Barrafina Founder: The Genius Who Changed The Way London Eats - Quo Vadis, El Pastor

0:00Buongiorno, buongiorno. This episode is so sick. It's with Sam Hart who's the hospitality legend. He literally changed the way we eat in London. He changed the food world. He changed the restaurant scene. He's the genius behind Fino. He's the genius behind Barafina. He took on Quo Vadis in 2012 with prodigious Jeremy Lee, founded Tacos El Pastor, and more recently Bar Daskal and Parana. I think I've said that right. I absolutely loved this episode. It's just jam-packed with wisdom. It's a proper gallivanting conversation. We go into all sorts of different pastures. We talk about how to be the perfect host.

0:44Sam spent a lot of time in Manchester and in Mexico City. He opened and created the best club in the world at one point with his business partner and best friend, Crispin. We talk about his definition of hospitality. Hospitality is enjoying other people, enjoying the enjoyment you've put on so, so good. we talk about the difference between nightclubs and restaurants and the how techno relates to this which is kind of weird how barifina like the systems behind the scenes of how they make customers feel instantly comfortable as soon as you sit down how quovalis was losing money they were losing money for 12 years but through just fucking dogged persistence and never giving in him and his brother sam turned it around we talk about culture we talk about how to make your team feel confident the nefarious consequences of over promoting honestly it's a proper jam-packed the rafters conversation I absolutely loved it's made me fall in love again with restaurants if you enjoy it please do subscribe please share it with a friend anyway enjoy this with Sam Hart

1:52Sam, thank you so much for doing this Enormously grateful I've loved Well, I've had many a delicious meal In here, in Coivadas And it was at Barra Fina on Sunday In Burrow Yards Which was stupendously delicious I had an amazing meal Took the old deer, which was great fun And yeah, I've got just huge respect For everything you've built I'm really excited to sort of just, you know, dig some of your learnings along the way today. Oh, well, this is a pleasure. It's nice to be here. I want to, I would love to start with sort of maybe a bit of a juxtaposition between two cities. So Mexico City and Manchester.

2:30Yep. So you went to University of Manchester, as did I. I think we were talking about this just before. And then you set up, then you went to Mexico City and you set up a, like a jazz and techno. I don't want to say this, Boyty or something? I think? Yeah, yeah. A nightclub. A nightclub, yeah. Is that what Boyty is? Yeah. That's what's on the, what I read. It's a strange word they used to use in Mexico, which I've now even forgotten how to pronounce because it's been such a long time since I've heard it used, weirdly. Anyway, they used to call it things like an anthroid. It was a nightclub. Okay, nightclub.

3:09And as Sam, our mutual friend, Sam Wiggin, and people who listen to this pod, he's been on twice, he's amazing. He was saying to me that you were born to be a host, and born almost to hospitality, it was kind of like in your blood. And he was saying that at Manchester you would, you know, do have roasts on a Sunday, you're always hosting, you're hosting these amazing sort of house parties. Obviously I've been to some of those house parties in Manchester, they're delicious fun. I'd love to kind of go into Manchester to begin with, then we'll zoom over to Mexico. what do you think are some of those like weird and wonderful lessons you took from hosting house parties in manchester that you've probably then applied that you still use today when you're running the whole sort of hearts group across barifina here um well it's a good question i think there's some people i think naturally want to be the host and put parties on and other people are more comfortable being the guest and obviously I like going to other people's parties as well but I did always enjoy hosting parties and I suppose there's a differentiation between organizing and putting party on and being the host you know you said you felt natural being the host I actually think probably being the organizer rather than the host comes a little bit more naturally to me but I love the idea of um I mean with the simplest uh you know having friends around for dinner and and and you know doing that side of it but at a sort of um grander scheme organizing a party whether that be in a big sense professional sense in Mexico or a sort of more amateur sense um in Manchester um and I suppose to sort of come back to the original question is Maybe it's about enjoying looking at people enjoying what you've put on for them.

5:11Do you know me taking pleasure about other people's enjoyment of what you've organised, whatever that might be. Can you remember a specific house party? We'll stay in sort of rainy Manchester before we jet off to sunny Mexico. ago but is there a specific sort of house party that you put on there that you can remember that was kind of really encapsulated that feeling of I love that of like you enjoying watching other people enjoy themselves uh not a specific one because we used to do I mean there was there was you know three years of pretty much constant parties um but you know in those days I'm sure it's exactly the same when you were there um there didn't seem to be any neighbors around particularly.

