Pret A Manger and ITSU founder: How Julian Metcalfe Built Global Billion Dollar Brands and The Art of Leadership and Simplicity in Complexity

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 a 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 to 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've had your breakfast yet i personally less recruit a more growth partner they are loved and adored and are trusted trusted by brands uh real superfood like he's saying 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 agro you know you've got to relabel products waste time i've even had a pal who's um who lost the 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 buccaneering brands 95 % of their community your smes you can get free tickets to events and invites to talks big big picture opportunities who's like to pack 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 of 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 I'm absolutely honoured and thrilled to welcome Julian Metcalfe onto the podcast.

3:47Julian is the founder of Pret-a-Manger, the incredibly successful popular sandwich shop that I'm sure we've all heard, founded in 1986 with his friend Sinclair Beecham, which he then went on to sell. I've tried to find the exact number and it sold for on the internet, but it sold for a lot of money. Julian is also the founder of Itzu in 1997. um they think they've currently got 74 stores probably more coming and a wonderful range of um grocery products which are kind of beginning to profuse all around the country um so i'm incredibly grateful julian for you know you're giving us the time to say i really appreciate it so the first kind of door i want to go down is um i i read one of your stores the other day something that really kind of it was beautiful it was a beautiful big piece of copy and it was um it really struck a chord viscerally here where was it it was in it was actually in the Kingston store was it on the wall or was on the bag yeah really I was on the wall and the word I want to explore with you is this word beautiful yes your whole thing is you know beautiful food done beautifully and the quote on the wall was I first visited Tokyo in the winter of 94 and fell in love with the harmony and the precision of the food every bento box was a work of art it was beautiful food fast if sorry if beautiful food fast was human impossible then japan was leaving away and it's probably nearly what 100 000 people there are over 100 years old and then you say i returned home to create a new kind of food place i know i don't know how hard it would be but it's chelsea london opened in 1997 and i'd love to go back to that winter in 1994 in japan and was there a specific beautiful memory for you was there a specific beautiful meal or can you like tell us what that felt like no i think i think uh you know pate-manger was open and i'd already traveled uh spent a lot of time in like we all do on holiday in france and paris and italy and so i knew i had a pretty good idea of what was possible um you know in europe but I'd never seen anything like what I saw in Japan.

6:01I didn't know respect and love and passion for food at all prices, way beyond sushi. Forget sushi was possible. I just didn't think I'd never seen anything like it. And, you know, a combination of the real love and respect for ingredients and food was just off the charts. I'd never seen anything like it. And you could eat in those days very, very cheaply in Japan, as you still can now, actually. uh the most remarkable food um so i was captivated by it um it took me to a whole new level really can you never stopped well no because i went there in um 2019 for the world cup yes and i was just bamboozled by the attention to detail yeah each each place in japan has like a focus so yes of course you've got like a one place will do great sashimi one place will do there was this one like in the in the nooks and crannies this uh kind of katsu place yes just specialize in cats yeah and i was just flabbergasted with how good it was we end up going back it's just this small little place and it was just the food was insane yes could you like what was the when was the first time you had sushi like what did that feel like oh uh i think i first had sushi i was very young i was fascinated i've always been fascinated by food like so many people like a great many of your viewers you know food's wonderful so yeah i first ate sushi when i was probably 18 i think visiting my sister in new york i was and i was i loved it i thought it was fantastic the combination of texture and taste and that that fascinating rice you know with a ph and the the whole thing was no wonder this it was a cuisine which had captivated so many people but but i think then we launched sushi actually in presser manger in 1990 we had a wonderful supplier who just made two boxes for us um and it was through that connection i think i ended up opening the first which was which was quite japanese i mean we employed quite a lot of japanese people um but in the end it was it didn't fulfill my dreams of selling food for prices which people could afford in other words i'm less interested in selling food for 100 pounds a head or 50 you know i i think that the goal the very exciting goal is to try and sell wonderful food for prices people can afford which is hard you know well that's that's what i wanted to talk to you about is is this almost i listened to quite a few podcasts and prep for this and there's a few things you said that were really kind of struck accordingly and it's like almost being brave and swimming upstream to create these moments of magic and i think that's what food can do can do to people it can be a moment of magic yeah but right now we've got this kind of paradox of uh costs of goods going up everything's going up inflation's going up in um staff shortages staff shortages on the one hand ultimately the staff are what give you the kind of the magic and then on the other hand you know you've got this need to relentlessly cut costs so it's like a bit of a paradox i'd love to know how you're like navigating and mitigating that because do you mean in grocery or in the restaurants in the restaurants specifically because i guess it applies to both um well you're saying the same kind of laws and difficulties apply um and we are doing our best but i'm not saying we're doing you know brilliantly at this at all because it's come a lot of headwinds have come at once particularly in this country now um but you know you listen at the end of the day you just have to work with a wonderful team you have to listen to the wisdom of many as many people as possible particularly those who work with you um and collectively if you if you have a reasonably clear vision of what you're trying to do and why and you listen to the you listen hard and you implement carefully you can get around most problems so i don't uh the the the list of things you've just you've just referred to they're not insurmountable we could you know we can deal with them uh but with some imagination and some collective sense of responsibility and accountability we can you know come up with the solutions and then we can implement them whatever they may be like you know we're very lucky that we're in this sort of five pounds seven pounds eight pound mark in the food business we are not in the 80 pounds so um you know if we have to go from five pounds to 550 it's not the end of the world there's still thank goodness a great many people who can afford afford to do yeah and then anyway more and more people are prepared to spend a bit more on food now you know people have traveled they've they're so much more aware of what delicious food is um and it may be in this country they're becoming less obsessed by let's you know buy a lasagna for one pound you know why not buy a lasagna for three pounds which is delicious yeah and made with with ingredients which have real integrity and i think the country in the last 30 years since starting brett 1986 this country's changed completely with its love and respect for food partly because of the enormous influx of of passionate chefs from Italy and Spain and France, you know.

