Oisín Rogers, The Devonshire: Building London’s Most Successful Pub, The Power of Storytelling, Embracing Lovely Chaos, Trends are Wrong, Be Besotted not Obsessed

0:28Hey guys, I hope you are wonderful. that the ship in wandsworth so you've ever been to the ship sundays and which is an absolutely banging booze up uh that was all of osha's thinking and he's responsible for that so there's just so much in that we go it deep into kind of the secrets of great hospitality how the devonshire do things differently they they're obsessed with storytelling doing a thousand little things well from the bodyguards to the knives to the art on the wall it really gives you a whole feeling of what makes a great pub so many lessons in that we talk about the reframe of obsessed to besotted and i think so many founders get obsessed obsessed obsessed and it's like not very nice word but if you change that to besotted you're besotted with your brand it's just delicious um we talk about why some of the best pubs are the landlord and the landlord is the best pubs it's a great kind of link we talk about the carol rogers palmer walters symphony so like the three of them as co-founders how they have chaos order and perfection and i think if anyone's in a co-founder partnership or bringing someone on then there's just so much in that we talk about osha's granddad's mantra for life which i've just loved which is avoid unpleasantness so simple but so effective and i've been using it a lot this week like just avoiding unpleasant people unpleasant things you're gonna absolutely love this episode um i can't wait for you to listen to it as i say please if you enjoy this podcast please like it share it share it with a friend we literally grow one podcast at a time and yeah without further ado let's jump in with Osh.

2:00Hello there people and listeners of the Hungry podcast today I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome Osh Rogers onto the podcast Osh is the co-founder of the Devonshire which is in my opinion London's absolutely most amazing pub i was here on friday having multiple guinnesses having a very um lovely time osha's been uh a landlord for several well several um kind of 20 years or so in london working at the stag's head in dublin first um the ship in wandsworth the guinea grill and now the devonshire and um yeah thank you so much for finding the time in your crazy schedule to do this i'm incredibly grateful it's really nice to see you dan thanks for coming to see me monday morning i love it in the pub there's nobody here it's kind of lovely and empty and uh sort of ready for the day um you're really welcome it's a it's yeah it's a delicious juxtaposition from friday i was out on the street and me and my friend were saying that you've got like the nicest bouncers in in in in london they make you feel so like because you know you've got that line there Yeah, we need to enforce that.

3:09And actually, it's really interesting because I don't really like the word bouncers because, you know, door staff quite often in pubs bring a completely different vibe to the place. You know, when they're all badged up and they're wearing like stab free vests and they got high vis on and they look really menacing. And, you know, they're the same guys, but we've just sat them down and spoken to them about the fact that we want them to be like ghosts in the background, not visible. they wear their normal clothes and they work as like really just to make people feel safe and comfortable and happy and make sure that we adhere to the rules without being uh over the top because that's one thing i've noticed just since we've been walking through today and when i was here having drinks it feels like you guys have done a thousand little things incredibly well and i think that's what's kind of add to the summation of of the devonshire is this huge explosion and we're going to get onto that but i think yeah me and my friend we're having a few guinnesses outside i was like the way when you said the word ghost I was like that makes complete sense because they're big imposing lads but they're just so softly spoken it just makes such such a delicious little difference but what I want to start with is Octopaddy so I found and I literally thought Octopaddy what a hilarious um phrase yeah uh so so tell me about your um your journey to London and then how did Osh turn into Octopaddy?

4:36Well, I was fortunate and unfortunate at the same time. I was good at maths in school and university, and so I was good at maths, chemistry, physics, applied maths, and a bit of biology. So, you know, when you do really well in those subjects in the 80s, the assumption is made by your teacher is you're going to be an engineer. so I went to UCD in 1986 to study engineering first year didn't have any money at all and wanted to have a part-time job and getting a job in a pub at the time was really quite difficult because it was a good job, it was well paid and the entry into the business was very difficult because you had to know somebody and I really searched and tested because I wanted to work in a good pub and there was a friend of a friend whose dad knew the guy who owned the Stag's Head in Dublin, Peter Chaffrey at the time, lovely cabin man.

5:33And the procedure was that you had to write a letter to the barman, Francie McGann, the head barman. Francie McGann, what a name. Yeah, and Francie would get all these letters all the time and he'd decide based on the letter whether you'd get an interview. And anyway, I set my letter in, waited for about three weeks, got a letter back in the post saying uh dear mr rogers you've been accepted for an interview on tuesday 5th of january whatever it was at um 6 p.m do not be late and i look forward to seeing you and that was it uh in in in old-fashioned type with a signature at the bottom and a little stag's head um headed notepaper and i was really excited about this came along to my interview there was three guys sitting in front of me all with white shirts and ties you know uh a couple of guys after me we all had an interview and we went into francie's office i went into francie's office and francie was on the other side he's a gruff older typical dublin almost humorless barman of you know hundreds of years of experience he looks like this yeah yeah and uh yeah perfect i sat down and he's gone, Rogers.

