How Black Bear Burger Use Behavioural Economics to WIPE OUT Five Guys & Shack Shack

39:58How you do one thing is how you do everything. That's what someone taught me. It's like, yeah, how you do one thing is how you do everything. And as I say, it's work, because I'm talking about it on the podcast. Yeah. It's like, you know, not that I wasn't hanging around there or anything, being naughty. but the yeah it's a talking point and it's also hilarious it's like oh there's a bed yeah brilliant yeah so what were the darkest days in the woods of the journey definitely in the street food days and how long was that period about a year year and a half or so yeah just doing it every weekend and obviously when you start it's excitement it's like this new thing and to be fair all of our mates used to come down every weekend anyway because Broadway Market there's loads of pubs there as well generally we would try and do it so that we'd sell out at about half four and then take all our cash and go to the pub.

40:51It was quite fun. Good cash flow.

40:57But there was like, summer's great and then you get to the winter, loads of traders kind of pack up and go home. We were like, we'll all stay because we don't want to lose our spot and people come down regularly so we just want to kind of keep that consistency. and like we would just get there at like the coldest morning like freeze and get set up and then sell like 30 burgers and have a load of leftover stock and you're like why the fuck are we still doing this like what's the point and we've had like conversations about that um like because it was just me and Liz we're like do we keep doing this or like what's the bigger picture but we always our aim was always to open a restaurant and we knew that if we tried to do that off the bat one, we had no money two, we didn't really have that much experience so we knew we would probably fail if we did it so we were like, how can we step and stone it?

41:57how can we step and stone our way into a restaurant? so when you do have those shit days it's you have to look at the bigger picture and be like alright it's shit this week but we're getting our name out there we're making our way on this journey of trying to get into a restaurant and how did you what did you

42:20how did you keep that because I get it I do be with the cups I fucked it off after two goes I'm not doing that shit how did you

42:35like how did you tap into the bigger vision to pull you through those pull you out the woods yeah I don't know really I guess I think both failure isn't in people but you just when you've got kind of like a vision you're like we're gonna we'll one day like open a restaurant it's in those early days it's just like you're just gunning for it you're just like it's exciting and it's you might have one shit week but next week you come back and you sell out early and you're like we're back baby um and it's like it just it's ups and downs and as long as you can kind of ride the down to get back to the the ups it's um it's like staying at even even kilter yeah it's like it's like having an even kilter throughout yeah um without it yeah like almost not taking taking the not getting too carried away with the winds yeah getting too bogged down with the with the slow weeks i think we were probably quite lucky that we had kind of quite regular progressions if that makes sense so after doing the uh broadway market for a while we then started kind of this when street feast was like um i really still like massively popular and well it was open um street feast street feast yeah so it was like shoreditch which dinorama was that dinorama yeah that gone now isn't it it's gone yeah so what happened with that i think mainly covid so jd who ran it he was great actually throughout covid in terms of being a voice of hospitality um and i feel for him because his like all of street feast basically just died through covid yeah it's a massive casualty of that but back in the day those places were they were like the originators of food halls um but more like street food based food halls um and we kind of got approached on them they came try the food and then they had one in canada water hawker house so we kind of did some residencies with them so kind of each every maybe six months there was a new like another like rung up the ladder so there was always a bit of progression going from like proper street food to then street food that's indoors so like we actually had like a permanent kitchen and stuff like that and then from there we then did a couple of like things with curb on events and then we managed to get into box park and then that was a seven day that's when we quit our jobs and we're like right let's fucking go for it talk me because i think if you roger wade on the podcast actually like one of the early early days it was quite funny because he said he said i'm not actually a foodie yeah yeah well he was retail he was um that's how he said it yeah he was a genius of like why don't we just turn the shipping containers into the fucking thing yeah that's so clever but yeah so talk because i because we talked about this kind of crossroads moment uh whereby you're you've got the the green light for to go to canada that you get the keys to box park yeah literally the same day literally the same day talk me talk me through the the decision process you and liz are going through like the ums and the ahring of that because i think everyone gets the sliding doors moment it's like do you go left do you go right yeah well we were kind of we were applying for residency for like it took a couple years i think in the end to actually get that residency through and in that time we had started doing the street food and that kind of been going on in the background and when we'd we'd obviously signed the lease and so it was like it was a no-brainer we were like right well let's you actually have five years on your permanent residency yeah and you have to be there for two i think or three out of five so we're like let's just go with um uh black bear see where it takes us if it cans in the first like year we'll fuck up to Canada it's fine so um but yeah it was it was very much uh uh I was I'm always like the one that's a little bit more cautious Liz was like she was like fucking quit your job already I was like but what about what if we don't get it and then when we actually finally got the contract she'd already quit her job she's like I'm fucking second in I'll go and look at look for a site and stuff she actually got us into Box Park as well how did she get you into yeah because I read some of you guys blagged your way in yeah absolutely yeah so tell me about that it was I think it was Burger Bear who like Burger Bear Burger Bear Tom who used to have like burger restaurants in London and I think he got it initially before us and because we went through a process where they were coming to try our food at the the Broadway market because we applied to go in there because they wanted a burger trader Also, I think people don't understand how hard it is to get into these street food places.

47:16Oh, yeah. Box Bar, they basically said no because we didn't have any experience. We were too small. We were just two days a week. And to be honest, I'd probably say the same thing. So we didn't know anything. But we kind of blagged. We were like, yeah, we do. And they gave it to this other company. But, but, but. I'm pretty sure it's, I know, it's quite, Burger Bear Tom.

47:40Fucking hell. too many fucking bears yeah and they were in and we were like we were kind of going into shortest world time anyway and like going to box park as customers there were still like sticks on the door like burger traders obviously nothing was going on there so we kept the same as we did in broying market kept messaging the letting agent or messaging Gersh her name was from box park saying come on nothing's happening and we can go like give us a lease we'll do it and then obviously something must have happened with those other guys same thing they must just say we can send you over the contract if you can like open them the next like three four weeks and we were like yep sweet so that day got the contract signed it went and spoke to my boss and was like I'm quitting give my mum's notice and they were like what?