11:25Don't forget, those young people were not allowed to work here in 1986. It all changed in 1988. So for 30 years, we've had this influence and this hospitality dream of all these people from Europe coming here to help guide us and cook for us and create. I mean, the food scene's changed completely in this country since 1986. You wouldn't recognize it. i mean there's so much you said there that i want to kind of weave into sure the first thing is you know no you said no problem is insurmountable and i think i think i love that mindset i think it's the mindset every one of our listeners who are predominantly founders in food need and you said it's all about listening and it's all about imagination and i think in terms of leadership leadership there i mean listening is kind of integral for empathetic leadership but it's this imagination so how do you get your team as a leader how do you inspire them to by listening to them to to create this almost flight of imagination because i think imagination can allow you to look at problems from completely different ways yeah just that's an incredibly good question because if i had the answer to that if i was able to give you a clear answer I wish I could, but I can't, because it's a really, really fundamentally enormous question which holds the commercial world back.

12:49Because, you know, when you have companies with hundreds of people or dozens of people, let alone hundreds, you know, immediately the corporate environment can hold back ideas. It could hold back imagination. It can hold back vision and change. And there lies the danger. because frankly you know so much of well particularly with pressure mangi and it's it was driven by the uh combination of the the dreams and ideas of the people who work there and and us listening to each other as well actually is listening enormously to the customers but so yeah yeah where does imagination come in you said i don't know maybe that is partly the you know it's got to come from somewhere but i i think it comes from if you challenge people and give them the opportunity to express their their their their their feelings their imagination you'll be amazed what you can get particularly from your employees and customers the skill is to know what to do and what not to do you know so so do you pro i'm just trying to get into this because i think you're right as you get bigger there's the other principal aging problem so So I think every brand starts out and it's almost like the principal is the founder and the nucleus and the team.

14:13Yes. And it's very easy in that beginning stage to have this almost like osmosis because the original employees have skin in the game, but financially and both kind of part of the vision. Yeah. But as you get bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger, the person, it's like, how do you get the person who's serving me at Itzu in Kingston to have that sort of imagination and magic? Like how, the further you get away, the bigger you get. And I think this is what happens with corporates is to solve that principal agent problem, they put in a, so excuse my language, but a fucking process. Yeah. and that can stifle imagination and that's when you get into a uh quite a pernicious um situation where hair the the only solution is to cut costs cut costs yeah which happens in so many businesses and not all but you know with regard to it's you um you asked a number of questions then so how do you get how do you get the people who who work with us and are working in the restaurants to care and be proud and the well number one process is important because you don't want to burden them with ridiculous things to do the more you burden them with impossible badly thought through stupid ideas the more they're going to get stressed and tired and fed up so firstly don't try not to introduce too much stupid process but most importantly the goal obviously is to have them run by um a leadership a management which is really empathetic and that is very hard to do and i'm not suggesting that we we win if we we succeeded that all right but basically people work for people they don't work for a company really you work for somebody as hopefully somebody you respect somebody you trust and someone who trusts you and respects you and that is not easy but that is the that is fundamental and that's where you know we'll never stop we'll never stop um trying to do that uh leadership um you know the grocery issue has a grocery company which started with one bus and now has 80 but you know that the ceo the leader of that company joined as an intern aged i think 26 she's now the complete leader of the whole company and she set a typical her it's very much um had so many young very brilliant capable people with a you know extraordinary um culture of innovation particularly innovation but that's restaurants are very difficult listen restaurant everyone knows any any of your viewers in the restaurant business will know how very difficult it is but but i think the success uh ultimately is that you know focus don't create endless stupid process don't create a menu with with you know 500 things on it um and try and have a leadership with which is truly empathetic try and really understand what makes a wonderful manager and not and that is very hard to do but it's who has a lot of wonderful wonderful leaders when we invest money where it's needed to uh you know you hate god that's important but this is so you said it really kind of set my curiosity off like fireworks is you said people don't work for businesses they work for people of course and there'll be people listening to this who are trying to build teams who were trying to put in um not kind of middle managers as as they're scaling their brand yes the the lady who's now who started as the intern yeah um who's now the head of grocery what were the specific characteristics of her that made her a sales that i think that's an interesting one because this particular person has a whole list of extraordinary capabilities, which you don't find with most people.

18:20Such as? Well, unbelievable determination, huge empathy, very high standards, huge intelligence, real warmth, unbelievably genuine, very transparent. Yeah. She's just, she's got, which a great many people have, by the way, and many of your viewers have this but but sometimes they get crushed by the corporate environment actually the corporate environment often doesn't value some of these qualities the way it should because if only you can harness these qualities and build a team with them you'll build a remarkable business as she has done um do you see but but you need we're lucky in that we started we started with this incredible bucket of of attributes um so it kind of flows through the organization and then this this empathetic leadership is something i want to kind of jump into that because i think it's like what would you say is the difference between empathetic leadership and and leadership i know it's kind of a tricky question but well it depends if you want to be a pioneering uh really pioneering challenging uh company where the majority of the employees are very proud of what they do and really feel they're making a contribution i think empathy is very important because leading people is not easy and i don't think it's i don't think leading people is possible unless you you have empathy you know so to me it's quite fundamental really but i agree you can run companies with no empathy you can you can run companies just with process and many companies are run that way but i i don't know how they do it and i've never worked for one so i can't i can't i just don't know i mean that's why when people are interviewed well what percentage of people hate their job and dread mondays too it's too high isn't it 50 70 what is it i don't know do you know it's worryingly high and i'd like to think there are great many people who work on the teams who work with me don't dread they they know they're making a contribution and they know they're doing great work and they do respect each other uh and then and they respect their customers you know hi there guys super super quick one um i write a weekly newsletter called hungry friday feast it goes live at 8am every friday i'm pouring my soul into this bad boy it's probably my favorite creative vendor i've ever done i basically pick apart all the biggest lessons all the biggest learnings from all the wonderful guests and throw it into a feast or a newsletter we've got over a thousand two hundred subscribers come and join the party i'm going to put a link in the show notes it's right at the top and subscribe and if you are already a subscriber please just forward it on to a friend do the amount of favor it would mean the world to me anyway back to the old episode boys and girls it's almost you know the question i said earlier is like how do you listen and get people like to have that sort of flight of imagine imagination to solve problems i actually think what you're saying is it's almost the empathy because when you're not sort of bludgeoning and force feeding them with process and you're being empathetic you're seeing their side they feel like they're contributing then they're suddenly more inspired to be creative and bring imagination to the table I don't know if you agree with that.