6:45I said, yeah, Oisin Rogers. He says, Rogers. He says, I interview dozens of people and only one in every 15 or 20 gets a job. And even then, most of them only last about a week. So I'm probably wasting your time, but I have one question for you. And I said, yeah, go on. He said, a pint of Guinness is£1.06. A pint of harp is£1.09. A whiskey is£1.03. pence and a dash of lemonade is 15 p a vodka is one pound and seven pence and a gin is one pound 27 if a man comes into me and he orders two and a half pints of guinness two pints of harp two whiskeys a gin and tonic and a vodka and lemonade tell me how much that would come to please and I said that's£14.12 and he said right you can start on Friday but you won't last the week I can tell by the set of you and that was the end of the interview until I came in on the Friday and then describe so he so he's saying right you're not going to survive survive the well I mean because that maths I would never get my brain doesn't just not get maths but the so you absolutely kind of you get you say it's£14.25 he says you're not going to last a week someone's got to check that it's the wrong answer because i've forgotten that skill now because that was it was something that you did used to have to do yeah you know because you would have to know how much around was because tills didn't add up in those days yeah yeah yeah well yeah i mean i would be i'm just not maths and numbers i'm like i had to do extra learning for maths but so he says you're not going to last a week tell me tell me the first um the journey into that first week and then into octopaddy so So it was a part-time job.

8:31So I used to do three nights a week. So I'd do Thursday, Friday, and maybe Wednesday the following week. And that was the way it went. And then when you had done your three shifts at the end of the night, you'd get paid a brown envelope with 60 quid in it, which 60 punts at the time was a lot of money. And, you know, there was an expectation that you'd be really good at your job. And I remember showing up on my first shift, which was a Thursday, and being like really apprehensive because obviously the youngest guy there i just turned 18 working with really proper fast old school irish barmen who knew exactly what they were doing and uh you know you go in there into that cauldron and it's a sink or swim very quickly and francie actually had this thing where he either liked you or didn't like you and if you didn't like you you were gone in two days like end of story but if he did like you he was the nicest kindest most supportive brilliant fabulous guy and he taught me an awful lot there because you know the simple things like keep your head up always know who's waiting even if there's 10 people waiting make sure the 10th guy knows that you're going to get to him serve three guests at a time always know how much the round is always have enough guinness poured that sort of thing that you know i think people coming into our business nowadays don't get that overview of what we're doing you know and it was really coming from a place of pride of being able to do it really well and having done it over a long period as you said there about the pride and the fact this is probably my um my naivety but the fact you had to write a letter like a full-blown letter yeah to get a job in a pub now as i think i interviewed the guys from honest um honest burger uh really lovely guys and they were saying one thing that really fucks them off at the minute is how hospitality now has become like a step job for so many people.

10:29I think it's always been like that in England, though. Really? And I found that over here. And even when I came first, I arrived here in 89. I really found that the culture of people working in pubs compared to what I was used to was a vast difference, you know. Because even then and all the way through, I think people think, oh, I need some money. I can't be bothered to get a real job. I'll get a job in the pub for a bit. and you know people come and go it's very transient um you know anyone who's half decent gets promoted to a system manager very quickly and you know this the high the standards are not as high and the technical ability is not as high and i think also the whole way that guests are looked looked after and how people feel is not looked at in the same way as certainly it used to be in dublin in those days so i really was very fortunate to get that head start and you said Francis taught you Lowe's like what did he what specific things did he teach you that you still believe kind of drip into the Devonshire today like when I'm here on Friday honestly I think about this a lot and obviously I've talked about the technical bits you know about speed and making sure the beer is great and making sure you have positive interactions with the guests and the guests feel something but it's more than that it's a it's it's a timelessness it's a kind of a respect for the history and and and the the timeless position of of what the pub is and then the other thing is the the whole value culture of what's going on and that and that i mentioned the pride but there's also things like you know having things clean and tidy making sure things are ordered uh and in a presented in an orderly way and that that you know the stuff you need to do your job correctly are all in the right position and making sure that things are prepared and that you're not going to run out of stuff and that everything works you know that's i mean it sounds simple but there's a lot of there's a lot of thought and planning and texture to use your word to go that goes into these things yeah one thing that as i said before we hit record that just fascinates me endlessly is um so so i've done a bit of work for i think i sent you some I don't know if you tried it, that white mouth soup, that Irish, as I said, chili crack.

12:45Yeah. So they're based, or crack, I should say, based in Dublin. They started at the Fumbly Market. Uh-huh. And now they've built that kind of brand. But I used to go over a lot to Dublin. And what I, and I felt like, as I say, there's this, there's this real texture to it. I can't really put my thing, like, I can't pinpoint a word on it. So I've, I've kind of experienced it in that regard. And I've experienced working with, um, uh, with Lorcan and his, and his family who run the business but one thing that fascinates me is all the some of the best storytellers in the world are irish james joyce um oscar wilde um you've got o casey you've got beckett yeah so many there what what being an irishman why do you think i mean these like ulysses is one of the best books of people say it's one of the best books of all time i've tried to read it about I can't get through it.