48:34Steve Burgers that's amazing what story? I remember my boss was she's like head of like an oil trading desk so you got into like this finance yeah I started in like finance and like in for for Shell in the trading side and then I went into kind of like the analysis like market analysis so it's a very good job yeah and then it was like I kind of progressed and then went over to Chevron and was working on the trading desk as like an analyst there and then I wanted to go into trading that was kind of my I get asked this by a lot of people who listen to the pod who are like um i'm in i love food i want to get into food i'm in yeah you know cushy kind of corporate job pays the bills go on next holidays how taking that leap seems like a yeah a huge like how the hell do i do this is there anything you could say to people who are on that on the precipice of jumping in on their dream yeah well i think the way we did it was like testing the water yeah yeah okay um we were like we kept our jobs um and just did it on the side so did it the weekends at street food market i think anybody that's looking to test out an idea of opening a restaurant doing street food first is i would always recommend that because you get instant feedback from people so like if someone doesn't like your burger or if you're starting something else up you can see it because they take it away and they'll bite if they go fucking here's a piece of shit then you're like all right something's wrong street food's a bit like the comedy of uh i was listening to a podcast about comedy as in like comedy what's so valuable about comedy versus like uh is you comedian rice joke yeah puts up on stage there's a hundred people in the room or 50 people in the room yeah they either laugh or they don't yeah with street food they they they either eat it or they don't whereas a restaurant's probably a bit more like a film where you can hide behind the music hide behind the ambiance do you know what I mean?

50:34I think that's really valuable I didn't think of that it's almost like comedy it's a really good way to describe it you're putting yourself on a stage to be judged and you're seeing that being critiqued straight away did you have anyone throw anything away? no I don't know I remember just the fucking gazebo was flying away that's the only fucking thing um but no like you we actually had um we had loads like supplies when we first started like our bakery because they would be like one week because we're only ordering once a week and a small volume they would literally leave them like outside our front door and like they'd deliver like 4 a.m and people would come back from a night out come into like because it's in like an apartment thing see like bread on the floor and like nick buns out of it so yeah it's mad long um but like we because we're only in order once a week they're sometimes massive and we're small and big so loads of issues like that but um talk to me about the bung because you double seeded double both we we do um yeah it's kind of it's rolled in sesame seeds so like but not just the top of the bottom as well some of the bottom is yes it's just a heavy roll because that's my mate razz is like that he's got he's got like he's got like he speaks really is that he's that but I've double sesame sesame persuasion it's because it's because you kind of you roll it so basically they kind of prove them once and then there's literally a big tub of sesame seeds yeah and they get kind of basically rolled in there and when you do that it gets all around the whole bun so it's on the bottom bun and the top bun as well it kind of varies a little bit but yeah and then we'll get back we need to talk about the beef brisket one because this is otherworldly good mate but but so you're in box park you've plugged your way in there what are the steps you take to then opening your first restaurant because that's that's almost the next yeah that was big so it was it's basically another year of us me and liz kind of literally seven days a week in box park just finding our feet all right and it was it would used to be super busy in box park like lunch trade evening trade was it not as busy there anymore uh it's changed a little bit lunch trade isn't as much there i think kind of where from home has changed a little bit of course and then the evenings a little bit more destination we don't have as much churn anymore but um it's busy but not not what used to be um uh yeah first year it's just us kind of just grinding in there and like literally like scratching down the walls because we're there like too long but we were just like i said before just learning the ropes how do you how do you deal with the mental um because resilience is a word that's come up and persistence yeah there's two things i would you know say you know most people don't email the broadway market bloke 10 times yeah you know um how do you deal with the because you are literally in a container and i think a lot of founders feel like their brand is a container well i don't like you know yeah do you know what i mean and it's relentless but it's the price of like growing your dream like how did you deal with literally being in a container seven days a week i think yeah it was it was pretty much um probably give credit to liz actually because like um well the two of us we kind of communicate really well kind of bounce off each other two different personalities i'm i'm much more like kind of reserved and introvert she's quite extrovert um and like she can tell when i'm like exploding and she's like get the fuck out of it going go and get a cocktail somewhere like piss off what does you exploding look like because you see come across just uh i probably like shutting down more just like it's like just quiet and just like glazed over it's just like you're gonna fucking explode um but yeah i don't know really i think it's i think both of our family like our parents have ran their own businesses and stuff like that and like my parents being farmers and stuff they're you kind of i think you pick up a lot from how you're brought up and they're just like just constantly like grinding basically what so what what your parents did they uh they raised beef yeah so it was a used to be dairy then went to beef ages ago after foot and mouth and then they've kind of just kept the diversifying so they still got the beef farm but they do they turned all the cottages into holiday cottages and they did weddings they do like horse liveries that's like horse deliveries horse deliveries so there's like people leave um it's like a stable for your horse you live on a farm and then you come and it's like a home's got horses like a kennel kind of thing yeah horse kennels so they've got I think like 25 stables or something like that so they're constantly just because farming is difficult they're constantly trying to like diversify and change and do other bits and bobs it's interesting because there's a lot I think if you had a few farmers on the or have come from farm backgrounds William Chase is a farmer yeah William Chase did Tyrrell's Crisps okay yeah and then Dashwater I don't know if you know their parents were farmers and there's definitely this just relentless dogged work ethic that I see, that's a common theme from people I've spoken to it's one that you kind of have to balance though, because even now my parents very much are, they're on the farm to get them away from the farm is like you have to drag them away or get a beef brisket burger come here boy

56:04but um it's it's it's like very it's all consuming because there's always stuff going on yes um and then like i find that in in black bear it's just it's constant and like liz has to drag me out and be like just fucking yeah that's one thing i'm asking selfishly actually because i i'm this is all i think about 24 7 yeah like or even i might be thinking about other things but then it'll just bounce back to this of like you know it's yeah it's because i always talk about this thing of like or something i think about is battle versus boredom like as like as a thing because i've done jobs where i've been really bored yeah like trying to sell peanut cups yeah well not that's just more just destroyed but bored where you're just packaging cheese for railways yeah i was like oh my god like the minute goes the seconds go feel like minutes the days feel like the hours for like days so i've done that those jobs before and i was like well you can either have the battle which is super stressful you can have the boredom and i'll always take the battle yeah 100 and i think it's but yeah so how but means that means i'm always thinking about it so how do you kind of separate stew from yeah the craziness it's hard i guess um it's like i feel like now because we've got bigger we've actually got kind of more layers of management in so the day-to-day issues i guess a little bit less but the overriding like the bigger issues are kind of just constantly there like your phone just constantly goes type thing um but i i don't know it's it's a trick it's still something that i'm actually like trying to figure out as well like how to have a nice balance because it does just get you're just constantly in it what are some of the big issues you're facing now like this week um well before you got here that toilet was blocked that was me mate I'm joking I was quite literally a bear in the woods mate so like I'm I still do I'm actually speaking to a company now to because I still even do like maintenance sites like little bits and bobs like the odd job here yeah like so like literally I did actually I blocked that toilet earlier.

