How CARAVAN pioneered All Day Dining and Built a Coffee and Restaurant Empire - Laura Harper-Hinton, Chris Ammermann

0:00Hello there and welcome to Hungry. Hungry is the podcast for the next wave of challenger food and drink brands looking to pour gasoline all over their growth. Each week we'll interview successful founders, thought leaders, unpack their lessons and provide you with the toolkit to scale super fast. I am Dan Pope, I am your host and without further ado, let's get started.

0:25Hi there guys, thank you so much for listening as always, it means the absolute world to me. Before we jump into this episode, I need a really big, big, big, big favour. I have pitched us some massive guests, humongous guests, and unfortunately they've said no because my subscriber count isn't big enough. Please, please, please just hit the subscribe button on Apple or Spotify or follow. Ultimately, it helps all of us bigger guests equals better conversations equals hopefully better insights for you, which means you can scale hopefully faster with a little less stress as well. So please hit that subscribe button and yeah, enjoy this episode.

1:00Hi there guys, just a quick, quick little ickle interruption I am so, so, so gassed and thrilled to announce that Mackenzie Jones are extending their partnership with Hungry Beyond thrilled Who are Mackenzie Jones? Well, first and foremost, Billy is a great mate, known him for years Second, they are, well, FMCG recruitment specialists I know Recruiter probably gives you the ick rest assured they're not the negi norse heads who will pester you on linkedin asking you if you've had your breakfast yet i personally less recruit a more growth partner they are loved and adored and are trusted trusted by brands like real superfood lucky saint hello fresh fever treat but why why reach out to mckenty jones very very simple if you want to launch brand into retail you need a head of sales speak to billy if you want to in-house your marketing activities with the head of marketing rockstar speak to billy or if you want to they really specialize in dtc so if you need someone who's going to really kind of pour gasoline on your dtc channel speak to bill or if you just want a general nitter natter chew the fat have a chinwagathon speak to billy he's a top bloke message him on linkedin or ask me for an intro via email and i will get that sorted thank you all there's a horror story in food and drink that absolutely no one talks about it surreptitiously scurries through the underbelly causing throbbing headaches wasted money huge amounts of pain dodgy barcodes so many brands do the hard work they create the product name the brand open the bank account and then they cut bloody corners online and they order a dodgy barcode not sort your barcodes out is like scoring your own goal before you've even laced your boots and got on the pitch it's a souffle of aggro you know you've got to relabel products waste time i've even had a pal who's um who lost a planet organic listings they had the wrong barcodes but thankfully not all heroes wear capes gs1 uk are the superhero and they are the solution barcodes from gs1 uk are globally recognized uh trusted and accepted by all retailers and marketplaces giving you the confidence to sell your products anytime anyplace anywhere but gs1 uk are so so much more than that they really are kind of a spring well of advice for buckingering brands 95 % of their community to your smes you can get free tickets to events and invites to talks big big picture opportunities you just like to put organic boots and sainsbury's and help you know with advice like exporting it's just so so so much and look don't say don't treat you and there's an oh so special offer through the podcast get 20 off your first year's membership with gs1 uk by using the code hungry 20 at checkout thank you so much hello there people and listeners of the hungry podcast today i'm absolutely thrilled to welcome Laura Harper Hinton and Chris Ammerman onto the podcast who are co-founders of Caravan.

3:50Caravan pioneered the all-day dining. They have 10 sites across London including King's Cross, Bankside and my personal favourite Vardo and Chelsea which is unreal. They've got three brew bars. We're currently sat in one right now in Clandonian Road, um one of the savoy and one in houston um they are now ready and ready to rock and roll and launching their range of pods um into retail so they've won listings at cm foods and a whole host of indies um look guys and thank you so much for having me firstly um when you're wonderful uh roastery and yeah i'm excited to be here great well thanks for having us dan we're really looking forward to it um so where i want to start is i was doing some research for this conversation and i want to actually like kind of hop in a time machine and uh go back to the sort of the carefree 90s 2 a.m in the morning specifically in the tequila soap nights at mondo casino if i've said that right kachina i can never get my words out you have done some research yeah i did quite a lot of research um but i read an article which said we used to sit at the bar drinking tequila and uh we were talking about what i wanted to do and i'd love it seems like a really nice poignant moment in time that yeah could you go into that and maybe what were some of those conversations you guys were having and what was that moment like for you personally yeah well Mondo Kachina for a start is in New Zealand, in Wellington, New Zealand, where Miles is the other person that we need to mention.

5:30So just imagine there's another little Miles here. He is our co-founder as well. And it was a wonderful, really, really amazing, game-changing restaurant and bar when it first opened. Literally like 10 deep at the bar, like super energetic, thriving space and I was on the door as the door host Chris was behind the bar as the main bar manager bartender and Miles was in the kitchen the head chef and so that's how we all met each other and you know the story writes itself as far as the tequila is concerned but we used to sit around after we'd finished some really really brutal shifts and and talk about doing something for ourselves at a point in time and at that point there was a lot of philosophizing over you know what we loved about restaurants and coffee and all that was wonderful in the Wellington dining scene.

6:23And I think probably at that time we were thinking about doing something in New Zealand. And then, you know, cut past the 90s, we actually made it out and through and over to this part of the world. We all landed here in 2001 and then sort of realised quite quickly that there was really awesome opportunity in both the coffee and the dining scenes for the type of business that we then went on to create. And you said you were philosophising I'm only about four minutes in there, two words that are too big for me already. Philosophising about what makes a great restaurant. I think it's really interesting, like we're, what, 20 years down the line now and we're in this amazing place, you've got 10 restaurants.