13:38Why do you think that is? I think there's a value thing and a culture of enjoying talking shite, you know, and being able to go back and, you know, have entertaining conversations and conversations generally being an important thing. and for me it's really important because i think our business is all about stories you know and you know what what you're bringing in terms of the lore and the story that you give guests to be able to tell when they leave the business is really really central to what to what i think pubs and restaurants and places where people gather are about i hadn't thought of it like that i suppose there's constant like the currency and the energy is the storytelling.

14:22Well, if you think about the Devonshire, it's all about stories, you know, it really is. I mean, and they're true, luckily, you know, the bit about me and Charlie meeting up, the bit about why Ashley's here, the whole lore and story about the Guinness, about the butchery, about what we've done with the cooking and the fire and the wood and, you know, all of the trials and tribulations. We're very conscious that that's currency and that people need these bits and pieces in order to sort of have something to tell about their experience here. Yes. Yeah, I think all those stories intertwine. And then that's because one of the things I wanted to ask you is how this explosion happened.

15:01As I said, I was with George and Dom in Suffolk and they were saying our friend Osh is about to open this pub called the Devonshire. This was kind of, I think, mid to early October times. I think you guys opened. We opened on the 5th of November. The 5th of November, yeah. and then it just went this explosion happened I remember my first time I came here long story but I'd lost my passport absolutely it was a nightmare I'd lost my fucking passport and I was meant to be going to Paris the next day and I came in here and I had two pints of Guinness and it just felt like a big cuddle I was like this is what this is so nice to hear this is what a great booze is about but what yeah what would you say like how was there anything you put in place beforehand for this explosion to happen like how did it happen there was loads of things and in hindsight it was that that theme of stories is is really important you know so like this green room that we're sitting in at the moment which was an afterthought we thought really long and hard about what the story of this would be and we wanted to be a place for art and music and people people who are uh are creative minded to feel comfortable and safe and and that's really worked you know the same with the little boots in there that we that we we swap around for the for the restaurant the way the bar is the little nods to culture um all of those things and we were very fortunate that charlie and ash and i had so much time to plan and think about all these things and every single plan or thought that we had uh made a story i think down to the knives that we use for the steak in the restaurant by kato that was one of our great stories and really really lovely collaboration with them um and i think yeah all of those things together give us a bit of texture and color um that people can take away and go oh well i experienced this or i saw that and i quite like that or whatever it is you know even the sign writing on the front to go and find uh perry who's a old school hand signed writer to properly do all the outside in the way it would have been done 100 years ago it's a nice little little vignette yes as i know when you talked about the beginning about the guys on the door being we want them to feel like ghosts and wear their normal clothes that is a story and as i opened it with the story i had of the devon show when i was here on friday was that i was like we're getting ushered in but it's in the most calm and kind of serene warm way which is now i've never had before in a part that really comes from the culture you know everything everything we do is pointed at our business which is to make people feel comfortable safe happy and well looked after that is that is core to what we're doing and we think about that all the time whether it's where furniture is how the how the staff engage with you how you check in how things work how you feel when you get served all of those bits and pieces and the door the door or the the uh the we don't call them door stuff that we we we have a word for them i've forgotten what it is it's monday morning mate don't worry yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah what's the story of you because because charlie was at uh was flat ironed yeah and then ashley was was at the fat duck yeah what like how did you this the three trio come together charlie and i go back to a round table discussion that happened i think it was around 2012-13 with the caterer magazine and we just happened to be sat at a round table with a load of other operators talking about how the business was at the time we ended up getting on quite well during the conversation went for a pint afterwards and ended up becoming reasonably close and uh chatting about stuff and uh charlie and i did a project in 2014 where at the ship we roasted a whole ox on um on a huge great big pole with cartwheels on either end there's a great video of it on youtube it's very fun uh one of the best things i've ever did and we sort of collaborated on that and began talking about doing a pub at that stage but I had no intention of doing anything apart from staying at Young's for a long time and it gradually came to fruition over a long time so there had been hundreds of hours of conversation about this before we even looked at this site so we had an idea what direction we were going to go in and Charlie's a wonderful wonderful guy he's so clever he thinks really slow he's amazing with numbers he's strategically one of the best operators out there and you know his journey with flat iron to go from zero to 13 restaurants over seven eight years um is an incredible story and that for me flat iron i think is one of the best if not the best multiple operating restaurant chains in the country and, you know, it's credit to him and he's taking a lot of that expertise in here with me and Ashley and I think it really shows.