5:57Were you in Fallfield? First year then I was in Wilmslow and it's pretty so like I moved around but anyway somehow or another if there was a neighbour they didn't seem to care when you stuck in a sort of professional sound system and had 300 people in the house. I don't know how but we I mean I think they're still getting away with it. My son's at Is your son up there? My son's at Leeds actually. Okay yeah yeah. Actually running club night strangely there um where the after party remains a sort of uh a big part of the the event so um and they're still getting away with it bizarrely i think if you get if you get to an area where there's enough students you can oh yeah yeah i mean it was yeah it was a sort of uh fallowfield was kind of this sacred sort of um i always say i went to the university of fallowfield not manchester because i never got the bloody night bus into okay into town it was very it was a very bit of a rarity of course there's much more going on in town than there there was back in the early 90s yeah so because did you because did you have the sort of the hacienda was that was that your time yes time yes yes because i've interviewed um sasha lord who does warehouse project you know he does like the night time yeah yeah yeah yeah fascinating guy and he was sort of growing up in i think he went into the hacienda and he said that really um sort of impacted everything he did creating warehouse project i think warehouse yeah warehouse project is still going now but i suppose that was our hacienda or probably your son's yes the ender equivalent yeah yeah And I'd love to know, did you go in there and how did that influence, not necessarily partying, but creating...

7:30Because what he told me, Sasha told me, there was this palpable punch and feeling of like... I can't really describe what the word is. This sort of bacchanalia of enjoyment. How did that imprint on you? And then how have you applied that across all of these businesses? Well, interestingly, so the person who partnered me with the nightclub in Mexico City. Right. And is currently now my business partner, Crispin Summerfield. Yeah. He, when I was in Manchester, together with our largest shareholder, put on these legendary nightclub nights called Pollen. Right. And they did quite a few of them in the Hacienda and in sort of a few of the other old legendary Manchester places.

8:18Yeah. So much as I wasn't involved in actual, you know, the putting on of those events, both Rollo and Chris been my, and remain to these days, my best friends. And so I was sort of part of the crowd of that. And so, yeah. So Pollen was a night in? Was a night which then moved around various different nightclubs. With you. But they did, I don't know, six or seven in the Hacienda, probably all, etc. Yes. Yes, so that's how I knew that sort of world. Right. And what was it? Did you go in there? What was it? Oh, yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What was it like? Can you describe the feeling? Because I don't think, because that really changed everything.

8:57That whole, that one club led to like, it was just sort of just a change in the zeitgeist, I think. Yes. I mean, I think that, you know, it's weird when you read the history of all that stuff. The Hacienda at its best was this incredibly short period of time. It didn't last very long before the gangsters took over and it got sort of weird. Yeah. Obviously, specific nights excluded, like, you know, the nights that my friends were doing. But it's, so, you know, it had, it was unbelievably influential for, it was something only like about two years before it all went completely wrong, bizarrely. So the actual moment where the Hacienda was really, really doing its thing was a couple of years before I arrived.

9:47So I think I might have got to Manchester in 92 or 93. And actually, the Hacienda was, when it was really, really, really influential, I think was more like 89 to 91 or something. And then it changed. And so by the time I got there, it was no longer the absolutely legendary place. I mean, it still had its reputation. Those sort of, you know, Happy Mondays days had gone by that stage. Yeah, because you had, wasn't it a guy called Tony something? Tony, I don't know, but he had the Happy Mondays Think Joy division. Exactly. Yeah, and then that New Order, that was it. Yeah, and he basically, yeah, he got it up and running.

10:28and then so so then you've got this this host and i suppose yeah enjoyment of watching other people enjoy themselves which and i think that works across a myriad of things whether it's a pollen rave or a restaurant i think they're there they're seeing from the same hymn sheet they're just yeah or making a film or recording a podcast it's the same it's the same thing so then you go you go to mexico what's the um pull to mexico city why they're out of any way you could have gone Yeah, so I did economics at Manchester. Right. And in my year off between school and university, worked in finance. And the company I worked for, I got on well with them.

11:11They said, look, when you finish your degree, come back and work for us. And I'd been traveling around South America in my year off as well. Really liked it, wanted to go back, spend more time there. and they were opening offices all across Latin America. So they said, look, come back and work for us and we'll send you to the first office that we open. It might be Sao Paulo, it might be Santiago de Chile, it might be Mexico City. In the end, it turned out to be Mexico City. So that's why I ended up back in Mexico. I'd never been there before, actually. That's how I ended up in Mexico. Right. And like, talk me through, because I think where you've got this club, my pronunciation of everything is horrendous.