7:05Back then, what were your ingredients or pillars of like, okay, this is what makes a great restaurant? Yeah, I mean, I think for me, I don't know about you, Chris, but for me, the key to a great restaurant is energy. And the way that we have designed and built all of our restaurants is very much to use design materials, lighting, very much to create that kind of authentic, worn, but very warm space at the same time. We obviously created all-day dining spaces, so lighting is really important. Transitioning the customer and the team as well, equally important that they're having a great time and feel cocooned within a super energetic, wonderful space.

7:44So we use lighting throughout the day to just really make sure that you're always feeling the vibe of the space. But, you know, it's about the energy of restaurants. I think that, to me, is like the thing that brings spaces to life, and that's the customers and the team just kind of coming together for that wonderful dining experience. Don't know about you, Chris. yeah look i think um you know food the food needs to be good the um you need to design a great space and um and uh the service needs to be fun and good and i think we've always um we've always tried to make sure that when people come to our restaurant they leave in a in a happier in a happier space or a happier place and uh i think um it's definitely about having fun but um you know i i think what what we did was it was um we we tried to make something that was uh everyone could come to and that would be um fun and and you know you know people would have a good time so that's always been what we've tried to uh work on and deliver the energy the energy and the fun and i think what we were saying before we hit the record button is this so paul i interviewed last week said you know the the product i the food is is the art yeah but then the and i suppose you've called it energy laura is that's the magic and it's the lighting even the lighting here is is is yeah there's something about lighting that you can't put on an excel spreadsheet i think so many of these podcasts i do there's something about like not following logic and stuff that you You can't really justify.

9:24Yes. So I'd love to go into, so what made you come to London? What made you guys think, right, we're leaving the bosom of New Zealand and going out to explore London? Well, I think the thing with New Zealanders is we've got a thing that we call the OE, which is the Overseas Experience. And, you know, New Zealand, wonderful, wonderful, incredible place and what a brilliant place to grow up in. And it has that sort of free spirit and this sort of no boundaries, kind of anything is achievable and nothing is set in stone mentality, which I think we've definitely brought with us. But I think the part and parcel of that is this desire to travel and this desire to experience the world, especially because we are geographically where we are in the world.

10:13So it does feel at times like you're quite a way away from the action. and that's I think what drives a lot of New Zealanders to travel and it is something that's talked about a lot at home and I think the equivalent over here I guess is the gap year but for us it's very much like part of the lifestyle is to travel and to experience the world and either bring that back to New Zealand or to maybe find yourself 22 years down the line still in London. so yeah that's sort of I think that's why we decided to come to London but previous to that we've done you know lots and lots of traveling all over the world so it's not just that we decided to come specifically to London to the United Kingdom it's just we sort of found ourselves here and there and I think for me personally I was only really planning on staying for six months so yeah just sort of London sucked me in in the best possible way yeah we're adventurous aren't we yeah exactly and when you grow up in new zealand there are no as laura said there are no boundaries so you feel like you can do anything so when when we said we'd open a restaurant and people said you know that's risky we were like well you know let's give it a go you feel like you can do anything give it a crack yeah exactly i think that's really reassuring for our listeners because a lot of people listening to this podcast maybe sat on the fence and wanting to maybe jump into the precipice and all its own idea and what you said there is like be adventurous and you can do anything i think there's lots in that yeah um so one thing that fascinates me is kind of perspective and um travel is a great way to it's my it's a mind-bending experience in my eyes and i'd love to know what like took you by surprise by when you came to london so i remember when i went to japan it was mental like i love that place it's so sick yeah the the traffic you You know when you cross the traffic lights and it's got that little bird thing?

12:09I was like, this is mental. But I think it's really, I love. That is a sensory overload. Sensory overload, yeah, completely. And I think where I'm trying to go with this, I think a lot of the time we hold on to our beliefs or perspectives as if they're absolute and they're really not. So I'd love to know what took you by surprise coming to London? Like, what was that? Okay, that's a bit weird. I wasn't expecting that. Yeah. I mean, this is going to sound a little bit negative, but it's not really intended to be so. Yeah, go for it. People don't smile as much here as they do in New Zealand. That's the one thing that really, really struck me, is getting on the tube.

12:45And it was quite a depressing experience, I have to say, because I'd previously been living in the Netherlands and they're quite sort of happy, chippy, actually. I guess I just wasn't on the tube as much. And just coming here, it felt like there were a lot more barriers up around people. And I get that because it's a much bigger city than any city that I'd ever lived in. and you know I would even say that over the course of 20 years that's changed a lot as well and I think that's because London's become even more international so there are all walks of life here which I think just naturally breaks barriers down but yeah that that is one thing that really I was like wow that's a bit of a culture shock and that's not to say that like now pretty much all of my best friends are English people but yeah I just that that that was I mean random but But it really struck me that there was a cultural difference.

13:37That said, there's so much that's similar about New Zealand and the United Kingdom. But I mean, yeah, I don't know about you, Chris. Well, growing up, we feel like we know England and London, right? Because we have monopoly. Going around London, you just go, I know that street. But there are so many similar things because there are a lot of English people who live in New Zealand and you grow up feeling like England is a part of New Zealand, I guess because we're a colony originally. But when you come here, everything's so much bigger and brighter and busier. So when you grow up in Wellington and you come to London, London is a true large city with all walks of life, and I just think that's fantastic.