21:47Yeah, yeah. I mean, listen, the job of a leader is to set an example. It's really very simple. Across everything. Everything. Right. Everything. Everything matters. The way you treat your product, your love for your product, the way you treat the people you work with, what you expect from them, the way you treat your customers, everything matters. And a leader, regardless of whether it's the leader of a company or the leader of a team leader who runs our hot bench they're there to lead and to set a wonderful example and that is not easy it's very draining you have to have grit and determination but but they too need to be recognized and and endlessly congratulated for their grit and their bravery and their courage you know and it's you managing a restaurant is really one of the hardest jobs in the world as is being a chef but managing a restaurant just think what you have to deal with The complexity of looking after all these customers, the complexity of quality control, the complexity of health and safety, and let alone HR.

22:52Often you'll employ 30 young people working very hard. So really a manager, a restaurant manager, is an incredibly difficult, very demanding job. and they need to be recognized and treated with the greatest respect by their employer. And my take on it. I think I have nothing but the most unbelievable respect for the people who work in it. And when you say respect, so... Well, I know how hard it is. Yeah, you know... And I know how demanding it is to be good, to be really good, to be good with your people, to be good with your products, and to be good with your customers. This is not... It's terribly difficult.

23:33and therefore our job is to set an environment try and set an environment up which supports that but it has to recognize it you know do you see what i mean anyone who thinks people are doing this the work they do just to be paid you know that's a there the problem starts there so that's so this is what i want to explore with you right because there'll be people listening to this who are like you know say someone's i think if someone asks to say a pay rise for example right uh and you can't give them the 50 grand that they want. I'm just going to create a scenario here. Yeah. What are the things you're doing that makes those people feel so kind of proud to be at work from a leader, not just you, the senior team, not that they don't ask for pay rises, but like there's that other element of work.

24:24Do you see how you're getting that? The subject of, there are two totally different subjects there, I think. Right. One is how do you motivate, reward, and look after and recognize people's incredible ability and hard work. And the other is what happens with regard to how much they're paid. So they're different. Pay rises, that's quite simple. That on the whole in life, you get paid to do a certain type of job. If you have grit, determination, curiosity, and you see yourself wanting to go from A to B or B to C, invariably at that junction, you can demand you're worth more money to an organization.

25:00is pretty that's quite obvious and it's quite basic so if when people you know a great many people not all by the way but a great many people are on a trajectory where they do want to be paid more yeah and that means take on more responsibility become more accountable work well with your colleagues lead and invariably you will be paid more money but there are some big organizations i think particularly the big ones which which they they're not very good at recognizing some of the qualities which people deserve to be paid more and go up you know it can be laborious and there's put it there's all this political nonsense where to be promoted can be problematic i i think the strength of of itzu and it's your grocery has been we have been able to promote quickly a lot of very dynamic hard-working brilliant young people so we're able but that's that i we are lucky that were were quite young were quite small we're not a huge company but so if people want to be paid more it's pretty straightforward become more responsible become more accountable and and and on you go uh take on more responsibility plan your your life a bit plan your career a bit it's like rumbling yeah unless of course you work for a wally and if you work for a wally then you best move department or move company um but on the whole the route to earning more money definitely is take on more responsibility more accountable and make sure your results are good with regard to motivating people who are in the job that's totally different i think a lot of that's down to the leader the manager and how they respect and treat and and and the way they handle their people their relationship with the people they work with um that's that's the big one.

26:48And then the company needs to respect that. So here, I remember when the headwinds really came bad a year ago, our head of people, Harry's, you know, got huge empathy. The one thing he wouldn't, you know what he did? He put everyone's salary up. At the very moment when we could afford to put no one's salary up, he put everyone's salary up. At the very moment, he should have cut back on all the benefits you get, the free lunches, the huge celebrations that caught four times a year, all the things he could have saved, he didn't save on one of them, not one, because these are things he felt built a stronger culture.

27:30And also were a company. So had his colleagues said, not one of them even suggested that he should cut back. So in fact, he's done the opposite. what's that expression he's doubled down he's doubled down on what he thinks creates the magic and i think i think it was even bartlett podcast for you or the mary porter podcast where you said it's always endless moments of bravery yes that require and it's just a beautiful analogy of when every fish is swimming that way it takes a moment of bravery to swim upstream and i and what harry's done there is um is that it's it's an it's an embodiment of that and i'd love to to kind of just boil down the principles of i really believe kind of leadership is is two things it's hardware yeah and software right so hardware is like these non-negotiables this is the way um julian um sorry this is the way leadership is then you have software which is the nuance which is the um so harry's leadership cell may be very different slightly different to julian's to say perry hayden taylor yeah sure it's the nuances what would you say are like the two one to two principles of like this is leadership as is the first part and then the second like what are the nuances that you that you know that most people probably don't know i don't know we could that's a big subject and we could probably talk for hours but i guess leading by example is pretty clear right you've got to lead by example you can't be a leader of a department or you can't be an executive unless you know what's going on and you have an unbelievable endless curiosity to find out what is going on um and that is sometimes rare in the corporate world people climb the ladder they get there and then they slam the door uh and i i personally i hate that I think the joy and the exceptional stuff comes from the involvement.