11:50Juarez. Juarez district. Like, I would love to sort of just go, like, what's the colour of the streets? What does it smell like when you're walking through the streets? I'd really love to sort of paint a picture and tapestry of what it was like at that period of time for you. Well, the Juarez was pretty run down at that stage. So there was sort of pretty dilapidated buildings knocking around, empty parking lots, a few sort of gangs of youths knocking around all street corners. It was relatively dodgy. and I suppose that Mexico's always got quite a lot of noise on the streets you know people selling tamales and it's like a sort of steamed corn right things mostly savory sometimes yeah or a lot is the other great this week there you know the sweet corn they do the lot of thing makes this ridiculously high-pitched whistle people you know pushing carts along um offering knife sharpening to second-hand mattresses so the streets is sort of pretty busy and pretty noisy always and i suppose in mexico you're never very far from the smell of of of street tacos of which there were i suppose um not on our corner where the club was but you know 50 meters away there was sort of um some amazing street taco spots so So there's always a pretty strong smell of corn and cooking on the street as well.

13:24And I suppose combined with the slightly less appetising smell of sort of car fumes and general pollution. Yeah, yeah. Which still pervades Mexico City. It muddles, yeah, it sort of muddles in. So it's almost like a cacophony of kind of, yeah, hustle, bustle, craziness, noise. I love that. Very much Mexico City's thing, that, is the noise. overwhelming assault on the senses. I know everything sort of visual and smells. What's the visual like? Is it like bold colors or? You usually have, I mean, it has 300 and something days sunshine, so bright blue skies. Wow. Mostly. But then, you know, with this very urban, a lot of, you know, 70s, 80s, pretty badly designed concrete buildings, together with some old colonial bits and pieces.

14:19We were actually, the club was in an old colonial house, but it was pretty run down. Yeah. You know, in a street with most of the colonial buildings had gone, you know, six, seven-storey concrete blocks and sort of falling down things quite a bit. Yeah. And what made you, like, pick there to set up the club out of all places? meaning Mexico City or the other? Sorry, Juarez. Yeah, I mean, it just happened. So we came up with the idea that we wanted to, this is what we wanted to do. And it's just very, an opportunistic thing of like, right, who knows somewhere that's got a license. And, you know, the license being the key, it was relative, you know, had some infrastructure, you know, had some light and some electric and extract and so on.

15:12Sort of like following your curiosity was just like, right, Like this seems like the easy door to push on. It was kind of as innocent as that. Yeah, I suppose with all sort of hospitality property, you ask around and see what's available and then, you know, choose the best thing. I mean, the Juarez, although it was certainly not, there was actually a very famous nightclub about three streets down that was still going when we were there. But it wasn't a sort of natural place for a club, but we were two 20-something-year-old English kids who just had to take the best we could find. And I'd love to know how you got, like if you take us inside your nightclub, like how did you get, what were the lessons you took in terms of getting people in and creating some sort of magic?

16:03Yeah. Because I think it got, when I read somewhere it got voted, like one of the best, my research has escaped me right now, Sam, apologies, but like got voted one of the best bars or something in Mexico, I think. Yeah, at some stage, we got one of the top something bars or clubs in the world. I mean, depends which list. It's insane. It's a list, but it was successful. I suppose it was a two, well, a multi-pronged attack. Right. One was, well, you need, in a club, unfortunately, it's one of the problems about a nightclub business. it's really it's a big part of it is is who the crowd is and so trying to bring in the right people is is key because you can have the best music best drinks but without fun people it's not going to be a fun party um and we were very lucky we had we were good friends with two of the best promoters in mexico city it was them that suggested we do it in the first place so they had the people um and then and then but then the bit where a lot of these places had fallen over is that once they had the crowd there they'd forgotten that they actually had to deliver something uh whilst the people turned up and so the um we uh um we brought music um you know there was a house techno music scene but it was quite commercial uh but chris and my business partner had been a dj for for many years and had brilliant contacts in there and so we were flying sort of proper underground DJs from the UK and bringing records from the UK and and then the other thing that we focused on was drinks and so you know Mexico City in terms of cocktail culture was stuck in the sort of you know Tom Cruise 1980s cocktail mode of you know blue drinks with with you know parasols but we

18:01flew over the head bartender of the Met Bar, the Met Bar, obviously, in whatever it was, 96 was sort of really leading the way in terms of drinks and so on. One of Dick Bradsell's funny enough apprentices, and he came over. Dick Bradsell, was it? He was one of those sort of great cocktail legends of the 90s and noughties, I suppose. Yeah. And who was a big part of making cocktails credible again in London. Yes. Anyway, his prodigy came and lived with us for four months, showed us how to make drinks and funny enough, my now wife, then girlfriend, ran the bar together with Crispin's ex-girlfriend.

