Fallow Founders - The Secrets Behind London’s Busiest Restaurant

40:30It just takes, it takes a different, you know, it takes a different kind of, yeah, work ethic. There's a couple of different, there's so much more important to hire for work ethic than it is to hire for experience. Work ethic and passion. So much more we want. Obviously, you need a bit more than just passion because you've got to have something to back it up, right? Obviously, but what I say, you can teach that stuff. It's our job to teach them that stuff. With these three that, again, we'll get this out live once this has, once that's happened, but what are some of the one, two, three specific things you'll do in terms of It's being able to follow instructions.

41:01Like, I always say to them, there's absolutely, I always say to all the chefs, there's absolutely nothing wrong with fucking something up. The issue is, it's fucking it up again. And again, and again, and again. If you fuck it up, we can try, we can go, okay, here's what you did wrong. This is what you did. This is how you can fix it. This is how to do it next time to make sure this doesn't happen. That's fine. Yeah. But the thing is then, you just got to take that on board and learn from it. If you just keep making exactly the same mistake over and over again. That's the issue, right? But that's our job is to give them the correct recipes, give them the correct equipment, give them the correct mentoring and training so they can do their job.

41:37That is my job. And also change approach with different people and different characters. Like ultimately, like me and Jack are completely different characters. So the way that someone would have spoken to me would have got, you know, maybe a potentially a negative result out. Whereas with Jack, it'd be like, yes, chef. Such as? So just, I think sometimes, sometimes, sometimes you can speak to someone really directly and say, do it like this, this, this, and this, and you'll get this result. And they're like, yeah, cool. Other times that, that might not relate to the same person in a completely different way.

42:06So you need to use your sort of skill as a manager to say, oh, that's that, you know, she's a bit more, or he's a bit more of this type of personality. So, you know, sometimes as well, like this old school bullshit of just literally barking at people and telling people off and asking for a result that might not even be achievable that, you know it's just pie in the sky and it's like actually just like sitting down with someone and saying these are the few things that we need to work on this is what went wrong throughout that service this is what we're going to do next time to improve on it are you comfortable with that you're happy with that getting the best out of them that way is so much more effective than just barking i think i think old school all those points we just spoke about all boil down to one thing which is being honest and genuine like just treat them like normal people do you hey like you're just having a conversation with someone i'm working with you 50 hours a week i want you to do is i want the best out of you and i just want to have a good relationship like do you understand you need any help with it sure let me help you like just treat them like a normal person it's not like do that do this it's like how you getting on how are you how are you today sometimes just asking a genuine question because people are carrying all their own problems as well they've got their own thoughts they've got their own ways of dealing with things they might have something else going on at home they might be struggling with whatever like just be honest and genuine and sometimes that can be more than actually just training them yeah it's like how are you to feel respected shake their hand thank you for today thank you for today have a good day off you know how was your day off what did you get up to just actually being honest with these people they're here to work for you they're here to learn it's so interesting what you say about the I interviewed Jackson Boxer and he was saying that one of the wonderful things about hospitality is you say everyone's got their own shit going on like every single person that's in here now including myself we've all got stuff going on it's like you can come to this sort of magical place where the house music's going, you're having this sort of general conversation, and he's basically said you're pointed sort of, whatever you're going through can sometimes just dissipate for that period of time.

44:04I think you're so right, mate, about like that, just how are you? Like, it's just such a pretty simple question. We do it all the time, because we spoke about our services are intense. Like, you start a lunch service at 12, it won't finish till four, and then it's pretty much going anyway. So you're basically tapping in and out of service. I'm going for a break, tap out, I'm off. But sometimes it's like, if someone's struggling a bit is everything alright are you okay maybe do you want to not do service today is it a bit too much but it's just having because it's our job as the well doing the pass or being the sous chef or the head chef of that day is to get the best out of that team and if that means just speaking to someone figuring out how they're doing maybe they're a bit tired you know maybe they've been up all night with the kids you know whatever there's so much stuff going on it's just treating people like genuine people take us to dinner and the first day you guys meet each other if you're the boss man I'm joking like paint the picture of that like what was that day like can you remember that yeah I got marched through by Alan Herrick he was a senior sir at the time my best mate yeah and and yeah and they announced me so this is Will he's very very green and then Jack was on a chef what year was this this was 2016 7 2016 17 something like that okay yeah yeah and this was Jack was like Jack was like setting two fluid gels like whilst like making a mayo and like he gets this horrible vein that pops out his head when he's stressed and yeah it's just like yeah I mean to be honest I'd never seen a work ethic like that before so I was always trying to beat Jack into work like I would start my shift I was trying to get shave off five minutes on my green bean prep every morning and every single time I got in there Jack was always there before me and I was like well I've got to get eventually I did but yeah I mean and you know it's one of those things the relationship wouldn't work I think you know it wouldn't I'm not from a traditional chef background I think Jack's definitely from a traditional what were you doing you did classics or something I just did uni yeah yeah yeah uni and then and then and then went into I went into being I was a baker whilst I was in uni and then you know I was a pot washer when I left uni and you just knew that that that was your sort of path yeah I wrote dinner on a list of five restaurants and then um when i moved down to london i went in there first the first day i got was actually running the show with my yeah yeah yeah um with my knives on my back and got the job on the day and then started a you know five-day stretch which i was totally unused to but but that that was it i never you know never ever looked back and and then um i think my point of difference was like i think i very much knew that i wanted to open a business um so my focus when i left dinner was definitely and i i could have you know i could have gone into opening a food truck but i knew i wanted to open a business and that was my primary focus and i think obviously i think you're a bit more of a yeah i mean i never really dreamed of it i mean i always my dad was a chef um so i was always was he a chef like yeah it was um i was in london at the start of his career you know he did an apprenticeship at the connor under michelle baudin he was then he was sous chef at the Ritz under Michael Quinn very classic places the Mirabel Royal Crescent in Bath like very like that period I think was just like the 70s 80s it was like everything was like that traditional French cuisine style and then he moved out to the Cotswolds which is where you know I grew up and my parents were split up so I would always get dropped off at the hotel I would sit in the chef's office and wait for him to finish work before I'd go home with him so I was always sort of around kitchens and you know that smells and seeing the chefs the chefs would bring me like roast chicken or whatever and i'd just eat it in the office doing my homework whatever so i was like around it like so it wasn't like a weird place for me like i was just sort of like i'd walk through the kitchen sometimes i'd sit there and i'd help them like cut berries or whatever like 12 11 12 years old and then 14 15 i just sort of would come up after school and do a bit of work for cash my dad would just pay me out of his own pocket but then i just got i was naturally quite good at it, I think.

48:10When I was like 15, I was like working on the fish section, just like cooking bits of fish in pans and stuff after school on a Friday night. It's wild. I loved it. Yeah. And then probably like a relationship there, like me wanting to be closer to my dad. It was just like, I want to be a chef. You know, I'd look at knife catalogs and watch like James Martin on TV, like religiously. Call me a nerd. Yeah. And then when I finished school back then, you didn't have to stay till 18. You could leave at 15, 16. So then I just, it was just natural to start an apprenticeship. And I think my dad was like, if you're going to do it I want to make sure you've got the right training so I did an apprenticeship at his hotel the hotel where he was the head chef at and then sort of did a big long apprenticeship there and a few other restaurants around the place before moving to London pretty like basic but good quality sort of training yeah and then you were doing you did classics right it was yeah yeah but I like I remember like on my days off and stuff I'd be I don't know I was obsessed for a period of time with starting a stocks and sauces business because i'd done stocks and sauces on at dinner so i wrote like a business pitch for that and i wrote you know i wrote i wrote a whole business plan around it and then the idea of this like this competition came up in bricks and kitchen so i list well you know we did this together and it was our first sort of and that was like yeah that was very much when i started to see it more as oh i think i'd like to open a restaurant yeah before then it was like i'd like to open a business in food i didn't know what it was.

49:36And then, yeah, then, you know, that's what really motivates me, I think. It's always been just the idea of working for myself and running a business. Yeah. I just didn't know it was going to be a restaurant. I think having Jack there and doing it together, I think that was the key. Yeah, those, definitely those earlier pop-ups, earlier. Just a bit closer, mate, yeah. I can't imagine how you could, how don't I... How are you guys similar and different then? We've talked, like, just getting to your... Completely different. Completely different. Literally completely different. Like, opposites. We have no similarities whatsoever.