19:58Ashley sort of came along following a conversation that me and Charlie had been having because we both remembered a particular dish at the Heinz Head in Bray going back to 2003, 4, 5, before I got a Michelin star where there was this suet pudding and it was It was ox tail and kidney and in a sauce, really delicious steamed pudding with the sauce over the top. And I can still remember the feeling of putting my spoon through it and then tasting this delicious meat. And it stuck out to me as the best iteration of traditional British pub food I'd ever had. I said this to Charlie in a conversation at Norman's Coaching Horses one afternoon And he's gone fuck I remember that dish as well Absolutely banging I wonder who was behind that Because obviously it's not a Heston dish And I've gone I'm certain it was Ashley And he's gone Ashley do you know him Not really but I've got a friend who knows him Do you know him Not really I've got a friend who knows him So we both reached out to him And two days later we're having a pint with him And that was it and how are you how are you similar and different so one of the things that fascinates me is how how like the storytelling the storytelling bubbles down from the top right yeah but yeah I love to know how you guys are similar and then how you're how you're different across the three of you we all love pubs and we all love pints we all love stories we're all really good family men as well I think um and you know we've all got kids we all like our holidays we all like a bit of balance but i think we're all completely besotted and and and think all the time about our business you know what we do and pubs restaurants how to do things well i think that that would be how i would describe how similar we are i love the word besotted i haven't completely described that as a some people say obsessed but i think that's quite a nefarious way of saying yeah it's a bit more emotional yeah yeah i think i'm a bum just sorted with this podcast that's i love that how a word can completely change things i and i think that's the similarity and we really really care about it and all three of us really care about the details but i think we care about the details in different ways which i think is interesting because actually you look at my career and what i've done and you look at charlie's career and what i've done you look at ashley's career and what what he's done they're really really really different you know I've always been the front of house, front man, maitre d' type, you know, publican, mind host type character who deals with customers day to day and staff and customer interaction day to day.

22:50Charlie's much more thoughtful overview a little bit more corporate always about the big picture and you know the business side of things and doing the deals and making sure that the margins work and making sure that best suppliers and best practice and all that and Ashley has always been the food perfectionist I mean he invented the triple cook chip for God's sake do you know what I mean and you know things like the journey to get to the bread that we've done, the journey to get to the chocolate mousse. You know, we were cooking for a full year before we opened down at Mission Kitchen. Not a lot of people know that, but we started...

23:28That's why I used to be based in Vauxhall. Yeah. Yeah, that's where I was based for six years. We started cooking there. We started cooking before that, but we took a space in Mission Kitchen in January 23. And we were still cooking there in October. And so that's where all the dishes and the cooking was developed. and actually oversaw that with Jamie and us, yeah, and our exec, Ev, as well, who still works with us on the food side. It's interesting seeing the kind of, as you say, the texture between you three and then how it kind of spills into this manifestation. Well, I think an interesting observation came from a very good friend of mine, Bob, when he met the three of us for a pint, he's gone, it's really interesting, you three, because, Osh, you're total fucking chaos.

24:21And I do think in a chaos way, whereas Charlie's complete and absolute order, and then you've got Ashley, who's complete and absolute perfection. And I think between the three of us, we got a good balance. Yeah, chaos, order, perfection. I love the synergy. I think I've listened to a couple of, read a couple of interviews you've done, Osh, in terms of, I think you talk about the coaching horses, another boozer in Soho. Love it, yeah. And I think you talk about the landlady there or the landlord, and you say the best pubs have to have a landlord or a Republican who's there kind of a lot of the time.

24:59I'm very set on that as an idea and have been always. And I think that's changed a lot in England because even when I came over, most pubs had a landlord and usually the landlord lived upstairs or the landlady. And just because of the way that the corporate owners of pubs over the years have, you know, sold off the accommodation upstairs, in relative terms, they've lowered the wages that landlords get and the benefits they get and how they're perceived. And then there's the added baggage of the job itself, which has become much more paperwork based with all of the red tape and the procedures which we rightly have to do.

25:46And that takes a lot of the time away from landlords. Also, a lot of them only work 40 hours a week, which for me is bonkers. But then again, I'm a dinosaur. You do see some incredible pubs, though. And when you do see an incredible pub, the chances are 99 % there's a landlord, a landlady or a figurehead there who is in charge of it, runs it and takes pride and responsibility for the day to day. Yeah, it's fascinating because I think I go to a lot of pubs, right? Every weekend I'm going to a different pub. Glad to hear that. But I think a lot of them can feel kind of a bit IKEA flat pack in that it's like it's rinsing, especially with the big corporate chains.

26:28There's numerous of them, right? I used to work for a cheese wholesaler called Harvey and Brockless. I used to be a man in a van when I left uni. And I'd go into the kitchens and you'd see this. It was kind of the system behind the scene. It looked, it was, as you say, kind of flat packed with the menus. It was the same thing going to each and every pub. Yeah. And I think what I'm trying to work out whether this, the kind of the birth of gastropubs, is that what's the good, bad and ugly of that in your honest opinion? Well, going back to that flat pack thing, I think it's a really good observation from you.