58:14That wasn't me, by the way. It was before you go. But because we kind of built every site ourselves and kind of from the ground up, I know every little aspect of it. But I'm just getting a company in now to kind of take over our facility management type thing. But what was the question? So what takes up our time now? What are some of your big problems now? Because as you said, there'll be other people listening to this. I think it's quite cathartic. Like, oh, they're going through this. so unplugging toilets i think it's like i'm trying to focus on the things that really make like move the needle so to speak like because it's so easy to do the things that are kind of easier but are not impactful if you know what i mean so it's like oh um let's try to think oh a fry has gone down here like am i in some reaction is oh i can probably fix that in like an hour I'll go over there and fix it whereas in reality I shouldn't be doing that I should be looking at at least for a new site and what the implication of that is for our future growth or whatever like it's I should be focused on the things that's that's helping to kind of grow the business or develop the team rather than the smaller issues that I shouldn't be spending my time that's the thing i struggle with is is um focusing my attention in the right space all the time yeah someone said to me it's like the impact versus busy zone yeah and it's like so easy to be busy but it's actually so hard to just stop and be like well actually this moves yeah what is the the blackbird needle like where are you trying to get to is it more sites like how do you um we're I guess because we are we're still like completely independent so it's just me and Liz who that's amazing own a member of the business yeah we've been we've done everything we're basically just not taking anything out we're just constantly just any revenue we've created just pulled back in the business to help it grow I think we're kind we want to grow it kind of want to do it organically especially kind of like for the next kind of hopefully a couple more sites sites um and then we don't really have like a set we want to grow to 15 sites or revenue of this or whatever it's kind of more opportunistic led so kind of quite regularly get opportunities that come across us it's like this site's going to be available blah blah and if it's not the right fit we're just like okay how do you work out where a site's going to be a good fix i interviewed in fact i think you know him from great um charlie mcveigh oh yeah yeah yeah so he was talking to me about um the uh oh my god what was the what was the rest uh the pub the chain of pubs he had uh brew house brew yeah brew house he said he opened a site which on paper was you know game set match pass me oranges yeah he's done dullage village east dullage village or dullage whatever yeah like that's gonna work people have got money like apparently it was fucked it just no it didn't work yeah what's the art of picking the right site in your opinion i don't think you ever truly know um i think i think a lot of it's gut i guess i don't like measuring like the uh is there anything practically you can do like the footfall yeah so i take this like for example so ex-off market um this was a dirty burger restaurant um and they kind of closed and maybe even pre-covert but it was closed throughout all COVID and Exxon Market is a really cool location like Alfresco dining in the winter and then inside we've got this cool kind of vibe, basement vibe but it was a burger restaurant before that had failed so it's like if you look at that on paper you're like well why are you going to make it work if it was an Italian restaurant or something like that you could spin it oh it's Italian maybe there's a need for a burger here but a burger restaurant obviously didn't work, closed so I think a lot of it is kind of more gut I think because our offering is probably very different to what Dirty Burger was how so as in because I think because it is interesting how

1:03:05you know kind of like tagline is not your typical burger joint so i kind of view our restaurants as a restaurant that does burgers rather than a burger restaurant so we our burgers are kind of our core things everyone comes because they see our burgers on instagram or someone says you've got to go and try a brisket burger um but when people come here what we try and do is then kind of exceed expectations in every other area so it kind of like our sides there only there's only a few sides they're like four or five sides but every one of them is kind of really well thought out to exceed expectations so like our brisket spring rolls are kind of quite well known for now um completely different dish like it's slow-cooked brisket with cheese and bacon and a little bit pickles in spring roll paper it's like deep fried and then served with pickles on the side and a bit of garlic mayo so kind of a little bit like a brisket burger but in a spring roll format and it's those sorts of things that when people come they try the burger hopefully we kind of wow them with that and then they try one of the sides so like i think our wings are some of the best in london and it's those sorts of things go wow this is like burgers awesome but new spring rolls are cool as well and then yes we do like a little free ice cream at the end of the meal and like the way we fit out the restaurant it's very much a you can come here for a quick lunch or you can come here in the evening with bring a date and kind of have like a nice meal with cocktails and a nice glass of wine as well so it's kind of it is i hate the word elevating because it's such a wanky word but it's kind of taking that burger restaurant but making it more of uh every occasion destination but still at a good price point yeah but yeah but that you've answered my question perfectly is like how did you how did you take a burger place before that wasn't working yeah and then reframe it to make it work you said we're not a burger joint we're not a burger joint in a restaurant we're a restaurant that does burgers i think was what you said yeah but that's that's how it's worked and i think so i want to talk about the sides because I don't think I've ever actually had the...

1:05:19I don't think I've ever made. I'm going to turn into the incredible Hulk, mate. I feel like a glutton right now. But, yeah. So, yeah, because the Honest Burger guys, I don't know if you know them. Yeah, I've followed them, yeah. Yeah, they focus a lot on the chips, which I think is interesting. I always think, how do you stand out versus your competition and stuff? So the relentless focus on the sides is really interesting because it's not something I'd thought about, you know, but it's like, oh, that's what's going to... So you've got the... What are they called? The brisket spring rolls. The brisket spring rolls.

