't use any scottish ingredients apart from scallops occasionally but other than that nothing they are hyper local to the southwest but everywhere else uh the the luck and the tyne frog um they need to use scottish ingredients even the chocolate shop need to use scottish

54:54Adam Handling:ingredients inside of their food sick and are there any like you know there's a little magical storytelling pieces through you know whether it's on the menu or like people go into the restaurant or the way they're welcomed or almost away from the food, more like kind of the cinema of service. How does that kind of romanticism play out in that?

55:15Dan Pope:Well, with the Frog is everything a guest would want or should want should always be given without a guest asking for it. I love that sort of service. I'm a very weird chef. I'm very front of house focused. And George is a very weird restaurant director. He's very kitchen focused. So we're not much, you know, when you watch Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, you've got one being on one side one being on another and it's like fuck you fuck none of that stuff here we we care so much more about our other areas that it works seamlessly together and i think if you allow chefs to have more input on how something is perhaps explained so let them serve it uh how it is uh um finished at the table so make them serve it don't let them make them when you get them to be on the floor they'll realize i'm not going to create a dish it's going to put a front of house in the shit again in case i have to do it myself on the floor you know there are so much things outside there where if you work together you can achieve anything and you know that there is already romantic but for frog we have a team well for the whole group we have a team of seven and their sole job is to how do i say this nicely research every single guest every single guest that comes in bar chocolate shop everywhere research research everyone by using social media, using, using, um, chat, CBT, using any sort of platform that's digital.

56:32Dan Pope:If you don't want to be found, get your stuff off online. If it's online, it's free for all. And with that, we will always look for things like, um, if we find a guest coming to say frog or, or the other one, uh, or any of the restaurants and we see that they have children or they have a dog and we find their name of the dog or we find the name of their children, or we see they're drinking a beer with a different hand we mark could be left-handed we do all of that inside of it you see them with a sen pala green or sparkling water they drink sparkling you know there are so many things that we can get you going that when a guest say comes to the frog and um we don't bring up we know your family that's fucking weird but uh we would start with instead of still or sparkling we'll say sparkling or still right there that little little factor of saying what they already like first means that it's straight away simple simple simple things

57:24Adam Handling:like that simple's not easy other give me some more examples on this because i love this stuff

57:28Dan Pope:i could just wank over so when it when it comes to when it comes to dining in restaurants uh and all of our restaurants we have a ridiculous ridiculous uh portfolio for every guest when they transfer to and from all notes come from it and there is always so so so so if i was in the

57:45Adam Handling:lock and tie and went to the ugly butterfly.

57:46Dan Pope:We'll know exactly what you had, how you were as a person, how many times you went for a piss. We'll know if you're left or right-handed, what water you drank. And one of the things which we started doing it for is to see how much guests spend. Because I don't want guests to go to one of our restaurants where they've spent 30 pound bottle of wine or go to another, spent a hundred pound bottle of wine. And then the 30 pound bottle of wine, they go to the frog and someone tries to upsell them a 200 pound bottle of wine. you've made that guest feel shit because you know they can't afford it because your previous history tells you their wine budgets so if you can work on people's spending matters without being a twat about it the worst thing in the world are french sommeliers where they make everyone feel like shit and that uh because they don't know enough about them or they uh they upsell wine that is outside of someone's price point where a lot of guests will say you know what yeah we'll do it It's a special occasion.

58:38Dan Pope:They'll enjoy the wine. They'll get the bill. It will ruin the meal. Finance is so important to be able to make synergy from restaurant to restaurant and make every guest feel comfortable. Someone said drinking Salon by the Glass. We do Salon by the Glass for, I think it's like 190 pound a glass or whatever. They're drinking that wine. They know the price because they've ordered it off the menu. You know you can play with them in our other restaurants. You can't do that if someone's ordering glass of my English sparkling.

59:08Adam Handling:It's so, I interviewed Sat Baines, which was a great pod. And he was saying his whole thing is allow your customers to spend money.

59:16Dan Pope:Never customers, always guests.

59:18Adam Handling:Sorry, guests, yeah. But as in, as in, as, and we'll talk about that. Because that's interesting. Again, these little things mean a lot. But he was basically saying that, you know, the, you can get people, he'll change a different menu or he'll open up a spot for people, for guests to come in in the evening. Like, you know, just allow your customers to spend money. Whereas I feel like, with the hooty-footy wankiness of hospitality, i.e. the archetypal French chameleon, it's like, you are the poor to spend money. Like, that just needs to vanish, especially in today's landscape. Guest versus customer, what's the difference?

59:55Dan Pope:Customer is a transaction. Guest is an experience made. If you look at every person that comes into your restaurant like a transaction, you will build zero relationship. and we are in the hospitality industry. It's to be hospitable. Yes, we're to make money and yes, it's a business at the end of the day, but we need to get out of our mindset that everyone that comes in... is the wealthiest person in the world. You need to tailor your service to people and how they are.

1:00:20Adam Handling:I like your rule of shorts versus suit. I think it was, I don't remember, but besides that, how would you tailor, say I walked in like this, like I'm basically in fucking holiday, versus someone in a three-piece suit, same restaurant, same timeless band with IA Chanel. How do you keep the brand consistency and brand adaptability?

1:00:41Dan Pope:Unless it was the last table, you'll be moved to a more suitable person because we have three sections. We've got 27 seats in frog, but let's split over three sections. And you'll be tailored to someone who's better suited for you. So if you come in in a three-piece suit, one, we would have known you would have done that based on what we would have found about you. Or if we came dressed like the way that, I go to my restaurants just the same way because that's who I am there. We would have technically found it. But if you did put a spanner in the works and just come out of the spur of the moment, post this, come this way.

1:01:12Dan Pope:Yeah, yeah. You would have confused us. But everyone is welcome. We tend to find people that dress up want more of an experience. People that dress more casual, they do this for a living and they just want great food. We have a lot of single diners. A lot. And some want experiences. Some just want to be left alone because they eat like this every day. We got this one guest last year. Must have eaten about 89 times. 89 really? On his own. The most wonderful person in this world. Doesn't like any attention. yeah yeah yeah he doesn't like any attention at all he doesn't drink so much alcohol that was just for frog we've got so many big regulars that come to our grips so many we've got one from cornwall that comes to the mall as well who came on christmas on his own as well so we created a table just for him because he was just like yeah i'm on my own this christmas i know it's all last minute do you have a table we will make you a bloody table and he had been uh between the two restaurants like a hundred hundred times last year or something like that and i think this is because they're made to feel like guests and not made to feel like a transaction yeah it's very important that you you look at that and that's a weird coming from a chef build them an experience get to know people we have to they have to write down one piece of weird information about the guests that goes to reception that goes on their profile sorry who do who asked the waiting team so anyone who find out they have to find out one thing and if they don't they have need to get a bloody good reason language barriers doesn't really want to talk um which you do get them uh you know specific parts of the world guests who come they're like fuck off man just let me

1:02:43Adam Handling:eat my food it's interesting because like again some some of the ways i get guests on the show especially in the early it's now it's slightly different because we've got momentum but it was finding i'd find out one weird thing and basically tailor a weird gift to do something kind of weird um we've got will goddari no unreasonable hospitality nice yeah he 11 madison park oh yeah yeah yeah yeah he i'm going to nashville in a couple of weeks to get him on um to do the podcast but where we got him on was we found out he likes candles i went to chelsea got this personalized matchbox you know made the candle yeah like doing these little things because i really want to get it this going in america and i think it's yeah but that finding one weird fact out is is and what are some of those facts like is it not as innocuous as your dog's name or yeah

1:03:32Dan Pope:we would normally find that stuff out ourselves uh it needs to be something weird like what the yeah something something which we can't find out ourselves yeah um i won't go into something again because this is there's loads so much the only way you can get a conversation out of someone is to start a conversation yeah it's the only thing it's just like me and you speaking yeah yeah yeah but Yeah, but one's serving one's food and the other one's eating it or pouring the wine, but you can still bloody chat to people. And people that come from an experience, like I said, some don't want it. The majority of people are very excited to be there.

1:04:04Dan Pope:So they have verbal diarrhea and you can get wonderful things out of them.

1:04:08Adam Handling:Amazing. So what are some of the other, again, I've been to Ugly Butterfly with my family, which was astoundingly delicious. Being, as I said, my best mate Squelch lives right by Lock and Tyne. so I've been on well less now so because he's got three kids but smash the fucking shit out of that one that opened up and it's amazing those uh cheese donuts like sort of little globes or planets of just yumminess squidgy delicious yeah so good um but what so what are the other things you sort of think about with with frog the kind of the intangible brand magic and we've talked

1:04:43Dan Pope:about the weird thing which I love so the way the way the way always say it's the way someone's made to feel and the way that they know they're in one of our restaurants by the flavors they're eating. Sources are very important to my group. So I would say they're the main ones there. So when you go to Lock and Tyne, it's 50 % there. So it's in Berkshire. It needs to be British. It needs to be sustainable in terms of use it by whole, use it all. And it needs to be proper cooking just because this pub doesn't have it. The other 50 % is tailor it more to the location and more to the team, not just a chef, the team.