27:01And what you're saying about that is actually that they homogenize the design. They homogenize the idea. And, yeah, that's fine, but it takes away all the other dimensions and the characters and the wonder and the beauty and the stories from what you're doing. And I think if you look at a pub business or a restaurant business from the point of view of you have to make some money, then you're on a loser. because if you think if you look at a pub and go okay right that's the dog and duck we're going to buy the dog and duck and we need to make 300 000 pounds a year profit so if we need to do that then we need to turn over a million pounds and if we're going to turn over a million pounds then we need a manager who's got to pay 40 000 and we only need six staff and then we want to make the kitchen like this and then we'll buy the cheaper food and that will make sure that we get the bottom line if you think about it from that way i think you're fucked because what we we've always thought about it from the other way we want to make a place where people feel something we want the food to be great we want to have lots of stories we want to have different areas where people feel different in we want to have a place for people to hide and if we do all those things then we should make some money so that that really is the difference i think between what charlie and and ash and i have done and what the big corporates do and i think the the result is what you've described that flak pack feeling yeah it's like it's like fuck me going to a pub it's like there's a dog bowl with some biscuits it's like it's so it feels like it's generic it's so generic and and and and it's it's thought but a lot of the decisions that you see that you don't like are thought about by someone who's not there who's in a head office in a marketing department somewhere who's saying right it's sending an email out saying this is the list sort of spritzes that you're going to be selling for the summer and i want you to all buy into these spritzes when actually you might I'd be sending it to a lovely old country pub where the blokes don't even know what a spritz is and don't bloody care because they just want to have a nice band.

29:01Yeah. There's a quote, I want to tease out some quotes from Irish writers because I think it's as fascinating as kind of like a launch plaid. But Oscar Wilde's got a quote which is, everything popular is wrong. And I think about that a lot. And I'd love to know, what's one truth you believe, staunchly, that you think most people would disagree with you on? Oh, I'll give you a good one. I don't think there's anything, I don't think there's any such thing as a good trend. Is there any such thing as a good trend? People always ask me, or often ask me in these things, what do you think the next new thing is going to be?

29:42What's the next new trend? What do you think are the trends going to be next year? And I've always kind of avoided that because if you try and think, oh, everybody's going to drink, I don't know, pear cider, and you focus on that, it might work for a little bit, but it won't work for a long time. And eventually you'll be seen as, oh, that's the pear cider guy. You're much better off thinking, what do people always like and what have they always enjoyed? decent beer comfortable furniture good lighting bit of fun and i always think that way about things that are timeless rather than of a time timeless versus over time yeah i think there's a uh there's a guy interviewed called rory sutherland who's like a marketing um really interesting marketing guy works for ogilvy and he was saying that you can only see when like as you look the longer you've been in kind of in business you can see how pointless trends are but when you're in it for so short a time it feels like this is this is where it's going and i think even vegan meat like that everyone thought the whole world was going to fucking change yeah obviously there's a there's always a vegan dish on the menu now but over even that's beginning to subside yeah they've got burned those companies haven't they quite a bit recently completely burn yeah um it's it's endlessly fascinating and what is the story you would like we've talked a lot about stories but like what is the story you want people to go and say say to their friends after they've been here um i i can answer that really simply i want i want people to tell their friends that they felt good that they felt that they had value for money and that they had value for time and to express that in a in in a way that will make other people feel positive about what we're trying to do and then you've talked about time versus timeless yeah super interesting how do you how do you how is the devons you're going to say stay timeless well times times are really interesting we have a good conversation about time because everyone talks about value and you know obviously you do need to have value and we've thought carefully about that you know about the set menu not 29 quid you know about the pint of becks for 4.95 the the um the budvar is 460 and you can come in here and get a get a gin and tonic for eight quid double gin and tonic for eight quid so so from a value and price point uh we've done that but price is not value and i we've proposed the the uh concept of value for time rather than value for money because time is that currency that is way more valuable to people than money i think time is more important than money and when someone decides that they're gonna spend part of their evening or their whole evening or a lunch time with us that's an investment that they've made that they think all right i'm gonna go to the devonshire and i've got a reservation at one o 'clock and i'm gonna be there till four and i might stay till six for some pints that's a huge investment of a chunk of their incredibly valuable um downtime or their investable time that they give to us so i think from our point of view we need to deliver on that so to make sure that the time they spent they spend it in a way that they feel good about and that's i think a lot of the bits and pieces we do in terms of values and how people feel and the training and the bits and pieces and the experience and the food and the drink uh should all feed into that and that's really where we're coming from on the time front and we talked about kind of you talked about your training we've talked about octopaddy we've talked about what you're building here what would you say is like something you know that most other landlords don't don't know like what is what are some of your principles that you'd pass on to i know your daughter laura is um laura is working here as well What would you pass on?