29:30People need to be really accountable all the way through. And I have, I think, six or seven executives who run this company, and they're all very different as people, but they care and they drive. Their decision-making is fascinating, you know, and the way they support each other is fascinating. and in this endless pursuit of absolute of harmony and respect um but then sometimes that get you know at the same time you have to move with speed you have to be fast you have to know when to be very fast and when to be slow it it's it's tricky and then the the the sort of the nuances that you've learned over over over the years over with pret with metcalfs with it so what would you say those are well what do you mean by nuances in what in what respect so so so so obviously you said lead by example is like the core principle must be that's so basic yeah so lead by example lead by example but then is there something you know that most other leaders don't because ultimately there's a you know i can line up 100 founders outside right now and that we could say right all of you guys are there say say you work 100 hour weeks for example we could line up 100 people outside and say oh you're all going to work 100 hour weeks not all of them are going to reach the same level of success as yourself right so what i'm trying to get is like what is something maybe you know that other people don't know okay so it's tricky because some people will watch us thinking let's let's hope he comes up with some words of wisdom i'm not going to be able to do that i can't um what i can tell you is a company which is really going places and like it's and like it's your grocery generally has a a reasonably clear vision in other words what what do we do why do we do it and how do we do it and that vision needs it doesn't matter if you make uh you know spectacles or carpet it really doesn't matter but what is it you do and why do you do it um and our the vision of our company is pretty clear and we all share in that uh and and it guides us and it's really helpful to have that so if you work for a company if you lead a company which doesn't have a pretty clear vision you need to sort that out because that's why people come to work you know what is the shared goal what is the shared vision here so that's really helpful and it's who has that um you know whether it be beautiful you know yeah we take an enormous amount of trouble about the presentation of our food so it we try and use, you know, really beautiful ingredients.

32:09We won't compromise. We don't have a central production kitchen for sushi. There's so many things we do where, you know, it must be beautiful. We try and, you know, it must look beautiful. And it can be beautiful. The environment needs to be beautiful, you know. We don't compromise on that. And when we do, like recently, one of our execs who handles all our property and building maintenance, everything he handles. You know, we were getting concerned by the cost of building an Itzu restaurant. It just was going up and up and up. And, you know, to change it, to bring it down, my goodness me, you can't just bring it down by shouting at your suppliers, your builders.

32:53What you've got to do is all get together and share the issue. How can we collectively get this down? You know, where are we adding costs where we don't need to? Are we doing this? There was a thousand things we could do. And we've already done about 150 of them and the costs are coming down. But it was very much started with an understanding is we can't do this unless we do it together. Do you see what I mean? We can't do it. There's no point just cheating this thing. So to redesign it so it works better and we don't waste energy, we don't waste money, we don't waste materials, We don't have complexity and inefficiency.

33:35That takes a united group of people all working together. It's a fascinating answer. And when you said, you know, I'm not going to kind of give you pearls of wisdom, which I think you have to be honest, Julian, but this purpose thing is really interesting in this vision. And I think it's something that seems really simple. And I think it's wrong to think I'll get everyone in a room and then bish, bash, bosh. We put it on the wall and away we go. There's a guy I'm interviewing a couple of weeks who's got a jeans brand called Hyatt Denim. Really, but their mission and their story is really, really simple.

34:14It's our job is to bring 400 jobs back to Cardigan. And Cardigan's a place in Wales where they used to produce jeans, factory shut. Really simple mission. and actually by trying to be super super small they're actually getting bigger and bigger and bigger it's a bit of a paradox because we only want 400 jobs but that vision like i'm telling you about it now it's worked that story's worked yeah of course how do you just got a bit more granular kind of zooming in on this with with the team here with the team in the restaurants yeah how are you getting that vision to kind of go into the go into the employees being so that when they come to work they are like right i i know what i'm doing and i'm so excited to be here good question and very complicated um so the vision of the company is pretty clear in the sense it's written everywhere it's on our boxes you name it it's there which is to try and over the next 10 15 years to challenge the fact that most affordable food is fried or processed beef you know the world the fast food has not moved on much since 1950 and there are reasons for that the harmony with regard to the equipment the menu and the people is very elusive to sell good nutritious food at low prices it's very very difficult to do but we will at it's you never stop trying to do that so that's kind of the main purpose of it's and the the we do it under the banner of East Asian food for various reasons.

35:45It's the combination of using noodles, broth, rice, dumplings, etc. But so at a senior level, you know, all our managers, the whole of our office, you know, we get together four times a year and always have done to spend time discussing exactly this, the goal of what we're doing and how we're doing it. We have had two systems. We have a lot of good process which supports it. But the young people who join us for a year don't forget the food business working in a restaurant is is interesting because a great many people use this job for a short period of time so they arrive particularly if they're coming to this country to learn to speak english they'll arrive and they'll look around for who's where can they get a job reasonably easily reasonably quickly where they're not going to be completely stressed out for months um having to learn complexity complexity um and where can they go which treats them with respect and where they earn a decent wage um so you need to be in our business you've got to accept the fact a great many of your members of staff will only be with you for a year or two which is fine it's it that's okay as long as you respect them and they respect the product and they and they make friends they make good you know and they're treated beautifully by their management um so in other words i don't i'm not sitting here saying we make and invest uh in people for life or you know i'm you know they're great we over the last 15 years it's who's employed many many many many thousands and thousands of people i i hope that they were treated well and they let and they left they came enjoyed their time making a product they were proud of um and i hope they learned a great many of them will have learned a lot about efficiency uh discipline tenderness you know if you work for a company with high standards which is which is successful you're you're bound to learn stuff you know it's it's good we have that responsibility to to give and it's give and take you know um but but so what i'm trying to say is i can't sit here and pretend to be some profound leader who's changed uh the lives of thousands of members of our staff because i haven't our job is to provide them with a with with a with pride and joy of what they do uh and pay them well and and give them as much self-respect as we possibly can for as long as they're with us and hopefully a great many of our nearly all our managers start like i did you know on the shop floor a great many people here in the academy started like I did on the shop floor.