1:05:15Dan Pope:So I think that's the other 50%. Stephen helped me build the frog. So it's very easy for him to do that. You know, he has the, uh, the, the ethos of how we created our group embedded into his soul. So for him, he can walk into a place and it's like, he's back in a restaurant, but he wants to stand on his own two feet. And he's very, he's very honest about what he wants out of life in terms of, I don't care about tasting menu. I want someone to come I want to go to Frog for a special occasion. I want people to come to this restaurant every fucking day. So I want the menu to be ever changing. I want specials flying out the door like there's no tomorrow.

1:05:50Dan Pope:I want to be in such communications with all suppliers that we will be able to create things all the time. And every time I go and work in that kitchen, it's electric. The guests there, we have a 36 % return rate in the group as a whole. The entire collection together is there. Lock and Dine has about a 70 % return rate every day

1:06:13Adam Handling:I thought it was a genius move because Berkshire I don't know if maybe we can explore this but my mate, because we often go to Marlow it's not a million miles it's about 45 minutes from that shit and we love our whole relationship well it was starting as partying but now it's sort of moved to food but you know so we'd go to Marlow because you've got all sorts of Tom Kerridge there you've got loads of a flourishing of amazing restaurants but so you're kind of in that windsor's i think the food scene in windsor's is well before you guys i was fuck all there i agree and so it's like a really did you was that that did you like look at the competitive landscape and be like right this this is affluent we're right next to what's the thing where they

1:06:55Dan Pope:ellen john lives right next door you know you've got ascot around the corner um what's the eaten

1:07:02Adam Handling:yeah ascot eaton what's the fucking begins with a w where they play the golf oh yeah i forgot the name but yeah um oh it's my bare minute people basically yeah yeah but it felt like there was no that was so did you was what's the business did you like do like a analysis or was it very

1:07:19Dan Pope:guttural like we just found this boozer like so when we found the place one of our board of directors friends used to own the building right and he was just like something's going on the market if you want it um it's in windsor i was like we're only in london but it's like well we're closing a lot in london this is a really good steal at the moment actually come and have a look with me and we'll have a look then you make your mind up if you want it and i went into it and i immediately fell in love with the place this is beautiful because i love quintessential british and um we have to do a business analysis we do a comp analysis with everything around you're looking at it thinking is there even people around here because everything around here is chains and like not so good food.

1:07:57Dan Pope:Like there's a lot of pubs, but they're not like pubs that I would like to say, I don't want to be mean because they may just be the skills that they have. They're water boozers. Yeah.

1:08:05Adam Handling:There's actually a really good pub. As you come up left, Locker Tine, and you're going towards there and you go left again towards co-op, that old, that's a proper good drinking booze. I don't know if you've ever been there for, maybe not if you've got any water boozer. That's actually a really good fucking boozer, but there's no food. It's not food. They're not foodie places.

1:08:21Dan Pope:Yeah, which we all love. But so we did that. We were worried slightly that if we were to open this place, is it going to succeed? Because it was already a fine dining restaurant when we took it over. And that's what the previous business was, but sadly didn't quite make it. So I'm like, if a fine dining business didn't succeed in that area, there's no real food destination places around here unless you're going to Marlow, which is a while away. Is it going to succeed? And then you just see it, seeing the potential that I know Stephen would love this as a present. And I know for a fact he'll make it successful.

1:08:54Dan Pope:So me and Nicola and George and Jamie quietly created the plan, finances, everything, without him not even knowing. And then that was when we gave him this little plaque where it was Adam Handling Collection, opening date, Stephen Kerr proprietor. And I gave him that with a contract and a bottle of Krug because all celebrations should be done with Krug. And we were like, we have a little present for you. So he opened it up. He was like, what the fuck is this? What the hell is lock and time? He didn't even see the logo. And I was like, and here's the contract. Here's the contracts. I signed it wow and I'm like this is yours now I signed it to you

1:09:27Adam Handling:that's amazing

1:09:28Dan Pope:so I still own it but it's his soul it's his family his missus works there as the pastry chef his kids are always there it's his soul which is beautiful

1:09:37Adam Handling:yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah the what I wanted to ask you about is kind of the bit more of your sort of business acumen side of things and like what you've learned about making money making a lot of money like I want to make serious dough out of this i'm a bit unapologetic unapologetic about that um why i'm really interested to speak to you specifically now is with my business we have multiple verticals so before we just had sort of sponsorship revenue which was good we now do you know we did five supper four supper clubs last year we get to a live podcast get loads of people in the room great like really good revenue but also great for brand uh we're then doing sort of we package up a lot all the lessons and go and sell these into big corporates as well um and then we're trying to do this sort of members club thing but that's like a collective thing but that's kind of separate but how did you what's the weight what's the art of making a lot of money in this game like what have you learned about that first and then how do you manage across so many different things because again i asked all these questions selfishly is the wheels spin out pretty quickly when oh yeah Like if I'm looking on Slack and I've got like eight different fucking channels, like, do you know what I mean?

1:10:50Adam Handling:It's tricky.

1:10:51Dan Pope:I think the reason, when I started making a lot of money was when I allowed other people to make money for me. I think if you being the chef of the brand is always like, I have to do everything. I have to do every menu tasting, menu signing, menu creation, all of that. You're missing the key focuses where you need to pinpoint your brain, your passions, which is business development. The creation of making sure it's always going to be stable. What can you do outside there? I could be in a restaurant or I can be doing an event somewhere that boosts that much, that month's worth of revenue straight doubles it because I've managed to do one of them sort of things.

1:11:31Dan Pope:Or creating products. I think, you know, I'm very fortunate that I make 10 plus million a year in our little, little, little collection. And this new year is going to be really good. But it is, it takes 300 odd staff to do it. And the only reason we went for that.

1:11:48Adam Handling:That's 10 revenue. Yeah. Yeah, amazing.

1:11:51Dan Pope:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So we do, we do a lot. We do, we do. It's been very difficult profit wise for the last year. But the year before that we would make, well, I can be quite honest. we would make just shy of two million pound profit uh which is uh last year we didn't make that we made quite a considerable less but technically it's january so i won't know the real finances to the end of this month but it was it was more than half less of of that but that's because of the climate yeah yeah but we didn't we didn't we didn't uh we didn't downgrade any of our products we didn't downgrade any of our staff we didn't downgrade any of the things that would have affected the guests just to take a little bit more extra profit out of the business We kept it all fighting and we use our ways to clamp down on operational expenses to be able to take that surplus of inflation.

1:12:39Dan Pope:Because we realized that whenever there's a sticky situation, it's very temporary. You need to make sure you don't get scared. It's like when you get a stock and you see it dropped, people buy out. Why? Now you've lost your money. Stay in the bloody stock. If it's a good stock, I'm not a financial advisor, but it will bounce back up. And it's the same as business. if you if you cut all your suppliers and be like downgrade your meat downgrade your fish start buying this start buying that the guests will experience your your stress through your shit food and they'll be like this isn't as good as it was before it's uh it's it's on that point

1:13:12Adam Handling:of like staying in the eye of the storm when things it's good news travels slowly bad news travels fast oh for sure and we get so and it's interesting so like that paul smith bag i've got I'll show you afterwards it's basically it's a Paul Smith for listeners I've taken this round with me my mum got me that for Christmas like 20 years ago I was looking for a fucking bag I was like I'm packed so last minute I was like take that but it's a picture of the skyline of London nice and you know it's a grey and foggy then you've got a mini in the front but you look at how small the buildings are you've got literally the gherkin you go and look at that same view now it's like this and it's like that's 20 years ago look at all the progress that's happened but that because good news travels slow we don't look at it we look at like the oh that bad things happened where everything's fucked hospitality's fucked the world's fucked because we kind of get off on it but if you just allow things to pass and you almost need these again history's really good at making you realize that things are actually going up like that in the long term for sure it's yeah so so how did you

1:14:12Dan Pope:yes it's on that note so it's like so when it when it came to when it came to really making profit. Yes. We could have either done things like, um, expand even quicker after lockdown. We said, no, we're not doing that. So what we'll do, we'll invest pretty much all of the, uh, profits back into the business. So when I say I make just shy of 2 million pounds, we put pretty much all of that back in the business, redoing the frog kitchen, redoing even the frog kitchen cost me a fortune. We did three floors of kitchens, redoing a lock and tines kitchen put it all in the business we build a brand for longevity well i i don't need the why do i need money in my pocket now yes i need i need to survive that's too much put it back into the business make it better get new guests coming through the doors wow them even more get awards whenever you get awards your team around you they get that pat on the back there's only so many times i can say after service we all smashed that that was awesome you're great they're like thanks chef they get a michelin star they're like we fucking did it we did it and it's such a wonderful feeling for them so my advice and even this year so we've closed ugly butterfly for six weeks even we made our lowest profit in history um for six weeks for a mammoth refurb we've closed tartan fox for a mammoth refurb we've choked the chocolate shop reopens in two weeks another kitchen.