33:56I don't know. It's a difficult one. I think you just need to be good, try to be good, and try to be good from the point of view of what the customers feel, not what you think is necessarily what you should be doing. I think it's important to put yourself in the customer's skin and shoes and think about how they feel. What's the atmosphere like? What could be irritating? And try and take those bits out. that's another thing about the kind of whether you call it gastro well not gastro wank's probably too strong a phrase but but those flat pack pubs is the noise because this one thing i've just thought about when i said on friday i was like because sometimes you can go to a pub and it's really echoey yeah yeah we think about that too yeah yeah like how does that what how important is the kind of the the noise of a i think it's more that but this is an interesting one for me because if you go back 40, 50, 60, 100, 200 years into pubs, pubs always had nooks, crannies.

34:55They had little dividers, screens, soft seating. You think about snugs. You think about those beautiful Victorian screens that would be all through the pubs with glass and nice leather finishes. And then they had the anaglypta, which is this raised wallpaper, which by the way is very good for soundproofing and there's another one called Linkruster that you'll see in old pubs. It's like a very, very heavily textured wallpaper that's got swirls and stuff in it like that. A lot of that stuff was taken out by the big pub cos in the last 30, 40, 50 years on the basis that they thought that if they took it out they'd have more space.

35:38But actually I have a feeling that people when they come to the pub quite often want to hide that they want to find themselves in a corner or somewhere comfortable and soft and where where they don't necessarily want to be seen drinking restaurants are different i think people want to be seen in restaurants but in pubs i think it's important to have places where you can't be seen and we've thought really hard about that and if you look at the the boots and and and and the screens and the and the way the tables are done you've got places where you won't be seen and that's important and carpet is another one of course yeah um and a lot of these places a lot those old Victorian pubs they've pulled everything out and they've turned them into like big square rooms and from there you get this issue with noise and the fact that you can't hide anywhere that you're so visible and I don't think that's right for pubs not all pubs anyway you said your um your brain is kind of more chaotic or your mind the way you think and I I kind of relate to that a lot um what how does your your brain like work how does it oh god I don't know the answer to that but i do know i jump from from thought to thought to thought very quickly and that somehow works for for pubs but the the theme of chaos is very important too i think without chaos then pubs don't work there's an element of chaos that has to be there managed of course and looked after that makes the excitement and makes things uh happen i think if everything's ordered and and use all the same furniture and you have everything really set like a restaurant or beautifully symmetric, then you don't get the flashpoints and the wonder that happens at pubs.

37:22The great thing about pubs is you come in here and you stand, you have a pint, you don't know who you're going to end up talking to. And we've always said that we'd like for the bin man and the chairman to be able to meet on a level playing field out there. And that's really, really important to us that, you know, you could be a billionaire and you could be stood there and you could be talking to somebody who doesn't make very much money but you can still have a fantastic interaction and a really good experience and that believe it or not happens here all the time and how do you create that because i love the word chaos is something i i think yeah the reason i like chaos and imperfection is because every human being is has an element of chaos and imperfect even though with all this people present ourselves is perfect i think one of the reasons i think pubs work is as you say it's a place you can kind of hide or um the ones that work really well are those little elements of all the as you said the nooks and crannies and the imperfections like that's what humans are ultimately yeah and i also and i also think most people's lives are now are so incredibly ordered you know people have jobs where they have to be at the desk at a particular time leave at a particular time they have to wear a certain uh uniform they're not allowed to put their feet on the chairs they have to work in these um spreadsheet ordered zoom meeting type environments where their lunch break is at exactly the same time they get the same train home to work uh and then at the weekends they're they play golf at the same time and all of this stuff and i think you need to break out of that a little bit and i think pubs can really give people a kind of a different environment and sensation and it doesn't matter what if you're a challenger brand that's absolutely killing it in d2c but you're struggling to crack retail then you've got to listen to this maybe you've got an ocado listing maybe you've got a whole foods listing maybe you're absolutely killing it in selfridges maybe you're absolutely killing it in your farm shop and your indies but my friends making the leap crossing el chasm crossing El Rubicon to grocery retail is not easy.

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43:59But from a work point of view, I lived at the Guinea more or less sort of three to five days a week when I was there and loved living in Mayfair. But I've always wanted to come to Soho. And Soho might as well be 20 miles from Mayfair. It's a completely different place. You talk about chaos. Soho is chaos. And it's brilliant chaos. And I loved it. So about a month before I left the Guinea in June 22,

44:35Charlie and I signed a lease on Flatton Dean Street. And so I pretty much moved there. And I felt it was important to be a resident of Soho if we're going to open a pub here. Because there's nothing worse than coming in and making assumptions about an area without really knowing it. So I wanted to live and breathe Soho and get to know the other pub landlords and the people who own the clubs and the people on the street and the coffee bar owners and the restaurateurs and the tramps and the lunatics. And I really, really got myself involved and got, I had a lot of fun and still do, getting to know the real locals of here.