14:26And the longer you stay here, I think the better it gets. I think in the beginning you feel like you're a tourist, so you feel like you're from New Zealand and after a while you feel like a Londoner. So I think that's the beauty of London. You know, I mean, the smiling thing's interesting. I think if you... Because I, you know, to do this podcast, I've actually moved back home. Even today I get in the tube up here. I was on the Rattler last thinking, fucking hell, it must be a bad day. Do you know what I mean? Exactly. But if you go up to somewhere like Manchester, people are just more... They're more cheery.

14:58Immediately. But I think it is so interesting, the smiling thing. Yeah. Because I think, I don't know, and just, sorry, just to sort of not to labour that point too much, but that's definitely the sunshine and the smiles was what we wanted to bring when we started the restaurant as well. It was very much that kind of all welcome, that like, you know, throw your arms open and just be really, really welcoming to everyone and give that warmth. I remember we won this like really randomly titled award very early on in like 2010 when we just opened and it was the Warmth and Welcome Award. and we just could not have been happier that that's the one that we won because that was exactly what we were trying to achieve with the service.

15:35It's just smile, just give everyone a smile, just make them feel good. And you know, like Chris alluded to before, is we want people to leave feeling better than when they walked through the door in the first place. So yeah, a smile goes a long way. Completely. And I want to talk about, before we hit the record button, talking about why there are there are as you said chris like london and new zina so hugely different but kind of similar at the same time and there's lots of kiwis do well specifically in food and drink um so your cousin is margot who's uh found rochelle canteen um wife of wife of fergus henderson um who's obviously everyone knows fromst john adam willis from well wills i think from crosstown donuts jp from crosstown donuts um what do you think it's about about kiwi specifically that gives you an edge when it comes to food well i think i'd go back to what i said before about i think there are a lot of new zealanders doing well just across the spectrum in in london and the united kingdom we actually went to um miles our business partner partner got nominated for uk new zealander of the year at the waitangi ball which we went to at the wall that was on much fun yeah um like not often in a room literally of just new zealanders so that was an experience in of itself really fun times um but yeah like the the chap that won was amazing he's works at google and is doing incredible things um for you know i don't know exactly what because it's beyond my managing director of operations at google yeah craig fenton so he was a great guy and he actually He beat Miles just.

17:14Really? Probably by a vote. Probably by one vote. Just one vote. Exactly. That's hilarious. But yeah, I think it just goes back to that whole mentality of give it a go and nothing's set in stone and boundaries are made for breaking, not for following. And there's also a bit of a she'll be right, mate, sort of mentality as well that goes on with New Zealanders of, look, you might as well just give it a go. It'll all work out okay. and so I think when it comes specifically just to answer the question back to food and drink you know that's something that we pull into the equation with everything we do in life but I think food and drink is the is the is the time and the place where we all come together isn't it so and and New Zealand's got a really lovely rich heritage of incredible produce and so I it's got there's got to be something in that something for sure and And I read the book about, oh, the authors escape me, about the leadership lessons from the All Blacks.

18:14Oh, yes. Rugby, obviously. And one of the things, one of their values that they had was don't be a dick. Yeah. And it's all about, and I think Adam talked about this in the podcast. Yeah. And almost, it's not saying like everyone, you're kind of the polar opposite of that. It's like the adventure, the smiles. Yeah. And it's kind of a nice, almost cousin to that value of like, don't be a dick. It is. I read last night that he's actually consulting on one of the Premier League teams. I can't remember which one. What's his name? Is it James? Literally, yeah. The name's Escape Me. Yeah, same. It's a very good book.

18:47And he goes into just how they all clean the... The changing room. Changing room. Clean the shed. Clean the shed, that's it. Clean the shed, exactly. Yeah. And I think that is an important New Zealand value, actually, which is no one... We've got a thing called the tall poppy syndrome. And it's when you start getting your head too high above everybody else. we cut it down in New Zealand because it's like come on mate you know it's not get above exactly and that's it's a it's a cultural thing that you know we really just like everybody to get stuck in and just because you might be the star player of a team it doesn't mean that you're not also responsible for clearing the shed yeah it's a respect thing isn't it yeah it's just I wanted I always find these things interesting how like because it does start on a sort of more macro level and sort of bringing it down into into where we are now um and then what would you say the values are that let's just talk about two that that uh have really rocketed your success in terms of we're caravan and this is how we're doing things because i think one thing doing the research with you guys is you kind of put your put your fork down not your fork but you put your stamp oh maybe it is your fork yeah yeah put your put your marker down right this is us and i think there's a quote by um i was reading a book about uh bob dylan and he was saying when he got to new york he was like i was like no one else you couldn't compare me to him or her i was like no one else and i'd love to know what are the two values to kind of um you live by to to make sure that you're not like everyone else yeah by not being like everyone else you attract the right people to you yeah sense yeah well I mean I think the no boundaries thing is really really really critical to us and that is you know you know be bold and we want people who you know bring themselves to work we intentionally when we first started caravan made sure that no one had to wear a uniform because we wanted them to bring their authentic selves to work and that was like a genuine you know um response to what a lot of restaurants were doing at the time because we're talking 13 years ago now and most restaurants that you walk into people wearing uniforms and I don't think that that enables people to express themselves so that's sort of the type of people that we want to walk through the door at Caravan and work with us as people who are not not afraid to um to be bold in their thoughts and and their passions and and bring all of that to the table so it's definitely something that we um live and breathe at Caravan and then my other one would be well-traveled, which obviously the name of the business is Caravan.