50:03Really? That's wild. The chemistry you guys have. I mean, the similarities we have is, you know, the love for this business. But like, outside of this, we wouldn't be mates. Really? No, I mean, we have very different interests, right? What are your interests? Nothing much. Not much. Grand Prix in the gym. Yeah, Formula One, you know, like gym, like running or whatever. But yeah, just like, you just wouldn't put us together, to be honest. That's mad, yeah. I think the key is that, obviously, in kitchens, you know, going back to that camaraderie, like kitchens do bring people from all walks of life and you become friends but it's like a forced friendship you're like you know i'm sure every people people in hospitality can all relate to this like your best friends are who you work with at the time and then they leave and then all of a sudden you're not friends with them anymore it's such a weird dynamic like it's so weird like you have your best friends and you see that person 50 hours a week you go drinking with them you go to their house you have food with them you hang out with their families and then they leave and it's like see ya and you don't speak to him ever again yeah it's so strange yeah that's what we had at dinner like we were working together we had a little group you know like you look back to your career and you're like that was the point you look back to when you had all your best mates that was what it was like for us at dinner he was living with one of the other chefs who's actually now our head chef at row um you know we had a couple of other guys we'd all go out drinking together like we're all just really good mates and that was like look back on that like a good period so that's what we would just we'd go out and play pool we'd go out drinking whatever and I never I never thought I would have ever done this like to be honest even to this day I don't know what the fuck made me do it to be honest I always thought I was just going to go on and just be a head chef of like two or three stars like I was just that was where my that was the way my career was going so then do you so you're sort of more the business side and you're more like no I don't think so I think I think I think when we started we didn't have a fucking clue I think Jack is, I'd say, a more overarching exec chef.

51:58He wants things done a certain way. To be honest, I think he's an exceptional mentor. I think that's one of his biggest attributes. I think, to be honest, I think I'm a bit more creative in a lot of different, like the way that I'll approach situations, problems, issues. And I've definitely got a little bit more of a love for the business strategy side of it. and I've got a love for marketing as well. So I think those three things, coupled with James, our business partner, who is a very aggressive old school businessman. We'll talk about him shortly, yeah. Like it's just a London sort of been around the scene.

52:39He's very, very good with landlords. He's an exceptional mentor in a lot of ways as well. I think that it's that combination and we're coming up to five years now and a lot of businesses fail. You know, if we don't work on that relationship, this between three of us three very different characters that's why business has failed we've got five years we've signed 15 year leases on all these places so we don't plan to to split up we plan to work as hard as we can to maintain that relationship because ultimately with all three of our skill sets we have got it all covered I think it's where because obviously Will's got his interest I've got my interest but then it's that it's still that like we still feel ourselves of like young chefs just like in the kitchen I think that's where some of the fun ideas come from.

53:22We come together on the food, 100%. The food, the serious side of food, but there's also the fun side of the food. Yeah. Because I think, because we don't have everyone just telling us what to do, we've got this like bit of free range just to do whatever we want. Some of those weird little ideas, just like, maybe some of them shouldn't go ahead, but they go ahead anyway. Yes. Let's talk about creativity then, because again, this is what I was speaking to Ashley about and about how he was basically saying creativity is there's two poles between creativity. essentially he's like got all these mad fucking wacky ideas this was going on at the fat duck we can do this we can do that and then it's like the practicality side of like we need to make this work from a gross margin perspective the example he gave was the meat fruit and he talks about i think it took him a year or something to get that right with the because it didn't look more like a like a like an orange you'd get in like a you know like a christmas look basically and he said Creativity is like it works between two poles.

54:18And he said his sort of skill set was being able to sort of thread the wackiness to the like, it makes the right gross margin, people like it. I think that's a very good analogy for myself. Jack's classically trained. And that comes across. The way that Jack gets inspired about a dish is we have this amazing seasonal produce. It's really good value at the moment because it's banging season. Let's get it on the menu. Let's work to get it on the menu. um so it's more of a i guess a more much more practical approach whereas i'll get obsessed with the concept of doing a korean rotisserie chicken and that's a korean rotisserie chicken over there and it's taken us three months to get there um so yeah i think i think i'm ideas led and then i think jack is like produce like traditional like um and then we come together quite a lot so like the best thing that makes the dishes is sometimes i'll get like obsessed with an idea i want to do a shawarma yeah i want to do yeah i want to do a spent hen kebab we want to do a duck an ex-laying duck um pancake dish and then there's there's it's great having the idea it's great you know putting the first thing on the plate but how the hell do you do you organize a new supplier 50 chefs to be able to pull off what you've essentially done and then pull it all together so you can consistently deliver 700 portions of it on a busy day in fallout and that's the real challenge that's that's what makes it so because it it makes it like obviously the easiest thing for us to do would just be not change the menu but then you lose all sort of creativity and and you know love love for putting those new dishes on new new ingredients is there an example of a dish that like you've had a wild idea and then like you guys have got like got rubbed up against each other, but you said, look, mate, we've got to make this work.

56:04What's almost a dish that has been... Every dish on the menu has been through that process. Myself and Jack going over it, being like, not happy with that. Everything that has been produced on these menus, especially at Fallow, has gone through a rigorous... Probably a lot. Back and forth. I think it's now we've been doing it for so long. Well, because Fallow's five. Fallow as a business is five years old but then there was also like a period before that before we even started Fallow where we were throwing ideas around so we've been doing it side by side for so long now that now we know before we would do we would come up with ideas and then the other person would really hate it whereas now we know he knows what I like I know what he likes so it's much it gets a lot a little bit easier now not a lot easier but definitely a bit easier where do your ideas come from do they like come to you or do you go to them creatively do you think I think exactly I read a lot and I've got, I get obsessed with like little videos I see like from Chinese roasted chicken.

57:00I think Jack's eating out and produce and I'm sitting with books and - A lot of it comes from, we joke, we sit with our development chef, but we joke, it's like we have a vibing sesh. Like we generally do. Like every week we have about an hour just vibing, just sitting there and like just - You say vibing, no one else says vibing. It becomes a bit of a bit annoying. Just we're vibing, we're vibing. Now we're vibing, boys. Just vibing, baby. Just throw shit against the wall. It's actually my favorite thing. The thing is, like, we go so off-piste. Like, we sat there. All the fun happens off-piste.

57:26Because we got so off-piste that now we have to go, right, first of all, we talk about our operations. Like, are we finished? Are we finished? Okay, now we can start vibing. Right, go. No one says vibing. Because you have to, because otherwise we sit down for a meeting and all of a sudden we're talking about... Start vibing. It's like a geography teacher. That's so funny. Like, you know, we were talking about Easter. We're like, lamb, what are we doing? And now we're buying a lamb doner kebab machine. Yeah. So, just happening. Yes. But that's the thing is we've got the freedom. That's where we have the...

57:55I make sure it works from an operational point of view. Like, I'm very meticulous. What are those sort of... Is that when you say operation, like... Well, GP. I mean, I'm very OCD with how I want things organised and how I want things processed. Like, you know, a bit weird, like straight lines and all this sort of shit. Like, nicely organised fridges. Whereas he would just, like, buy a load of shit in, chuck it in the fridge. Yeah, let's make it special. Woo! Amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm like, what are we doing with that food? He's like, I don't know. That's your job. Do you know what I mean?

58:21It just... I'll get... A supplier will reach out and say, I've got this amazing sheep from the Orkney Islands that eats seaweed and I'll be like, that's the coolest idea ever, let's get four of them. And then it'll come in like six months' time and I'll be like, oh shit, I ordered four sheep that are coming tomorrow, do you know what I mean? And then we'll be like, right, we'll put a mixed grill on and then it'll be... We've literally got a... Toast dish... Cuttlefish. That's a good actual example of how the dishes change. Because that was a one, that's one at row, yeah? Because I ended up getting two rounds.

58:53We actually had one, we went to Venice together on a trip and we were literally, it was actually a work trip. We were looking at an oven. You're looking at an oven in Venice? Yeah, it was such a bullshit. Why is that fucking Venice? Who not? Oh, right, okay. So we were on the plane and we were like, right, we're opening row, we need a menu. Let's buy it, baby. In front of the table. Yes, let's go. Flight vibing. We were eating the crisps, we were eating the sandwiches, we were like, this is genius. So we were sat there and actually the Roe menu was pretty much written on that flight. What is it, two and a half hours?

59:29Three hours? And we sat there and we got a bit of paper and we pretty much wrote the menu for Roe then and there because we know what each other likes. We had a rough idea. We'd obviously been thinking about it separately as well. We just came together like bam, bam, bam, bam. But our style is kind of like well-known dishes with our own twist on it. Like, relate to a lot of it. It's not... So we thought calamari, really popular, like that crowd will love it. Cause at that point we're like bankers, bankers, bankers. That's what we're going to be cooking for. What do they want? Like that simple classic stuff.

59:59We used to do it in our own way. So we thought calamari, let's do cuttlefish calamari. Do it in nice rings. It'd be perfect. It's sustainable. It's different, but it's also well known. And then we developed it and we were really happy with it. When it got to opening week, we were following our recipes and it was turning out like genuine dog shit. It was just disgusting. And we were like, what the fuck? We can't serve this. This is why it was so dramatic about things. It was just not that crispy. It wasn't that good. It wasn't dog shit. It was delicious, but it was like... It's not like... There's no point in putting a calamari on unless it's as good, if not better, than the best calamari you've ever had.