1:15:34Dan Pope:We've put more than double our profit back into the business in the first quarter of 2026. And the reason for that is that's why people like working in our group because it's not so much a, I guess. Okay. I have nice things, but you know, I'll fucking work for it. But like, we put most of it back in to make the business better for the, not for, not just for the team. You know, like when I say you need to educate, inspire, motivate, you can't motivate someone if they don't have a good enough kitchen to work with. You can't motivate someone if they're working on chip plates or they're working on like stroggy chopping boards or a walk-in fridge.

1:16:10Dan Pope:Every time you open the door, the handle falls off. You're like, fuck me, I'm in the shit and I need my meat out there. You know, like you have to motivate them by giving them the tools to be able to do their jobs. But also they sit on a balance sheet. So as a business, you know, it's not really doing very much, but only just, you know, depreciating very slightly. but it uh for me people get scared too much of putting more money in when troubles happen if you have it make it better for the guests if you don't keep it in in your back pocket but uh don't please please please don't buy a cheaper product an inferior product cut down on staffing cut down on the experience your guests once had because when they come back and experience an inferior one they will never come back and they do not give two fucks if they think oh they're struggling it's okay same price on the menu they know they're also struggling it goes back to that short-term financial decision versus long-term brand value creation which is so i'll tell you as well which is probably one of my most exciting things to date that we're doing everyone knows that i love caviar it's not british but i love caviar a lot and our group goes through one hell of it um through the entire collection they they buy a lot one of the things that we were looking at is we go through what two tons of caviar or something like that within the group or we forecasted to do this year on specific things that we're doing how do we uh how do we maximize on that how do we still give all that on a plate let's go direct cut out a middleman create your own farms so we have a new brand launching next month wow called yeah it's uh yeah i'm handling

1:17:52Adam Handling:caviar aurelia so it's uh aurelia uh how do you spell that well don't ask me that it is aurelia

1:17:59Dan Pope:so it's like a cross between the goddess of love um sorry it's a cross between the goddess of the ocean pearls but also a slight mumble of letters because caviar is under so it's a hc adam handling collection. So it's not going to have my name on it because I don't really care so much about it being a show off to me. We're creating a business plan that will help all the restaurants out there being able to not cut down on how much caviar they put on their plate because we're not undercutting everyone to take it. We're undercutting everyone to be like, we don't need to have that much profit on every tin of bloody caviar.

1:18:34Dan Pope:My idea for caviar and my restaurants are, if I can buy it cheaper, I can add more to a guest. This is the same ethos I'm going to roll out so that if any chef wants to continue the luxuries without having to up their prices or add little amount on a plate, they can hopefully get on board with this brand. So it launches next month. It's been in the process for a long time in the making. It's costing us an absolute fortune to do as well. But I am so excited. The cost savings within our group was ridiculously incredible. So if we can even scratch a smidge of that with other chefs' restaurants that want to stay using the best ingredients ever, like, say, caviar, but they have to reduce it or remove it because they can't afford to buy it anymore, now they could.

1:19:21Dan Pope:Amazing. That's the plan. So we're saying it's London's best-kept secret.

1:19:25Adam Handling:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:19:25Dan Pope:Launches in quarter one of 2026.

1:19:29Adam Handling:What, so, are we able to talk about you trying to go for two stars? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So what are the... Frog's got one star. I think one of the goals for when this goal will be live is to get two this year. Yes, yes. What are you putting in place differently or how are you getting there?

1:19:48Dan Pope:So we made Cleverson the proprietor in August of Frog. So he's been with me since the day before the place had even opened. And I'm based now in Ugly Butterfly and in Tartan Fox in Cornwall, so I can really ramp up them operations. and the only way that we can change for him to do that is to show his to let him show his skills a little bit more he's a phenomenal chef but he's been under my shadow for so long there's no doubt about it every dish they puts through needs approval because it's the frog it's the baby but he's using a different mind frame of thinking about food under the same umbrella of sustainable british luxury and coming up with his new ideas the business will only progress if it has new ideas come through the doors so he brings new ideas to the table about how he can change the frog and we allow him to do it the team is phenomenal um we've invested heavily into the front of house so we got this gm called lorenzo used to be uh claude bossey's gm he is incredible incredible incredible person and very hungry as well but believes in the brand believes in that one restaurant so we're just we're we're um investing in people inside of that operation rather than things.

1:20:59Dan Pope:The restaurant already has everything you can possibly bloody imagine.

1:21:02Adam Handling:Yeah, yeah, yeah.

1:21:03Dan Pope:So it's investing in people to make that go reality.

1:21:06Adam Handling:And that's what it is. Is that kind of what it is? That's the next thing that takes a restaurant from one star to a two star?

1:21:12Dan Pope:I think it allows, yeah, more finesse, more tighter ships. You know, Lorenzo's been two stars for most of his career. So him being there will give me the insights of experiences I've never done. I don't own a two star restaurant. So, you know, like I mentioned, bring someone in who's better than you or at least has experience in fields where you want to go to. One of the things I've always done is never ask advice from someone who isn't where you want to be. And I think if you ask advice of people where you want to be, then that'll help you move forward. But there's too many of these ones you ask your friend, oh, what should I do about this?

1:21:45Dan Pope:I think you should do this, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Why the fuck are you asking them? They're literally five steps behind you. You know, it's really good to, and I don't mean that disrespectful about bouncing ideas off of people, But I mean like proper business decisions that don't just affect the direction of the restaurant, but also the team as well. The team are very important too, because if they're not happy, your guests will bloody see it. So invest in people. We're investing heavily into the operation always. The frog gets the most cash refurbished every single year. Keeping the team strong as hell and being honest.

1:22:22Dan Pope:so we're like when we do our next year meetings so for instance quarter three quarter four last year we're like what's the goal for next year? Two star operation perfect I don't think I'm going to get two stars next year I hope it'll be the year after if we don't we'll work harder no one's going to be like fuck Michelin they're not very good blah blah blah they don't know what they're talking about they know what they're talking about we messed up we work harder we come back fighting so people that blame awards for not getting the awards that they want it's because there was a crack in your foundations not theirs so use it as fire under your belly to succeed and be stronger and fight harder and cook better that's the only way you get it um so yeah but we have to still be busy so the only thing i will not change is we have to we do 100 covers a day in the frog i cannot drop the covers down or i'll have to make sacrifices on team so we've got 63 staff inside that restaurant for 27 covers it's a six-day operation if i move down to five days a week i have to remove some staff if i do that I'll massively hinder on revenue which will then come into profit which will mean less refurb moving forward so I cannot as a business as a business mind this is where logic and business is very different yeah sorry passion and business is very different passion will be like fuck it let's let's let's make it four days a week let's run with a core team and let's just do the best we can with 20 covers sounds wonderful that business will not financially survive to be sustainable change that word sustainability because it's overused it's tomorrow so if i want to be have a sustainable restaurant i've got to make sure it's open tomorrow i've got to make sure the team are educated to be able to cook better tomorrow i've got to make sure that the dish that we made today is better tomorrow all of that is being sustainable yes just there's a lot

1:24:08Adam Handling:um this what you've said is so powerful and just trying to like i i would love to get into hard work so i think it's like i know you're notorious for just a relentless maniacal work ethic like take me through like what it actually takes to do this like and again appreciate every day is different but like is there like a what a week a tip a typical week would look like for you how you know you're across so many different things like on a monday morning what happens like how do you what are the systems and then the hours that make this whole fucking rolex machine ecosystem tick essentially.

1:24:46Dan Pope:So I would always say a founder would do this, but employee wouldn't because I live to work, not work to live. You know, like if I'm not working, I'm very destructive. I'm grumpy, I'm whatever. I need to be surrounded by people. I need to be in an operation. I have to be working. I live for it. I love it. But I don't expect employees to do that. But if it's your own bloody business, you have to do it. You literally have to do it. So if you don't want to do it, don't start a business. um my my week is uh we always do a 10 10 so we have uh 10 minutes for all restaurants and bars and uh chocolate shops to tell us what happened uh yesterday financial guest experience wise good and bad and then today financially what's happening guest experience staffing issues so 10 minutes 10 minutes 10 minutes 10 o 'clock all the restaurants they have like two and a half minutes each where they uh yeah yeah yeah yeah so um we we do that and uh they they have they cannot speak more than two and a half minutes or they have to wait until the end when everyone goes then they get the relevant people and there's about 30 people on this call all the directors all the gms all the head chefs and it's so that they can see the power behind the drive of the group that every collection uh is uh is gunning and that wonderful cute competition that they have where Lock and Hine beat the revenue of Tartan Fox.

