Tommy Banks: From hospital bed to becoming the UK’s Youngest Michelin star chef and winning Great British Menu twice

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3:22Thank you so much. Hello there, people and listeners of The Hungry Podcast. I'm absolutely thrilled to welcome Tommy Banks onto the podcast. Tommy is a prodigious chef and forager and entrepreneur. The youngest chef in the UK to win Manchester Star at just 24. He's the owner of the Black Swan in Oldstead, where I eat on Saturday night. Absolutely insane meal. Thank you so much. Roots in York, which is also in and so he told Tommy won Great British Menu in 2016 and 2017. He's recently launched a podcast called Seasons, which is a really interesting listen and adds a lot of depth and richness to his restaurant.

4:02So I implore you to kind of check that out. He's also launched a premium wine in a can brand called Banks Brothers. Super, super busy man, Tommy. So thanks so much for having me today. I really appreciate it. No, it's nice of you to come to us as well. It's nice. I've not really had to do much. You've come here and you're here in beautiful North Yorkshire and I've just come along for a chat. Well, that's why I wanted to, I so wanted to try the restaurant. And on Saturday, we're in your gorgeous restaurant now. I just think it hit sort of the culmination of both art and magic. It was like everything about it.

4:38I think a restaurant is there to sort of, I don't know, take you to a place away from reality almost. That's what I think a great restaurant is. and obviously where we're sat here, we've got the Yorkshire Moors or Dales. Yeah, we're in the Moors here. Oh, Moors. So it's like this whole idyllic view. The sun was coming down. There's like lambs dancing around. So yeah, no, it was absolute pleasure coming. It's so cool you say that. That is something we talk about a lot actually is that I think when you go out for a special meal, it needs to be an escape from reality and you have to sort of make sure that those things, we were literally having a meeting about this last week, it's making sure those things that are part of people's reality aren't there in this reality so it's a case of like you know you don't see laptops out on the side or phones or people doing things like staff wise it feels like people are just there to to serve you and cook for you and and you don't see any of the things you see day to day because it needs to feel like a an escapism for sure well when we walked in here because i didn't know what i was walking into right in a good way but the uh sort of put that on airplane mode walked in and there was like the roaring fire the smell i don't know what it was i don't know if it's like a vanilla smell or something like i probably got so wrong with my palette mate so apologies yeah there was like a smell and it's almost sat down here before you go up to the restaurant creates an element of suspense great storytelling and then obviously you go up and it's we'll get all into this in a sec but i I loved how the chairs were just slightly tilted at an angle.

6:14And it was that escape from reality. I really think it's an interesting... Yeah, I think also our geography plays into our hands a bit. And I think in order to... I mean, you've obviously made a long journey to get here. In order to get here, everyone's got to make a journey because we're in the middle of nowhere. And as you make that journey, whether you come by train or plane or car or whatever, as you get closer, you're going through all the rolling hills and it's past the sheep and past most of the things that we forage and all the sort of areas that form the sort of identity of our food. And I think by the time you get here, well, you're hungry for a start because you've been a long journey, but you've kind of like bought in and the journey sort of leads here.

6:57So I think people are already quite prepared for that. And then in terms of the restaurant itself, it's not a grand place. This is a 400-year-old drover's pub. that um sorry what's a drover well you see this little lane here that runs down that little lane was the drover's road from edinburgh to york and then down to london so people would historically have driven their cattle down and this would be one of the places they'd stay so they'd drive the cattle down to market uh they'd drive them down they'd stay here overnight you know just pop in you get i don't know what the fodder would have been but you might do some sort of bread and broth or something and and you get your head down for the night and your cattle will be tethered up in the back and then you carry on your journey yeah and that was literally sort of 400 years ago what this would have been and then over the years has been funny little add-ons and bits in different decades um so when you come in what i like about it is it's probably fairly as it would have been all them years ago obviously there's a stone floor and stuff which is original so i i kind of like that there's sort of this history to it it's very sort of humble but then upstairs the magic happens yeah but it's not it's not obtuse it's not stuffy is what i think and it's it was super just relaxed and i want to get into this escape from reality art magic but where i want to start actually is is cricket uh you know so i mean i i'm quite scatty with my approach yeah i talk about cricket all day so so i think sport and cookery have a lot of similarities so that you Obviously, Gordon Ramsay was a footballer, well, footballer at Rangers.