21:19It threads through everything that we do from not only the food philosophy of, you know, no geographical boundaries for what we put on the table in front of people. And we really want to take people on a culinary journey of, have you tried this from, you know, from Central America or, you know, wherever it might be. And likewise with the coffee sourcing as well, is we try to find the absolute best that we can from the best coffee suppliers all over the world and bring that to people's table and hopefully they can experience that with us. But I think to flip that, it's also traveling well as well.

21:57So it's not just well-traveled, it's traveling well and that kind of is where all of our kind of caravan of love and CSR side of business comes into things. So it's just doing things, not just doing things, but doing them well in the first place. And you know, of can we make it better and how can we actually have a positive impact on the planet and the people and the people who work with us? I'd just probably add all welcome in there. For me, the best restaurants are always restaurants where all walks of life feel like they can go in. And so if you have people, office workers or people in suits and students and if you go into our king's cross restaurant there are literally just all walks of life and i think that creates uh just an incredible energy and i think all the best restaurants are like that so if everyone's welcome and everyone feels like they can come in it's uh it's just it reflects what's outside your front door i hate to tell you this but you're gonna miss the boat on the 17th of february opportunities do not last forever and on the 17th of february an opportunity is going to sail off far, far, far into the distance and you'll be sitting there thinking, why have I just stunted the growth of my business?

23:16Boeimi, our beloved sponsor, are helping build the fastest growing challenger food and drink brands. Look, if you're a small brand just starting out and need your first indie stockist, your first hundred stockist to wholesale, Boeimi are the platform to categorically speed that up. But if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger, Boeimi are also insane. they make field sales marble smooth silky slick they're just epic ollie's ollie's been on this podcast twice actually they saw a 29 uplift in sales when using bowie me to check major malt listings availability insane 29 uplift by downloading an app insane lucky saying my boy aaron duff who's coming on this podcast in a couple of weeks he uses it to manage a team of 30 people and they've lucky to have unlocked 500 draft listings by using bowie me look you've got to get involved with this stuff it's absolutely insane um you can get 50 off your first three months yes 50 off your first three months but this offer ends on the 17th of february how when you're doing a demo i'll put a link in the bio when you're doing a demo with their sales team their lovely sales team use the code hungry 50 and it will categorically change your life it's just the sickest platform i use it all the time at ireland a lot of restaurants can be quite stuffy yeah it's it's not it's palpable you feel it it's i don't know but it's really hard to to get into what makes something not stuffy when what you said there about being just everyone's welcome in all walks of life i mean whereas i said we're doing the supper club tonight in king's cross i mean a lot of weirdos there tonight we welcome all weirdos that kind of uh idea runs all the way through the dna so you you build a restaurant that's you don't we don't spend too much on our restaurant so it doesn't feel like they're over designed so people feel comfortable in them and lighting is obviously a key part but a large menu where there's a lot on offer just allows kind of all types of people to come in and eat and we've got lots of vegetarian things lots of vegan things so anyone can feel comfortable eating and drinking there so I think that's really really important and we're open all day so you can come in at any time of the day so all these kind of things help you know help create that energy because you guys are a bit of an outlier outside looking in and that a lot of the guests i've interviewed on this podcast say um there's kind of two things that are the they boil their success down to so one is saying no so you've got to say no to focus and focus is really important and the other is well actually you guys do do this is not it's not following logic yeah so if you follow logic you'll end up in the same place as everyone else.

25:52A guy from Roy Sutherland, I don't know if you know him, he came on the other week, he's genius at this. But you guys said that, you know, there's no boundaries, is what you just said to me. And you guys have got these restaurants, the brew bars, going into retail, there doesn't seem to be boundaries. What have you had to say no to? What are the hard things you've had to say no to to get to where we are today? Well, I think you've touched on such a brilliant point there. And as a business, I wouldn't say that actually we've been historically that brilliant at saying no. and I think that increasingly as we've grown has become something that we want to get better at and that we are definitely getting better at.

26:27But it is actually understanding exactly what the core of your business is and where the opportunity lies within that core and then not getting too distracted by all the sort of splinter off opportunities that could be out there because I think we have created very much a multi-channel business because obviously we've got the coffee side, we're going into retail, we're getting retail ready which we are because we're in you know some lovely local independent shops but then we've got the restaurant side as well we've got brew bars and there's lots of different tendrils that could like splinter off from that and it is about being disciplined enough to not get distracted and I hold my hand up to be like number one person that's got distracted over the years we created we started doing our own kombuchas and shrubs and lacto-fermented sodas and all the rest and then we've got a bakery down there a sourdough bakery that we created and it's very easy to get distracted in business I think especially when you've created something that allows you to be distracted because it's not just one thing that you're producing it's not like one product an FMCG product where actually you do know what you're doing and you just need to go after that so so I think that's sort of a bit of a challenge for us as a business that we're grappling with at the moment so the saying no thing is something we're working on I think it's The reason I love doing these podcasts is you find the nuances in things.