18:46So Crispin and I used to play the records and the girls ran the bar and made the drinks. But they'd been chained by the best. Jasper was the sort of, I mean, he remains a very good friend. So he was, you know, the best. So we did actually have really good drinks as well. I love this. This is fascinating, Sam, learning so much. A few things, and I'd love to know, like, from that sort of moment in time, what are some of the sort of the principles that you think are still relevant with the restaurants you're running now, the group you're running now? So you said, you know, you can do the best drinks in the world, can have the best eaters in the world, but if you don't have the fun crowd, then it kind of just dissipates into nothingness.

19:21How do you, like, how do you, I know you said the promoters, like, how important do you think is it in curating a fun crowd or like, um, or yeah, fun crowds to, to a restaurant and or nightclub. Like how, and how do you, how do I know you've got promotes, but go a little bit further into that. How do you do that? I actually think it's really different. Luckily. In between restaurants and clubs. Yeah. Yeah. Because, um, with, with a, with a nightclub, people are primarily there for the crowd. And obviously the music, the tricks is, is also important, but it's completely, well, sorry, not every restaurant we happen to be a foodie restaurant where what we try to do have foodie restaurants plural where what we're about is is food and service and we don't care who comes as long as they enjoy what they do because it's not primarily we don't you know that's the crowd is not what we're after we're after food and drinks and service and and uh you know a nice atmosphere but we're not at all crowd reliant or try and bring in a certain group of people so it's it's really different from from the nightclub days where you needed a certain sort of demographic who are all going to get on and and enjoy partying together now it doesn't matter for us whether you got you know a 70 year old on one table and a 20 year old on the next you've got nothing in common at all apart from they're enjoying the food and the and the restaurants and so um you know it's one of the terrifying things about nightclubs if the crowd move on you're effectively left with nothing doesn't matter but but but if it's a I mean there are restaurants around where it's all about the crowd and it's less about the food service I don't think it'd be unfair to sort of um but we all know those lifestyle restaurants where you know it's about the DJ and the crowd and the how people are looking and this that and the other um but but we don't put ourselves in any way in that category.

21:16Yeah, yeah, yeah. So then the crowd is unimportant. I mean, as long as we're making them happy, then that's fine. Yeah. No, it's so interesting pulling at the different parallels because they're almost like cousins nightclubs and restaurants. They are cousins, but they also are definitely, they're really different. Yeah. So you said you played some tunes with your mate, Crispin. I interviewed a DJ on here who's got a food page. that was the it's very tenuous link but he's got a food page and he goes all around the world eating some of the most amazing he's a like big dj plays with katharra's and stuff um he's his instagram page is phenomenal because he eats some of the most amazing restaurants um and one of the things he told me about sort of reading when you're when you're a dj it's about kind of reading the crowd or reading room or a bit like reading restaurant the floor right and he goes your job is to sort of feel it, like feel what they're feeling.

22:11You know, I've never DJed, just a Spotify at a house party. I mean, that was my, as far as I went, Sam. But he was like, what you're trying to do is, especially with techno music, which is what I love, is it's building constriction, constriction, then release. Constriction, constriction, release. And I think I kind of was thinking about this today, is like when you go to a great restaurant, sometimes you are kind of tense as a consumer. And then like the great restaurants, just a bit like Barofino and Sunny, just got this you know i'd love to know like what would you say the parallels of playing banging tunes and sort of running a running a restaurant like and reading that getting that people to feel that enjoyment you know uh but i suppose in a restaurant the the difference is is that in a restaurant you want to walk through the door and relax and immediately have the release you don't want i mean i don't think you want any tension ever in a restaurant sure whatsoever yeah hopefully you get you might have come in from a stressful day doing whatever it is and you um hopefully get greeted in a you know warm and welcoming way and you can i think you can always you know you can smell when you're walking through the door of the restaurant not actually all the smell of the food but you can feel whether it's going to be very often a good experience or not and that when you walk in and immediately immediately relax then that's what you are hoping for i'm hoping for in a restaurant yeah um whereas the sort of um ups and downs of music where you want crescendos and lows and quieter bits and uppier bits or whatever it might be is not what you want it for.

23:42You don't want to go through an emotional rollercoaster in a restaurant. Quite the opposite. On a dance floor, that's fine. In fact, you might say necessary, but you definitely don't want that in a restaurant. You want the opposite. You want to immediately, for me, you want to immediately relax and stay in a place of happy zen for the rest of your meal. Sure. So I get that from the consumer perspective, but from like the almost the the other side of um the other side of the room is like because obviously service and and running restaurant can be those things are going wrong the whole time and um sam said to me one of your greatest strengths is to be able to just like ride with problems that are ultimately going to bobble up the whole time when you're running restaurant things go wrong like i suppose that's what i'm trying to tease at is it will pull out is like you want people to feel release as soon as they walk through the door here right that's not actually that easy to do right no it's very different yeah from from the other side like how what how do you manage that and with all the different problems how do you get people to feel that constriction that release as soon as they walk through the door because it's not as easy as as as as it is on paper do you know what i mean of course yeah yeah i suppose that um it's um