8:34I think Marcus Waring was a boxer. And I think there is, I love exploring these parallels. So I'd love to know is, how did, what lessons did you take from being a formidable cricketer that helped you become, you know, one of the youngest chefs, winner, Michelin star? I mean, I think sport, and not just in cooking, but in all sort of work and business, sport there's so many parallels and i just think it's great if kids are playing sport growing up because you're learning so many life skills i think that the big thing for me was uh especially in cricket where it's probably a little bit less age group specific i would have been you know 12 13 14 years old playing in men's cricket teams on a weekend which would i'd be playing with guys in their 20s and 30s and the things that you learn at a very young age about life i think stands you in a really good stead um but but i think the probably the biggest thing would be man management and i think cricket out of all i mean like you can be the captain in a football team and basically you're just the talisman you try and just sort of drag everyone along with you um but in cricket it's a proper tactical thinking game and you've got to get the best out of people and i think growing up i was always like the captain of the cricket teams and you'd have to get the best out of people and and get everybody it's a long game so you've got to keep people like get the best out of them and I think that sort of stood being good to say coming to the kitchen because again it's that man management it's long days in the kitchen you've got to get the best out of people and make them feel comfortable and express themselves and I think it was that sort of man management more than anything and of course the competitive side as well Yeah for sure I think man management is really interesting what you said about sport is a great parallel to business and cookery the the the guy the james dyson the guy did the yeah i'll say hoover i mean basically in the school you learn more doing sport than you do than you do in any fucking classroom yeah yeah 100 you do and also what i love about sport is you get out what you put in there is no shortcuts is there you can't um there is no shortcuts in sport you can't like train half-arsed and and then still win it doesn't work like that like people can be naturally talented but you have to make the most of that talent and i feel like that's exactly the same in in the kitchen i wouldn't i don't really believe in this sort of uh natural talent when it comes to cooking i actually think it comes to working hard application yeah you can be creative of course you can but and you have to maybe have like a scientific understanding of like the processes that you're doing but really the most of it is it's a craft and it's a skill and it's a repetitive thing and it's about what you put in and having that sort of dedication.

11:20I think that's a great parallel as well because you can't be successful in cooking if you're not taking it seriously. Well, David Olgavy, who's the big advertising guy, I was reading his book, he said he took all his lessons in business from when he was working in a kitchen in Paris. And then this guy's passed away years ago now, but he's a big advertising guy. And yeah, I think you're right, exploring the parallels. And what you said there is man management in getting the best out of people. So lots of people listening to this podcast are basically leading and building teams in food. How do you get the best out of your team when they come to work?