38:22So there's opportunity for people to take on more responsibility and more accountability. And as you said earlier, earn more money. Because with more responsibility and accountability, leaders deserve to be paid more. They have more responsibility. But the essence of the company is in the people who make our food and serve our customers. Hi, guys. Super, super quick one. So, so excited look for years i've been badgering on about hungary the podcast you're probably bored to death thanks for putting up with me but hungary is also an agency and we look after one amazing brand called islands chocolate we've had a great time over the year we've won listings at load of wholesalers we've won milk and more we've got our first grocery listing coming very soon which is very very sick but what i'm thrilled to announce is hungary's merging with hc consulting um my boy harry clark and his wonderful team he's an absolute g they do brand strategy new business business and account management but why i really love working with harry and why we've got on so well over the last couple of months is harry was actually the founder of the boozy isolate brand pops so he's been in the trenches he's grafted his face off he's had the sleepless nights he's had the turmoil he's had the triumph he knows what it is to be a founder he is a founder and he's got a proven track record in grocery and out of home holy moly dips the gut stuff Savile drinks, Remy O 'Gelato.

39:44So if you're a brand and you're stuck, you're looking for like new business help, you're looking to scale, drop us a message. We'd love to chat. Thank you so much. Back to the old episode. It bats as empathetic leadership. It's almost like if the leaders start on the shop floor and they work their way up, they automatically know what that person feels like. I think where, you know, some businesses can go wrong is you get people coming in, especially for startups so yeah you know for the kind of challenger brand you can have people come in from like the big sort of the pepsico the mars and also i rule this roost you don't have seen it firsthand it just it's a cataclysmic nightmare but i think what you're doing about bringing people everyone comes up there's this automatic empathy and i know you said i haven't got here you know i'm not going to give and give out brilliant answers but they're amazing but you've kind distilled it to this simplicity of people aren't gonna be here forever people aren't gonna be here they may be here for two years and maybe for six months but if you can instill this culture of pride and joy respect this give and take that that i think that is the essence of of of almost like what i was asking earlier about this kind of the nuance leadership because i think it's such a um complex thing to get right um i also think i spoke i spoke to perry about this is about um great talent leaving and perry said every he's done this he's been in business for 28 years now he knows every seven years five to seven years there'll be an uplift and he's cool with that but I think say listeners maybe you know say 30 might right and they've had a business for 3 years if someone's been with them for 2 years as a key employee and they leave and they'd be going you know after 3 years they leave well that they've been there for 75 % of their whole journey so at the time it's wow do you know what I mean and I think what you're saying it's really reassuring for our listeners and our founders is as long as the values are there good people will come good people will go values are there that keep it you know um i want to kind of go back to back to japan and i really believe kind of found as a this this bravery piece i always kind of believe founders almost like samurais they're so brave to to get up there every single day and swim upstream and everyone else is swimming downstream and there's this book uh called the five rings by it was written in 1645 by this um um this samurai really interesting book there's a few quotes i'd like kind of like to explore with you um so the first one is if my laptop's gonna work five rings yeah the book of five rings it's um it's an interesting book about kind of uh just life and i think because i've been to japan it really it brings it kind of goes right into the roots of the culture yeah um and one of his things is from one thing, know 10 ,000 things, to know 10 ,000 things, know one thing.

42:49And it's almost, I'd love to boil down, like what is kind of one truth you hold that most people would disagree with? And that's actually from a book. Well, it's interesting. Complexity is one of the great problems of product design, really. And that's where I think Steve Jobs was probably so clever. Complexity is so much easier than simplicity and purity. I don't know, before you were born, we used to all buy hi-fis with hundreds and hundreds of buttons on them and flashing lights. And no one really knew what any of these things did, but it was an antithesis of an iPod, you know. And I'm sure for many people, an iPod came, and it was just such a relief.

43:42beauty and simplicity is much harder so usually on the 10 000 things people will you know get to 8 000 and add another thousand of their most recent discoveries and load them on but actually what was the one what what is the product meant to do and why um and that is really really difficult to have that discipline um i find my so much of my my my career has been spent trying to reduce complexity uh and i haven't been very successful at it frankly um all my life all my career in food people will make appointments and come here to show me something which they think is great and we're going to buy or sell or serve and often it's absolutely no better than the competition at all and you have to wonder why why you know why why would we um why would we do why would we take your product on have you have you even eaten the competition do you think we buy your product because it's too cheaper than what we're buying now uh in other words the glory is in the product and often uh to make a a great product it's it's this search for simplicity um because if a product's too complex to make it it becomes inconsistent so what you're using the design yeah well what you said there was beautiful is is complexity is so much easier yeah and it's anyone could do yeah and it's so so true you know i think even even doing this podcast and starting this business that originally is i was like trying to do a thousand things and it's only in the last week i've realized like why am i doing all that other stuff just of course you're like everyone else yeah folk and me too we all suffer do less but do it beautifully and have the guts to realize to set the bar what does beautifully mean what does that actually mean what does that so i want to so i i've heard on many uh kind of podcasts and just reading that you've kind of got this fastidious attention to detail with the product and create the product is everything at pret the the the there's two products that i was obsessed with and which would actually eat every day which one um so one was the tuna sandwich which i uh tuna baguette and i was just I'd scoff that down with joy and then the other was the the ham and cheese croissant not the cheese and tomato croissant you'd get in the morning I used to work for I don't know if they were selling and delivering for you guys I used to be a van driver for Harvey and Brockless right yeah and so I'd drop in cheese company cheese company yeah I remember and then I'd have an early shift so it was sort of like sort of five four or five in the morning and then I'd do loads of the deliveries in soho and then i'd go into a pre and i'd get one i'd get a cappuccino and one of those it was like a hot steaming party i know very well so i want to use that as a lens to explore this simplicity of of products and especially in a world of complexity yeah talk to me about that product like when did that idea come into not necessarily your head but the team's head how many iterations did you go through to create that beauty uh okay which one do you want to start with because the story of the tuna baguette will have exact, you know, when one could compare it to a contemporary Itzu product today.