25:04so the team in order for the customer to feel relaxed the team working in the restaurant need to be relaxed and in order for them to be relaxed it needs to be sort of organized with near military precision so that when it starts getting busy or you know that everyone knows what they're doing everything's in the right place you've got all the equipment you need in order to it's a little bit like the sort of um you know the nelson's navy thing they were incredibly you know finickety about everything being in its right place and everything having its order so that then when the hits the fan hopefully there's not so much of a panic because everybody knows what they're doing everything's in the right place everything has a specific order of how you You do it.

25:57And then you can be relaxed. Sorry, the Navy analogy then goes out the window, obviously, when you're in the middle of a battle, not so much. But the point is that in order to be relaxed and for that to transfer to your customer, you need to be the opposite of relaxed in the preparation for that. So, like, all your mise en place needs to be done. Everyone needs to know what they're doing. Everything needs to be in its set place. everyone needs to know what order things go in and if all of that is going on automatically in the background then the people doing it can relax and have fun and transfer that to to the customer so what looks like relaxed service is is is built on the foundations of precisely it's the opposite of of real discipline and organization because that's the only way you know winter restaurants they start off very relaxed and then it gets busy and they all start running around looking stressed like headless chickens well that's because they're not organized properly and they haven't got everything in place so the idea is that when there's when it gets busy you know exactly what you're doing everything's there and then and then and then you don't transmit any stress to the customer there's um i listened to a podcast with jimmy carr and i think he says something along the lines of like you you don't you don't rise to your goals you fall to your systems and right yeah well which is exactly what that is it's like all the stuff behind this all the order it means when there's sort of the chaos bubbles in through or walk through the door and just sort of the the the feeling that's all militantly done then it um yeah that that makes total sense so in terms of so i get that in terms of like the organization but then in terms of making people feel um what is it that you want people to feel like i interviewed um uh osh from the devonshire yeah um and he basically says something super interesting he goes we're in like the retail business we see ourselves in the retail business but instead of selling an actual product that you take home like this cup we sell i was editing this morning so i should know this he goes we basically sell a feeling a memorable feeling that is traded as a story and i love that so it's like someone goes to the devonshire and they they're sort of sort of the the the yeah the merriment and all that and then you go and tell your friends about it like what is the feeling you want people and we'll start with um covalos and then barafina and then we can go into el pastor but what's the feeling in each different brand that you want people to feel and then trade as a story to different people yeah i think there's a massive degree of similarity across across all the across all our brands because it's um primarily that you know that feeling of hospitality of being looked after I think um of being like an in like that feeling that that we care how your time with us is experienced um that you're a sort of real person rather than just numbers or you know just a sort of um just faceless customers um and I think that um you know being treated as individuals by being made to feel welcome, by being made to feel that we care, we're just not trying to get your money out if you care how you feel.