1:26:03Dan Pope:Guys, are you going to up your game today? Yeah, I'm going to make sure I sell more donuts. I'm going to make sure that we think of an idea to work with steak. So maybe we buy a special in. Stephen's like, yeah, sure. I'm going to up mine. I'm going to buy Dover Souls in. It'll fly out the door. You know, so that's the financial side of life. But also the constructive one is we have an ecosystem that works together. We do a lot of foraging that we store in one specific place. We have a lot of things where Ugly Butterfly makes the sauce for tartan fox yeah for example so it's a very intertwined operation uh and that's because the uh ugly butterfly is a seasonal restaurant but it's i wouldn't say it's a carbon copy of frog because it's it's got its own identity it's got a little a little bit more skilled chefs inside of that one that uh we want to make sure that the consistency of say a sauce which is very important and very powerful for a dish is is the same so they can speak about on there of what they need to enhance their days and also if people called in sick we can fix it

1:27:01Adam Handling:immediately 10 10 10 a.m 10 sorry 10 minutes 10 every single day every single day wow yeah and

1:27:08Dan Pope:then from there we do an in-depth meeting um after lunch service so on uh it's usually about three o 'clock every day or it's straight after the 10 o 'clock meeting 15 minutes past the depending on which one it is. So Monday's our director's meeting and we only have 45 minutes. Fucking waffling for meeting's sake is no, it's counterproductive and you just get bored. You forget what it does. So it comes when every meeting has an agenda and it gets attacked. So Monday is them. Tuesday is frog. Wednesday is lock and tine. Thursday is ugly butterfly. Friday is tart and fox. Same time after as well.

1:27:43Dan Pope:And that's where it's a little bit more detailed about events that are happening there. So it's basically the next two weeks, the past last week in that one week in that one 45 minutes and it breaks it down into everything and the whole thing about transparency transparency in a business that financial uh guest reviews um morale and the teams transparency is the only way you know the honesty with inside of the circle so you need to tell your staff guys like did you need to have that many staff on by the hour you fucking did no covers it's all about being able to stay open uh just constant communication

1:28:22Adam Handling:yeah constant communication and then once that's done like when does the creative side come after

1:28:26Dan Pope:that straight away so depending where i am i am in every i am in the kitchen of where i am every single day yeah every day and i'm on whenever it's i'll do a lot more admin-y side of things and and development side of things when service is on there is not a single direct you can go to my head office no one will be in it every every director apart from nicola they have a job to

1:28:48Adam Handling:do when services are risen so talk me through each one uh so for george george's restaurant director

1:28:54Dan Pope:if you're in london he's in the frog other than that yeah but other than that george is based in lock and tyne that's his home so we always pinpoint one of us to be in every specific place so that we can uh we're quick reactive that's where we're going to be every day of the week whenever there's an issue we'll switch and change so george is in lock and tyne predominantly most of it uh nicola is in frog so a head office area uh or lock and tyne lives there or she lives no she so she you know as none of us we all live in london oh sorry i think you

1:29:27Adam Handling:meant like so sorry that's but that's like their head office yeah yeah so so we have we have a

1:29:31Dan Pope:five boots on the ground yeah we have a five five story head office um just around the corner from the savoy yeah um so we do our meetings in there uh nicola will be everyone nicola will be there like eight o 'clock every single morning seven o 'clock every morning just to she she's an early bud she likes to get all of her work done before she before everyone else comes in um and so would the ops team be there my my pa will be there uh the chocolate team is based there they're based in that building as well um but then the uh the the kelvin is everywhere he is literally the beverage director because we have three pubs and bars as well so he travels pretty much daily to every one of them but during service he's on service he'll have his two days off but he'll he'll he'll be unless it's summer then we all work like crazy people jamie is based absolutely everywhere including events so director of um chef director so for instance he's in london at the moment doing an event that we're doing um in uh in february doing some tastings there then he'll be in lock and tyne then he's coming to london while while i land back there to redo the frog menu with me Cleverson and him then he'll be in um uh Cornwall with me doing well first in Ireland doing an event and then he'll be doing an event with me um relaunching Ugly Butterfly with me because that's where I'm based uh and it works pretty much like that we really tell that's why the directors meetings are very important because the directors meetings are for the next three months and it's repetitive as hell but it's just so everyone knows what's going on it's that military discipline yeah the one thing i wanted to ask you about is how and like we tell me to

1:31:02Adam Handling:fuck off we don't have to go here at all but i know you went through like a tricky period you had your son or is it oscar or oliver oliver oliver and you split up with your partner a lot of people listening to this i've got friends who are in treatment situations when a kid gets involved you're building all this business how did you navigate that period how was that and was that tricky for you i think it was yeah it was that again we don't have to go here no no

1:31:26Dan Pope:it was very difficult because it was a situation which i couldn't control um and i think if i hate being made to feel stupid yeah if there was a situation where i didn't know something i'd study it tomorrow ask me the same question i'll tell you the answer to it but that's my personality but when it's specific stuff like uh like the separation and it all started pretty much because of social media people people you know i'm a big boy now it hurt me at the time but there was a lot of negativity about me and in social media from um from from things which no one's met me but everyone just jumped on a bandwagon and assumed everything was was correct like this like cancel cultures oh it is it is it is do i care about it now not really at all but i did at the time you know this was the same time lockdown was going on as well so i was losing everything i was losing my relationship i was losing my son i was losing my restaurants i was losing my parents house i was losing fucking everything and i'm looking around thinking do i just want to jump off that fucking balcony and make everyone's life easier um and it was it was the nicholas it was the george's it was the stevens it was the them people that i've said will always have my back they're the ones that were like fuck them and yeah they say that to you but you're like no no i'm not going to it still hurts me I get a you know daily mail starts to speak about it you click on the comments and you I'm it's like a scary movie I've always been like this I used to be terrified of Jurassic Park when I was a little boy when it first came out I had to watch the whole movie or it was game over I'd have nightmares forever um and it's just like that even now I have the same same tact of what I had as a child where I have to read every single comment are you very

1:33:06Adam Handling:sensitive you're like a sensitive teddy bear underneath well I would I wouldn't say I was

1:33:10Dan Pope:but I won't show emotion in public very much.

1:33:13Adam Handling:Yeah.

1:33:14Dan Pope:I do it behind those doors. And I'm not going to, every fucker cries. If you don't, you're a liar or you have no soul. But yeah, there are times where it gets me and I'm in the shower thinking, fucking hell. But I have to pretend when I go into my work, nothing's bothering me at all.

1:33:29Adam Handling:And how often do you get to see your son?

1:33:31Dan Pope:Oh, quite regularly. We had him for Christmas this year, which is beautiful. Holly has a phenomenal relationship with Oliver. Holly's your... Yeah, yeah, yeah. they have a very, very good relationship together. And so does Oliver. Oliver grew up in the frog. So when he comes, it's like Uncle George. It's like Uncle Jamie. It's like Nicola. And it's really quite funny because I walk into the office and I'll see them FaceTiming my son. They just chat. He'll just call them to be like, and how are you? How's the chocolate shop going? Or where are you? You in the Fox? Because we have another house down in Cornwall too.

1:34:03Dan Pope:So he's like, are we going to daddy's house by the beach? Or are we going in London? and he just is so involved and so inquisitive. And like I said, when you mentioned about how I was as a child, about not having the energy that a child gives off tailored, stuff that I didn't give a shit about. I was being disruptive, you know, English math and all that jazz. Everything that he's quite inquisitive about, I go down that path with him, always. So when we're going out, he loves food, but I will never correct him on what he gets wrong. So for instance, he's very much, every protein is chicken, every meat is chicken.

1:34:42Dan Pope:Every seafood that comes from the sea is fish. So he can be eaten venison tartare, beef wellington, pork. This chicken's amazing. And he's very appreciative. It's the best food I've ever tasted. And I'm never going to say to him, that's not venison, that's venison, that's beef. That's, you know, no, he'll find that out on his own. Because as soon as you start to correct a child when they're passionate about something, about what they're saying is wrong, they'll lose that passion who does it bother that he's calling pork chicken beef chicken some sad sad human being is just gonna do it yeah so and he fucking loves it because he feels that he's connected by me or he's he's connected with me by a joint passion and i think the joint passion uh was perhaps something i didn't have as a child and that made me an asshole so i will make sure So that's one of the reasons why we created the chocolate shop.

1:35:36Dan Pope:My son doesn't like chocolate. So I wanted to create everything from start to finish to be able to be like, well, this is how we got you eating vegetables. You were in the gardens in Lock and Tyne and we were digging it up and you were making your salad and everything was the best he's ever tasted. Chocolate, he still doesn't like chocolate, but he tries.

1:35:51Adam Handling:I've tried that problem.

1:35:52Dan Pope:Yeah, me too.

1:35:53Adam Handling:About four Kit Kat chunkies when I got in last night. Yeah, it's fascinating. And what are some of the hard things you'd want him to go through? because I don't think a bubble wrapped existence for a child, not that I've got kids, but like you want them to go through some hardships because that's, as we were saying, when you're buried, you know, the seed grows and you blossom. Like what are some of the hard things that you've been through that you'd want him to go through?

1:36:18Dan Pope:Yeah.

1:36:19Adam Handling:Without a character assassination.

1:36:21Dan Pope:Yeah, he's very soft and he is bubble wrapped. You know, now that he has two homes to live in, I think it's perhaps not as disciplined, it's definitely disciplined when it comes to me, but it's not as disciplined in both houses the same. And I would like that to change because the boy needs to know he can't get everything he wants. He's not God's gift to humanity. And yes, he's an adorable child. It's really difficult because his grandparents is bloody Thai. So he's a super white kid because he takes after my skin color, blue eyes, but his mom's Thai. And it's just like, he's the prized possession to a Thai grandmother.