1:00:39So it wasn't like... And then the batter doesn't stick the same way as it does the squid. and it's very hard to get it as tender as it is squid because it behaves differently when it's heated at hot oil. So yeah, that was overnight, didn't we? Prawn toast. The other thing is that then we had like 30 kilos of cutoffish there that we'd ordered for the opening menu. We were like, what the fuck are we going to do this? And then we were just, we were talking and I can't remember. We were just saying, what can we do with cutoffish and moose? Oh, let's put it on a bit. Oh, let's do this. And then Will just went off, did the first draft and it was just perfect.

1:01:08I mean, give or take. Obviously, like the idea was there on the toast. We're like, perfect. And obviously we changed the garnish, adjusted the spice level and the paste level of what goes in it. Obviously that took a couple of times, but the general concept of the dish, we're like, that's great. We know it's going to work as an item on the menu in its place. How important is it to listen to the conversations from the tables to then inform your... Well, we are our own worst thing. We had a massive soft launch. Because it's so often. Right. The things you said, you're going right back at the beginning, is like Canary Wharf's almost a different city.

1:01:44We did three weeks. And it's like, how do you listen to that? We did three weeks of soft launch at Canary Wharf. Right. Solid soft launch with friends and family at first, which were all given anonymous feedback cards. So yeah, we were really vigorous. And that's the one strength I think some chefs are like... What was the feedback questions like? Oh, it was just like, what's your favourite? What's your least favourite? What should we take off the menu? It was very vigorous. It's like, what's your favourite drink? What do you think we need to work on? Was the concept clear? What did you find the ambience of the restaurant?

1:02:13How was the lighting? It was quite vigorous. Yeah. And we had it anonymous, so our loved ones didn't feel like they were like needling us. Although you can definitely tell my dad's handwriting. We need some fruit on the menu. What fruit you deserve? Everyone loves fruit. So funny. Anyway, but yeah, so I think that's one of the things that we are, I think we're pretty, we're also, we're quite thick skinned because we're quite ruthless with the feedback to each other. but also we do completely take customer like we we listen to reviews where some chefs are like oh they don't fucking know what they're talking about like we get an AI detailed summary of every review in every restaurant every single day and we listen and read every single really yeah absolutely wow because so then so so we did exactly the same with our menu like yeah we take um yeah we we use um this sort of AI data scraper to it's not even just like the reviews from internal reviews it's you get Google reviews you get the seven room reviews and then you get mentions in different social media posts which we listen to and we read and it's quite depressing sometimes because you've like some of the depressing things people would say oh normally it's just over salty chips or something like that so it's there's never anything that really stands out and then if there is and we know it's a trend then that's something that we'll investigate and look into so about the business side behind things that I hadn't well I don't think I don't think I mean I'm sure I'm sure It's also you can use it as a training mechanism.

1:03:39You can use it to an advantage. Instead of reading it, as we said, mindset, reading it and going, oh, these guys don't know what they're doing. That food's seasoned perfectly. We can go, because you can actually go right back to it. Okay, the fries on that day were all, we had four complaints about fries tracking on that day. Who was working that section? Can we train that person better? You know, you can actually track it to specific people. Does that waiter need more training? Do we have the right combination of people on the door? Does that chef need more training on the cooking of the meat because we had three complaints about steak?

1:04:05you can use it to your advantage it's just about really delving into the data Mate it's mad what are some other things you guys do behind the scenes that sort of almost like if the restaurant is sort of front stage like backstage behind the scenes that people won't necessarily see but will like the AI tracker We're very very detailed with our reporting so we've taken on an MD from the Ivy and the Ivy is obviously what we were very inspired by about the Ivy Group is obviously you watch Top Draw it gets the most amount of flack from most overrated or whatever but whatever you want to say about it Richard Cairn has created an empire which is very financially successful but what we saw the potential of bringing on our MD Julia was essentially like if you could do a business that was you know as successful as financially as the Ivy but with very good quality like chef-led cuisine at the same time.

1:05:03That would be a really powerful... And what I think, as we've matured and we've grown up slightly, we get probably the most, I don't know, the most detailed summary of the entire week from our GMs, Monday morning, and we go for it all every single week. What stuff do you guys focus on that most restaurants probably wouldn't focus on? Oh no, that report has everything. Right, but what are the ones that you, the factors that you really delve into that most people wouldn't? I don't think I'd mean, I don't think we're running our restaurant that much different day-to-day than everyone else. I think the difference is that...

1:05:37And we are. One angle that's very different, I think, is probably the social media and the marketing and our strategy around that is one thing. But the day-to-day operations of the restaurant, I don't think we're doing anything that's outlandishly different. I think the key is that we just care a lot. And we really try and empower the team and we really focus on it. And we still look after the maintenance. We still order all the crockery and make sure we've got the right plates for the tables we're very involved with this as the owners you know we're not just I think it's just again sitting down and giving people the time to go through it with them and sitting down and going through with our GMs and operations teams so that we're all aligned on the focus and go through the reviews go through the data where can we improve what was great targets for the week okay and it's just a great start to the week to reflect and then focus on what we need to improve on and then start the week with a nice you know happy mindset and everyone's focused on the goals for that week one thing i've always with because we'll get onto the youtube stuff but um i love like the knife skills videos you do and i think um i don't know who i was speaking to but i think there are some again i'm fucking awful with the knife right but i'd love to know like again random question but like what are some of the like knife skills and that discipline that transfer to sort of life skills would you say i mean to be honest so we literally just got we just filmed a knife skill video but I mean knife skills to life skills maybe that's serious it does rhyme yeah maybe I'm not sure firstly what do chefs what do the knives mean to chefs right because again I've listened to a lot of podcasts probably the most commonly lost thing as well yeah but a lot of people say I've watched videos if I have my fucking knife in here it's like what does your knife mean to you do you know what I mean yeah I mean I bought one knife when I started I actually don't have that much of a attraction to my knives you've got a lot of different knives some chefs do oh yeah 100 % some junior chefs will go out and they'll spend I've always been a bit like give me the knife give me a basic knife and I'll fucking get the job done I love it whereas like you know you look it's true I take Jack's old knives as well and get them sharpened and then just use them you can look after a chef I think it's the chef I think people make people make mistakes of being like, all right, I'm going to buy a Japanese knife and they've got absolutely no idea how to sharpen it.

1:08:05And you're just like, well, is there a difference to how you sharpen it? No, but you've got to be able to look, if you can't look after a basic knife, why are you going to be able to look after a foreign knife? So, but my point is, just because you've got, if you're a ship, It's like getting in front of you if you've got no petrol sort of thing. I would always say just go and get a Wusthof, which is a German made, like, just get a cheaper entry-level knife, learn how to sharpen it on a stone and then eventually like maybe after like two years going back a Japanese one. I had my knife from, I mean it's been nicked now.

1:08:34Someone nicked it here. I don't know who it was but it cost me 180 quid and I bought it when I first went to dinner and by the time that, I mean it started off as a big old knife and now it's like literally this big. So it's, I just sharpened it until I knew exactly how to do it and then now I've got the techers down but like people, I think people get way, people get way too. It's one of those wanky things where it's like, oh my God, I think a little bit. I mean, don't get me wrong. I think it's an investment. If you're an experienced, you don't even need to be experienced, but if cooking is your passion and you want to invest in a beautiful knife and look after it, of course, go and buy a great knife.

1:09:07But just buying a great knife because you think it's going to make you better, knife skills, is definitely the wrong way. Like, I could chop an onion better with a fucking two-pound knife than, you know, whatever. It's about looking after, it's about learning the knife skill. Yeah. If you have, like, just as Will said, a basic knife, whatever, Victorian Ox little chef knife, if you keep it sharp, You can do everything with it. All my butchering knives are like 10 pounds. Are there transferable life skills, do you think? Only if you want to cook, maybe. If you want to cook? If you don't like cooking, it's probably not that transferable.

1:09:36So true. Most of my food at home comes out of a bag. Let's go into the marketing side of things. I mean, it's wild what you guys have achieved, like huge, massive kudos and respect. And yeah, you've said, mate, that marketing is something that, from the sort of the business side has always intrigued you because we've gone onto YouTube it's we just went onto it did the podcast for four years went on decided we need to go onto YouTube like basically about a year ago we're just putting old stuff up and it's an absolute shit show like we were trying to get it right we're just about to hire someone I don't know if you've ever listened to Chris Williamson's podcast Modern Wisdom Bloke but I hire his strategist because I'm like I don't know what I'm doing doing all the different thumbnails, testing a fucking thousand different things, trying to do the hook.

