Espresso: The Devonshire founder - How To AVOID a Common Crisis in Restaurants

0:02what keeps me awake at night is what happens if we're no we're no longer seen as attractive active you know if all of a sudden people go ah we'll move on to the next thing um and that worries me yeah like that it's something because it's like it's almost having such so much success so quick it's like yeah it's that's that's there's actually a price to that it's a burden yeah it's a massive burden it is and you know even like six eight months ago we thought when's it going to die off when are people going to stop coming and how do we deal with that if we either flatten off we're go into any kind of decline because obviously you've got investment in staff and suppliers equipment all the stuff you know and you know you want to have contingency for stuff and you know even stuff like you wake up at night and you go what are the things could really fucking screw us up you know what happens if it burns down or there's a terrorist attack or somebody clears out the bank account or you know this there's a pandemic or there's a what are all the things that the crises that we might have to manage and you know we've we've actually spent time looking at all those what are some of those in terms of keeping this place attractive um i think that's a bit of a more esoteric question and we just have to hope that it is but I think it comes back to what we discussed earlier on.

1:27If we are always constantly looking at the edges and trying to tweak and make the incrementals better, you know, work on the consistency of the offer and make sure that the guest's experience is always improving, then fingers crossed we should be okay, but I could be wrong. I don't know. We can only do our best. Yeah, no, that's in terms, I think, again, I think it's another Rory Sutherland thing. he talks about the in the edges where no one really focuses yeah they're the most important bits by the way when you add them all up yeah what are some of those sort of those edge peripheral edges things i think it is everyone focuses on everyone's in the middle right i think with everything and that's why you get kind of the i think we talked about last time the modernization of pubs is everyone's looking here but actually all the interesting bits so the almost like the burnt crust do you mean that's where it gets really yeah interesting on nuance like what would you say those are i don't know i don't know um it's it's it's it's a million things things like you know making sure the doors don't squeak making sure the paintings kept the the is kept up today and that the the things aren't chipped when you look at them closely you know making sure you've got enough glassware in the place for when you get really busy there's nothing worse than going into a pub right when it's really really busy and you ask for a pint which is eight quid or six quid and they give to you in a shitty little plastic glass and you go why am i having plastic oh we're a bit busy mate yeah that is you know and that we would oh that would that would kill me to do that so you know things like that so the corollary to that is i've got a thousand pint glasses hidden washed ready so when it really goes off that we can actually fill the shelves and nobody ever drinks out of a plastic glass you know it's little bits like that that you wouldn't necessarily think about and other businesses would go oh we don't have enough classes so there you go there's a shit plastic glass at exactly the time you're at your most busy when you've got the opportunity to really impress people it's all those as you say it's all those one percent little things that add up how does your brain because i feel like um how does your brain sort of cope with that constant thinking of like the downside does Does that impact your enjoyment of this place?

3:45Or how do you balance those two things? I don't think it does. I think it's, I see. You hold them at the same time. I hold it, yeah. And it's the job. And I've done it for that long that I've kind of got a bit of balance on it. And I'm able to pull away, thankfully. But another one I've been thinking about as well recently is, you know, it gets very, very busy. The toilets downstairs get really, really busy. There's a couple of times during the day, like about six o 'clock in the evening before the theatres start and then when the theatres finish again at 10.30 when everybody piles into the toilet.

4:19So we have to think about how do we close that bottleneck and how do we keep it so that if somebody's going from the restaurant down there that it doesn't look like it's blown up down there and it's full of toilet roll and people have thrown all this stuff all over the place. There's no soap and, you know, it's war. So we've dealt with that by putting a full-time person on there just to make sure it's right all the time. And those little things do make a tiny difference, I think. And then on the enjoyment part, like what's, how do you, and I think it comes from experience. You said it's like you said in terms of the negative, it's not negative bias, it's that constant improvement thing.

4:56Yeah. Which is, as you say, it's almost just baked into your modus operandi of like constantly looking at how can we improve things? What's, what can we go wrong? On the other side of that, how do you create the, almost switch off of that? and I'm asking that selfishly because at the minute with everything I'm doing I'm constantly looking like that needs to improve that needs to improve and it sort of takes away from the enjoyment of it sometimes I don't think it does I think I think I think when when you look at something that is either a tiny problem or a big problem and you realize what that is and then you you make a strategy to fix it and then you fix it there's something really quite cathartic about that anyway and it's way better than leaving it obviously yeah yeah because that's the that's where you that's where you get screwed if you if there's something that's niggling you in the background that's always there you don't deal with and i think i've learned over over a long time that i try and deal with them straight away as soon as i see it i'm on it i have to be because because the flip side of that would drive me bananas if i wasn't able to do yes thank you so much for listening to that espresso i hope you enjoyed your morning coffee and are ready for the day let's be having your boy and please do subscribe follow the podcast share this espresso on whatsapp if you liked it and also there's a link to our newsletter in the show description i spend 15 hours toiling and writing this bad boy it's full of wonderful wisdom from the biggest names in food and drink you're not going to get these in a business book so please subscribe and Thank you for being here.

6:57I said two months free in the show notes click there and you're gonna get two months for free