27:45And I think on the one hand, yes, you've got to say no. But at the same time, you've said yes. Because all day dining on paper is a bit hard. Most logic would say, you know, go and do one thing, do it well, do pizzas well, do eggs well. So on the one hand, yeah, you've got to say no. But on the other hand, your kind of superpower is by saying yes to all day dining, saying yes to yeah um or like a whole smorgasbord different cuisines and stuff what like what do you actually put in place to say to say no now because i'm a bit like that i want to do i'm like got new shiny toy syndrome it's like a buffet of options and so what do you put in place to say no because that would help me out actually yeah well yeah exactly um well we've you know we're 13 years old now and we've definitely been on a journey of Chris Miles and I literally been completely stuck in and immersed in the business from day one and making all the decisions together and not having a lot of delineation between even job roles and who was doing what and how we were making decisions and it was just all very like let's go and have a pint and decide whether we should do that site or not and you know dial down the tequila a little bit these days but not too much yeah we're on to we've moved on um but yeah but as you sort of grow as a business you you do become you know you have to get a little bit more grown up hopefully not too too grown up but um we've definitely um surrounded ourselves with some absolutely incredible people these days and you know some of those people are very good at saying but hang on a minute this is actually a distraction for the business and you know if we look at this commercially which i've never historically been brilliant at doing either um you know this is probably not the most sensible route for us to go down so i think it's people um that we have you know we've actually got a really amazing senior leadership team now um and both on the coffee and the restaurant side of the business and then it's just putting structure in place for decision making as well which again historically as i just said we didn't really have so um and then we've got a phrase that i've actually momentarily forgotten of um whether this is a distraction or not jess came up with it but it's just like literally asking yourselves is this a distraction if this is if this falls into the distraction box then yeah we might just have to painfully say no painfully say no and i but i do so this so what rory sutherland says is and he works for ogilvy oh yes really he's got a book called alchemy and it's all about his whole thesis is this like sometimes you can't follow logic so you've got to try these he said you've got to get a lot of lead to find gold so it could be the mushroom whatever you're talking about or the butcher or whatever yeah yeah you need some of that to keep the magic and the twinkle in your eye going but you need you need a healthy seasoning of of discipline and no yes um but i'd love to talk about um all day dining because now it's kind of ubiquitous ubiquitous but back then and if we go back to was it 2020 uh 20 20 2009 2009 yeah so let's go back to 2009 now um because again on paper that's excuse my language but like mental to be doing opening something that's all day every day yeah why did you do that why didn't you go and do what not what everyone else was doing but why didn't you focus on is it antipodean is that the right word oh god another one third time lucky it's a bit of a weird phrase there anyway yeah yeah yeah kiwi breakfast essentially yeah why don't you just focus on that yeah well well look it was it was twofold one because we had the model that existed in new zealand and australia where places were open all day right and then secondly uh we had all worked in restaurants for years and when you go on your break it's around three o 'clock so there's nowhere to eat at three o 'clock so we were like well surely why wouldn't we open at three o 'clock because all those people who are going on their breaks might come to us like you want to eat at three o 'clock right and so when we opened everyone was like that's a stupid idea you know because you've got staff and you've got chefs in the kitchen but people did come they'd come in at four o 'clock and and have a meal and it was quite random we'd have like a room full of people or half full of people eating and drinking and coming in at odd times and it it was it was one of those naive perhaps ideas that when you're when you first go into business you think it's a good idea you don't really have any research or research to back it up but you do it and it works and another thing we did was we put avocado and toast on our all-day menu so from 12 o 'clock till 10 30 every night we'd serve avocado and toast everyone people would walk in there it's not on the old amen but that whole avocado and toast didn't really exist in london like i i hadn't seen it we we saw it in new york but um people would go avocado and toast who's going to order that and i go i don't know people do and they go well i'll try it then and so people would just order it out of interest so yeah yeah but as we're so what we're 2023 now and it's it's just ubiquitous it's like every man and his dog's shotting avocado and toast.

33:07But then it wasn't like that. Coffee was also a big part of it, though. Having good coffee was essential to bring people in at all times of the day. Yeah. So roasting our own coffee and taking control over the quality of coffee was essential to that success. What came first? The roasting. So you set up the coffee first and then open the restaurant, or was it all at the same time? Together, yeah. All at the same time. So that was the other stupid thing we did, was we put a coffee roastery in the bottom, in the basement of the Exmouth Market restaurant, which is great when you're trying to lug 60 kilogram coffee sacks down stairs and back up again and all the rest.

33:45It was, you know, a silly idea, but actually it was wonderful because, yeah, like Chris said, we very much wanted to, and again, that was a first in London for sure, is the whole combining a dining space with a coffee roastery and just breaking the barriers down of, you know, oh, this is where your beans come from and, you know, here's the roaster roasting the beans that you're actually then drinking upstairs and you can go and actually chat to the barista and the roaster downstairs about, you know, the origin and where things have come from and how we're roasting them. And that was a really exciting thing that we were able to bring to customers in Exmouth Market when we first opened there.

34:25And then obviously we moved the roastery over to King's Cross. because by the and in fact speaking of margot margot henderson um rochelle canteen was our very very very first out of home customer um and to this day she is still our wonderful customer so what has she taught you about hospitality because i love learning kind of on the obliques of yeah things what she taught you about hospitality because again just for listeners like rochelle canteen amazing restaurant husband is uh fergus henderson which is arguably saint john's probably one of the i think it was bourdain's favorite restaurant in the world exactly and he wrote the book the forward to the book i mean that just sort of shows but what has she taught you specifically about well what hasn't she taught me i think it's more the question okay um when i first got to london in 2001 i remember going for dinner with margot and fergus um and at that time um they'd just opened i thinkst john bread and wine in spittlefields market they hadst john and they St.