29:22That would be the primary goal across all the restaurants. And then, you know, maybe Quo Vadis is a bit more sort of, you know, refined and comfortable elegance and Barifine has got more of that, you know, energy and obviously all the theatrics of of open kitchens um and pastoral I suppose it's meant to be a bit more transportative so you sort of feel like you could be um in Mexico City um as much as you can when it's four degrees and gray outside yeah yeah yeah oh god I'm pining to be there what so because when did you take this place over what was the like 2007 2007 and like talk me through that like period like what was yeah well that was a disaster really because we'd opened barifina early in 2007 it had been an immediate success and uh we were wandering around central london with our property agent looking for a second barifina site kept coming up and down dean street looking through the stained glass in those days qv had those stained glass windows of a sort of what was a rather sad looking um uh but beautiful beautiful building and um we went oh you know look how amazing it is blah blah blah and eventually or one day our agent went you know what i think probably we could um you know you could have a chance of buying it if you wanted to um and so then to cut rather a long story short we did end up buying it um about a month after the financial crash oh god which is such a big you know because it's eight and a half thousand square feet here it's quite big um and so um then uh we lost lots of money here for about 10 years or no not maybe not that long but quite a long time it took us if we bought it 2007 we didn't open barafina adelaide street which was the next restaurant we opened until 2014 so it took us seven years or so to recover from the great qv experience so yeah so talk about i believe like the deeper the wounds the deeper the wisdom like what were some of those those painful periods in in that in that 2007 that you think have actually provided you with some real deep wisdom yeah well apart from losing loads of money yeah i mean um there was a few so timing i mean let's when in doubt blame it on someone else um timing it was really unlucky because cubby was meant to be a i mean um was of of quite a luxurious you know everything beautiful silver and russian um linen tablecloth and silver polish everywhere and it was expensive um and um and we were really really well actually so we were super super busy when we opened for probably a year or so um but um we had two issues one is we weren't consistent enough so on its day it was good but it wasn't good regularly enough and who what sort of food what because jerry wasn't the chef no no it was a guy called jean philippe who opened who'd opened fino with us when we opened fino in 2003 he uh is actually from the south of france um did the spanish food with us at fino did it very successfully and then we asked him to move across to do uh you know what you call it grand british brasserie sort of stuff um and um he'd worked with nico when they when nicola dennis had three michelin stars in park lane so he worked across you know and was a very very good chef um probably not best suited to the british stuff um but also it was quite a big dining room the kitchen is in the basement and and we we didn't get the food consistent enough um and we didn't get the service consistent i think probably even more importantly the service wasn't consistent how so like what was going wrong do you think well you know to where i'm very busy big dining room you need to be well organized and i you know i don't think we had the right team be able to pull it off um you know we tried our best but you know a bit like everyone running around there was too many services where people were running around looking stressed rather than relaxed and that combined with suddenly the very place people didn't want to go was a big quite showy offy or not showy offy but expensive grand restaurants you know in by the time we opened in the um you know 2008 2009 was exactly where people weren't going for lunch you know they were going to places which are much more pared back like barafina which did actually very well through the financial crash um and beyond and so um so i suppose but the the people not wanting to go and eat in an expensive restaurant was bad luck in terms of timing so that we couldn't of protected sure that but the learnings would be um if you're going to open make sure you've got it right i mean it's easier said than done isn't it it wasn't like we weren't trying um but um it should have been more consistent day one and any other sort of um mistakes or wounds that provided wisdom from that period of time i think we underestimated how difficult private members club would be um how so um in order to fill the membership to get enough members that you need we thought that um you know we'd have a queue of people wanting to become members out the door and again the financial crash really didn't help with that as everyone's trying to cut their budgets the last thing you need in your life is a is another private members club i mean interesting of course we're chatting to the our friends at the grouch i remember at the time i saying by the way it took us 20 years to make this thing work so it's um I don't think it's unusual um yes we we probably imagined we had a bigger database of wannabe members than we actually did um yeah it's mad it's mad how like because obviously I've just sat up there for the last hour and a half doing some work and it's now just like people jumping coming in and out Well, the happy news of the story is actually Quo Vadis, well, anyway, it's up there with, you know, it's one of our most successful restaurants.

35:52We've got 15 restaurants, QVs definitely in the top three. So there is a lesson in perseverance is that we got there in the end, which is satisfying. What were you saying? Because your brother Eddie was involved at this point, right? So what were you guys, so almost like you sit down and you're having your coffee and things are going tits up, excuse my language. but like what are you saying to yourself because there's a quote i love which i try and say to myself especially with building this which is ernest shackleton is the guy the explorer which is by endurance we conquer yeah just stay in the game long enough yeah sure like but that dogged persistence is not easy like so how talk to me about like what you guys were saying to each other just to keep bludgeoning your way forward well funny enough um i think you can extend i can to answer that in a more general way because in restaurants in general you do need dogged persistence because anyone can come up with a great idea for a restaurant and be all enthusiastic on day one there you are yeah eight o 'clock in the morning and you're still there at midnight and you know every you want everything to be perfect and uh and and that's great and you You know, most people can do that for, you know, a week, three months, a year maybe.

37:07But can you still jump up in the morning and still give a shit after a year? Can you still do it after five years? Can you still do it after 10 years? And so I think what unites all the people who've had successful restaurants for a long period of time is dogged persistence because you've got these things. if you don't care anymore the restaurants won't be any good anymore and they won't exist anymore and so you have to keep caring and you have to keep looking at the detail and that probably defines the restaurateurs and the chefs who've made it in the long term is that by definition they've got to be doggedly resistant because the moment they're not anymore is the moment it will all go wrong so I suppose And yes, of course, if things are going badly rather than going well, you need even more dogged persistence than if they're going well.