12:01What are some specific things you do? So it's all about creating the right environment. I know that sounds really obvious, almost a cliche, but I think the point there is that I think egos are the biggest evil in any environment. whether that's sport whether that's cooking any business if you have somebody especially at the top who has an ego they try and be god in their own little world and they're usually blokes to be honest uh it just you're not doing it for the right reasons what you everything that we do should be aimed towards creating the best product but as soon as somebody has an ego in the mix it's not about creating the best products anymore is it um it's actually about fulfilling their insecurities and that's the thing that we've always tried to do i'm sort of the the boss i suppose but i don't have ego i don't bring any of that to the party and i don't allow anybody else to so therefore i think you create um you just get rid of all the bullshit and you create an environment where people are just working towards one solid goal but i also think reaffirming them goals is really important um we did it last week where we just all stop sit down we have a meeting and we just exactly what we want to achieve and why we're doing it and how we're going to do it and and i think that having that clarity and when you're working in an organization you know this is what we're trying to do and this is how we're going to do it and this is the reason why we're doing this i think having that clarity and communication everybody's on the same page um that's really important and then non-negotiable behaviors as well so there's certain things that you just don't compromise on and and that couldn't be anything from ethics to like standards of work but i think certainly i will not compromise on egos or certainly in kitchens any sort of bullying or macho behavior anything like that that's a non-compromisable situation for me if anybody steps out of line in that way they're gone because that's the most damaging thing that can happen to our organization um and then other things that would be totally non-negotiable might be really simple things like how we put the orders away and how we rotate things and how we like systems so that everything else is perfect i'm a big believer that if we have all the systems in place we can't fail and i think there's so many misnomers about our industry um you see people shouting and screaming on tv and all this sort of thing and i when i see a chef shout and scream i just think well they're very disorganized like why would you ever be yourself in a situation where you're disorganized in that way i like to break it down and become very detail orientated um we created a piece of software um which we have in all of our restaurants uh where every single detail of a table is recorded to the time i know the time when your water's poured out at the time when you left the table to go to the toilet and the time when you came back everything is recorded on there and in a little like a basically like a database of information for every table so anybody in the restaurant any point you can click on that table and they can see exactly how that evening is mapped if we take out every detail that could possibly go wrong we stand a very good chance of being successful and i think it's much more important to concentrate on detail and process rather than um mouthing off about certain things or shouting and so i think that's where people in our industry we get this weird thing if people concentrate on the detail rather than the ego i think they'd be a lot more successful i love that tommy concentrate on the detail not the ego and i didn't so well we will talk about it shortly but it did it did feel like there was this whole magic and knowing that there's this whole system behind it because it feels like it's the service on saturday wasn't it wasn't in your face it was like at the perfect time so i'm always seeing revealing the the what's going on behind the stage doors if you want to call it that it's fascinating yeah well i think yeah that's the thing that you have to you have to have a frightening amount of detail behind the scenes in order to have this seamless sort of almost casual service in in front of the guest um i mean i think to the thing that i want the most is i encourage people to be themselves so i want uh i think service is a is like a performance art i want people to express themselves so when someone describes one of the dishes in our restaurants it can't be just reading off a spiel like we've all been there and they this is this with this and this and this you know thanks cheers it needs to be like they need to feel it it needs to be part of like the journey they've been involved in that and and deliver it it's a performance art i think so long as you have everything else behind the scenes sorted it allows people to step onto the stage and and perform without worrying about whether something else is because there's a there's a serving staff you've got a million one things in your head but if you know everything's looked after you can then just deliver the deliver the important thing yeah there's a i don't know who the what the quote is but there's a quote is that the more you practice in private the more you people don't see what you practice in private but what happens in public basically there's a lot of discipline behind the scenes yeah and one of my book favorite books of all time that i've talked about probably way too much on this podcast is called the war of art really short little book if it's shot i might give it yeah give it definitely a go mate because but it's all about like all this discipline behind the scenes is i think people think art whether it's food or i think actually art could be something like if messy and football or or or behind the scenes is just relentless discipline non-negotiables practice and when by doing that it allows it to you know even this podcast like i've done lots of prep for our conversation for all the conversations but it allows it to just sort of flow um and what when you said that ego is getting in the way so so from a hiring perspective what are some of the technical tests hiring is the hardest thing in the world is what i've learned from ever i've interviewed how do you make sure they are they don't have egos and they are gonna want to impress i think you need a little bit of ego to impress or want to work hard do you want to be proud of yourself does that make sense yeah i think it's self-respect and that's very different different things i i have a lot of conviction in what i do right but i i like i really believe in what i'm doing but i think that's different to i think when i talk about ego i think you're doing things or expressing yourself upon other people in order to get a reaction that makes you feel good i actually think ego usually comes from people who are not comfortable in their own skin who may be actually riddled with insecurity whereas um i'm not insecure and i'm very comfortable in what i'm doing but that's not an ego that's just that's a happy place to be and i think that's where people need to get to when it comes to um hiring we don't tend to hire people in at management level everybody with some exceptions but generally speaking people start because because we're such a unique business and especially in like the kitchen a lot of the ingredients we use we can go down to the farm and have a look in a bit like a lot of the ingredients we use aren't things that people have ever come across before so people kind of need to start towards the bottom of it and work up um so therefore no one comes in with too much pressure on them um and i think people spend time to be able to work their way up in the business and you can see that across the board all of our management have been in the business for years and they've worked their way up so you become part of the culture and you you drive the culture itself but in terms of tests there are none i am not interested in that i'm only interested in character not in ability because you can teach or experience you can teach people how to do things but you you can't do is make somebody a sensible uh empathetic caring person which is what i need a brigade of and we need an organization full of good people and that is either that's not a taught skill really people adapt to the environment and I do think we get the best out of people but you get a good, I just go on first impressions on totally like, is this person a good person do I like them, do they look genuine do I feel like the bullshit in me if they just seem quite honest and humble you got the job, because everything else we can teach and I actually almost prefer inexperienced but keen, enthusiastic happy people than people who have a whole load of baggage and book some amazing experience um certainly never i know like some chefs