1:37:00Dan Pope:Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just trying to be like, would you please stop peeling his grapes for him? Let him fucking eat the grape skin. You know, like, let him do this. He's like, no, I'm not gonna do that. But he's like, no, it's my grandchild. I'll do everything I want. And I'm like.

1:37:15Adam Handling:Yeah, that's fascinating. Obviously we're in Phuket now, we're in Thailand. How would you say the Scottish and Thai cultures are similar and different?

1:37:24Dan Pope:I think they're similar because they're proud of where they come from. They've got a very long history in terms of products, what they have in each country. I think the flavor combinations are completely bloody different.

1:37:34Adam Handling:Yeah.

1:37:35Dan Pope:Completely different, but they're both islands as well. So seafood is very important for them. So I think the proudness of location is very important. Like my dream, I'm going to go off on a tangent here. My dream is to make Britain an actual, and I hate the word cuisine because it's not British either, to make it a cuisine that people come to the UK to be like, I want to go to a British restaurant. But, you know, during Queen Victoria's reign, In World War II, Britain, within the first one, Britain got sought after of being wealthy and powerful if they're eating things from the other side of the world.

1:38:09Dan Pope:Pineapple, for example, is the bloody, the gift that you give people. You know, what's better than a fucking massive basket of strawberries, you know? But, and then World War II, when Germany was shooting all of the boats coming in with products, and then we literally got in the shit in this country because we were not self-sufficient. We've always had the mindset is it's better to get from abroad because we can, we're Britain, we're powerful. And we learned that, we learned the foundations of it. You go to any Thai grandmother and they can cook their socks off. You know, if you go to lots of, you know, British grandparents, some of them can cook, quite a lot can, the next generation can't.

1:38:52Dan Pope:You know, it's passed down to be able to provide, eat from the land, eat from what is there. My dream is to change that and have people understand what British food is all about. Gone are the days French word is used to describe something posh. Creme brulee. Fucking hell, you're taking a piss. It's made in Cambridge. Why are we... It's exact translation is English cream. Why are we making French words on our specific products when a dish that was created in Cambridge University is called creme brulee? But yeah, on a menu, Cambridge burnt cream, creme brulee. Creme brulee is posh because it's French.

1:39:27Dan Pope:Why? come on yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah i want to change the mindset about what things what britain's

1:39:34Adam Handling:british food is all about what would be your utopia in say 10 15 years time if we could

1:39:41Dan Pope:paint that picture well i got honored by the king two years ago i got an mbe for my services to british hospitality thank you that was literally the biggest achievement of my life because it means i'm on the right path but i want people to well i've got two different legs to that around the world i want to create the the i wouldn't say the history book because the history book is all covered in french terminology and covered in french chefs creating it there are still some british stuff but it's it's it's not pure it's it's covered in foreign um words i want there to be a british cookbook where the uh the the foundations is completely non-existent but it's all about the products that we have so we can create we can create something magical we can we have a complete blank book to be like, what is British?

1:40:28Dan Pope:You know, what is British? And because it's the products that we use here, the way that we do them is completely new. I'm not saying don't put a tartare on the menu. I'm not saying that. I'm saying like Coors New Restaurant, for example, you know, re-highlighting what British food is all about in a very, very elegant way, but very historic foundations. Heston Blumenthal's in the Fat Duck, Look what he tried to do there as well. I think there are a few chefs out there that are doing phenomenal, but they're a specific way of doing it. They're all about ancient history. I would like to do and be a part of all the other chefs that are around my age category where they're all doing British food.

1:41:11And it is literally brand new, brand new.

1:41:15Dan Pope:You go to, you go down to Spain. Yeah, I'm going to a Spanish restaurant. Croquettes in one, ham in one, croquettes, omelet. You know, you'd eat the same food in every restaurant. Some is better than the others, blah, blah, blah. But it's the same. Italy, the same. You know, you go to Britain, you go, I'm going to eat in a British restaurant five days a week. You're having completely fucking different food. But it's all from British products. That excitement of what I would love to see foreign people come to the UK, especially London, to be like, we ain't eating where we're from. We're on the British ones.

1:41:46Dan Pope:And you're going to find fish and chips and you're going to find a roast beef and a Sunday roast, but you're going to find some serious magical things.

1:41:52Adam Handling:What do you think that week would look like, again, through a utopian lens? So someone comes in and is like... Because you're right, like, even out here, you know, I'm like, one week... So I was like, even I said this to Lukey, I was like, I need to try the roasted pork. I'm going to smash the fuck out of Thai food. I was like, I want that. Is it the Krad Kapow, which is the holy... Does Krad Kapow thank you? I don't know. I kept getting confused with saying thank you and the other one is... You know that, you know, it's the minced chicken or beef. Oh, yeah, and the holy basil. Yeah, and it's fucking spicy.

1:42:27Adam Handling:Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I kept saying holy basil. We've eaten that every day. Yeah, yeah, it's banging. Like, wanted to try that, wanted to try that. But I think you're right. Like, if you were to take off the naff, stereotypical fish and chips, Yorkshire fucking pudding, pie, whatever, like, what is the utopian British food, do you think?

1:42:47Dan Pope:I think it's to have a British cookbook alongside repertoire de la cuisine. yes the LaRousse gastronomic it's about something where it's like the history but also the future of food because the LaRousse gastronomic is the future of food of that period of time so I think it's to have a huge ass book with what everyone's doing now there's plenty of fantastic chefs out there yeah yeah you know you go to Mark in Morehall his food is British as hell and it is wonderful and it's got top top you know it's three stars

1:43:20Adam Handling:yeah yeah yeah

1:43:20Dan Pope:Oh, three stars. We have the best awarded British restaurants in the country, being British, but we also, and Simon Rogan. All of them, three restaurants I mentioned, apart from Claire's, is three stars plus two green stars. You know, they are the top epitome of what it is. But yeah, people still think Britons can't cook. You're like, well, it's fucking, you've got French people giving us the top marks in Michelin.

1:43:43Adam Handling:Clearly they do.

1:43:44Dan Pope:So my dream is to have foreign people come into the UK and to be like, yes, I want to eat British food. yeah yeah yeah but it's all it's thought it's done by it's done by what's that word um the generations so our parents generation where they would go or like from from france countries they'd come here and they'd have shit food because we would be doing mgo seedlings of everything it would be completely beige that was when britain did really bad for itself it was a factory produced filth that just put a lot of damage in people so their perception is shite their kids their perception is going to be wonderful and then next generation their kids when they come here it's even better so i just think it's a generational thing i don't want anyone to die but when that generation does pass and the new one comes in to be the the the older ones it's gonna it's gonna go yeah yeah

1:44:31Adam Handling:no i just love the way your brain thinks mate about the future and just ambition one thing i love again it's another chris williams thing which i think is really interesting is he says a lot of like not like advice from people who've been who are successful who've made their millions is is not always the best to rely on and this whole thing is is study the rise not the result so a lot of these big minted people you know go on these some of these podcasts they'll say that you know i wish i it's all about balance like taking a fucking walk or you know playing with your kid or getting a gym session and doing a morning routine that's fine once they've made that though they've got time to do that but if you had to actually study the rise on the way up they were fucking psychopaths yeah like what's what's what was your rise like versus where you are now your result like where it was like talk me get me into your head into the eye of your head uh sorry your head about that up the top that direction well to be fair it's that it's that

1:45:34Dan Pope:saying everyone wants to know you when you're successful but no one wants to help you be successful you know like every and no no one no one no one believes in you when you're struggling but you're not you're you're a stubborn ass not to give up but then when you've achieved it you have lots of friends i hate people like that my circle is very very very small very small for that reason um i don't really know how to answer that question it's like a bull run really i started off my career went up really high shot down pretty much almost collapsed went up again shot down from lockdown. Now it's gone back up again.

1:46:10Dan Pope:Luckily, it doesn't seem to be dropping. It's slowed down in terms of its spike, purely for the reason of the economics. But we aren't slowing down. It's still going up. But instead of like that, it's now pushed slightly slower and it'll always move forward. It'll never be stagnant.

1:46:26Adam Handling:Yeah, it's interesting. A guy I interviewed, you know, Grenade the chocolate bars, because we interviewed a lot of brands. Interviewed the founder of that. He's sold X's of that for 200 mil. Went to his gaff in Cornwall, actually. sick he's got like his own it's just like this old like it's like a bond layer but he was basically saying to me is you can have a better business without having better or higher profits or revenue in the sense that you may be sort of flat lying but you may be getting better the team in oh for sure and i think that's really interesting we look at so myopically through like oh what's all the revenues and it's like no no you can get better like better systems better yeah and you

1:47:03Dan Pope:you know all that stuff is fucking fascinating i do think tech is playing a major part in um in financial growth with inside the hospitality sector right but i still think it's a little bit more scary to let go on specific things i know it has been for me but my my ops team are very much

1:47:21Adam Handling:a uh we are going digital so what sort of stuff have you implemented uh but everything every

1:47:27Dan Pope:single thing that the team do is completely digital in terms of how they obviously clock in and out, how they manage their holidays, their time, their rotas, their pay slips, their ordering, their shopping baskets, accounts, finance, every single thing is all done digitally where all specific people will have access to absolutely everything. So they can click on it. They can see the projections, the forecast, everything. And people are like, yeah, that's just a flash report. I'm a restaurant. I'm not a hotel. I don't have an endless team of financial people that I just sit and do that. So picking up these systems in place to be able to make sure that you can control food costs as well.