47:06They both would have been on a similar journey. Okay, so let's take the tuna baguette and the katsu curry vegetable big bao bun. So you start off with an idea. Wouldn't it be great if only we could do this? Wouldn't it be great if only you could, in both cases, have bread, which was really wonderful so in the case of the baoban at itzu that meant steaming you have to steam about you can't yeah you don't it doesn't work very well enough so you've got to find the right people who know how to make it which means a lot of hard work in east asia you've got to find people who know how to then ship it and and and handle it you then have to find people who know how to create the equipment to cook it to steam it and money at this point no object just just try and dream the perfect product and then you have to uh then find a piece of equipment which can then display it again money no object because you want the product to be perfect and at all times the product have to be affordable otherwise it's a waste of time and that that is an incredible journey involving a lot of people now with the that's the case with the itzu katsu probably took us two years of hard work to get that product right and even now today i've just come from a you know we were we may even have to change our display equipment but but tamagi was similar in those back in the old days to make a french baguette you you had to have a particular type of oven called a euro for oven which which had a steam button and they really were very very few of them in the country and they cost a huge amount of money and i remember in my case my my grandmother passed away and left me enough money to buy that oven so with my entire inheritance from my grandmother i didn't buy a new car or anything i bought an oven and put it into the first prêtre manger it was a euro for oven and with that i was able to bake a long thin french baguette it was amazing and then we had to make the tuna which meant making it in ourselves mixing with good quality tuna mayonnaise the right amount you know we we worked on the recipe till it was perfect and then we sold that thing in the old days i think it was two pounds 29 and yeah there were queues out the block we'd bake the bread three times a day yeah i was just determined to make this thing right so the cook in it's you today the machines which steam the oven, steam the bao, cost, I think,£20 ,000 each.

49:49And we had to buy two of them in all the recent things. Imagine that. So on the one hand, I've got a director doing everything he can to get the cost of building it in Sudan. On the other hand, we, that's the food team, the operations team, and myself, say to him, well, you have to have£40 ,000 of these machines, or we refuse. Otherwise, the product's compromised. And you know what he does? He smiles and says, okay that see that to me seems really complex like to go back to this complexity thing so then let's go into the art and the beautiful art because you're clearly very good at this right it's holding two things simultaneously and making it work you need the 40k to create the beautiful product that gets punters otherwise you'll have no charts so how are you like so we're saying you know you said the guy was like uh yeah happily let's do it crack on like well because we have a culture here where he the guy who's responsible for building won't fight back on the quality of the product right what's the point because we all know in the end it's the quality of the product and the guy who's responsible for our money also knows in the end the quality of the product is key so he's he's just makes it harder because he's got to go and find the 40 000 pounds but in the end it's a relationship with the customer and it's a relationship with the team.

51:08In other words, you could have 15 different flavors, couldn't you? You could have 15 bad flavors. Right. Or you could have two great ones. There's simplicity for you. So there's a good example. By making the two really, really good, you don't have to have the staff trying to control 15. Have you ever been to a restaurant which has 16 pages of menu? You know, by halfway through, you know, the food's going to be dodgy. yeah yeah because someone who owns a restaurant said no we have to have this we have to have fish we have to have lamb we have to have steak we have to and you know it's unfair on the staff it's unfair on the customer and it's not particularly it creates no joy for anyone so the harder route is to say let's do less really well it's just really hard steve jobs got a quote which is focus is saying yeah and the word no yeah yeah he's very good your bit um what what what's your just out of curiosity like what's what's the product you're most proud of oh god it's always it's the one i haven't made yet i mean i'd never miss a food meeting i was the one on yesterday um i never miss a food meeting ever ever for both i never they're amazing so in other words i'm permanently trying we just changed our we had the most wonderful mushroom ramen broth which we used in all our restaurants and it took us two years to change it to the new miso ramen broth which is better took two years of work unbelievable but it's done now it on the whole it takes years of hard work to make the products years of hard work we could save money and and there's so many things we could do to save money or by you know but So the product's king, and the relationship with the staff and the customers and the product is fragile, needs to be hugely respected.

52:57But yeah, I believe overwhelmingly that it's almost endless what you can do to make your food better. Although sometimes you meet people and there's no point. Like the miso, our miso is made in the Nagano Valley by a man who has spent him, his father, his grandfather, and his great-grandfather. No one knows more about miso than this man in the world. He is captivating on the subject. And I've been to his facility, his kitchen, where he makes it all for us many, two or three, maybe five times. He's a wonderful man. He had dinner at home the other day with my wife and I. He's amazing. And there are some cases where you hit Nirvana.