1:10:25And I'm like, this is proper. It's a proper explore. I don't think people understand like how much goes into this. And you guys have got like, so just talk me through like, you opened the restaurant. Why did you think, right, YouTube and content, like, what's the strategy? Very simply, when we moved from Head & Street, having a big background to this is the fact that we had time at Head & Street because we didn't have any customers. So we were, By the time we'd opened our main restaurant, we'd already had a retail range. We were doing cooking classes. We were doing pretty much everything to make the business work just for me and Jack, just to keep ourselves afloat.

1:11:03And then when we opened back up again, just me and Jack in the kitchen and Moosa, who's still with us, our amazing KP. And then we had a Faye Mashler review, which really had a massive... What's that? Faye Mashler, who's writing at the time for the Evening Standard. And it definitely had the most profound impact of anything that we'd ever done before. Soon as she came in, she ordered a cod's head. It was the second day it was on the menu. I remember like being like, oh, shit, she's ordered a cod's head. And like, and so when we saw that review go live, it was like this really, it was a really profound moment for the business.

1:11:43Because we realized like just the impact that media can have, not social media at the time, it was media. um anyway moving forward to when we'd open fallow um we got involved in social media because i was interested in it and i you know i tried to do as much of it myself as possible um and then we were you know we were doing well we had some more reviews which brought more customers and then we were wanted to open him open up brunch we did one photo of our royales which is our like croissant puck um it's like cooked uh croissant dough in a really nice puck with it's basically a mcmuffin but really you know high fancy um banging and then that post phil we did a post on it was just a photo it wasn't i think it was before reels had like started happening and that filled the restaurant for three months that one photo for brunch so saturday from a business point of view saturday we opened saturday brunch because we're me and jack were brainstorming This is when you're at Hedon Street.

1:12:44No, it's here. This is here. Okay, sorry. We were brainstorming. We were like, right, how are we going to drive revenue on a Saturday morning? It was the quietest service of the week and we couldn't work out why. Did that post and then we were booked for three months. And it was just one photo. So then obviously we're like, you know, the potency of that, the impact that that had just kind of circulated in our heads. And then we got a full-time social media. um lady sofia who helped out with everything at that point and then the real started happening and essentially i think like so it's like a lot of things that we've spoken about today i think people sometimes with social media and stuff they ask the wrong question so they're like how do i get better at social media i think for us um a really core part about what we do is like we're not actually focused on social media as such.

1:13:36The bigger question to ask is, how do I make my team happy and smiling so they want to engage in social media when someone comes around with a camera? Is the food quality good enough so that it always looks banging on camera? Is the recipe development and the new creative ideas, are they interesting enough to stimulate people who are watching the channel to like it? so we've also we've also always recruited social media people in house and trained them up ourselves so Ricky was a pastry chef then at the moment we've got a fantastic girl called Zara she was front of house although she had a little bit of a marketing background before she came to work for us but we find it so much easier to find chefs or hospitality people and then train them up to be and what's in that social media like what's just well again it's just passion and energy we have we have skill set is relatively low It's not that hard.

1:14:31Anyone can make a little social media reel, right? There's not that much skill. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a little bit reductive. You know what I mean? There's millions of people doing it. It's not like you have to be the best person in the world to make good people. Well, I think there's a way that you post things that definitely gets more traction than other ways. But have we ever paid attention to a posting schedule? No. Have we ever paid attention to posting it at the right time? No. We focus on making sure that the idea that's in the video is really good and the food looks banging. and that they get the whole process so people feel like they're learning from it.

1:15:03So people are like, oh my God, your social media has made it. It's because we put three new dishes on the menu a week and we really invest in those dishes and making sure they look really sexy and they're a beautiful thing to eat because there's absolutely no point in building a business around social media because what happens is they'll come in, they'll eat whatever you've made look really beautiful on camera and they'll never come back again. And a business like Fallow can't rely on that. A business like Fallot, you need to have that royale, and it needs to taste as good as it looks. Really important.

1:15:34How annoying is it when you go somewhere and you're like, oh, it looks so good online, and then this slop comes out, and you're like, oh, my God. Well, for us, it doesn't end with doing a great social post. It ends with making sure that the customer is super genuinely happy with what they've received, and they come back again and again and again. Otherwise, the business wouldn't work. We have about a 33 % return rate of Fallot, which is really high for a restaurant in central London St. James. And yeah, like Jack said about being in that neighbourhood restaurant in central London, that's what we're aiming to do.

1:16:08It's more about a community online, which we're really passionate about harbouring as well as a community in the restaurant. And you don't get one without the other. You'd just be a flash in the pan otherwise, excuse the pun. And you'll be that chicken shop in Soho that people were carrying around. and now you go back there now and there's no queues anymore because people have gone, they've taken their photo for their Instagram and they've gone. Which is what we're really passionate about. Which is a window. All we're trying to do is provide a window into what's actually happening. Yeah. Again, it's honest.

1:16:39Well, that's the bit I pick up is the ruthless transparency. It's like you're literally saying like we're putting, this dish is expensive because we've got to make up this total, you know, GP or gross margin or whatever of the menu. Like, that's a bold move. So that was a term It's funny you say ruthless transparency. Radical transparency is a term that kept... So our YouTube channel is run by one of my oldest friends, Joe, who's our creative director now. And he came up with the term radical transparency. And that's very much what he... And we've worked on it, you know, this concept together of like, how can we peel away the film of, you know, the things you don't see in hospitality?

1:17:20You know, the little questions that people haven't asked. and then the POV services very much I think reinforce that because to be honest the POV service is literally just us there's no hiding it's just us doing service and it's very simple like I mean some of them aren't even really edited they're just put together and then we they make sure that we you know we're not using way too many swear words but we pretty much leave most of them in and that is what happens on a busy night and effectively like the people who watching your content you effectively understand that they're very enthusiastic home cooks who potentially want to cosplay as a chef or they are um really young chefs who want to learn how to do it properly i think for us that second one of really young chefs who want to learn how to do it properly is what we're very passionate about sort of taking forward in the youtube channel i think ultimately the best performing videos that we've had after the povs have all been just teaching sort of fundamental skills to young chefs.

1:18:23And that's what we're doing now. That's kind of what we're doing. So you're trying to think, it's almost like if you go for the chef, the consumer will come in anyway. Yeah, so we are thinking like that. But also, like, when we overthink it, it never works. So, like, yes, we have a hook, and yes, we have a good title and a thumbnail, but, like, ultimately the biggest video that we've done is five mother sauces, and it's just us cooking mother sauces and then showing us how to play. and then how to cook a steak from rare to blue. And these are just skills that we've just learned that we're literally just passing on.

1:18:57And I think it's quite a profound thing. I mean, everything is hid behind a paywall now. You've got the Masterclass series, which I've never watched, but you've got Le Cordon Bleu, which could be, you know, obviously it will give you a different foundational training. I'm not saying that we're a replacement for that whatsoever, but things, you know, I certainly learn a lot of my like I learn a lot from YouTube I learn pretty much everything from YouTube everything from plumbing to changing a fuse to cooking well it's basically Wikipedia with video isn't it it's like it's just you can just go down rabbit holes I think that's what we're an extension of which I find I think we both take that very seriously I think we're you know we are we're giving people knowledge we're imparting you know some of the things we've learned we're being transparent about how we genuinely feel about it We're not saying it's, you know, maybe the standard of classical training thinking, but it's just what we've sort of come up with and learned whilst we've been running these restaurants for the last five years.

1:19:54The food history stuff, because I don't know what, you did a video and you cooked every mishin dish from the era, like different eras. I loved that. And I think you've talked a lot about sort of food history and obviously dinner and stuff. And you've said you guys read and all this sort of stuff. What are some of those periods of, and we could go way back here, like that really excite you so i really believe like the future lives in the past yeah even before i got into cooking my dissertation was in feasting in the neo-asyrian empire so i was making a date this is a lot going on yeah i was making like a date date wine from the earliest ever restaurant what's the neo-asyrian empire neo-asyrian empire was like basically like the cradle of civilization where writing was first developed.

1:20:40It was a use of trade. Go on, say it. Go on, say it. You call me a nerd. We can talk about your stuff on a sec. Yeah.