1:05:54Wings. Wings. At the moment, we've got on like a rare bit crumpet. Yeah. So it's like a crumpet with bovril butter, so like a beefy butter. Welsh rare bit on top that would be like blowtorch, comfy garlic and pickled shallots. So it's like all of our sides are kind of designed to be a bit small, a bit snacky sherry. so say if there's a group of four of you you can kind of get a few of them each and share them around what other sides are there? so then we just have like a really fresh slaw that we make fresh to order just for something that's, because everything is pretty fucking heavy and then we do fries so similar to Honest we hand cut our fries double cook them because if we're going to do it there's so many burger places that might spend a load of time developing an awesome burger but then if you're not doing the rest of the menu that same service that you're doing to your burger what's the point yeah it's like it's like having it's like creating a football team and having a great striker but they're not having a great defense yeah yeah the um so with the chicken wings yeah like what's you said they're some of the best and i don't again i can't yeah but they what are they how what's your process to to wings so it's we we use the the middle wing um middle wing so like if if you look at a wing it's got like the drum so like the bit that goes like wider to thinner yeah um then it's got the middle wing which is like there's two bones in it it's like this this bit of your arm so like this is the drum this is the middle wing it's got those two bones and then the other one and then it's got the little tip on the end like the little bit of the wing yeah so we just use this middle bit because for me it's do you have the little that thing on there i think that's really weird the wing tip yeah when people send me wings i don't want i don't want to know it's a chicken yeah it's like when liz eats fish she's like i don't want to know it's a fish it's weird yeah um the head didn't fuck off yeah um so yeah it's just that middle bit and then we have uh the way you cook it is we also get really good quality chicken so that's like the biggest thing same with the beef and then the way we cook it is because we coat it in a lot of the flavours in the breading but we cook it fresh to order there's loads of different techniques you can do of that and we've experimented with all of them but our technique for our wings is a one cook wing at about 170 degrees loads of flavour comes in the batter that's on the outside and getting the right thickness of batter so that the chicken doesn't dry out in the centre and then it's just I'm actually but we we do like a uh probably best-selling wins like a buffalo and blue cheese wing which is like and that's kind of bit of a nod to canada because in the like we we lived in whistler so we were in like ski town and every place does wings and it's always like buffalo wings and they're they're not actually that good there to be honest um but it was when we were like developing it we just had that kind of that reminiscing of like sitting in a ski bar drinking jugs of beer eating chicken wings it's like this life's one of the life's greatest joys yeah but i don't think i've ever done that though but like i've definitely eaten wings been at a ski bar and drunk beer but never all in one here but the um what i want to talk about is 20 foot chicken yeah 20 20 foot fried chicken fried chicken yeah is a lot of people say focus focus focus focus yeah and i think it's really interesting but there's no the whole point of this podcast is there's no right there's any gazillion different ways to do anything right and that's the beauty of everything yeah i think um why did you create a sub-brand called or different brand actually called 20 foot so it was born by 20 foot uh i'll tell that story um so it was born out of um uh lockdown so in lockdown so when you're eating your brisket burger we did uh because we had the whole restaurant empty we basically cleared it out and made another kitchen in the restaurant in brixton so we did fried chicken so we had like had a fryer a toaster in where all the suits were and um basically did two brands on delivery when we were closed for lockdown so it was then it was called black bear fried chicken so it sort of doubled your volume yeah it was it wasn't quite as busy but it was like just an additional thing yeah um so then we did that then post lockdown we kind of kept it on delivery um because it's really the reason we kind of started doing initially was going back to the story where people come into the restaurant they they're getting a beef burger then they try the fried chicken we used to do nuggets which we're trying to bring back uh which basically like pieces of chicken breasts oh this is fucking good um and um everyone used to kind of rave about that and we were like actually we could our chicken fried chicken is so good that we could stand on its own and do its own thing so then opportunity came in market halls we always had in the back of our mind we're like we'd like to launch this kind of fried chicken um sister brand to black bear same sort of ethos in terms of quality and like flavor led dishes but a chicken version and then a site came up with market halls who we were we were trading with and we were like fuck it let's give it a go um and then we didn't want to call it black bread fried chicken because it just wasn't quite right we wanted it to be its own thing that could stand on its own two feet um but the name was oh it's it's quite embarrassing sorry so it's a long story basically there's an episode in alan partridge where um there's this uh he's having ago at farmers and he's like you make pigs smoke and and you've got 20 foot chickens in your in your sheds and it's one me and my brother used to watch we used to laugh about and one of my mates from uni and then i for so i do a bit like painting in the background you do um yeah just at home like um appreciate but um but for my my one of my best mates for my um is my best man we had this joke and I drew him these massive chickens.

1:12:10It's like a painting for his presence, for being my best man. And then we were trying to think of like a name because we didn't want to call it Black Bear Fried Chicken. And it's actually hanging in my house because he went to New York and he was like, I'm not taking that fucking piece of shit with me. So it's in our hallway and I was coming down the stairs and I saw it and I was like, 20 foot fried chicken, perfect. And it's the same logo. So the logo of that is of the painting. Alan Partridge is hilarious. he's got that thing where he's like I'm clinically fed up I feel like that a lot I need to like try and reach out to him and get him to come down to 20 foot because I'm fucking hilarious yeah I mean that program is just because I spend a lot of my time in my car editing a lot of my mates because I listen to the podcast about what I'm driving that's how I kind of edit not like editing it whilst driving and obviously I'm in the car driving to do podcasts, basically, whenever I'm in London.