35:21John Bread and Wine. And I just remember the experience so, so clearly to this day of just the amazing atmosphere that they'd created. And I think we were talking about this before about Fergus and Margot have always been very much authentically just wanting to create energy through the customers and through the noise and the chat and the talk and the clatter of knives and forks and the you know the wine glasses being put down and um and and to me it was just the most incredible dining experience and uh i i kind of from i mean i know we talked we talked about before mondo kachina where we all first worked and and all the rest but for me that really really solidified my desire to open a restaurant and for to do something restaurant wise myself um because i just thought they'd done you know literally nailed it the most incredible job of it um but yeah over the years she's obviously been her and Fergus have been a measurable support and yeah just great to go out for dinner with them because they're really fun yeah yeah yeah I mean they seem like I've only just seen from the kind of videos and online they do seem like good crack they seem really fun so so what do they um we talked about the clattering of the knife and forks which I think it's really um just again as I said it's um what Paul Ainsworth said is food is the art but the magic is all these is the service, is the lighting.

36:49What's been some of the challenges you've gone through, the really hard bits, and how has she helped you or Fergus pull through those? Yeah, that's a good question, actually. I mean, I think for me, and actually it doesn't really come back particularly to Margot and Fergus, this one, but it's the challenge, I think, when you create something that then you realise has got opportunity is working out the right way to grow it and the right time to grow it. And, you know, restaurants, I think, let's just say there's been, over the last sort of 20 years, there was a real casual dining movement of, okay, you open something, you literally supercharge it, you open 20 sites a year, and then you sell it to private equity.

37:37And there was a lot of pressure on us after we'd created something that obviously got a bit of attention straight away. We had an amazing review from Faye Mashler and Marina, quite early doors, which sort of meant that people started coming in because before that it was a little bit dire. I was like, oh, this might not work. Yeah. Where is everyone? Exactly. Is that you feel that pressure of growing and that kind of capitalist pressure of, well, you've got to really grow this fast now. Like it's the only way to do it. And it's challenging yourself to do the right thing for the business at the right time.

38:12and I think that what I would say about the London restaurant group or network is that everyone is so supportive and you know the people that we know and the lunches that we've had and the chats that we've had with people over the years have really like guided us and helped us. So it's not just necessarily Margot and Fergus, it's the whole network of people of you know what are you doing? Like when are you going to grow that? How fast are you going to go? And then coming back to okay I've taken all of that information from everybody else. what do I think is right for business and for also yourself personally because ultimately it's not just about a corporate entity that you know oh we need to roll this out we need to smash it and we need to make a shit load of money it's actually about what's right for you personally as well isn't it because most people don't say that they say it's what's right for the business or what's right for the investors and I think it's quite pernicious you see it on LinkedIn like we've raised X amount of money

39:11and it's just a bit like i think there's a lot of people listening to this who are small and there's something yeah there's nothing uh not that we demonize being small but there is this kind of growth obsession exactly what you said there which really struck a chord was growing the right way yeah and so you kind of get get the ocean of of knowledge and you boil it down and then you say to yourself okay right how are we going to grow yeah what what was the strategy to to actually to grow the right way yeah the right way is what i'm trying to get at yeah well actually that's it's funny you've um grabbed that from what i've said because that is one of our core goals in the business is make it better and grow the right way right and um the grow the right way bit um has been distilled over the years by the three of us but we were very much making it up as we went along for a really long time so i want to be clear about that like there was no master plan and growing the right way was just an intuitive feeling from the three of us of we've been offered these locations but do we really feel they're right for us and do we really feel that that reflects the brand that we've tried to create for example we would get offered loads of glass boxes and we knew intuitively that a glass box building was not going to reflect I think my actual glass box is...

40:25It's a real phrase in property, is the glass box. Right, right, right. But yeah, and we were just like, we know that we can't build a caravan in that because we feel that the buildings need heritage, there needs to be a story behind them. The Bankside space, which was our third location, is in a tin factory. And we know that there's heritage and raw brick and we can bring the whole thing to life. So yeah, there wasn't really a master plan with growing the right way, but now there is. and we very much have the values that we've crystallised, which we've sort of been talking a bit about, and everything, all decision-making, is put through the lens of those values.

41:04And, you know, do we think that really this is the right thing to do at the right time for business? It's true because it was an inherent value from the start. Yeah. And now it's actually a deliberate value. but when we opened King's Cross or when we decided to to go forward with that site everyone said don't go to King's Cross it's going to take years to to get going and we walked into the building and naively looked around going wow this could be amazing and we we didn't we were probably you know we were naive at the time and we but we just thought it's an opportunity that we'll never get again so we just thought we'll give it a go and it turned out to be you know our biggest success probably not only commercially but also just from an achievement perspective it was a huge amount of work we had a small kind of restaurant cafe next to market and all of a sudden to go to a site that's that you know was just busy from day one and we've always gone through since then we've always gone through the lens of is this is it a beautiful site can we do something great here and um nick lander who um who got us into king's cross or came to us with that um uh with that opportunity always said if it's two in the morning and you get a call something's wrong at the restaurant will you get up and do you feel comfortable getting up to go and sort that out and if you don't maybe don't do it so that's what we've always considered since then just to be clear we don't get the 2am calls anymore especially if you're a gig i got rid of i got rid of those 2am calls because i don't want them anymore that's hilarious so i yeah i love that so ask yourself the question like is is this worth it or because i think um a lot of people can go into something and they feel like they have to do it because it's what everyone else is doing and i think yeah there's loads in that um what i want to talk about now this may sound quite morbid is this thing called the trough of sorrow and it's uh i love the sound of us yeah let's try and get a smile on that yeah yeah yeah but it's um it's a guy called paul graham who does a lot of um startup um more more silicon valley but he basically says um i'm putting this through a food and drink lens as Everyone says it's that zero to one million mark in terms of revenue, or it could be the first to third site for you guys.