do oh you've got to cook me an omelette or do whatever i just think it's nonsense i don't see the point because we're about training people so if somebody can't cook an omelette i can teach them how to cook an omelette but i can't teach them how to be driven necessarily i can't teach them how to have empathy for uh an understanding and um to buy into the vision but you you know sit like this and just talk yeah so we do it sure and i suppose i completely agree is is it's it's almost looking for the apt uh attitude not the aptitude almost is it yeah you can teach them that other stuff but i suppose for our listeners is you know empathy humility when i say tests i mean is there like a way you kind of gauge that or is it just it's just that instinct no good instinct i mean i have a rule of and there's a few things that we've walked away from and everyone's like i thought we were doing that and why have you walked away this is sort of in business in general i'm like just didn't get a good vibe from the people and i think as a general rule if you don't do business with people who you don't like then you can't go too far wrong because all business you do is should be in my opinion if it's going to be have longevity and be sustainable should be a joint venture it should be collective you should both be working towards it and if you don't feel if you feel it's more transactional if you feel like you don't like somebody or like oh we gotta work with them but they're a pain in the backside and their ethics aren't aligned with you at some point it'll just blow up it'll blow us in your face or you just won't get the most out of it or you won't feel good about that day like i've got to go work with this brand tomorrow and oh god there's such a pain in the ass i don't really like their product and just don't do it and there's been a few times i've done it recently where we were supposed to work with companies and we've gone a bit down the line and i've just had just got an uneasy feeling about it i just don't feel the vibe um so we'll just walk away and a few times people like that's stupid why have you done that but it's like well no i think you've got to use your gut um use your gut instinct and i think you do know like you can judge people quite quickly whether you think people um i certainly know if someone's bullshitting me and if they're bullshitting me then i'm not interested um and that's just the way you gotta go bohemi 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 bohemi are the platform to categorically speed that up but if you're a big brand wanting to get bigger bohemi 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 Boeing Me to check major malt listings availability insane 29 % uplift by downloading an app insane lucky saying my boy Aaron Duff is coming on this podcast in a couple of weeks he uses it to manage the team of 30 people and they've lucky to have unlocked 500 draft listings by using Boeing Me 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 it's really interesting because there's all this i think it's a lot of bollocks to be honest all these sort of psychometric tests that these big law firms do and i know they are trying to do it on mass yeah but i think lots of our listeners are smaller businesses challenger brands predominantly in some restaurateurs and i think it's just this searching for humility and going on the gut and i what you've said to me is i've taken on quite a few projects recently and i'm at that mode rush i won't say what they are but i probably need to count a few off because I just don't see the longevity in it yeah um empathy though is something that's really important I think and I think there's a I think there's often a misconception between sympathy and empathy uh they're two totally different things uh I'm not looking for someone to be sympathetic to everybody all the time but I like to see that people can understand things from other people's point of view because that means they're going to be a good team player um so they're the sort of question I'd ask and if people have their own view but understand somebody else's view then you know that's going to work because they can put themselves so a good manager has to have high levels of empathy because in order to get the best out of somebody you have to be able to understand their point of view we can't just be like well this is what we're doing but they're doing this they're doing it wrong so they need to start doing this i think like in order to actually get the person onto your path you've got to understand their path first and then you can help guide them in the right direction um so i think that's the number one skill so that's the thing i would look for and you get that in conversation though because humble people who have empathy when you just talk they'll say oh yeah well i you know i've got this idea i want to do this but i mean we end up going this other direction i get that and you understand that side but i'd like to you're like oh perfect you whereas if somebody who doesn't have that would go i want to do this but they want to do that so i said that was bullshit and i walked away and you're like hmm yeah i can see that you're not going to work because nothing's that straightforward like i like to sit down with my management team and like look nothing's perfect in our business and there's always compromises but we sit down and discuss it on a one-on-one and we understand each other's point of view and like they might want to do one thing and i can't ever agree with them but for practical reasons we have to do another thing and we talk it through and you understand each other's point of view and that's when there's a way forward um so yeah i think empathy is the number one characteristic and that's on a really junior member of staff as well because if you want to take somebody through and they end up running your business one day for you they have to understand everybody's point of view they don't have to agree with it but they have to understand it yeah i love that and i think it's what you said there the difference between sympathy and empathy because i think i think i think people in business or the sort of the archetype of the business person has just completely changed it's a bit like back to the egos yeah back in the day there was the the ego of the chef the ego of the ceo yeah which was like this is my way we're doing it this way everyone else will fuck off that was kind of like that's kind of how it was and i think but there is a difference between empathy and sympathy because i think empathy back to what you said there you still got self-respect for your point of view but you can see it from their side of the table you haven't moved on your point of view yeah um whereas sympathizing you're like oh yeah i i yeah they want that and then you're almost appeasing and bending and i'm on my path i understand where i want to go but as long as i understand the other person's point of view then i can if i can understand their point of view i can probably get them onto my point of view but if i'm just sympathizing with them then i'm compromising my situation and is just from a leadership perspective is there an example of where it's so true of how you understand their perspective and then from from sort of sitting in their shoes help them move to the right point so is there like an example of that maybe in in anything you've done really i think uh it's hard to do a really specific example but i think we've made a lot of changes over the years where running restaurants is tough and like hours is hard sometimes and and i've found it very difficult when we've you know probably been doing more hours than we should have been or we've been working people harder than we ought to have been because of the situation i find it very hard to then be in there and work with them guys and look them in the face knowing that we're all pushing a bit too much here so i think um and you can see that people have found that tough so we've made a lot of lifestyle decisions like closing sundays and cutting hours right down and giving people extra like the guys at roots in the kitchen they'll do four days a week but every third week they do three days a week and you really try to make their lifestyle as good as you can but like so you really seen i really try and see things from their point of view i want them to have the most rounded life but the payback is that when you come to work we're in a high performance environment so you don't dick around because you've got three or four days a week to dick around but when you're at work it's not that it's a highly disciplined it is a highly disciplined environment but not in a shout screamy way just in a like it's a high performance way like we are creating the highest we're working to the highest color but we can and And everyone understands that and everyone buys into it.