1:13:10My mates are like, you're basically like David Brent and Alan Partridge in their driving class. You know what I mean? It's like, I'm in the office, mate. Cast a coffee in hand. Yeah, that's amazing. And then so, and then how, one thing I want to talk about is there's a, I'm not going to say who it is, but someone came on, is it in food and has got like a banging um bangy restaurant and he basically said that someone was a customer and then came in and this is now open basically the same i mean i'll tell you afterwards but like yeah i mean they look the fucking same really how do you kind of um how because obviously there's loads of people can come in and try there's so many burger joints yeah like how do you navigate that like not you firstly not copying other people's and like if other people copy you like yeah i think it's it's kind of why we've tried to not just be just about our burgers so like having those extra elements of like the sides that people talk about and stuff like that it's it's kind of like diversifying your offering a little bit but like you said at the beginning there's always like new entries into the market always going to look at what's out there and then kind of do their own iteration on it and there's always going to be another burger brand that's kind of an up-and-coming burger brand that's what we were and i think we still are to an extent um but there's the pie is big enough for everyone i think really right yeah that's a really good way of putting it right it's like i said before everyone loves a fucking burger and if you're in that kind of top uh tier of burgers then you're gonna there's there's enough for everybody to go around but i think that what you've said there about this the size is actually your unfair advantage yeah or that's your defensible thing yeah like it's and it feels um yeah this is i always pull out like the two interesting things i think one of the things is the the you're a restaurant well here specifically you're a restaurant that has sales burgers i think is what you said i can't remember and also actually where people think we're the burgers but actually what our kind of unsung defensible brand yeah is everything else yeah it's it's that's your kind of centerpiece but it's all those other bits around it it's and it's like because we're kind of doing two things we've got the restaurants which is a lot easier to build that individual brand but we're also doing the the food halls and the kind of the quick service restaurant side of things um but i think you can still build your own uh niche in those bits as well what's how how do those food halls i don't really understand how they work because the market was in full and just didn't work like like i don't like what's the nuts and bolts of it i think market was in particular um they've i think they've kind of got their concept right now in terms of I think the fuller one I think is quite small and they need Canary Wharf is the other one right?

1:16:22Canary Wharf Victoria, Oxford Street and you need like you need a big venue with lots of football essentially because there's you need that churn of people going through but they're I think they're really good because they're relatively straightforward to get open. So talking about market halls, they'll basically build most of the structure. Your kitchen's there. You kind of come in and fill it with your equipment. You do your facade. So in terms of capex, it's relatively... Capex. Like cash that you need to get up and running. Yeah, sure, sure. It's relatively low. and it's a bit of a joint piece between them pulling in people with their branding and all the eight traders that are in there all working together to get people through the door so your footfall is generally because it's in a usually in a good location you get really high footfall as well so you don't have typically with like a restaurant you open and then it takes like a few months for people the word to get around there people can try it they go oh that brisket burger was really fucking good and then they tell their mates and you kind of build from there like here it took us um maybe a nine months to really kind of get like into our groove whereas food hall gets is usually pretty busy straight at the back and i think they're i think they're great actually you can work with both things because food halls really serve their purpose it's we purposely have just a menu of burgers you can't get the brisket can you no we well we don't have enough room for because we slow cook it yeah but that's why i'm i was getting eggy because i was like i'm getting the i'm getting the brisket one when i first went with rats yeah and um because we i was flabbergasted that it wasn't on the menu so the kitchens are pretty tight yeah yeah it's pretty small yeah so it's like you can't physically fit enough equipment in there to do your whole menu and also you want to well we if we could add the brisket bag we would on there but also i suppose it drives people to the restaurant because it A little bit.

1:18:26It's like, well, if you like that, come and have the biscuit burger. Yeah, that's smart. Same as though, we don't do our spring rolls on Deliveroo, actually, because one, operationally, it's a bit easier. But two, I want people to come into the restaurant to get a proper, full experience. So not having a full restaurant menu on Deliveroo means that they might try a burger and be like, oh, that's really good. But because people message saying, can you put your spring rolls on Deliveroo? Come to the restaurant, mate. One, the chefs would fucking kill me because they take ages forever. and they'll be like um what talk to me about the the brisket burger like how does you create this thing of so it's so it's kind of like the most of our burgers are usually centered around a class our twist on a classic cheese baker cheeseburger or bacon cheeseburger whereas our brisket burger is a bit more like a meat lovers burger so beef cheese little onions underneath as well and then the brisket is take a whole brisket portion it down sear it off and then slow cook it in beer and beef stock about 12 hours then drain off that braising liquid make a sauce out of that and then the brisket we pull and then add a load of the little bits and bobs into it portion it down and then for service we basically reheat that up with the cooking juices and it goes on top of the burger and then some pickles some pickled red onions just cut through oh my god yeah it's it's it's it's insane how do you keep the quality with um on deliveroo so i remember someone actually it was roger from box oh yeah yeah he went he went um ham not ham yeah he went in on de shum saying that the the quality of his casa wasn't as good yeah on deliveroo and he was like you're quite it can be it's actually brand um not damage into the brand yeah brand brand aside in some respects in that it's like killing off the brand but so how do you navigate that between getting your burger to like a couple things we do it so we're now like over the years we've kind of progressively done kind of more and more on delivery and we kind of build it into when we designed this place we have when you walk out you'll see there's a little hot holding cabinet at the front so under where the till is and that's where once we cook the burgers we bag it up it goes in there and it keeps it warm because typically there's always like three to five minutes between the driver getting here and actually getting the food and then just gets cold so we try and put in processes which means that we can actually deliver the best quality as we can then also things like the packaging so we have like our own branded bags that's like a really nice thick quality bags we're trying to emulate the quality of our restaurant we're trying to send it to their home as well yes and we have um there's like qr codes on our delivery bags and on our website as well which basically talks about fries because we spend a lot of time sourcing the right potatoes cutting them washing them cooking them twice and then you stick them in a bag and they get delivered 50 minutes down the road and they come out soggy and people we used to get so many complaints about cold fries and then we we put flies in we've got the qr code on there and you basically scan it and it says next time you get your delivery your cold your fries are probably cold sorry but next time do this and it gives like instructions of how you like heat the oven when the ride is x amount away and then instructions of what to do when it gets back and it's like a five minute process if that so that as soon as you get a delivery you put it in and it it changes it's basically educates customers saying look we we physically there's no way we can get you hot and crispy but if you do this it's gonna you need a tiny bit more work but you can have pretty much the same experience you get in the house you know some complaints will be false your fries are crispy mate no but that's genius in terms of um of like pre pre well one it's beautiful because it's a great touch point in terms of storytelling on using everything yeah the guys with this morning perry is genius he came up with this term called pack for tising which is how you turn your packaging into advertising yeah or and or storytelling so that you've turned what is a uh a delivery bag into a piece of storytelling you've created you've used that as a vehicle to create this energy of warmth and and kind of warm house canadian hospitality but then the the qr code to to preheat your chip i just think that's it's so clever how to like just to say your chips are probably going to be cold yeah it says like on the top of our fire it says fucking fries basically and it's like you're probably eating some of your chips right now um and then it just like goes into the information and when we started doing that the amount of um complaints we got about cold fries just dropped completely off because it's you then kind of it's that educational piece and it's like we we're sorry we can't do it but here's a way around it are there any other moments where you've had like big complaints or one of the questions i always ask guests is the obstacle is the way so like you know there's that there's a book called the obstacle is the way which is like it's um basically we'll have like an obstacle and actually retrospectively it's a way forward yeah on your journey is there been any of any of like some some obstacles where you're just like oh um that actually you're like oh that that was the way forward i guess well you could say covid right and yes like how if there wasn't COVID we wouldn't have 20 foot fried chicken because it and also kind of what I was just speaking about on the delivery side of things like it reframed our mind of being