43:33That is the trough of sorrow where you're just thinking, fuck this, this is mentioned, yeah? And I'm like with this podcast, so I've just jumped off the precipice. I'm like, I need to do this. I need, there's no, there's no option. This has to work. And what I'm kind of driven by at the minute is probably like a mix of passion and fear, right? I'd love to know. first question is what was driving you in those going from going to King's Cross and then the second question was how did you manage that because for me personally I'm like I can't switch off like this is just constant even waking up in the middle of the night I'm like thinking about something about this angle that angle and it's like is this sustainable is this is this worth the 2am cool is sometimes what I think but yeah I'd love to you guys to you know kind of go into that yeah I mean I think I'm actually going to flip that a little bit because I would argue in a journey in business that sometimes the trough of sorrow comes a little bit later and that is when you've I'll go back to when we started but yeah but that is when you've um created something you've worked really really hard and I agree that it is a trough of sorrow to start off with because literally you're just pumping absolutely everything into it and like we were working day and night you know I think I had we did sight baby sight baby at one point as well which also added a massive amount of challenge into the mix um so we were just our lives were just so intensely busy and I think you get burnout from that as well you get and then my my actual trough of sorrow comes a bit later in caravan yeah exactly and that is very much that actually you get a bit bored of your own brand and you get a bit like you get a bit like oh and this is what you were talking about I think before with those little crystals of magical however you were describing it with that alchemy of oh and I think this is why you know I'm my own worst enemy in that in that sense of why I'm always trying to look at oh but maybe we should do a sourdough bakery or maybe we should do a craft brewery now or because you're trying to create more for you to get excited about and I think staying really excited and engaged with your brand is actually very challenging after you've worked really really hard at something for a really long time but that's where growth comes into it and that's where getting really really incredible people around you comes into it and that's where you know getting a little bit grown up and getting better systems in place and all of that stuff but i just think when you at the start you start a restaurant and a coffee business because you're super super passionate about those two things right going back to the clatter of knives and forks drinking the wine that putting the wine list together the coffee supply we don't do the wine tastings anymore we don't do the cocktail tastings half the time.