1:20:53Yeah, so I've always been, and that's why I chose dinner because it was the historical link. Rather than it being a two-star restaurant, I was just fascinated in the history that it delved into. So about your dissertation, sorry, this is where we're going off piece now, but I find this fascinating. in terms of like so this this i mean to be honest it actually turns out there's actually not that much information about the really feasted in the neo-syrian empire but i did make a a date wine which was the first ever recipe and i made that and we tasted it um which was you know it's quite good fun but but yeah i mean i was just interested in i've been interested in food in that way in history for a long time so the michelin dishes are used as an example like this is the best thing about the YouTube channel now it's like how many chefs have the opportunity to cook like signature dishes from um 100 years and to learn about that like I'd learned I learned that like you know Madame Brazier was like the first ever three Michelin star female chef like that's I think that's a profound thing that no one really knows everyone thinks of Claire Smith as like the but like there's been leading female figures in the industry like for since the beginning of the industry and i think like moving all the way from from like war time or like that was a fascinating video to make um and then you're obviously more obsessed with the techniques and stuff um it was it was really cool when you ask about like if you think about it like you ask about what our interests and our passions are like it's almost like we've created it where we are now is that our passions and our interests are almost our job we sort of carved it into being one thing like it's like the YouTube is like the running the restaurants is our job the YouTube is almost like our interest you know your curiosity is where yeah like they all do that on the YouTube stuff they sort of all kind of mingle into one thing you know but steaks is a good example of that we did we tasted every ribeye it's technically development and technically research and interest and hobby but also part of the business like as you can see it's all so slow we skip that stage where most chefs go off to like seven different suppliers and taste meat before they opened their restaurant.

1:22:58We were two in the weeds. So we got some incredible beef from one of our suppliers and that's what we went with and we built a relationship. But now, say that video, well, we got three new suppliers from that and we ate everything from... We have English Wagyu on the menu now because of it. Yeah. Wow. So it's had a profound impact on the business. Forces you to do research. And then the beautiful thing about that is if you think about it, you've got seven ribeyes, right? And everyone in the comments is like, oh my god this video must have cost so much to produce so it's like well actually we just sold all those rib eyes on that evening on a special youtube menu so like you all of the cost of the ingredients is under unwritten yeah um for the video and then the video obviously produces revenue and then we learn from the process of doing it and we get to eat loads of steak so it's like a yeah it's like when you can merge that whole thing of like um feels like play to you but work to others and you're just but that's the important thing about Everything for us, everything circles back to the restaurants.

1:23:57Yeah. Like, that's just what it is, because it's our business. So why wouldn't it? You know, it's like everything we do is all, and even like the marketing ideas and some of our crazy ideas, they might come from YouTube. They might come from eating out. They might be from a family holiday. Like they all just sort of like all intertwine somewhere along the way. You know, we launched a Wagyu Burger campaign for Fallow off of the video for the YouTube. You know, we got the Wagyu ribeye in. we then made burgers out of it we sold them at Fallow's it was popular so now we sell them daily you know so it's all just links but the other thing is we also run it from here so whereas like a lot of people go would go off site and or have a studio or something like that we just run it from the kitchen when it's closed on a Monday so is that the day you bosh it all out that's the day you bosh it we only have one day a week okay it's an absolute nightmare because like people I think people think that we're like I don't know doing Swannin' around the studio.

1:24:54People feel like, it's not, it's just. Be honest. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've got their away from the stove now. No, it's, I mean, yeah. Look, I've got two blasters. Fucking blue blaster. The beauty of it is, it's in the chicken shop on a Monday when it's closed. Yeah. It's just that basic kitchen setup. So we don't have, and then our social teamwork above, and then we do our management meetings here on a Monday. So like, for us, we're really, really passionate about like, it stays in the restaurant. we're not going to go off site because then you're losing lose that authenticity lose the authenticity but also also to be maybe don't sound like a control freak we lose like we lose the control of making sure that the quality in the restaurant's good and we can still you know we can still do tastings whilst we're filming it's very much like it will never get to the point where like we have to um prioritize filming over the restaurants it always has to be done on that terms because we're chefs first and and all that all that other stuff has just come off the side of it so i think one thing we didn't mention i don't think you mentioned it like we youtube is also a tool for us to help to keep the restaurants busy you know like it's very much like a space where we can people can see the videos they can they can watch them and then they come to the restaurant and they actually ask questions like the amount of times we do the cooking someone will come up to the bathroom oh i saw that video loved it how do i do this or ask a question about and that's quite feels nice as well that they can almost like relate the two together let's talk about i think the pov videos are just genius i've sent them to like loads of people and they've been like it's just it's sort of quite like tranquil well that's almost like the video game it's all about you just watch that and sort of go into this trance yeah i still watch them sometimes as well yeah yeah and you're probably doing them um but let's take us to some some other points of view um maybe we can bring sort of um james in here but like what's what's been in terms of building this wonderful kind of yeah just beautiful thing you've created what have been the sort of the point of view if you'd sort of take us into the apex when you know you're sat almost like sort of your your apprentice moment when you're having your cup of coffee like things aren't going too well and what's been the biggest obstacle you've you guys have faced so what's been which actually paved the way forward and how's sort of james almost being sort of the voice of reason to pull you through that.

1:27:13I think this is probably the current climate and economy and stuff. It's always a struggle. It's quite gloomy at the moment with the April budget announcement. Look, I mean, having James is... James is second to none at Landlord and basically just, like... it's a very tricky environment out there. It's like, especially for bigger restaurant groups like us, if you think you could have a traditional sort of small scale restaurant where say if it was me and Jack, like, you know, just running a service with three other chefs, we've got nothing to lose. We know that we're the owners so we can step in and do service and run those restaurants anyway.

1:27:55But like now we've got, you know, close to 250 members of staff across the restaurant group. you feel these little like these changes that the government have announced recently are just more seismic so having someone like James there is like it just gives you that confidence that you know I mean he's been through two recessions in businesses he went through one he's not old experience it gives you that confidence that you know basically any of these any of these issues that we're going to face we can pretty much overcome. And there'll be bad times. There'll be better times. At the moment, like, look, we're in a, we feel fantastically lucky.

1:28:39We've got a fantastic team around us. We've had some great success at Fallow. Like, Ro, we're really, really proud of what we've created out there. But yeah, it does, I mean, you obviously speak to a lot of hospitality people. It does feel at the moment like there's a lot of pessimism out there. I think what we're trying to do is, you know, well, we always just try and stay very very positive about what we've got what we've built and where we're going and we still plan to you know we do plan to open more restaurants eventually like we're not we're not going to yeah what is what's the we always tell ourselves we always tell ourselves we're in as good a position as anyone to survive and succeed so there's things that we can control there's things that we can't control the cost of utilities we can't control the budget the rates cost the minimum wage increases we can't control that all we can do is just do our best and navigate it and we're in as good a position as anyone so there's no point worrying about all those things all we can focus on is what we we can change and what we can we can what we can work on really which is making sure people want to keep coming back is ultimate the ultimate goal and then managing all of our costs internally so well in terms of like what the future holds it is very difficult like to think about like it's very difficult to think about opening new places in current climate with current climate conditions um staff cost is much higher so the pre-ops would be would would be way more um you know our model our model is so is staff we we actually used to like five four four years ago when we first started we our usp was like we have really low margins because we we really invest in staff we have a very high staff now that's going back the other way it was like oh shit that's probably but now we're not biting the but now we're suffering because it's obviously all the labour costs have gone up and we've always prided ourselves on having running on more staff because we focus on we want to focus on training and high energy doing whole animal butchery doing all of those things takes more labour and we've always tried to do all of that within the restaurants so like you know we used to bake our own well we do bake our own bread still but like it's just a little thing of like sometimes it gets to the point, especially with the new announcements, where it's like, it would be fiscally irresponsible to have a 44 % staff cost, which is what we ran at in the past.

1:30:57So if you had to take... No, we've not reduced it actively, but like, we are certainly... You just try and tighten other areas, right? Your food costs have to go even lower. We're certainly tight. We certainly tighten it. And you can't pass that on to the customers because that's not fair. And also... Well, you can, and that's what people do, but then the issue is, all that happens is then they stop coming back or they won't come as frequent or they'll order less food. Every time we've ever raised the prices, the spend never goes up. All that happens is they just order less. It's magical. So it's like that, it's that balance between...

1:31:27It's always the same, spend per head, no matter how much you increase the menu price. Like we said, for us, it's about, instead of just hooking up prices and going, I put 10 % on everything, inflation's up. It's like, okay, what can we do differently? Could we drive people... What are some of those things you... Like, for example, at Rowe, we're doing... Our lunches and our dinners are really great like from 12 till 1.30 full from 6.30 till 8 full but it's those other little areas that we're struggling with and naturally people don't want to eat in those areas I wouldn't want to eat in those areas I wouldn't want to go out for dinner at half nine but they will if the product you're providing they want it so bad and that's the only time they can get so it's our job is to try and make it as appealing can we do a few posts on breakfast can we come up with a couple of new breakfast dishes to make people think fucking I want to go to Canoe Wharf at 7.30 for breakfast because that dish looks fucking epic.

1:32:18Yes. We just launched a new clucking off hour at Roe where we do chicken wings and unlimited margaritas daily. Wow. Try and drive people over there to the periods where not everyone else wants to go. Yeah. The three till six time slot. And it's just having a bit of fun, being a bit creative, trying something new. Yeah, keep it moving. Just staying there going, oh, why aren't they coming lunch and dinner? Oh, they're not coming. Or just trying to... Sam Hart, who did the Barifino and Quovalos, he basically talked me through the numbers of a restaurant, like saying, literally in terms of like, sort of, key stage zero maths, right?