28:53And I think that by not just riding a business and getting the most out of it, you can as an employer. I think if you make it as great to work in that business as you can, I think the trade-off comes back around. So you've seen it from their point of view. You've made it as good as you can make it. Then they see it from your point of view and they make it as good as they can make it. Yeah, enough. It's almost, it goes back to that empathy piece. and i want to go back into back into cricket so i think in cricket and i suppose empathy is the greatest form of communication really between two people yeah empathy on the same length and what i want to talk about is in cricket obviously you've got the bowler and the wicketkeeper needs to be in sync uh two batsmen needs to be in sync yeah to to to for high performance as you said i know your brother was his thing is the front of house or he was the front of house and you're the kitchen i'd love to understand the relationship between between the service and and the the storytelling with the food because i think you need high performance in the kitchen but you almost need high performance in uh with the services which would be experienced on saturday so how do you do that how do you do that um well we've been on a real journey with that because obviously we we started very young and we were kids and stuff and now we used to fight like cat and dog and right You learn from things.

30:16And I think there was a lot of time we weren't particularly professional in our relationship. But we have quite different roles now. I think the key thing though is communication and it isn't a kitchen in front of house thing. It's just a team thing. Like we all sat around last Wednesday and we had a meeting and we're all in the same, we're all trying to achieve the same thing. So I think the more that you work as a team, the less that is. Because at the end of the day, you are creating the same thing. so I think we just try to cut any boundaries between the two and it's just one team who are delivering something um but I think we have you know we have about 17 years of experience of that and we used to fight literally fight each other and like as young stupid boys who are you know probably have a little bit of ego at that point and they can see how it ruins things when as soon as you have um people who are working in that way you know brothers who are sort of competitive and fighting or whatever it's just not going to create a great working i mean people thought it was hilarious but it didn't create a great working environment whereas now i think we sort of sit more above it you know um neither of us are like day-to-day running the restaurant we have head chef and head chefs in both restaurants we have restaurant managers in both restaurants and we're more sort of overseeing that we still work in the business but um it's more about trying to create the right environment and learning from some of the mistakes that we probably made um to to be honest, and it helped them.