45:19and part of that was having the camera and I think I took my first one of those silly photos around the time I moved in and I thought, oh, that's all right. Maybe I can do a little series of those and put them up in the pub and that's where that's come from. So they're all very much Soho photos. Yeah, I mean, they're beautiful. There's a... Yeah, I implore everyone who's listening to this to go on to Osher's Instagram and look at them because they are visually kind of, yeah, super, just lure you in and I think the reflection of things is super fascinating. What did you learn that you didn't expect to learn with coming to Soho about this part of London?

45:56You said it's 20 miles from Mayfair, which is super kind of curious. I think there's something, for those of us who've got that chaotic brain, there's something very, very attractive about Soho. And I realised this a very long time ago. And you know, I go on about the Coaching Horses and that is an iconic pub, which is full of an incredibly eclectic, eccentric bunch of customers. any time you go in there. And that's, I suppose, a reflection on Soho itself. You know, you think of Soho and it's the square between Piccadilly Circus, Leicester Square, Oxford Circus and Tottenham Court Road. And I think people who are coming out of one of those stations with the intention of heading towards Soho, there's an expectation of colour and wonder and fun and maybe some drinking, maybe some art, culture, theatre, the gay side of things, then, you know, coffee, amazing food, and there's an expectation that you're going to be entertained.

46:57And that, for me, is very, very important. And to be living in the middle of that with a chaotic brain and planning to open a big business like this has been a huge, huge amount of fun. And I've met some really, really great people and had some great times. Who are some of the most interesting people you've met? Oh, I don't know. Dennis and Elliot, who bought Jerry's Club. The staff of the coaching horses have been fantastic. Got to meet all the crew from the Union Club and the Academy. And, you know, my very lovely friend, Paddy Renouf from Merritt Street. All the crew from the Union Club. Jazz After Dark, the guys up at the Blues Bar in Kingley Street.

47:48You know, there's a great kind of village feel among the people that'll have a coffee in the morning and have a bit of chat and the dog walkers and people going to school. And I think if you don't live here, you don't get an idea for that. And then there's the French House with its bunch of artists and West End actors and fabulous writers and creatives and painters. You know, there's a huge layers of what's going on here. But for me, the thread between everything is that chaos and that creativity. The chaos and the creativity. How is Mayfair different from this? What was Mayfair? I loved Mayfair and I loved running the guinea and and you know Mayfair is a an area an area where people concentrate on on on creating wealth and and and um and high value things you know so there's a lot of government a lot of um a lot of hedge fundiness a lot of big retail a lot of property management and you know those guys are fabulous customers and we had a really great time there but i think they don't necessarily feel as comfortable on this side of region street as as they do over the other side when we look in like the reflection when you look in your reflection like what about yourself scares you a good example of this is during the during the incredibly intense few months from june when we signed the lease here until november when we actually opened And there was an absolute avalanche of work that needed to be done from the point of view of getting this, turning this from a chicken shop into what looks like a pub that's been here for a while.

49:44and the the the intensity of the dealings with the builders the contractors the suppliers the staff the setup the purchasing of equipment and furniture and all of that stuff really became a whirlwind it was it was incredibly intense charlie ashley and i worked you know a lot of 18 hour days uh in an environment that i'm not absolutely used to because it involved being on a computer and talking to people on the phone and and dealing with um contractors and timelines and schedules and cash and all of those things and i found that incredibly stressful and intense on the basis that it was such a huge investment and there was so much involved in making it a success and i realized close to the time we were opening that i wasn't able to tell the difference between being excited and shitting myself so there was this kind of mad intense emotional feeling happening where i wasn't sure what the signals coming back to me were because i was so in it and that was kind of a learning for me that they do actually feel quite similar yes excitement and nerves are the same thing yeah i say that to myself from doing this because i get nervous before i do podcasts i always do yeah you certainly don't seem nervous yeah no no i do even today on the way up i was you know i just always shit myself a little bit but oh my goodness but i believe it is it's a good thing oh definitely and then it adds what i i've come to because i've done like talks in front of a couple hundred people and i was like i'm actually like fucking shit myself you know what i mean yeah and then after i've done them a couple of times i'm like it just sharpens the sore yeah like those nerves add a certain like gravitas to things that um well i remember the last couple of weeks in october because we had planned to open mid-october and of course these things always slip a little bit yeah of course and that last couple of weeks and you just do the calculations about how much money uh is is is going out compared to what should be coming in and you look at the numbers and you absolutely go oh jesus you know and uh That last sort of headlong 15, 20 days from the point of view, we thought, listen, we've got to get this open to actually getting it open.