1:32:55It's like, what, you're£1.20 in, and then you sort of just ducked everything. He's like, you've got, this is your sort of five pence you're left with. And most people either do one or two things, they hike it up or they reduce their... Or you go for more volume and you make less, but you're making more and more less. Which is basically what you're doing, is the creativity and the energy is coming through. It's like, fuck it, let's do this clucking off genius. Instead of putting the roast up by£2, if we just do 40 extra roasts that day... Yeah, and you could do a Wagyu prime rib, and then, you know, 10 % of the people might go for the more premium meat off.

1:33:30Yeah. Yeah, it's just... It doesn't work for everyone, but it works for us. Constant balance and gator driven. I love to know, like, I ask this to quite a lot of people, but what's one truth you believe that most chefs or restaurateurs would disagree with you on? Don't worry too much about the plates. The plates? Really? I always get confused when chefs are like banging on about plates. Yeah, I'll ask this to ask. They'll buy expensive plates. We buy literally the cheapest plates you can buy in the world. Because they break them anyway. But no, those plates don't break. All the other expensive plates we've got.

1:34:06Don't know what we came... but they snap in half after 10 minutes. You know what we learned with the open row? I was like, I want a brand new plate selection. I want it really nice. I want to upgrade our cutlery. I want to upgrade our plate. So we went out and picked all these new plates and different plates and different styles. And then a year later, all we've done is just go, we've just moved back to exactly what Fallow has. I could have saved myself hours and hours of time. I think it's a very... I remember having a chat with a chef and he was asking for advice on starting a business. He was like, I've got my menu sorted.

1:34:40I've got my plates. I'm ready to go. I'm like, plates? What do you mean? All my plates are in storage. I'm ready to go. I'm like, okay, so you've got... And your 150 quid knife as well. Have you got your booking system up live? Have you got your marketing strategy? Have you got your PR company? Have you got your accounting software? Like, how are you going to track your GPs? How are you going to track your plant day? Your rotors? Your HACCPs. Where are you doing all your HACCPs on? And he's just... What HACCPs are... It's just... like um food safety stuff oh so yeah yeah yeah it's a food alert food alert stuff like that uh yeah he's just like all my plates are in storage ready ready um so yeah so it's one of those things it's like i always get because the food is obviously way more important than what it goes out on and i think like as long as the plate works i think that's the point that that's missing in the industry is that we've learned it through in fact through a need and what we're with this radical transparency we're just trying to show other people that you know what because no one teaches you that stuff you know no one teaches you that okay what do you do when EHO arrives unless you've been a head chef but it's about we try and we try and talk to the team all the time about everything that goes into it GP stock taking all the little things that they might not know dish costings rotor management yeah why are we open why are we open for 12 hours of service and not lunch and dinner but just boring stuff like why we don't use Blu-Roll like Blu-Roll Why don't you?

1:36:06Well, it's two, I used to use two blue rolls a day. How much is a blue roll in there? Probably about seven. I don't know. So that's 30 pound a day. Times 30 pound a day by like 50 kitchen staff. Like we just, we have micro, yeah, we have micro, micro cloths and we wash them every night ourselves and we cut our sponges in half and just like all these little tiny things. We do our laundry in-house and we have, we just bought, we just bought home dish, we just bought a washing machine and a tumble dryer, stack them in the laundry room, and we wash all our own aprons and cloths. Like, we literally save thousands of pounds.

1:36:42I mean, at the time that we've been opened, it's probably even a thousand pounds. We don't buy disposable gloves. That's wild. Yeah, just like, yeah, we don't do disposables because we just wash our hands. We give the KP's their gloves. They look after them. They monitor them, and then they have them in their locker, and they use one pair. They use it till it's broken, till the very last, rather than having, like, communal... But I think you walk through these sometimes in central London when you walk through, and like all the lights are on at night and you're like, what the hell are you doing?

1:37:07Or like they don't padlock their doors properly. Like we still use like a proper paranoid, like this is Robden, but we still use like a padlock on all of our doors. And they'll leave their central heating on. You're just like, what the fuck? Yeah, no wonder. That's not like... Utilities is that one. The beauty of that is like the sustainability aspect of it comes in as well, like with just how you actually run your business. Well, throughout the whole P &L, it's not just dishes. That's what I think. And it's like people, planet, profit. Like you're looking after the planet in a way by being more sustainable, by getting the most out of all of the consumables that come into your business.

1:37:40There's so many angles that you can learn about. And then you're invested in a team so they know how to work. So they'll do it the same way when they run their businesses, which is ultimately what we want. We always say we want people who are working at Fala to go on to run their own things. So you're equipping them with those skills and those tools. And then it makes money. It makes financial sense to do so. so you're like it's a really I know it's used to death people plan it profit but it's it is a very good mantra for for how to run a modern hospitality business the what you said about the plates kind of being a bit superfluous in the grand scheme of things it's just like the food's got to do the talk you've got to look banging what Bo asked me for his dissertation which I thought was and so for listeners Bo was a is an intern here I think for a bit yeah yeah lovely guy and he was like how important is the design in the restaurant and what when you walk into Rowe and Fallow and here, they are, as I said, almost like different personalities.

1:38:36Like how important is the plates kind of... It does come into the design. Yeah, but like, so how did you go into sort of the design of these restaurants? Because it's like, what's the creative thinking with that? Do you know what I mean? Yeah, very much James, James's partner is an architect and a world-class designer. Gossamer, that's her firm. um so she's been involved in some huge architecture projects so it's actually i think for her it was actually a step back to look at our restaurants and looking at things in a bit more of a map like micro way um she is absolutely fanatical about eyeline um where things are drawing your attention and she just really i think ultimately that i'll admit myself jack jack's probably more involved in some of these.

1:39:22I trusted her as a professional. Yeah, she's got this, just her and her business partner, Tim. I think ultimately you've got to trust experience and some people just have this eye for design and detail that's just completely separate. So, you know, not ashamed to say we have influenced the menu and the food style as an influence on the design in the restaurants. And also, you know, I do think that Fallow was built as a convivial space, which sort of work with our dining style at the same time. But yeah, they're very, very talented people who matched the menu, the food, the feel, the design, all in one sort of coherent place.

1:40:04And I think that's an important lesson for anyone who ultimately you can't do everything yourself. Some people are going to be able to do things so much better than you. And as part of an owner who wants to have control over everything and see every detail, see every piece of crockery, every plate that's ordered, But ultimately, sometimes it's so much better to get a professional in. Who knows exactly how to bring these spaces together? Because they're not easy spaces. Rowe especially is five different... It's fucking massive, isn't it? It's five different rooms. I mean, it seems massive, but it's actually just one massive long strip around a building.

1:40:39So it's a very hard... It's a very, very tricky space to coordinate. The building it's in is amazing. It's huge. It's beautiful. The way it looks. It's like a moron, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. and he's an architect firm and made it. It's a world-class piece of architecture. So we wanted to try and make the restaurant match that. And we built the first ever aeroponic farming system in there. So we have a full-time gardener who looks after that, which is really cool. Why did you do that? What's the why? Because we had a mushroom room. A kebab house coming. It's not easy. Yeah. We had a mushroom. Making duck kebabs or something.

1:41:13We had a mushroom room at Fallow, which was always like, you know. Have you still got that there? Yeah, it's above the pastry section. It's just a little tree house. And then when we thought we'd move to Rowe, we'd do something new and exciting. So we worked with a few other people on this design. A guy called Elliot from Urban Farmer was the guy who provided the technology. And yeah, it's a fantastic opportunity because Canary Wharf has this, obviously, well, quite rightly, it's a reputation of being very industrial and built up. and the idea that we can put in a little bit of like you know life and a little bit of cultivation in there was a really i thought a really profound thing so the chefs all get involved in helping there we've got gardeners we do get some produce off the wall we get lots of micro herbs and stuff like that but more importantly i think it serves as a tool to you know make people realize where the food grows and and like the journey that it takes from from It's like everything is marketing.

1:42:11I didn't view the guy who did green and blacks and course and press. I don't know if you've seen the rhubarb drinks. They got the kids range as well. They interviewed him last week and he was like, everything is marketing. So it's like you go through your P &L and it's like, it could be as you, like the not using like carving your sponge rolls. It's not sponge rolls. Are this what they're called? Yeah. Sponge rolls. So I'm thinking of like Victoria's sponge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm an absolute noob on this. And the blue roll is like, that is, as much as it's a cost reduction, it's like, that's marketing to your team because it invigorates the sort of the conscience bit.