1:48:04Dan Pope:One of the biggest costs that will cripple a business is mismanaging ordering and being wasteful.

1:48:11Adam Handling:What mistakes do you think young ambitious chefs make that you commonly see?

1:48:17Dan Pope:They don't realize that seafood is bloody seasonal in terms of price point. One day it's this price, one day it's that, and yet they don't adapt their menu. So, you know, if you're buying turbot, for example, you buy a whole turbot in, seven kilo turbot, king of the sea, absolutely delicious. You get, I don't know how many portions, say 10 portions out of one big portions of something. You'll get more than that out of that. And it's an X amount of money. It's on the menu. You've decided it. It's a great dish. Following day, you order another turbot and it's like 15 % higher, but your menu price is still the same.

1:48:48Dan Pope:You lost money on that dish. That whole comes into place at the end of the month. So I think doing a complete flexible menu of terms of being able to create things or even have a relationship with suppliers where you can say, I really want this on my menu, but I cannot have it change up and down. So create a floor, create a ceiling. I do that with my suppliers.

1:49:07Adam Handling:What do you mean create a floor?

1:49:07Dan Pope:So create a floor is that if it, say, for instance, it's a 45 pound a kilo. And I'll be like, if it goes down to 43, let's keep it that way. If it goes up to, say, 50, let's keep it that way. If it goes any lower, you make more money. If it goes any higher, you save money. And I do that with a lot of my high ticket items. And a lot of suppliers will be like, you know what? It's scratching each other's back. It's all going to pull back at certain times of year. And so create a floor, create a ceiling. Again, that's a normal business term to think about how much you can work with someone together.

1:49:40Dan Pope:Yeah, yeah, yeah. And be flexible, but not allow the flexibility to be detrimental.

1:49:46Adam Handling:Yeah. Talk to me about the, on the so i've read the four by four menu uh the flex but is that you want me to talk me through the genesis of that and what that is so frog is our and why now like i suppose i want to get into the you know be like water swim you know the bruce lee quote which i always love is be like water like swim around things yeah through that so we wanted to create frog as being a standalone

1:50:10Dan Pope:nothing will come nothing will come in place with frog it will be the flagship of the group nothing will change that so make a make um make a restaurant that emphasizes the good parts of frog but make it more accessible you know so we did a 4-4-4 menu so you can come in and pick your own menu come here five days in a row and you can have a completely different menu what's the four so four starters four middles four mains four desires also you can add on cheese so and it's like an a la carte vibes but we call it 4-4-4 because a la carte is bloody french and i will never use that word so it's like um just being able to being able to be more flexible we also have a tasting menu attached to there as well if you really want to come and experience it but it's all about the location ugly butterfly got changed to it isn't as affluent as what it once was in its previous location so i don't want guests for context listen it's just so it was in st ives now it's in new quay yeah so it's in it's in um it's in uh the historic headland hotel on the left side of the building over going the cliffs of fistral beach which is incredible the sun sets in the windows it's so pretty um and we wanted to create a restaurant that embodies the history of what we've done so we've got all the newspaper articles of what we've done well um done them into paper mache butterflies and hang them all from the ceiling because you must remember the past if you're going to think about the future and uh and then we wanted to create the foundations of of accessibility so if you don't want to come i love cornwall to bits but it could up its food game in specific areas uh so there's not so much in one small space of the top tier restaurants in fish for all in cornwall in cornwall everything like the top you've got phenomenal restaurants but they're also bloody far away and a lot of people don't necessarily like to travel so you know next one for me who's far away is like probably 40 minutes where you've got paul's and you've got Nathan's even further away from that.

1:52:04Dan Pope:You know, you've got a lot of wonderful restaurants, like some of the best in the UK to be fair, but everything is so difficult to get to. So I wanted to create a restaurant where guests can have the same standard without having to travel an hour there and an hour back. They can just create their own menu and come here five days a week while they're on holiday. That was the ethos around it. So to be able to encapsulate an audience and if they wanted to come just for a special occasion or they wanted to blow out, the taste menu's there. We sell a lot of taste menu on the weekends because people come for special occasions during the week is pretty much the four course menu.

1:52:34Dan Pope:And, um, I've had guests come in summer this year was really beautiful when we first opened. We had a guest come like six times in a week, lunch and dinner, cause we've got a bar menu as well. So if you want to have a whole grilled lobster with garlic butter and chips, or you wanted a big bowl of steamed mussels, or you just wanted the banging burger, you can do that in the bar. So we had, we had guests come and try all the menus and we have afternoon tea there as well. It's quite a large offering, but it's all about how would I like to eat if I was at a sea like a seaside part of the UK it's official beach where they've got the Rick Steins chippy yeah and and that's where they do board masters yeah I was

1:53:09Adam Handling:gonna say it's where the surfers are yes yeah and they've got that bar that's kind of does pizzas below yeah yeah yeah yeah I've definitely been there there's a little fish restaurant there oh mate I've been to that it's amazing it's amazing really really good so I don't when I

1:53:24Dan Pope:say there's not very much around there are good restaurants around i'm not saying that but it's not as it's not as close together as london is yeah yeah yeah because you've got one of my

1:53:33Adam Handling:the gurnard's head down there i love the gurnard's head one of my favorites and what's the other one which is really good the saint queuing yeah which yeah i think i had like a rib thing there which was just like mind-blowing it was so delicious yeah yeah there's loads of great places what are the other sort of psychological positive manipulations because i think it's a smart thing to do and the you you win the guest wins you know i'd love to be able to go oh four fucking four things you know banging don't have to you know leave and get in a car because a lot of people don't want to do that on holiday holidays i like driving but you know yeah yeah what are the other sort of um you know win win win win for everyone things you've put in place across

1:54:16Dan Pope:We have two restaurant cars that will drive you home if you want to enjoy the wine list. And you can leave your car in any of the restaurants, to be fair, and pick it up the following day. Because you never know. It's all about the experience someone gets. You come first to an operation and you're like, I'm not drinking. I'm just going to come for a couple of courses. And all of a sudden, you've got on like a house on fire with the waiter and you're enjoying the food so much. You're smashing out everything. Shit on that note. That's right. That's smashing out of me. And they're like, yeah, you know what?

1:54:46Dan Pope:Let's have another bottle of wine. Perfect. Don't you worry about that. The taxis take forever. We'll drive you home. You know, you can't be living in Devon, but, you know, there's an hour around trip. We'll drive you for free.

1:54:56Adam Handling:So taxis, you can't get in Cornwall either. And also it's mad. So I took my team down there. We did like a, well, I did the grade interview. So because our lives down there and we did, we did the rock. We did, what did we do? what's three boys or four boys in rock which was really good and and then paul ainsworth's cafe rohana not not not the um that which is a great restaurant yeah which is really really good but you know i was i was like back in the old days i was like calling these cab companies like all right love i'm like i'm like he's like you hear me i'll be there at this time and i was like this is just fucking so that's that's that's probably good business in itself yeah it is we

1:55:40Dan Pope:We don't charge anything for it. We just want people to make sure that we've thought of everything a guest wants to do without them asking for it. That's the ethos of a good restaurant. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Float from one side to another, do everything, guests don't see.

1:55:52Adam Handling:I want to explore your creative process. It's really been made to understand your character and the way you think and navigate this world. But the creative process is interesting. You know, Paul Smith, the designer, he's got really, I was reading it on the way on the boat over here actually really interesting kind of like rules of creativity and it's just really fascinating because his brand one of his things is have a fucking point of view there's a gazillion podcasters, there's a gazillion chefs, there's a gazillion graphic designers there's a gazillion writers people think we need another one of those we need a point of view that's one of his ones, his other ones is like there's a difference between stay child like but don't be childish so i always be curious kind of thing um positivity really really interesting but like i'd love to know and i know at one point you kind of backpack around here in asia like how did you develop the adam handling point of view first and then what's how do you go and get those creative ideas how do you i know you've got the famous lobster and lobster and wagyu and caviar dish like that's kind of just how does that happen well that happened a long way

1:57:08Dan Pope:a long way off from finding myself yep i'm a i'm a glen eagles boy which was very traditional very wasteful but incredibly phenomenal you know everything it was very old school so they would cut a turbot into a square i'd roll in my i'd literally get so frustrated if i went to a restaurant now and i see a square like where the fuck's the rest of the fish man fish ain't a but that was how i got taught so it wasn't until i and i do encourage everyone whether or not you're in hospitality or any other industry travel see the world see a different point of view um because sometimes you can be quite locked into you know we don't have a passport we only have we only stay in we only see what we see every day you need to be inspired by anything a smell a sound a feeling a fucking flavor you eat everything like that so when i went traveling i realized that especially in Asia, Japan here and China and everything, they're very much hyper-local in terms of proud to be using Thai, using Japanese, using Chinese, and they don't tend to bring anything else into their country that isn't in season just then.