1:24:27delivery used to be something just on the side it was like focus on your in-house sales and then this is just like a thing that's on in the background and then COVID hit and then like delivery sales kind of really grew because everyone was getting delivery and then that's then turned into a okay right well now every site that we open how can we one how can we make that experience as good as possible and how can we build it into new sites so that a site that might not look work on paper if you add an element of delivery onto it as well it kind of changes the metrics interesting what are the splits between uh uh like deliveroo and and burger sales it yeah but in-house yeah yeah yeah so it varies by uh by site quite a lot yeah um but it can get as high as like 45 50 percent at some sites like it's like some of the sites it's like a core part of the thing other sites it's so like canary we don't do any because well actually the landlords not market halls their landlords don't allow us to um but yeah and other sites like here it's quite high but not nowhere near those um those 40 percent so it it varies site by site kind of kitchen by kitchen but whenever we're looking at potential new site it's in it's never going to go away and you've kind of got to lean into it you can't kind of fight it yeah yeah and if you can set up your operation where you can still do all of your in-house but also do those that delivery on top of it it means your labor's not really you're not adding any additional labor costs and you but you can still do additional volume so and then what's the uh because i've interviewed there's a restaurant you know that david bowie pub yeah that david bowie pub but it's not that it's always called the cartford in but there's a but they were basically saying to me like hospitality right now is with the they were fighting for like a vat reduction obviously cost of living cost of pricing going up cost of rent going up like a lot of people have said it's like it's really hard how are you navigating and making that or trying to make that work in these times it's i always try and have like a positive out on most things which is generally in life and it's um to be honest since we've started we've never really had a we don't really know any different to be honest like we started like when we opened brixton we opened that we were open about a month before covid hit so we've been constantly in this either covidy or brexit or cost of living correct this has just been one after ever so it's kind of the norm for us so we don't know what it was like before when it was probably a lot easier but i mean this last kind of year or two you you have to be annoyingly like laser focused on every bit of your margin which you probably didn't need to four or five years ago it was like you just open your prices aren't changing you set your price and it's just like yeah cool like we'll make this margin but it's busy enough to it's kind of what's the not for not like what's the standard margin requirement for most burger restaurants you think kind of varies i think like i think somewhere at like 70 75 i think yeah um a percent like a gross margin for its profit margin um and but it's been every month it's kind of just kind of get like knocked down then you just have to kind of like tweak things and change things around to try and try and get back to something sensible but it's i think in general in the i think in the casual dining sector it's fairly positive I think like most of our sites are trading pretty well at the moment there's a few which kind of fluctuate in between kind of good and bad but I think with our sort of price point and our offering it's something which people can afford and kind of come back a couple times a month and do I think the kind of more premium end of the market is where people are probably a little bit more like oh i can't really afford to go out to that restaurant tonight that's like a bit too much out my price range where i think our sector and like the food tools i think why they're doing so well at the moment is you can go with like a group of six or eight of you and say if there's a couple people in the group that don't have the disposal cash as anybody else they can just go and get something that's like a little bit less indulgent yeah it's a bit unfair yeah sat there with a Kit Kat whilst your mate's smashing out a yeah you can have a Kit Kat because you're skin yeah you can have one of my chips we're like it I know what you mean though yeah yeah I'm just I'm just visiting like eight eight blokes night out there's like eight seven geezers smashing into a burger then there's the guy on the end eating a Kit Kat you alright mate yeah you alright nice yeah have a break mate yeah that's hilarious i think so when i worked in kanea wharf um like back in the day this uh this is pre-burgers so because i worked at chevron which is over there and it was like say there's a group of you like like six or eight of you like you've got people that are junior like myself and then like some of the big ones they're like oh let's go to fucking uh sticks and sushi or let's go here for lunch and you're walking there over there going uh is this going to be on the company card or are we going to pay for this and it's like whereas if you're going to like a food hall it's like all right everyone can get their own thing and it's pretty kind of democratized the access to food um which is really interesting and also i think it's what the arcade ones and i've been to the arcade one in uh battersea i've been to both actually yeah i haven't been to the batter yeah yeah the bassy one's sick but um what i i was like your access to a whole you you can go there and yeah they've done a different way haven't they they've kind of yeah so sit down it's like a food hall restaurant yeah food hall restaurant but what i think that's really interesting is more people are going to be get access to food because it's like instead of saying right i'm going to a korean uh restaurant tonight like where my whole meal is going to be korean you can go there and get right a korean starter yeah and you can get your spag bowl one if they do spag bowl there it's like you can get your manna burgers there so you can get a burger there yes yeah but it means more people are trying more kind of interesting foods i think the food scene in london over i think it was like 2011 was this tipping point where it just i think it was the social media um more people like yourself like beginning to think well i can actually have a career of food what are some of the restaurants like it's exploding like the food scene here is insane what are some of the restaurants that really um like weird restaurants that excite you or like do you where do you venture out um well i've always got a list of places i want to go and then i never fucking go because uh actually one i went to recently was um uh what's it called oma which is that david carter so he guided smokestack um oh that's delicious he's um yeah is that so good smoke sack yeah yeah so he's he's got a smoke sack and then they did Manteca which he did with another guy yeah and so we went and had his food at Omo it's like a Greek they've got two so Omo's on the top and then I can't it's Agora I think it's underneath which is more kind of casual dining underneath and a little bit more fine dining well not fine dining but a bit elevated above went and had food there the other way that was awesome it was really good what did you have it was we had some like octopus skewers with smoked sausage um and then loads like dips and the little flatbreads they make oh they're so good dips and flatbreads i've always thought about um there should be someone like you know the crisps board is so much better yeah yeah uh 3ds yeah yeah 3ds and boogles they're my favorite yeah the crisps i always think this is a rory sutherland thing it's like crisps board tastes better because you're by the sea yeah but i really think there should there should be a business where you do dips and crisps and there was there was one in um really um i've it's probably shut to be honest it's a bit of a it was in soho i'm pretty sure it was like uh like fresh made crisps and you just literally get loads of dips on it oh that's hilarious but yeah no i'm pretty sure that i've i've i've got money that's closed subscription service so like oh yeah it's in you know like for families i mean it's probably shit idea but as i'm like you know maybe i'm the only customer but it's like each month you get four different flavors of crisps around the world oh yeah four different dips and then to be fair i would i would get that yeah but it has to well there's only there's ones i love which it's from my childhood whenever we when we're young we used to go on holiday to like spain or grand connect except for my uncle lips we always used to go there and there was these i think we can get them here now they're called 3ds they're like little volcano shaped crisps yeah whenever we go there like me and my brothers always text each other and go like the picture of these crisps we're like also yeah what they did in costa rica which is was mindfuck is um it wasn't that much for mindfuck it's that they would have um they'd have like three different flavors in one bag so like imagine having like okay so imagine that can't work imagine having like let me twiglets prawn cocktail and skips all in one bag, which was, I was eating it thinking this is so fucking rank.