1:42:48But then you can put it on YouTube and it just spreads throughout the whole... You've got to bring it back to what our... We are a restaurant. Our job is to serve food. And all of these other things, they just serve alongside it to keep us doing what we love doing and what we're there to do. The marketing gets people in. it keeps the restaurant open it keeps it afloat it's all about transparency to help get people into the restaurant so we can do what we love doing which is serve them they're coming to the restaurant to serve to eat and drink and all these little things we're doing it's just all to compliment that how does the because it's is it conscious conscious conscious yeah so I'm getting confused here conscious I get to some place not say things conscious how does that inform the creativity like in terms of what yeah so I mean I think that's your two pillars isn't it yeah we were very like at the beginning we were very we used the word sustainable but i think everyone else started using it and it's kind of lost like when all the big banks started saying that they were sustainable yeah a load of plants planting a couple of trees somewhere or or a bit of carbon offset like we we we didn't feel like it was appropriate to keep saying the word sustainable because like we b cups you know we went through a b cup certification and we do really genuinely passionately care about it we always have um i'd our proudest dishes are all the ones that have that deeply rooted sustainable sort of mantra running through them um i think for me it's cod's head um i thought i find it incredible that you can get something that um like we created a supply chain for the for the cod's head because when we first got it it was trim now we get it as a direct product from the ships and it comes it we never know how much is going to come in which is an absolute pain in the ass but um like it can it It depends on what they've landed.

1:44:34And, you know, they still land a lot of cod. So we get them from different ships all over the place. We pay for them now, whereas we didn't before. So it means that it's actually, you know, a food source, which is now well and truly in the system. And other people are using it as well, which is, you know, a really positive thing, I think. Not that we were the first people to use fish heads, but like cod heads on that scale, we take a ton a week. so 100 % it's created a it's created a market for that um I think for me um I think it's always about one thing that happens now quite like the banana dish at row did you did you taste that it's unreal so that was um but that was one of those things where um uh Alexandra hat just for listeners like that is just describe because it looks like a banana yeah it's a banana parfait with a beautiful like fresh banana jam inside and it's served with the banana skin and a Nesquik banana caramel because it didn't have enough like fake banana flavour.

1:45:31So we made it a bit more like Nesquik-y. It's my favourite dish on all of the menus. And I love that dish because it took us two and a half years. It was on the original fallow menu as a banana split. Right. We never managed to make the skin edible. And then... Was that... How come? It's just too hard to make it taste good. we're never going to put something on just because it's sustainable like some places this is foraged or this is great it always has to taste banging otherwise it still won't go on the menus just because it's a sustainable product but this banana dish, Alex had said to us from Premier, if you find a use for bananas we can supply you with basically any, it's the biggest waste product bananas and bread the biggest domestic waste product we can we can we can supply you with black bananas green bananas any banana you want wonky bananas two big bananas um so she said we can get you can make a load of money off bananas if you can get create a dish for it and that's what stimulated a two-year process of trying to get the skin edible enough to serve on the dessert and use the entire banana as our signature dish um and eventually jiao our executive pastry chef Like he cured it in sugar for a sugar syrup, like infused with vanilla for two weeks.

1:46:56And then it completely breaks it down, scraped it down, like flash fried it, 170 and then refried it and dried it. And it's like, it's like a beautiful banana vanilla crisp. So yeah, that's a good example of where it's like, you know, we've taken a product which we knew was surplus, second class bananas from our supplier. we've worked really really hard with that product to get it you know to to the point where it's like absolutely delicious and then we put it on our menu and it you know it makes a good gp but it's also absolutely delicious and it's combating a little bit of food waste as well um it's a win win win you know it's one of those rare one of those situations we strive for i think it's not about the with regards to the food waste and the consciousness is it's not specifically about just what we're utilising on a daily basis.

1:47:46It also goes back to that training and mentoring thing. We have now a hundred chefs who are working with us. It's about, it's our responsibility to give them, to train them. Not for their whole development, but we're definitely impacting on these guys' careers. You know? You're stopping. Feel free to get the restaurant ready. Yeah. Yeah, because I think... We've got a few more things and we'll be done shortly, yeah. Yeah. But you can get rid of all the boxes and the table and stuff like that, the chairs and stack them up. That's all right. You've probably got about 10 minutes left. Just got a few more things I'm dying to ask you.

1:48:23Yeah, sorry, what you're saying? Yeah, no, it's our job. We're trying to just impact some of the stuff that we've learned over the last five years and hand that down to the chefs below us because if all of the chefs that are coming through are thinking about it and doing some of the things that we're doing, it's only going to be better for the food chain and create a more sustainable environment in the hospitality industry as a whole. We're not saying, look at all the difference we've made using all these cod sets. Look at all the difference we've made because it's fucking tiny, right? In the grand scheme of things.

1:48:51But if those 100 chefs can take something from what we're doing and input it and then do the same and then do the same and do the same to all the people that are working with them in the future, that will make a bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger difference longer term. Let's talk about Pierre Kaufman and that kind of heroic kind of dish you created, which went completely nuts. Like, tell me through about what that was like working with him. What did you learn? Well, Pierre has been one of our biggest supporters from when we started. He was like, yeah, it was a crazy moment when I saw him and Richard Vines come in to Heading Street.

1:49:27And it was obviously like, you know, cooking for Pierre Coffman. It was like, this was before, I think even before the, yeah, it was a second lockdown. man um yeah i mean and then he has come back every like for me it's one of the biggest points of pride that he comes to eat in the restaurant because he always says the season is on point um so other people are saying yeah chips are too salty but Pierre loves that yeah but he's um he's that three-way machine yeah he likes chef he likes chef seasoning um so yeah i think he likes the you know bold flavors and um he's also like he's just a fantastic um anyone who's met Pierre knows he's like he's a he's very passionate about the next generation coming through um which is just an amazing thing to see like he's still obviously really switched on active and he always leaves like he'll always give you one little pointer after his meal that what are some of those um like the suet pastry that we made on one of our original desserts was was too coarse and it was too overworked the cheese board on the last time was cold so there's always like a little thing that he'll give us a pointer to work on and with the chicken head pie it was exactly the same we went through like a development process with him but what was so like in Gascony where Pierre comes from like the idea of doing the stuff chicken head or duck's neck or something like that is just not foreign at all it's like Pierre ate the chicken head and then like took apart the beak and there's just like a neat little pile of bones left.

1:50:58So like he does live and breathe that, like the trotter is that dish because like he is that chef. He does relish in using the whole animal and different ways. So to be honest, it's one of the biggest points of pride in my career is collaborating with him, to be quite honest. Really? He's just a legend. He's just such a good guy. And who are some others who have, like obviously you work with Ash, like who are some other people that have, because what I'm trying to understand is you've got this, you're trying to bring people through but who sort of helps you and have you taken those little nuggets of and then you can sort of you know be the conduit to pass it on to the next wave of restaurateurs that's a right can you please comment your dad slim pickings for me I only worked at dinner so full transparency I've had one four and a half Four and a half days at dinner, which was Ashley.

1:51:56What was that like, though? What did you learn from Ashley? The thing is, by the time... Systems. When we were there, the issue was like, it was so... Set up. It was so well set up at dinner that you're learning the system. And I think that probably is formulaic in its approach. And what I appreciated was the consistency and the attention to detail. What are some of those systems? Oh, it's unbelievable. Just like the checking process, the signing, thinking recipes off. You know, I'd never seen that before. You know, you make something, you take it to your senior chef on duty to get it checked, you know, sign off the quality effectively.

1:52:37But I'd never seen that before. It's probably pretty standard around most high-end restaurants, but I hadn't worked in a restaurant of that caliber before. And it's about understanding why they're going through the process. And actually, I think somewhere like that, you have to work there for a good amount of time to fully understand why they're doing things rather than just be oh that's shit why have I got to do this and just trying to get around it you've got to fully embrace it make a cheese sauce you have to get the roux checked so you have to get the the pre like colored stage of the roux and make sure there's the right consistency you'd be running around a cup with a cup with a little plastic spoon to try and find a sous chef and it's a big old hotel and then you'll get the cheese um you'll get it checked again when you've added the cheese and the ultra tax and then you'll get the finishing check at the end.

1:53:20And then it gets tasted again before service. And then it gets tasted again before it goes out to the customer. So you're talking like five levels of checks. And I did... And what would you guys do now? Well, we do a check every day religiously of everything that's on the last. So that's five before it's even got... But with dinner, it was so vigorous and so... The thing is, you're taking what you're learning and you're applying it to your own style. Like for us, like now it's like... Now we're obviously... We're mature and we look, we've got different time restraints and whatever. but now it's very much like someone brings something to me I'm like what do you think chef?