1:58:06Dan Pope:But there's a reason why the best fruit in the world come from Japan. You know, like the apples, the strawberries, things like that, because they only make them for that period of time, and that's, you're done. If I can get a strawberry in the UK out of season, because people are forcing them to grow. so they're very much built on product and utilization of everything and i think that was so beautiful to experience because i'd never experienced it before um and i did cooking classes

1:58:30Adam Handling:in all countries i was in so what countries you go to uh all uh so let's talk about this area

1:58:36Dan Pope:Cambodia Vietnam um Thailand uh China uh Indonesia Bali um Sri Lanka China Japan Japan, this is just this area. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I took almost a year out and went traveling.

1:58:50Adam Handling:And what country was the most surprising?

1:58:53Dan Pope:Thailand.

1:58:54Adam Handling:Because?

1:58:54Dan Pope:Their usage of sweet and sour spicy.

1:58:57Adam Handling:This is exactly what Leaky was saying.

1:58:59Dan Pope:I think that there is something we don't do in British food and we definitely don't do in French food. So how I was trained. So when I'm having sour, sweet and spicy, I'm like, what the fuck is going on in my mouth? Why does this taste so fresh, so delicious, so yummy? And then I wanted to dive deeper into that sort of one.

1:59:20Adam Handling:And is there a way to do that with the British menu now? Well, British. How would you sort of create that?

1:59:27Dan Pope:So the thing is as well, because British food is historically based on French, that's why it's bland, if I'm honest.

1:59:34Adam Handling:That's why it's bland. I can't understand that.

1:59:37Dan Pope:So the history of British food was, you know, like yeah yeah yeah the savoy the first chef there french you know all of the big chefs that are around everywhere french they put their influence on it to make what is british food now french they they had so britain didn't have the opportunity to be able to be sour sweet and spicy didn't have the opportunity interesting so when you go over there it's not about taking the foundations of a phenomenal thai dip where they would pour over their rice or whatever and bring it back to the UK and be like, I'm doing just that. No, you can use British ingredients and achieve just that.

2:00:12Dan Pope:I wanted lemons for my restaurants. So I worked with a farm called Pasha's Patch in Cornwall to create my own lemons. We create Maya lemons for our restaurants, for example. So the thing is, now we have sour, but we also have sour. We have unripened grapes. So all of the grapes that they start pruning off the vineyards, we have our own sparkling. Then once there we press and we've got ourselves verjure, basically.

2:00:34Adam Handling:So that's sour.

2:00:35Dan Pope:Yeah, sour. So an unripened shoddy grape, you bite it, it's like sour as hell. You can feel your teeth disappearing. And then vinegars. You have creating a scoby, creating vinegars from bread, from beer, from whatever. You can be able to create something again. There are a thousand different ways to create a sour flavor. Now, how do we implement that in British food using British ingredients? Very easily. Very easily now. Things like umami, like soy. I love soy. Such a huge flavor. We don't use soybeans in our soy. We use our leftover bread. so we dice up our bread we ferment our bread we bake our bread ferment it put it in water leave it left two weeks reduce it right down 100 to one add some salt soy sauce made from bread not

2:01:16Adam Handling:soybeans same flavor if there was a dish to to kind of for people to cook it say like an adam handling 30 minute meal dish to create what your this utopia like what would that be for someone to whip up to kind of experience the new wave of yeah like what british food could be because i think we could definitely get there what would be something i'll say a posh version uh a posh version will just be a barbecued lobster yeah cut a barbecued lobster in half but when when the head is barbecued squeeze the head all over the meat yes brush it and be fat you do that two things

2:01:52Dan Pope:britain is very squeamish because they've never had to get their hands dirty foreign people come in and they do everything for us. You go to Spain, you're having all of the gambas cooked on the, on the, the, the, the bolt shaped barbecues in, in, in the South of Spain and people are sucking the head and they're squeezing the head, they're eating the prawns. And then someone does the same with a lobster and they're like, Oh, that's gross. I'm confused. It's the same bloody thing. One's a little larger. So it's about people's mindset about what is gross, what is flavor. But if you were to be a little bit more, um, And use a different culture's way of working with British products to understand that what they do, they've been doing for years and it's bloody delicious.

2:02:34Dan Pope:Sustainable, zero waste, use it all.

2:02:37Adam Handling:How would you apply the Japanese principles to British? Because when I went to Japan 2019 and what I found interesting about there is they'll specialize in one thing. yeah so like you'll go to like the pork katsu place or like this very specific type of shishimi and like that just kind of maniacal obsession with one thing like what would that be for the

2:02:58Dan Pope:if we were to put that through british asian fish so aging fish so aging as cod aging a turba aging mackerel aging a fish like they do over there to really impact the flavor of the ocean um that's something they've been doing for ages. We've only just started doing. It's a preservation system for us to be able to make fish last for longer. But because we're on the ocean and we've been very gluttonous in our time, we were very wasteful. But being able to age a fish in a chamber or even nicely wrapped in a fridge, you take the information about how they then treat a fish to really maximize on flavor, bring it back to using British fish.

2:03:39Dan Pope:That simple thing there, one little element of how they make the best fish over here, that little key will open up a world of experience, but also a world of excitement, because you know how wonderful it'll taste. It'll cook even better because it doesn't have excess water in. It has more of an intense flavor because, again, the water is, no flavor is gone. It's dried slightly, so the caramelization on specific fishes is even better. It's fucking wonderful.

2:04:07Adam Handling:Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. such an interesting way of viewing the world and so it's so exciting take how could you not be

2:04:13Dan Pope:excited about applying all these take techniques of history they've been doing them for longer than ever it's like come on the whole world is europe is founded on uh on asia people go to italy and think oh italy is one of the oldest foods foods in the world hey guys really really really really

2:04:29Adam Handling:sorry um we were recording this on my portable kit uh in thailand and yeah these things happen but there was a bit of a technical glitch where we lost about four minutes of audio and video because these things happen. So you'll notice the conversation jumps from kind of us talking and then goes straight into Paul Smith. The only bit you literally missed was me saying, oh, this is what I learned from Paul Smith. So, yeah, sorry about that. These things happen.

2:05:01Dan Pope:Have you met Paul Smith before?

2:05:03Adam Handling:Lee's coming on the pod. Oh, nice. so yeah it's kind of because i do a lot of chefs but i actually do a lot of brands

2:05:09Dan Pope:i'm more of a brand podcaster yeah i i met him in uh i met him in the foreign office oh really yeah what's he like he's a great ambassador as well oh really yeah yeah yeah so he's uh he's he's he's he's for um and for food yeah yeah yeah quite long mate i can talk

2:05:28Adam Handling:about this i'm very pro britain i think there's as we talk about even before we were recording there's this nefarious like just pessimism and I feel like people like you people like him I believe our greatest export and the best thing is when you are people who are from the UK and say why you know you can't believe in the world why London why the UK it's like man your greatest export is creativity we just take it for granted like if you think about the Beatles like all the bands we've created for the size of our country and education and education yeah exactly

2:06:08Dan Pope:Did you know Britain was the first country to abolish slavery? Oh really? Yeah. It was Britain that did it. Yeah, there's a lot of them. So Britain's got a whole durdiness about it, like taking over all the world and being all nasty and stuff like that, but it's ignorant people that don't actually look at the textbooks and think, Britain abolished slavery, they built education systems. they did so much obviously they're losing their weight now but it made us all very lazy

2:06:37Adam Handling:yeah that's the problem but i think it takes people like yourself you only need a few people who can change the zeitgeist and culture pretty quickly yeah do you know i mean it's not

2:06:49Dan Pope:but the chefs nowadays are really for britain which is wonderful you look at the top 50 restaurants in london or in the actual british guys and they're all mostly not british Yeah, yeah, yeah. There's probably 20 % that are, but the predominantly ones are all about promoting the UK. But this new government, they're stopping the Great Campaign. The Great Campaign? So the Great Campaign is the educational campaign where it promotes Britain around the world from its creative skills and food, its fashion. Yeah, and they've put a hold on that project. Why is that? No idea. But I used to go to so many different embassies around the world and do diplomatic dinners for free, didn't charge a fucking thing.

2:07:35Dan Pope:And it was all about showing what Britain could be, food-wise, and inspiring a room for fucking presidents and business people and that sort of stuff. But yeah, they put a pin on that project, which I find very silly, because I think if you don't show the world how great we can do things, everyone will forget us again. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 100%.

2:07:56Adam Handling:Now, I feel like we'll have this, as you say, things don't lie. I think I mean I think food is under the minute some of us have signed like that's it's ever been and obviously there's a lot of restaurants shy all the time especially because

2:08:10Dan Pope:they're not adapting yeah I say it in the most polite way possible if people don't like it there's other things to think about there's this there's that there's a small amount of things that people cannot change there's a fucking shit ton that can make you keep trying you choose not to do it yeah and that's the reason why the Gavroche clothes. It's the reason why Mike is wearing clothes. It's the reason why all of these big restaurants that you look up to and think, you were my fucking idols in my career. Because we didn't fuck out that. It's the only reason.