53:35So just leave it. When you're dealing with a guy like that, there's no point. And there are many examples, I think, in engineering and where someone has spent so much love, care, and passion on a product that you can just park it. That's such a relief. That's what we're looking for always. Is that where you've done so many iterations? You can't improve it anymore. Yeah, that is Nirvana. Ah, it's used a gotchujang sauce is Nirvana. You know, ah, ah, chicken gyoza is Nirvana. You know, our chicken gyoza are better than you'd get in a Michelin-style restaurant. Definitely better. And they cost a fraction.

54:13That's Nirvana. And also the bow, was it the bow buns I got from going into the grocery lens now? Yeah. The duck ones that you steam in the microwave. Yeah. I'm absolutely banging. They're getting better. Incredible. We spent two years on the large duck bow being launched in October, which is unbelievable. Some of the gyoza are really, really good. Our seaweed thins are off the scale incredible. um you know it's it's it's that endless pursuit of harmony and quality at the right price it seems like so one thing i wanted to explore to you it's almost like you see business more like art i would say and there's a business is art yeah business is art so there's two so there's a quote by the um phil knight who did nike yeah i'm reading his book and it's brilliant and it says business is war without bullets right and then there's also a quote by Andy Warhol which I love which is being good in business is the most fascinating kind of art making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art yeah what would you say so you said business is art as as it why and then the second question it's a bit of a generalization I the people who work for ITSU yeah see I think business as art I don't think all people see business as art at all But you're lucky if you work for a company where the business is art.

55:38Because, you know, building the most wonderful, inspiring retail environment and feeding people amazing food, it's art. It's all art. Everything matters. It's very creative. But I don't think all businesses, sadly, doesn't embrace the artistic nature. It could. Definitely not. Did you see our reception? did you wait in our reception downstairs we have steve jobs's computer his own computer is on display there no i didn't yeah no i bought i bought it in an auction it's just a tiny example of the people who work at it you deserve to have the most inspiring stuff around them whether it's free lunch or this but there it is sitting in an amazing case because it kind of represents let's you know hope that we too can one day um carry on in this never-ending pursuit of beauty and perfection it's art it is art i i so that's what i think i think it's i think business is art i think it's the greatest form of art but then i suppose exploring the other end is let's make no bones about it there there's tough negotiations there's hardship there's when when on your journey has it felt like war like has there been a really tough negotiation has there been a really dark day has there been a competitor you know gnawing at your heels no it's it's tempting isn't it to start thinking about war i i think um are we at war you know with our landlords no we're not at all the landlords you know take a very long term they build these buildings they deserve the best return they can it's all quite basic um we're very lucky in in in this country particularly you know that there's not there's very little there's quite a lot of transparency you know what can you imagine working in an environment where fear rules where corruption rules what we're very lucky in this country that that we there's a pretty even playing field frankly um so we're not at war uh with our suppliers at all were in harmony with them same with our landlords so no i don't think business is about war with no bullets at all i think it's i think to lead a business particularly to leave lead a hospitality business going through after brexit yeah and after the huge inflation uh yeah that's really really tough but it's not a war now what it is is it's time for really really careful careful togetherness because if you don't have that you're going to fail boemi 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 boemi are the platform to categorically speed that up but if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger boemi 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 Boemi to check major malt listings availability insane 29 % uplift by downloading an app insane Lucky's 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 Boemi look you've got to get involved with this stuff it's absolutely insane and it will categorically change your life it's just the sickest platform i use it all the time islands i suppose on like a on a macro a macro macro level you know war brings togetherness and closeness you have to look at it like that yeah and i think war not necessarily is not necessarily on like a competitive level of like okay it's us versus eat or us versus um um wasabi right i'm thinking sometimes war and this art can actually be more of this togetherness and it's it's not necessarily it's almost like the war of constantly trying to get better constantly trying to improve constantly trying to tinker like there's some sort of um war against the self in that it's not really war at all it's the opposite it's kind of love because it's the love of the product and the love the never-ending pursuit of really enhancing wonderful relationships you have with your your the people who you work with and the and your customers that's it's really love because in the end it's the love of the product which inspires the customer to come back it's the love and respect you show your the people you work with in the end which gets them to be happy and proud at work so it's not war it's the opposite it's love i have a never-ending love for for what i what we try and do here it's really i think driven by great passion the where i want to go now and is kind of swim into this um slightly maybe darker waters but um there's a quote i love by robert greek robert queen which is you kind of life is about turning your shadow and pain into beauty yeah and i think our greatest power as human beings is that ability so and i kind of said this happens on like a macro macro level with you know you had the end of world war 2 it was harrowing it was dark and then you've got the kind of the beetles the summer of love um i know you sadly lost your mother at a very young age um john lennon paul mccartney lost their mothers at a very young age they created this beauty um even in your um you know you see in nature kind of dark winters bring light summers in your logo i think is the perfect example of this the butterfly like the darkness of uh kind of the the cocoon almost yeah it's almost like the kind of the pain and then that can uh breathe this beautiful butterfly and you talked steven bartlett did a brilliant job of talking about kind of the symptoms of your pain in your childhood and you know you said i think you said in my 20s and 30s i just had really low self-esteem and i'm kind of asking this selfishly like i think a lot of what i'm trying to do is is to mitigate that low self-esteem and you said that you went to a therapist and that therapist was was kind of against your will but it really helped you i'd love to know kind of what were some of the tools or techniques or learnings you took from that experience to help build your self-esteem because i think the amount of founders i've interviewed who've got huge huge business loads of confidence but don't have the best self-esteem they're not they're not like intertwined do you know i mean yeah i know i think you often find that i don't know such a big subject um most of the the people i've worked with best and really admire don't have uh they're certainly not arrogant and they certainly don't have huge overflowing self-esteem they're they're people who are incredibly sensitive and so many of your viewers and listeners will will will understand that uh the leaders who pretend to have great self-esteem are usually full of shit.