1:53:53You know because it's like How are you? What do you think? I'm trying to get into it You're bringing me this little cup and it's got I don't know let's just say I've got my gravy for Sunday in here and it's got a little whatever and they're like chef can you taste this? And I take it and guarantee nine times out of ten they haven't tried it themselves so it's about being like what do you think? What do you think it needs? And they trace it and they go oh I think it needs some salt and you go there you go you've already answered your own question before coming to me so it's about empowering them to develop their own skill set and i'm merely we are the other sous chefs the other head chefs whoever it may be we're merely there to guide them and make them better and mentor them but it's taking that and learning and then you get inspired by them uh opening that window for creativity that if those are the guys i'm not the one doing all the prep anymore you know we have too many chefs like i can't control every single thing so you rely on their their knowledge and their skill set and their passion to ask the question sometimes.

1:54:49And sometimes by someone with no experience or limited experience, asking a question that might seem so basic about a preparation, you can sometimes develop that. Yeah, I believe the smart answer lies in the dumb question. It's just so many people are scared to ask dumb questions. What are some questions that you like other than how are you? Some of them aren't necessarily dumb, but one that blew my mind recently is, this might be normal to other people but I'd never seen before. We've always made, we make mushy parfait, you know one of the most popular dishes in the restaurant make a fucking numeric shit ton of it we've always done it in a bog standard classic parfait way which is into a terrine mould into a bain marie in the oven with foil over the top cook it to whatever temperature it needs to go to and then take it out and then we had one of the junior sous chefs working with us recently and he was like why are you doing it like that like I've always done it like this can we try that and I was like all you do is you basically pour it into a tray and steam it And I was like, we were like, yeah, try it.

1:55:47And it was like absolutely perfect. I was like, why the fuck has no one else ever thought of that? So you can get inspiration, you can learn, you can develop from within the team. It's like bottom up leadership. I think that the other one, which the Devonshire did, is like they were doing shots. They don't serve shots at the Devonshire. And he was like, Osh was like, I think it was almost like, why the fuck? Every time we do a shot, everyone's absolutely off their nut. and it kind of ruins the slow, getting pissed up sort of vibe. So they just don't do it, but that's a bottom-up thing. And I think it's, as you say, it's like with the mushroom parfait, it's like, well, let's just steam it.

1:56:23Any other of those little nuggets? Quite often you get things done by people doing something wrong. And you might be like, what the fuck have you done to that? It's quite nice, eh? I'm trying to think of what I've done with it, but it does happen regularly. Like, you might mix two sauces together by accident. You'd be like, what have you done? it's really delicious but what the fuck is it? Yeah, yeah. That's not on the menu. Quite another thing, lads. There's been absolute joy. But yeah, so you both got kids. I'm right in saying that, yeah? Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. How's that sort of changed the way you've sort of approached things especially with the sort of the creativity, conscious, consciousness, whatever the fuck it is, consciousness.

1:57:04I've got kids is, well, I've got three now so I've got a three-year-old one and a half year old and a five month old so it's it's pretty intense that's mental I think the thing is for me it's like when you're doing all this my work is like I say it to Charlotte when I leave the house in the morning she's like well you've got to work all day I'm like it's pretty tough you know and she's like it's nowhere near as tough as what I'm doing today so like for me sometimes when I'm leaving the house I'm like you know it's just like a different hat and then every single day off is just absolute carnage yeah yeah yeah in a great way it's funny that he spent We're busy, but we're happy, you know?

1:57:39I always find it weird, like, you spend your whole life growing up, right? You're in your 20s. You're like, all you want to do is grow up. You're getting more professional. You're getting more serious. And then you have a kid. Then you start acting like a child again. Oh, really? Yeah. You come at home like, hey, man, how's it going? Then you come to work. It's like, right, what are you doing with that? Come on, you've got to be serious now. Service, table 32. It's like a yo-yo of emotions. Different hats, yeah. You just get very... But you do get much more efficient with your time. That's for sure.

1:58:02I can achieve what I used to achieve

1:58:09because I think what I don't know who I interviewed but someone's like the creative adults are like basically just kids that didn't grow up because you know you've just got like I've got little cousins they're just so curious they're like trying to fucking pull at staff and all that has that having kids like changed your kind of creativity or like curiosity if I'm honest with you yeah so it hasn't changed my work life that much to be honest no no I mean look I think I definitely have calmed down a little bit since I've had a kid like it just since I've had kids because it does give you a different perspective on what you're pushing for.

1:58:41And I think... How's that changed then? It's just changed. I mean, to be honest, like, I'd find myself getting stressed out about things I couldn't control. And I'd find myself, yeah, overthinking situations. And ultimately, like, as soon as you've had a kid, you have this slight just switch in alteration of perception. Yeah, you realise there's more to life. They're the most important... Than just getting in for 7am. They're the most important things in your life. Well, fuck it. that was one final question is what my mom was like you gotta ask this uh why is it called fallow and row like what's the you've taken out that well the name So when we did the cooking competition, you had to have a name I believe right I can't remember this was a long time ago so we used to we used to both live in Brixton literally randomly on the same street in Brixton completely coincidentally it wasn't planned so there used to be a coffee shop at the end of the road and like on days off we'd just go and sit in this coffee shop and like look at plates it actually came from right menus and what not and like just vibe yeah we'd just be vibing basically customer list like talking about where we might open a restaurant not a fucking clue what we were doing sure but my my parents used to have a restaurant called The Circus.

1:59:53The Circus. The Circus. It was in Bath. What a great name, yeah. And so I was always like, I'd love to have a restaurant called The Circus. And we'd go away, we'd brainstorming names. It's pretty hard to just come up with a name for a restaurant. So the other name for the restaurant, it was, Will just went away. We all had lists, we had lists of names in notebooks, whatever, loads of shit ones. What are some of those other names you can remember? I can't remember. The one I remember was Bread and Circuses. Was it Bread? Bread and Circuses. And Circuses. What does it mean? It's a reference to the...

2:00:23It's a line from Herodotus. It's like how you run the empire. It's a reference to holding games and making sure people are well fed. It's from Romans. That was one name. And then the other name, and then I can't remember what else was on the shortlist, but Fallow was the other. But the reason we went for Fallow was because of the Fallow year. Leaving the land to replenish and regrow. It came from a book. Gibbon's History of the Roman Empire. It came from the glossary of terminology in the back of that book. And it was, the name fallow originally came from the farming calendar. So you have a fallow year.

2:01:02And it was about like what, when we were speaking about it, when we were sort of conceptualizing the concept, it was, you know, it was ingredient led, importantly, by a company called Food Chain, who had launched something called Feast Furley, which was all about like surplus produce. So it was definitely the idea of using, you know, products a little bit more sparingly and thinking about things in a slightly slower way. So like more seasonally, more, you know, that was the focus. But then... I remember just looking on Google and just like typing in words related to sustainability and like looking up names, like what sounds cool.

2:01:37Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. We were just looking everywhere for names. But then, yeah, but we didn't, the deer term didn't even cross our minds. Ages. And then I suppose Rose is because... Well, during lockdown, there was a massive explosion in deer population in row and fallow deer. And people started offering us fallow deer for£3.20 a kilo. So we just started taking fallow deer every week. We'd be breaking them down whilst, like... I remember, like, you were breaking one down and, like, a bunch of vegetarians walked... I came back to the table like this. Walked in on the table. We used to just clean film the whole table.

2:02:09And it was literally like this. This was the size of Head & Strip. I was in the corner, and then they were like, what the fuck is this? But then it wasn't until we actually got the deer. we were like oh this is a fallow deer we're called fallow but then it's actually like it's actually a like sustainable superfood and you know we've been shooting fallow deers ourselves and again free roll question here what's the difference between a fallow deer and like a it's just a different type yeah fallow was brought over by like the Normans so it's like an invasive it's more of an invasive but you've got roe deer which is the like native British breed and fallow deer which came over on the Norman with the Normans and then you've got like Muntjac and stuff which came from the Empire yeah and there was not that many they're all slightly different that many types of deer yeah red deer roe deer people don't talk about seasonality but like fallows are normally like best in in the summer and then there's certain periods in time where you won't eat fallow deer because when they're in when they're reproducing they produce toxins that can be like slightly harmful so there's a big like seasonal calendar of deer meat which Mike at Deerbox sort of advises us on and talks us through.

2:03:17But yeah, we fundamentally use it as the main source of protein in all of our restaurants because it's sustainable. It's absolutely delicious. It's super lean, you know, and it's very, very good value. And fundamentally, I think everyone should be eating more of it, you know, if they can get their hands on it. A good company is Deerbox, who we use. Let's wrap that up. You guys are getting a very busy restaurant. I've absolutely loved that. I think it's what I learned from you guys is that almost everything is marketing. and you can just pull everything through and it's been a joy. So cheers, lads.

2:03:48Thank you, mate. Cheers. Thank you so much.

2:03:55Thank 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 points 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.

2:04:28Thank you so much.