2:08:41Adam Handling:Yeah, sorry, just, we were talking just quickly about buildings in London.

2:08:44Dan Pope:Do you know why in like that side of London, the, all the buildings are like slanty or like the cheese grater building is like that? No, no, no. The rule that isn't, that Henry VIII had created was no building can ever block the view of um suppose cathedral so wherever you are in london you can always see suppose videos so these buildings have to be the shape of suppose cathedral so that it can be so high

2:09:09Adam Handling:that's mad it's fucking cool so so um i think what we were talking about the before that camera started being a knob but the um the was it the british it was the japanese oh yeah sorry we're talking about japan and the japanese just doing one thing well yeah like what would those be for Britain like in the in the new era a lot of people are doing it but it's the preserving of fish the

2:09:30Dan Pope:Asian yes aging fish fish is a really good way to enhance flavor um to make something prolonged to you know there's that one little technique there brought over here it's just transforming the way

2:09:43Adam Handling:British seafood uh isn't yeah yeah yeah um what did you what would you say is um like if you could only spend two hours a week on your business as a club thing where would you spend it i would

2:10:00Dan Pope:probably spend it in either the the development kitchens or the labs i get so excited about being adventurous so excited about creation of things so we have a we have a lab we have we have food lab drinks lab we have development areas them sort of ones where you're really honing in i try and make dishes that connect with me but also will connect with somebody else I think that's very important that as much as I only cook for myself I'm a normal person and the average Brit has experienced pretty much what I've experienced growing up so if I can create a reincarnation of that real happy memory that I've had as a child or as an adult or as whatever they would have experienced it too so when you give them that dish and eat it they say to you that reminds me of you like done it done it i didn't tell you i wasn't going to tell you but it does because i think

2:10:51Adam Handling:we were talking about paul's and then we kind of got yeah that was it i was talking about my paul smith bag which has kind of been you know follow me around this trip and i love it because it kind of just stands out as it reminds me to sort of just look for the things that stand out and his whole mantra and thesis is is you know stay like childlike not childish but then you said you met

2:11:12Dan Pope:at the british thing for an office yeah for an office for a great uh a great dinner a great

2:11:17Adam Handling:dinner what where on that if you could speak to that about your where do your ideas come from how do you have to exist in the world to get those ideas like does creativity come to you is this quite fucking ethereal and spiritual here but i love this stuff like yeah i think

2:11:33Dan Pope:creativity comes if you're willing to learn and work for it it's not something that you wake up in the morning you think i'm going to create this and it's going to be magical you know like the That there happens to a very few people, but it does happen and I'm so envious of them. But for me, I need substance. I need to be inspired by something. Hence, inspiration is one of the words. So I need to be able to find something that inspires to me of how I feel right now. How do I feel in the moment? How can I create something that contains a memory and also promote Britain in its best light possible?

2:12:06Dan Pope:That's how I create my food that way. It's how I feel and what I want to eat now. Because I'm a normal person. So it's not an arrogance one where this is the frog we're talking about. The other ones are 50 % frog, 50 % the team. It's all about if people are coming to the frog, which is my main restaurant, they want to experience, I would like to think, what goes on in my crazy head and now Cleverson's crazy head. So if they were to come in and they would eat something and it's like, oh my God, this is obvious. My grandmother made this, but it was shit. You've just managed to make me feel and miss her.

2:12:36Dan Pope:You've just done something like that where it's really quite encapsulating of an experience. chicken butter the reason why people love it is because it reminds them of a monday morning loaf of bread lots of butter leftover rose chicken sandwich that chicken butter reminds everyone of that experience that's why it's a memory and that's why it's a chanel dish

2:12:56Adam Handling:timeless other chanel dishes that's happened to that keep going yeah like other ones that you

2:13:02Dan Pope:think they're not so that one there is the predominant main one but things like the uh the lobster aged in beef fat and the cheese donut and the mother dish, they're pretty much the staple four that are on, I wouldn't say all the menus, but half of them are on all the menus.

2:13:21Adam Handling:Fascinating. What would you say is some of the most underrated foodie city in the world, do you think?

2:13:26Dan Pope:Oh, underrated foodie city in the world.

2:13:31Dan Pope:I love Sri Lanka. I know that's a country, not a city. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But the variation between all corners of Sri Lanka, the food changes. And I think it's completely delicious.

2:13:42Adam Handling:Really? Yeah. So like, what's some of the dishes you'd have there?

2:13:45Dan Pope:Where would you go? I can never tell you the names, but so I was there last year and I was mind blown by the location of food. As in like, each place is completely different to another, even though it's the same country. And yeah, stupidly, I thought that way. It's the same as Britain. You go to Scotland in the bottom. They are different. but the ingredients that they were using the proudness of their heritage of my grandmother my mom my this my that used to make it I do it the same way using the same ingredients grown right there I thought was so romantic and the food was so fresh it was such a clean country I would say that's probably one of my favorite places to go or that I've been to for that specific type of food because I don't know that area of food I don't know Indian I don't know lankan it isn't my forte at all um and i'd love to dive into it a little bit more final question mate how do you think most people misunderstand you how people misunderstand me i'd like to say that they don't again it's they don't see the graft they just see the reward they don't see they think that i was handed everything they don't see the the tears the the the heartbreaks the broken families losing kids they don't see any of that they just see me pick up an award at a ceremony in a fancy suit i think but that's because i keep myself pretty closed off um i would love for people to you know drop me a message and say ask me a question if you want ask me a personal one ask me a food one ask me whatever um or if i'm in the area and someone asked me do i want to go for a coffee i want to chat to you about stuff i will pretty much say yes to everyone if i'm in the area because i want to inspire people and the only way people are going to get to know the real me is

2:15:24Adam Handling:to ask me a question or meet me do you what do you think people are fearful of meeting you or do you think they're fearful of me what do you think you're or do you think because of like just you wanting to create create your own sort of as you say you're very i'm the same i don't let anyone in how am i like close my boys have been with me for fucking since i was 11 years old anyone else i'm kind of like keep at a distance a bit yeah what would you is that is that what it

2:15:46Dan Pope:is or is it yeah i've always been an extremely shy person so me holding a small group of friends is really easy for me to do. I don't want to be the favorite person in the room. I'm happy if my ones that I'm close to like me. But yeah, I'd like people to want to get to know me perhaps. Speak to the team that work in my restaurants, 300 wonderful people. You know, there's how is Adam? Is he a cunt? You know, how is he as a person? And I guarantee you they'll say he's strict, but he's proper passionate and he works.

2:16:18Adam Handling:what do you think there's that that misconception about you yeah really yeah what isn't why do you

2:16:24Dan Pope:think that is just perfect example um one of my most senior people that we just hired uh um i just said why are you why are you coming with me you're getting interviews in left right and center and all the best restaurants in in in london and he was like because you inspire me and i and i was like i don't understand you've never met me and he goes i came for a trial and i felt the energy in this room you created that i'm like me and the team created that i said he's like it leads from the top if the chef is an aggressive angry person the entire team mirror it it's all about mirroring and and he said he was warned not to come work for me because i'm angry and i'm aggressive and

2:17:03Adam Handling:i'm strict haters about you because you've got all this well there's haters in every industry but i feel like for you specifically but it's because you've because you're so young in the grand scheme of things and also you you made the kind of dollar uh young yeah you know there's i don't know maybe there's this kind of this spewed or spinned there's a there's a lot of

2:17:25Dan Pope:people that like to latch on to a negative thing if someone starts to fall we all make mistakes in life i'm no i'm no fucking angel but you know mistakes are a lesson they're not a life's prison sentence so i suppose that uh there are times where i've got way too excited and i've got wasted at a party and i'm and i make a fool of myself you know that's a life lesson i don't want to do that again because i feel horrible the next day to be like i made myself look like a twat but that was when i was in my younger days you get handed a lot of things when you're doing so well and successful that it goes to your head and you make a twat of yourself like even like just in general

2:17:58Adam Handling:in life the ones that will like tear people i remember like vegans who would tear people down for like eating meat yet they're sniffing cocaine yeah well fuck me look at the man's the death that's happened in that fucking supply chain love i mean and it's just like yeah it's interesting and yeah it's just that yeah i just feel like that misconception of i and i think it's a british british thing of build them up tear them down and it's fucked because

2:18:26Dan Pope:it's like but again i don't want this to be uh me playing my little fiddle and i want everyone to say oh poor adam poor adam i've had a wonderful life and every every bump in the road has made me a stronger person a better role model for me for my son a better role model for my team and more drive to become better and better because i don't want these idiots in the background to be like look he failed haha so it's my it's my this is the passion i need i need that sort of negativity in my life to make me be stronger and prove every fucker right everyone is holding their breath waiting for you to fail let them all suffocate

2:19:01Adam Handling:mate perfect way to wrap that up that's been a fucking joy thank you so much brother my pleasure thank you so so much for listening to the podcast i really really do appreciate it if you liked that episode only if you liked it please do give it five stars subscribe tell all your friends families foes next door but one cat dog whatever please tell everyone about this podcast it means the world to me and i really want to understand what your pain point are as the new wave of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search dan pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much