Espresso: Dance Like No One's Watching, The Day KFC Ran Out of Chicken - Charlie McVeigh

0:06Any brand, and I think this is why so many restaurant businesses get into trouble as they get to scale in the UK. any brand needs to be reinvented all the time needs to be moved forward needs investment i mean that's perry's business so we when we talk about perry we're talking about perry aiden taylor for big fish has been on this podcast three times extraordinarily this is my first time uh may there be many more uh but uh and i think that constant reinvention you know preserving the the the the essence the ethos of the brand but moving it forward all the time uh in line with culture the wider culture in line with the product as a product evolves in my you know uh and of course you know evolving is a risk yes it's it's much easier just to stay as you are and it's a lot cheaper right but ultimately you have to yeah and one of the things that kills businesses is is just going right we've perfected it now let's just let's just keep spending the same amount of money on marketing and the business will keep growing uh and oh and let's cut the costs while we're at it and then before you know you're catching a falling knife and and the whole thing is going bust on you you know so it's it's it's it's challenging you know what's what's meant is that mark interview was in 2018 yeah five years ago and i was thinking and there's some stuff in there that you were talking about albert schloss in manchester i went to uni up in manchester um i can never say old chingden old chingden market whatever it is yeah so that's now like become more of a thing so when what was you said something which is ai is coming down the roads which is mad and it's like we'll talk profit is what you're saying yeah yeah that's what that's what i want to talk about that later but what one one's what i'm basically saying is is it's so true like when i listened to the to the podcast you with mark five years ago you're like oh my god like the landscape now is so different and i think we're like the food um almost the concept of uh street food was was just beginning to sort of bubble in the zeitgeist whereas now it's like everywhere yeah um so and i think it went by having though this interview today and the conversation you had with mark is like if you don't constantly reinvent you just become stale and pallid and just sort of just go in evaporate into the ether quick one guys espresso's got a brand new sponsor unleashed unleashes inventory management software that talks directly to your finance and econ software we use unleashed daily islands i bloody love it we've got our admin time in half saving approximately 30k a year why use it save money save headaches save stress get granular clarity on your margins no way your stock is don't miss availability look your favorite brands literally use unleashed as their backbone candy kittens tiny rebel trip always religiously look there's a link in the show notes please feel free to book a call with josh and his wonderful sales team at unleashed they're amazing even nothing comes of it and even better news you'll get your first month free if you reference hungry thank you going into that like how do people reinvent without losing their core essence and their soul because i think i've seen it happen before firsthand where you try and reinvent yourself and you're like, it's like putting on the wrong clothes.

3:25I think the key thing is to dance, you know, like nobody's watching, right? So the whole point about business and brand is, there's got to be a part of you, there's got to be a part of your headspace as a business and as an individual if you're the CEO or the founder or whatever, which just loves doing what you're doing as having fun and it's always thinking forward. And, you know, just because you've had an absolutely fucking terrible last three months and, you know, sales have gone down and you're losing money and somebody key in the business has left and, you know, and there's all these terrible things are happening, which is basically, you know, welcome to running your own business, you know.

4:10You have to be able to carve out that headspace, which says, you know, I am so excited about how, you know, Coca-Cola is going to evolve this year. And I mean, yeah, it can sometimes be, sometimes a really great marketing and brand evolution can happen by mistake. You know, for example, like when KFC ran out of chicken, you know, and they created one of the, it was one of the, you know, out of the recovery of that, which, you know, the F asterisk CK campaign, you know, which was basically, fuck, we'd run out of chicken. sorry guys you know but we're going to be back uh and they did it with so much wit and joy and and excitement and uh you know and and and and humility uh importantly um that you know when they did get chicken back their sales were up enormously i mean like vastly up because they just they just caught and that's a big company i mean young brands is one of the biggest restaurant businesses in the world, if not the biggest.

5:18And they were nimble enough to, when they had a problem in the, you know, tiny little UK market, they absolutely nailed it. And their UK business was not in trouble before. It was fine. It wasn't amazing. It's amazing now. And that's because of what they did with that recovery. So that can happen. And in a way, that's a gift. is there an example of how you did that woodies or or the draft house with this because i think what's joyful to hear is is as you said like business is hard there's loads of failures it's you know every day this kid is going to mess up fuck up kind of thing but to create a space in your mind to have that sort of frivolous kind of fun and as you say dance like no one's watching is there an example of how you reinvented without um losing yourself you have to constantly say, what is the right thing to do here for the brand, for the business, for the team, for the customer?

6:19Yes, any business person has to control costs, but it's not generally in anyone's interest to slash costs in a business because you're in trouble. Generally speaking, and it's also probably not an anyone's issue to double down hugely and spend loads more money you've just got to be clever about how you how you plan out like okay we're in the shit at the moment what do we need to do for the next six to 12 months next two years i mean we're just in the middle of a of an exercise at butchies where which is called 20 2025 and what that means is 20 sites by 2025. And that's a two, that's a two part exercise.

7:05Part one is what do we do for the next three months? And part two is what do we do for the next three years? And they're completely different exercises. You know, the next three months is like, what are the things we need to do to build the foundations? Thank you so, so much for listening. It honestly means the world to me. I hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and go and have an amazing day. Let's be having ya. If you want the fun episode, it will be in the show notes. A link will be in the show notes, the full episode. Thank you so much. Please leave friends as well. It means the world to me.