38:03But you still need that even if it's going well because you've still got to wake up and care and keep people motivated. So what's when you wake up? How long have you been in the game now then? Fino was 22 years ago. So yeah, 22 years is wild and congratulations. But what's when you wake up today? or yeah when you woke up this morning like what is that feeling to so i appreciate there's the dog of persistence but you also someone said to me your hope needs grit which i love like your hope of doing something great needs a lot of grit as well like what's the thing you're saying to yourself or what's the feeling when you get out of bed which is not always like you know buzzing your tits off like what what is that well i mean i suppose that some that now see you know i'm not on the restaurant floor every day so right i've got other people in place who are who are maintaining those standards and and in fact you know we were a company of 600 odd people so i've got people in place who are making sure the people are on the floor are maintaining those standards so so my role has changed but i suppose that um i'm still we still spend a lot of time trying to make the customer experience better and that could be anything from improving the way we do our training to improving the way we uh you know do our interview process so we're hiring the right people improving our personnel uh you know policies and what we offer our staff so that our team stay longer so it's not me going look that's um you know that glass is dusty yeah you need to polish the knife sure but we still um you know in every year's business plan we still we still believe it very much that the happier the customer the more they're going to come and then the more they come the more money we make and the more successful the business is so ultimately of course we are a business and we're you know um we've got shareholders and we need to deliver them value but the way we think we can actually deliver the best value is by having the happiest customers because then we'll have full restaurants and then we can deliver value to the shareholders so we spend most of our day um thinking about how we can have happier customers rather than how we can make more money because the happy customer leads to the more money interested in a more yes in a slightly better in a better way because the moment you start thinking about how can i make more money take your eye off a happy customer you don't have any customers and you'll make no money so yes yeah everything yeah i love that just boiling it down so if you can you can kind of boil it down to one thing just make the customer make the bloody customer make the customer happy yeah because uh you if but that i mean which of course is is complicated but yeah it's a there's a sum of a million moving parts if you're a challenger brand that's absolutely killing it in d2c but you're struggling to crack retail then you've got to listen to this maybe you've got an ocado listing maybe you've got a whole foods listing maybe you're absolutely killing it in selfridges maybe absolutely killing it in your farm shop and your indies but my friends making the leap crossing el chasum crossing el rubicon to grocery retail is not easy it's the champions league of fmcg it's super hard it means playing at a higher level and that's where some of you amazing brands sadly stumble look retailers want stories backed by data not dreams and a pretty pitch deck and let's be real supermarkets are not just going to magically make a space for you and your little brand.

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42:19You don't need a massive sales team. You need Northstar. Link in the show notes. Click that link and you'll be able to book a free demo with Northstar. Highly, highly recommend that and thank me later. What would you say over the 22 years are like two of the one to three big things in terms that like if you were to say, right, we put this in place or we change this and this led. And again, exactly. We just said that sounds like a million different things. Right. So it's a hard question. What would you say are some of the big things that really move the needle in terms of customer satisfaction, do you think, across everything?

42:55It is a good question. Well, I think it boils down to the team, because what you need to have a happy customer is a team that knows what it's doing. And in order to have a team that knows what it's doing, they need to stick around, you know, and have experience doing that job. and so I suppose it's not one particular thing but it's about trying to put a system in place where your team do stay and people know what they're doing and you build up that experience but I suppose there's not one or even three singular things that achieve that because there's lots and lots of different bits around that.

43:48Yeah, it's sort of the 1 % across everything compounding, which creates it. But the team thing's interesting. So how do you... I asked some really random questions, so forgive me. But you know the feeling like... I was thinking about this at Barifina when I was there on Sunday and the crispy calamari arrived. It was absolutely wondrous. And you put the lemon on it and it just brings everything alive, right? um how do you do that from sort of a galvanizing your team perspective you know that when you just and you make people make your team not your customer feel like just a jolt of like do you know what i mean and then that transfers to the customer a bit like squeezing lime on a taco or lemon on a on a calamari it just brings everything like i think that's a possibly an easier question to answer actually because it's it's trying to instill in them um the joy in giving pleasure to other people so so when they when you when you and there's lots of stuff you can put in place but when they're really focused on customer experience um and how people are enjoying their time with us um then then they end up taking pleasure in it because i remember my brother always said look you're going to be here for your eight hours so you can either sort of sulk around in the corner looking at your clock watch and wondering when it's home time which day it claims that the day is going to go pretty slowly or you can say so all right i'm here i might as well give pleasure and provide an amazing service or cook amazing food for for these customers um and of course you know guess what's more enjoyable you know so it's it's um so once and there is a it is a culture actually because once that culture is established you walk into a team and they're all taking hopefully evident pleasure in in in customer satisfaction it's sort of infectious it's like a nice happy virtuous circle where it's difficult not to be infected by that enthusiasm infectious that's beautiful yeah by the way it can work the other way you can also have vicious vicious infectious in the wrong way it's very difficult to change culture yeah the good news is once Once you've got a positive culture established, it's quite difficult to break that virtuous circle.