1:34:17That is, that's so strange. I know, but I was like, I just want some Les Hamans, you know what I mean? They're so delicious. Yeah, so you've been there. What are the other like kind of restaurants that you're taking inspiration from that isn't a burger chain? Because I think the beauty of London is you can kind of be like an octopus and just really like get loads of different, as you were saying, like the reason you like this podcast is because you can get little ideas from everywhere yeah where do you go to get those ideas physically i think um i'm trying to think really um i guess like operators so somewhere like flat iron which i think i've just got such a cool business model like to be able to replicate something like they do i'd love to be able to do what's that because i interviewed australia lodgers from the devonshire yeah and his business partner is charlie yeah what and then i actually interviewed libby from pipe who did they're one who sold it oh right okay which was she was really interesting and she they've both basically what is that what's the genius of their operation well it's just i remember when it first opened and it was just like how has no one ever thought this before like the a flat iron stake that's like a tenner that you can just go like there queues out the door everywhere it was like that's such a good idea because every other steakhouse is so kind of uh unattainable on a regular visit like if you're going to drop 50 60 quid at least every time you go to a steakhouse whereas this you can be in and out for like 15 20 quid max yeah um but i think what they've done is like they they always have kind of cool interiors uh and i think that's something that we whenever we're looking at restaurants we're trying to get the vibe of the interior to kind of match the food and I think they do a really good job on that because it's really well fitted out and gives the element of like a more sophisticated steakhouse but it's really good value for money and yeah they're like a food offering kind of similar to us and it's quite like pared back but it's really consistent and good quality so yeah they're always someone that I'm like they've nailed it that's like what I'd have to be able to do what are some of the, you talked about like operator and systems and I think we said we're wrong before we hit record we're like that's not actually my, well it's definitely not my bag yeah like what are some of the systems that have really what I think about when I think about systems there's this quote I love which is slow is smooth, smooth is fast yeah and that's for me who's fast is fast which is chaos so that's my default setting and what Osh from the devonshire was saying is he's osha's chaos charlie's order ashley who was you know who's the fat duck chef yeah is perfection yeah great little marriage what are some of the um systems you've put in place that have added order to your kind of natural chaos and chaos is a good thing yeah yeah so i think uh when we've like back in brixton days when we first opened it was it was like me and Liz so Liz was front of house she was like people hiring setting kind of the tone and the culture front of house I was back at house and numbers essentially and you could run it quite easy with just the two of you there and then as we kind of grown I used to think I was quite like organized but I'm really not I used to think I was quite like like um like numbers driven and like um would have things in spreadsheets i thought i was like quite processing but i'm really not

1:38:04when when we had um maggie our first um baby that was like during lockdown during the first lockdown and then liz kind of stepped back and initially i kind of took over her role as well because things weren't really open and then after a short period of time i was like fucking how i can't do this this is like too much so we hired um an operations manager seb who's still with us now and he's kind of my right hand man and yeah i i thought i was quite like organized structured and processy and then he's come from more of an operational background and just his personality is very much like that anyway and then when he he's brought in a lot of kind of processes to help us grow because when you're when you're one or two sites you can you can quality control everywhere really quickly you can fix things you can you don't need as many processes in place because you're just there constantly and as soon as you kind of grow to a few more sites you physically can't be in those sites so you have to put in training manuals and training processes and sops and like all these other bits and bobs so that there's accountability with other people and people know what's expected of them when you're not there essentially but yeah he came in and I was like ah okay yeah I'm definitely not that organized so he's um he's kind of really helped bring a little bit because he's got that outside experience of other other restaurants and bigger places I think he worked at Gaucho he kind of came up through their ranks initially so he's been able to draw on the processes that other bigger businesses have and help implement them with us because we've never had that experience one thing I want to ask you is when you're a small bubber at wherever the first one was, Brick Lane was it Brick Lane?