46:11I do. Well, he does. But it's sort of, you move away from the stuff that you loved about why you created the business in the first place and more on to actually working on the business and being in much more of a sort of, well, I'm at the board meeting now, I'm doing a fundraiser. And sometimes it's difficult to keep the love going when actually you're working in a completely different section than what you thought you would. So anyway, that's sort of my trough of sorrow is just keeping the magic alive and keeping the love and the energy the energy levels really high and focused to me is the big challenge I was going to say the exact same thing actually I think I think working in restaurants is all about and the reason why people come to restaurants is the human connection we can eat at home we can order we can order amazing food in from Deliveroo and all sorts of places now but you can't replace the human connection so when you work in a restaurant and when you open your first restaurant you get there at seven every morning having left at midnight and the team start to arrive and everyone's smiling and then people start to come in and that whole such a buzz it's such a buzz especially in an all-day restaurant because people come in at eight o 'clock it's not like you you're working three hours setting up and people come in for lunch and you're waiting for that first customer people come in for takeaway coffee they come in straight away so that human connection is is so important and you you love the team you love the customers and and then to move away from that into more of a business environment is is really challenging but on the flip side you learn a lot right you learn a lot more about business and because we all came from restaurants and that's actually quite rare most of the people in our in our industry actually come through different different kind of different routes yeah finance they haven't worked lawyer yeah they haven't worked in restaurants for 10 20 30 years yeah i mean there's so much in that and um and and actually haven't talked about this on on the podcast i want to go into it um but what you said there about um coming to work and feeling is go back to right we said beginning the energy yeah and the smiles if you're seeing the smiles and the energy it's so that can get you to work at 7am when you're in the business it's very easy to to feel alive and energized um but then when you go into the the boardroom pardon the board room but like you're bored i'm not saying you're bored but like you as you said so rightly there you get a bit bored of your own brand and i genuinely think that a lot of these rebrands that happen are because the founder's bored they think that alexander mcqueen on the catwalk and like fuck it we need to do autumn winter you know 2023 yeah and i think a lot of it is because they want they'll convince themselves with logic that it's oh we need better messaging or but i think a lot of it is is that um i get a bit bored yeah um but so that's your trough of sorrow so how how did you keep the fire alive and the magic alive yeah is the first question yeah and then the second question is how did you guys have to change going from being in in the business to kind of on the business yeah well keeping the fire alive I think is a daily is a daily exercise isn't it I don't always wake up with a smile on my face um but I am an absolute optimist and um and so I think that you know there's so much to be excited about and so much to be enthusiastic about when it comes to Caravan and our journey and what we're up to and you know super excited particularly on the coffee side of the business and I think you know a positive because there are some positives that came out of the last three years with the pandemic is that we really pivoted to focusing more on the coffee side of the business obviously the restaurant restaurants are very very intensive from a time and energy perspective so coffee perhaps for a little while was playing a bit of second fiddle which it now is 100 % not and that's been a really exciting evolution for us is we've always had a really great out of home network of customers and it's been a brilliant part of the business but now we're very much looking into the retail landscape and you know retail ready for like-minded and aligned businesses and we've got lots of really you know exciting live conversations happening so I think that has definitely kept some of the fire alive of oh look there's this incredible section of the business that we started 13 years ago that could do with some time and energy and love and that side of things put into it and actually I think the fire has been kept alive by the fact actually that we're still here and a lot of our fellow restaurateurs unfortunately their businesses whether they be like small independents or you know even some of the even some of the bigger guys um have not made it through the pandemic and I think if that doesn't give you fire and that doesn't get you up in the morning um you know you should probably shouldn't be a business owner should you because ultimately like you should be super super proud that you managed to make it through and and that should you know and and all those people that we that we kept on with us we didn't make a single person redundant you know we were really really like held the line until the government announced the furlough scheme and cost us a lot of money to do it but we're really proud that we did it that way so yeah I forgot what the other question was and also make sure you you work with really good people yeah because if you always we recently brought in some great people into the business and they're so much fun to work with and they're inspiring themselves so you know that just again it comes down to no dicks right just just work with great people and that at least makes the the whole you know process fun because you don't have to work with boring people right yeah especially not especially not in what we do for sure i think i think there's so much in that for listeners and paul ainsworth who i interviewed last week and he'd said the way we we kind of do that is he calls it professional fun so um or you've almost got to be professional and it's almost like that fire is kept alive by being grateful that you're here yeah i think absolutely um but it is really interesting to think people the kind of the narrative is get find a passion go and set up a business yeah and it'll be it'll be a bit hard and you'll flip it and then bish bash bosh go and sit on a kind of a yacht on the french friviera sounds good that does sound very good rather rather be in the road street um and so so in terms of that i've got this thing which is not this thing but there's i believe there's a difference between in leadership between software and hardware right so um you know the book salt fat acid yes i love that book it's yeah wonderful so that so those are your principles you get those four things together you've got a good dish yep um so in terms of leadership i think there's some real core principles yep um which you just need um to run a great organization but then i also think um there's software so this is like the sort of the tacit knowledge or the nuances that you'd pick up only through doing kind of doing this for years and years and years um and that's almost like if you compare it through a recipe so say i'm making us i don't know an avocado on toast right so so you've got the principles and that's how this is what you need to do it yeah but then you can go a little bit off piece and add your kind of je ne sais quoi to things yeah um i don't know whether you want to put in more coriander whatever whatever floats your boat but i'd love to kind of look at this in in in your eyes in terms of like everything you've learned what are the two principles of great um great leadership how big's the um how many people do you manage now um it's 550 yeah um restaurants require a lot of people right yeah yeah yeah definitely a people-led business um 50 of those are in the roastery 30 30 yeah but i mean including some central support people that work on the roastery side of the business as well So, yeah, it's a lot of people.

54:22And I think by way of leadership, it's an interesting one because, you know, I think Jacinda Ardern is a very interesting human. Jacinda Ardern, the previous Prime Minister of New Zealand. Right, yeah. Yeah, and I was going to talk about it before where she, I think it was a world's first, but a budget that she brought out in 2019, or it could have been 18, was called the wellbeing budget. and it goes back to this principle about growth at all costs that I was talking about before. It's just that capitalist mentality of success is because you've grown a business and you're really profitable and that's the only way to measure success.

55:00Whereas she put a budget together for New Zealand which was a wellbeing budget, which is success actually isn't about just growth. It's about the wellbeing of everybody who lives in New Zealand and that that should actually be the way that we put budgets together And I think that principle applies to the way that we run Caravan and the way that we've led Caravan. We want to make decisions that are obviously right for the financial well-being of the business, but also right for the people. And I would say that that's that kind of balance between, I think empathy is probably the word that I would use the most in leadership that is the biggest driver for successful leadership is that we're talking about connection.

55:42and we obviously run a hospitality business and without empathy you are not able to properly connect with humans and and so that would be my sort of number one principle for leadership but empathy needs to be balanced with strength as well because obviously you can't be too empathetic to everything because otherwise you just won't get anything done and I think you need to show you need to show strength um in your decision making and in the way that you are um you know handle yourself in the way that you are with people as well so it's those two things combined for me again it goes back to this kind of balancing of of the barbell if you want to call it that you kind of need the empathy on this on this side and then the the strength and i'm kind of naturally a people pleaser so i'm empathetic but i won't always be like okay this is what i need to do yeah i think a lot of our listeners may have seen this sort of predicament so how do you add in sort of lashings and dashings of strength to kind of um balance your empathy and become really formidable formidable um well to be honest the strength but it's a bit of a work in progress for us as business um i would say that um that's something that we need to dial up a bit going forward because I do think that we very much run the business not as a family but as always as a team but in a very you know arms wide open you know let's just all crack on let's have a good time let's not take ourselves too seriously but let's get the job done on the other side and I just think it's one of those things that you transition through as you grow isn't it so it's recognizing that you need to implement a bit more kind of strength and structure into the team to push it forward.