46:06The bad news is, is once you've got a problem, it is quite hard to turn it around. When did you have a problem? Oh, we've had millions of problems in the past where you'll get, you know, team leaders probably not quite up for the job, or you've got, you know, a gang of staff that for whatever reason um shouldn't be that you know maybe they started but they're bored or they're not inspired or they're not managed properly um and um you know and then it's a challenge to to change that around let's go back into just that sort of that period of time getting um quo varus going and changing um like so because one of the things i found fascinating and it's on the like is so this was was this Karl Marx's house uh straight upstairs straight upstairs yeah and then it used to be a brothel as well right I think so how does like again another weird question but how do you think I really believe that sometimes buildings like hold stories in them in a weird way like um well by the way this I mean I'm not actually a great believer in um in in in ghosts and stuff but this building is um if you're here by yourself at night it is actually quite a scary place to be how so how so i don't know it just has an atmosphere to it yeah bizarrely soon as you've got people in here having a nice time it completely disappears yes but if you're scurrying around in the sort of basements of qv late at night it's quite a scary place i believe i do i'm a bit weird and spiritual in this sort of stuff like i believe places like do hold stories yeah so um joe rogan was going to open a comedy club you know joe rogan the podcaster he was going open a comedy club and he purposefully didn't do it because there was a in the well sorry he did open a company but his first venue uh previously was this random like this gay porn star who started a cult and basically was was um i think he convinced those people to do something pretty heinous and joe rogan was like when i walked into this place it's gonna be a bad fight he goes i just had the stories he goes the stories were in the wall and i think it can work both ways It's interesting what you're saying about don't come here at night on your wands, on your Larry, because you can just start seeing some fucking shit.

48:17Or doing so. There's a lovely extension to that, which is that for the first 10 years we were here, we made our own sourdough bread. And interestingly, so my dad's got a bakery up north in Rutland, and he brought us down the original starter and taught our guys how to make sourdough. But of course, the sourdough feeds off the natural yeasts in the atmosphere. And so the Quo Varis Sourdough, by definition, the starter, is feeding on all the yeasts that are part of this, you know, 350-year-old building, which, you know, by definition has taken on all the smells and the things over the 300 years.

49:00So the QV sourdough does take, I mean, it's like, it's obviously doesn't take the sounds, but it takes on the yeast culture that's been here for the last 300 years, which is quite a lovely thought. That's, yeah. Or disgusting, depending on how focused you are on the brothel part of it. Well, yeah, the brothel, yeah, or you've got Karl, yeah, or Karl Marx, so it's sort of, sort of, sort of, yeah. There we go. Communist, communist croissants coming out of here or something like that. But the, yeah, so with that said, it's interesting that you said that. So these stories that are in the walls, I do feel, again, I can't read this.

49:34It's an intangible sort of kind of intangible yet palpable thing. But how does that specifically in this site, like those stories that are on your website, they mean something to you. Although the fact that it was a brothel, the fact that Karl Marx did live above here. Like, how does that impact the way you sort of run things and add to the sort of magic of this place? Yeah, it's actually, it's QV's 100th anniversary in, I think it's 26, about a year and a bit from now. So it's incoming. Right. And there is this sort of amazing sense of, you know, being custodians of, you know, one of London's most historic restaurants.

50:16Yeah. That I suppose is a privilege more than anything else. is, you know, it's fantastic to be involved in a building with so much history around it. And I suppose, you know, when somebody of these, you know, the old, the first way, because it was a sort of one of the first wave of London restaurants. London as a city got going pretty late with its restaurants. Oh, so when, so... The TV opened in 1926. You think most of the restaurants pre, sorry, the upmarket restaurants pre then were in hotels. Okay. So the sort of money class either ate at home when they had plenty of staff to be able to do that or in the five star hotels.

50:56And restaurants didn't get going until incredibly late. So it's one of the oldest restaurants. And there is a sort of and well, I suppose what I was moving on to is quite a few of them or most of them now no longer exist. So there is a certain sense of responsibility around the building about, you know, making sure it survives for, well, let's hope another hundred years. Yeah. No, I love it. Let's talk about Sir Jeremy Lee. So he comes on in 2012. Yes. Describe the first time you met him. What was that feeling like, if you can remember that experience? um well i don't i can't quite remember whether it was the first time we met but the first time we we hung out for a prolonged period of time is that we were um i don't know if you remember there's a probably still going a festival called taste of london yeah did a lot with the peanut butter business there actually yep and we had um two stands that were bang next door to each other um and um is the summer one or the winter the summer one yeah in regent's park sure i think it was um and um anyway um so um eddie and i would be there for the duration jeremy was there for the duration with the blueprint um and because we were in basically next door kitchens there's plenty of time when it's not the rush to sort of hang out have a drink um and sort of generally mess around with your neighborly chefs um and um jeremy and eddie and i instantly got on incredibly well i I think because, well, of course, we were doing barifina.