1:02:45I mean, great people who can really lead are sensitive people. And like all people, we all go through ups and downs. We all have moments of terrible self-doubt and pain and suffering and worry and stress. That's what it is to be a human. And some of us are better than others at dealing with it. But no, I think too much of that confidence thing is beware of that that's that's often nonsense it's often nonsense sensitivity and uh i think some people you will find uh i guess that there's people who've endured hardship sometimes can be more sensitive than those who haven't i don't know i'm not sure um you know people try and find a common common themes in entrepreneurial flair did they have a troubled childhood did they have this are they yearning for respect and success uh possibly i don't know if there is if there is a common theme i really honestly don't yeah i don't think there is a common theme and i actually think i think it's quite reductionist to say like every entrepreneur had a rough childhood or every entrepreneur is flawed so i think yes that's one ingredient of drive and determination but there's a whole host of other ingredients there's art there's the joy and the love of doing it it's not like it's not just exclusively right there's so much fucking pain and trauma that that's why they've got this drive i think it's no and it's quite a blanket statement to say that there was something rough in their childhood or what do you know what i mean but i don't i don't buy it i don't really buy it yeah and i've met a well i've done so many of these interviews now so you don't think it's a common theme which is good i don't i don't think it's a common theme but what is a love a joy for the product must be a common theme well i think that that respect yeah that's more of a there's i think uh the i don't know where i heard it was i heard it somewhere but it's almost i think the people who really make it are the ones who feel like they're chasing down a beast and are being chased by a beast and listen there's something else which is which will touch a lot some of people I've met a great, great, great many people in my career who have spent the last four or five years in a corporate environment where they've been completely undervalued.

1:05:07And they come to here, for instance, and you can recognize within a few days that these people are off the scale wonderful. It's just they have not been working for somebody who has recognized their ability, their drive, they're fantastic. So you have to ask yourself why. Well, in the corporate world, a lot of people are protecting their own ass. You know, so why give someone amazing hope, enormous opportunity? That takes courage, you know. So why give someone huge hope and confidence when, number one, no one's getting it to you, and number two, they may just take your job? So the corporate world can be pretty hopeless like that.

1:05:54um so i believe you know we're very lucky here because we don't we recognize um as a team you know i think we're pretty good at recognizing drive and ability and talent and really getting right to it immediately but i'm always amazed by how many people come here you know who are maybe age 33 35 mid 30s who are off the scale good and but they've just never been told that enough What is off the scale good? I mean, and again, I know that's not - The kind of people who have imagination, people who take their jobs, what they do seriously, people who are accountable, responsible, people who love what they do, people who drive themselves, drive to do brilliant stuff, people who've never been, these are often people who've never been heard, their opinions have never been sought, but these are people who often have really good experience, really good opinions, and they need to be heard.

1:06:51And they need to be freed up. You need to take the shackles off them so they can create. And then they'll work miracles, these people, like most humans. Take the shackles off them so they can create. Yeah. So they can create and contribute and make a difference to this world or a product or, in this case, a business. You know, we are a team of people doing something. And all the contributions come from the will and the drive and the courage of the people who work here. Hmm. It's so true. And I think it's, but so back, back to this, this, um, some not specific tools, but I think you mentioned you did a Hoffman course or something.

1:07:33Oh, I did do the Hoffman course. What is that? The Hoffman is an extreme course. What is it? uh it's it's a it's a it's a place you go to for a week uh and they're locked away you can only do it once and it's it's a brilliant was created by this guy hoffman who's now dead uh i think in the west coast of america and it's it's it was his unique system to try and help people who had trauma in their childhood and it's you know if if anyone who's listening has had trauma in their childhood uh any trauma at all it's the hoffman institute is rather remarkable and remarkable and what were some of the remarkable lessons you well you're not i don't think you're meant to discuss it too much it's just we don't have to go seven days of deep remarkable work you do with others and yourself it's amazing i did it years ago yeah yeah and now i suppose but i think it's all self you know introspection and and and it's useful i think you've got to be really open-minded if If you want to work with lots of people, you've got to know, you've got to continue to hone that, those skills, you know?

1:08:41Yeah. And I think going back, tying this into this empathetic leadership piece is, don't disclose what happened on the Hoffman course, but I think to really build deep, empathetic leadership for our listeners, it requires a bucket load of self-introspection. Yeah. Because only by knowing yourself, you really know others, I think. Yeah. I agree. And many, I'm sure quite a lot of people who work with me would say I'm an impossible driver because I'm a perfectionist. And, you know, I'm not probably an easy person to work with all the time because I'm never satisfied. I always believe things can be better.

1:09:20And that can be draining for people. But it has to be balanced with my respect and the way I trust them. But, yeah, I will continuously try and improve things. i'm never satisfied i always believe something could be better completely so it's almost that that's that paradox i was saying you know i think you're one of your powers is to have simplicity in kind of in areas of complexity so like respect people and respect their time and there's love but we can be relentlessly better i think i think you said on that wall in kinkston it's like i will forever be restless or will forever you've got i personally think that's the only way to surely is is the only way to keep reinventing what you do and your products so they are always remarkable i mean nearly every product we ever launch it's it's always goodness i wish we'd thought of that or i wish we'd done that and then you have to go back and have the guts to revisit it but that's draining for people i work with definitely yeah you know they work really hard and at last you launch a product and actually instead of saying this is the one you are absolutely a genius this is the most wonderful thing i tend to see damn if only we'd done that so how do you deliver that message because i sometimes well and sometimes badly let's just because this is a great delicious insights for our listeners right so when is there not an example we don't have to like but as when is that being delivered badly and what did you learn from that oh it's been delivered badly many times Right, okay.