1:39:56Shoreditch was our first when you're having the fun and it's small like Broadway Market, it's like street food you know you get at 4pm you go and take your mates for a few beers you know and then good old days good old days is what I suppose my question is how do you keep the good current days yeah I suppose how do you keep having fun as the business gets bigger and more serious because I think as you scale more systems come in yeah but I think a lot of founders they struggle to be like well this isn't this isn't the good old days yeah how do you try and maintain having fun with everything you're doing cocktail training session cleaning out the bulk yeah literally fucking hell um i think yeah it's hard you do sometimes get a bit um you sometimes have to like sit back and appreciate what's kind of what what you've built and what you've got so occasionally i'll like i'll sit in brixton or i'll sit here in eczema at like the counter over the kitchen and i'll just have a beer and i'll just kind of sit there and just listen to the hum of the restaurant or i'll be in canary wharf and just kind of like watch the guys working and that's kind of you need to force yourself to kind of uh like forget about the all the lip because every day there's shit that's going on there's literally fires that are being put out but you need to kind of just every now and then just ignore that and be like oh this is pretty fucking sick what we've built here now yes and then and i love i love new openings that's why i get really excited because it's a creative side i think of it it's like so i love looking at new sites and like seeing like how can we squeeze this in there or how many covers could we do here and what if we could we get a smoker in here or blah blah blah well i love that i like that's just a glorious piece of wisdom which is just you know listen to the hum yeah it's like so easy to just think of the next you know and it's actually just whoa listen to that i'm gonna start using that because i don't do that yeah just i just love just you sit there every and then you can just you can hear the guys speaking to customers hear customers like laughing and just the noise they know you're the boss

1:42:09how's your burger it's good isn't it yeah um that's hilarious but i love just the sound of the kitchen as well just like that like the this plating up of stuff and because we have all these little metal plates that we make and they always like clanging around the kitchen and it's like yeah it's nice just to see it Richard Corrigan's got the book called The Clatter of Knives and Forks. The Clatter of Knives, Forks and Spoons, which is like when you're at a restaurant. Yeah, yeah. I think that is your listening love. Yeah, I love that. The name for his book is The Clatter of Knives, Forks and Spoons, I think it is.

1:42:41Oh, really? Which is brilliant. Final thing to wrap up on, mate, is what's been the hardest? You said you get the creative juice and the energy. One of the things I think about is as you get bigger, you've got to try and do the things that give you. there's things that take energy and give energy obviously it's not utopia where you can just do the things that give you energy but like trying to get do more of these things versus less of these things yeah it's a sweet spot what's been the hardest sort of site you've opened and like talk me through that process um brixton i reckon first one yeah because it's um like when you kind of we're in a much better place now where you've got a few sites and we've got like five plus one i say and like generally you have a little bit safety in numbers if like three or four of them doing well and one doesn't do quite as well that week typically the next week that one does a bit better and then another one doesn't so it's kind of gets spread out a little bit more but bricks and it was like our first restaurant we had box park open but it was completely new and when we opened we had like a little soft launch where we had people for the first week we had to do like 50 % off or something so it's busy for the first week and then it just died and it was just dead and we knew like everyone said to us like or like whenever you read stuff it's like it takes six months a year for like for you to get busy but you just think ah no that it will be all right it won't be us um and it it wasn't it was like tuesday wednesday lunchtime just no one in at lunch i was just like sat in the corner what thoughts in your head at that period you're just like you fucked it like literally like it's not worth no one comes and you're like and then you get to the evening and it gets a little busier but it's just it's that was tricky because we then after like when are we open like november what year is this 2019 and then a couple months and kind of christmas kind of got a little bit busier then january kind of died off and then it was we just started to pick up again then it was covid yeah well i didn't realize that i didn't realize that it was that recent in brixton because i must have been running the burgers like just when it was open i thought it'd been since like 2016 yeah no probably like six months or so we've been there um but that was when we opened there we were like oh fuck we've like fuck this and we didn't we were just like oh it will get better like we just have to relax but you can't like you know that it probably will but when you've got nobody coming through the door you you're not thinking i'll be right so that's thinking you're thinking what are you thinking what can we do like why isn't anybody coming in like is the food wrong is like is the hip-hop shit kind of like what it's you question everything and i think you just naturally do anyway like even when i'm looking at a new site yes even if you think it's gonna be great there's still that bit inside like what if it's not what or if it's shit and we have to close.

1:45:52You always question yourself, but I think that's natural. How did you get punters through the door? Well, it kind of, it did eventually just do it naturally. I mean, it was all over the shop because we shut, reopened for takeaway, which is 70 burgers. And then it was Eat Out to Help Out when everything reopened again. And that was a good Kickstarter, actually. I think that was a really good campaign. because that got people out and eating again and then it's always i think with the restaurants that was like a moment in time which was like this is so banging it's just crazy yeah it's absolutely mad and like we were kind of uh it's kind of sad because when when we reopened there was like three restaurants around us that didn't make it through and they had all closed so it's like us we had frank and manka down the end and salon um which like fine dining place um in in market row and all three of us basically just had the whole length of the markets we just put shit some tables out and it was it was awesome like that kind of like kick-started it back going again and then then word gets out and it's if you're constantly delivering consistency consistently like quality food and service then you'll be all right and it kind of builds up if there's a brand or if there's a person who's setting up a street food venue or a restaurant and they're in that situation where punters aren't coming through the door yeah what's what could you what's one piece of wisdom you could almost like tattoo there for them to see god um

1:47:26i don't know really that's really tricky question because it's like there's so many aspects to it isn't there it's like is it the right location like if you've done all your homework and most things are there for you then i guess it's just local marketing as well you can just you can literally go out there and flyer um offices around there you you can't i don't think you can ever take for granted that people are just going to turn up so you have to be creative of it's like running competitions on social media like hooking up with a load inferences to get them down to come and kind of run a competition to get people down in there or like I think in like XMath to begin with we ran a load of like lunchtime offers just to get lunchtime trade up and then we slowly kind of scaled them back because we're not really in an offery type of place but it's just constantly kind of tweaking and playing around with stuff you can never kind of just rest on your laurels and be like oh yeah rest on laurels yeah have you seen that Rick do you really think oh no i guess what we're doing i'm wasting my little um stew mate i've i've i've loved that thank you um it's been so i think for me personally now every time i munch one of your burgers it's i've just got all this delicious storytelling and texture around it um love what you're doing so yeah huge thank you mate thanks for coming down mate let's um let's munch get your brisket spring round

1:48:52thank 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 of challenger food and drink brands please do hit me up on linkedin search Dan Pope and hopefully we can together create a more meaningful and powerful podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands thank you so much