52:05And, you know, there's some really lovely photos on the wall in the green room that were taken by Mike Taylor, which kind of punctuates that for me. And I quite often look at those days and I go, oh, my God, you know, that front bar didn't even have a bar in it two days before we opened. it looked like an absolute the worst disaster that had happened and to get through that and have it done and get the carpentry finished and french polished and open and get the beer flowing was just an incredible time how do you surf the chaos of like the the the sweet i almost imagine like a wave of shitting yourself versus excitement yeah a wave of chaos and that relates to me massively how did you because i even i'm asking this selfishly like how do you like stay above the water not stay above the water but stay not calm but like keep do you know what i mean within that honestly i i do think well while the plan and the and and and the timeline was there in front of me i always thought about the moment that i was in and trying to get the shit done that needs to be done right now and i'm quite good at getting things done quickly and right now and i felt like i couldn't think forward for a lot of that time it was all about right now i've got to do this list of things that needs to be done right now and i want it done before the end of day today and if it's not done before the end of day today it needs to be done tomorrow first thing and rather than having goals and action plans which which i fucked that by the way i just had a list of things to fucking sort out yes and if even if they weren't done to the standard i wanted them to i wanted to be able to get to a point where they were done and i could move on to the next thing and that was how i got through it yeah it's almost being being in the in the moment what did it feel like when you open when you on the day you open you've had this huge amount of work between the three of you lads god it was um what's the feeling in your soul there was one particular moment where we got the beers on and the beers were delivered and we tested the the guinness and i think it was only me ash charlie ross sam and mike the photographer were the only ones here it was a probably a tuesday evening and i pushed it and pushed it and rushed it and rushed it and wanted to get to that fucking point where a pint of guinness would come into a glass and somehow we managed it and the technical the technical um push that we had to get that done was immeasurably intense like i don't know how the technicians managed it how the builders managed how we managed it but we managed to pour a few pints and the very first one i was tasted i was really fucking happy with and we knew we'd nailed it and i just went and i said look i'm just going to sit in the fucking corner and i sat in the corner yeah and it was pretty emotional i can imagine yeah that's amazing and mike actually took a photo it's over there but that for me was a was a big moment why is the guinness like what how do you approach the guinness differently because i i took as i said i was here on friday yeah i took my mate freddie and i was like trust me mate this guinness is fucking i mean i've done fucking dozens of interviews about guinness and it's just so boring to be honest with you let's do it in one sentence then we put the bloody thing in so it would pour correctly and we have a good pint and we keep the glasses clean and the staff know how to do it that's it that's it but we've done the same with the lager we've done the same with the wine we've done the same with the chocolate pudding we've done the same with the cooking of the steak we've done the same with the the way we sharpen the knives for the kitchen We've done the same with the art.

55:57We've done the same with the staff training. We've done the same with the door staff. We've done the same with how the customers feel. So in our terms, the Guinness is a drop in the ocean of the many, many, many things on our huge, big plan of bits. And it's surprising to me still that that thing that we know we got it right and we know the Guinness is great, But it seems to colour a lot of people's feeling about what this place is. And weirdly, it makes us seem to people that we're an Irish pub, which we're kind of not, and we're intentionally not. This is a pub for Soho. This is a pub for the people around here to come and have a great time and feel that vibe of being comfortable, safe, happy, and well-looked after.

56:44It's not about Guinness. It's not about Ireland. it's about being in Soho being in the Devonshire and having that timeless history. I think I listened to a podcast or an interview you did and you're like this is a Soho pub with an Irish accent and I thought that's a beautiful way of saying it, it's got a little tinge of... Yeah definitely, there's a lot of it especially with Ross and Sam here by the way and they're legends and yeah it's got an Irish accent but it's very much not an Irish pub and I think that's really important that people feel that it's for everybody. What does the perfect, I ask some random questions as well, what does a perfect pint of Guinness and the texture of that, like teach someone about the texture of Ireland?

57:31Nothing, I would say. I think the overarching thing here is that Guinness were always a brilliantly benevolent a really good thing for Dublin in particular but Ireland in general, they always looked after their staff they made sure that everybody who worked for them had really good accommodation and paid them really really well they had a philanthropic firm for hundreds of years like the whole story of how they went to the Caribbean and to Nigeria on the basis that they wanted to help those places really is a good value and vibe and I think So what's that about the Nigerian bit? So the reason why Guinness is the biggest beer in Nigeria is because they felt as a rich company, as a rich sort of British company at the time, that it would be philanthropic and a positive thing to go to Africa to set up a big brewery which would give employment.

58:39and make the life better for those people. And they actually did it. The, yeah, I'd never heard of that other than going to Nigeria. Yeah. The, let's go back to... That was 19th century. 19th, that was, oh, fuck. I thought it was in the 90s. But I think there's a kind of an intangible thread through that that makes Irish people know that that product and what it stands for is a good thing and and and i think in an awful lot people don't really really talk about it but i think there's a sort of it's not benign it's a positive thing there's something there's something beautiful about it and and it that that history something translates in the glass and i think that's why nobody can copy their marketing because nobody really gets it or understands it because it's it's a big long timeless arch big story what What kind of shocked you about London?