31:45It's so, yeah, it's just fascinating seeing what I'm learning live, I suppose, is this empathy dissolves this ego. As you become more empathetic, you dissolve the ego. But, yeah, I mean, I've got a little brother, and we used to fucking argue with all this time growing up. And, you know, we used to argue a lot, and occasionally we do. The problem with arguments is they don't actually, it's not a debate, it's an argument. and when you find yourself arguing one person rants and the other person rants and as the other person's ranting you're thinking about your next rant and how you're going to respond to them so actually it's not a nuanced debate it's just no one's listening to each other there is no empathy and if you're arguing with me i'm not listening to a word you're saying i'm just thinking about how i'm gonna fucking get you next time and vice versa and you listen to you think well that's not a constructive conversation so what we try and do now and it's difficult with family because you tend to be able to be less professional with family because you speak to each other in a different way sometimes, especially when tensions are ramped up.

32:46I think what we try and do is calm, not allow anyone to raise the voice because as soon as you raise your voice, you're arguing and then just try and actually debate things. I'm not saying we're perfect. I think my communication with all the 120 people who work in our business is very, very good. My communication with my brother is good, but I think that's the only time when I feel myself ever as a slightly unprofessional because sometimes you've got to point score a little bit and we do it to each other but I mean the other thing is at least it's not personal and you can walk away but I think that's the hardest dynamic so my other business partner Matt if we start disagreeing on something you have a really constructive debate and you find out the best way forward for the business 100 % every time even if one of us has to concede some ground you're doing it for the right reasons whereas with my brother occasionally it's like we just we do get in the end but there's a bit more point scoring involved and then it's it's a shame but i'm happy to admit it no it's good and i think if you can if you can have that with your brother again it goes back to i have that with my brother even if like we're going to the pub my parents if there's something comes up i'm not thinking i'm just thinking jake i want to like you're wrong mate it's in my head as i make you were wrong i don't give a fuck what you're saying and it's actually reminds me not necessarily about family relationships but more about business but paul ainsworth taught me something which is listen to reply um listen to grow not to reply i think so many people listen they're not listening they're just they're just thinking right i just want to say something to you to shut you up yeah and actually listen to to grow through the empathetic side of things is yes is interesting um so i want to kind of go into my experience saturdays it was unreal some of that food mate i can't even it was just mind-boggling it was so so good on your website it says the foundations of food are the same after that you're simply painting the same picture with with new and exciting paints and i thought that's really just a succinct and sort of delicious way to describe it but i'd love to know for you and i asked this to paul as well is food art or magic to you

34:57i'm a little bit more holistic than that go on um because obviously i come from a farming background and like when we finish this interview we can go down to the farm and it's a beautiful day and it's more than art or magic because i don't feel like i'm not the creator if you know what i mean like if you go down to the farm now there's little baby lambs that have been born and they're Herdwick so that's a slow growing breed so they won't be ready for the menu for 18 months and it's actually you have to shepherd them through their life or we can go down to Point Hills and you see these first little shoots growing or you go into the Palace of Preserve and you see all the fermentation and things like that I don't really see it as art or magic I actually have a much more it's nature and I feel like we're we're totally dictated by that and I know that sounds so flowery and so chef but from a farmer's perspective point of view like our menu is we could say we could create a perfect piece of art uh and it could have um five different flowers on they're all grown in the garden and we we pick them every day at half past five but then it might piss it down and you know what I mean and then that's that actually dictates to us so I'm not um we're a little bit more than than that in terms and I think like in a lot of for a lot of chefs it would be a bit a bit of both I think art in terms of making the dishes magic in terms of the service would probably be a really nice way of putting it but i don't feel like we're creating perfect pieces of art i think we're uh working with the land and the seasons of what we've got to sort of give an expression i guess it's more uh uh interpreted art you know like it's an expression of what is going on here and where we're at on our journey, if you know what I mean.

36:47No, completely. But I do see chefs who create pieces that I would say are more like art, but I don't think they're working as closely with nature. They're more like constructing beautiful masterpieces, and I have so much respect for that, but I think we're on a different path. I love that. So Paul Ainsworth said the same thing. He said the food is the art and the service is the magic. So it's both, really. But actually, and I think there was a listen to him, I think it was Marco Pierre White with um anthony bourdain i think where he said mother nature's the artist which i thought was a really good quote because it's like and it's it's so it makes so much sense here in this restaurant because we are literally in a big pudding of countryside but i think when you go to some london restaurants it is kind of like you don't see as a consumer or as a being in a restaurant you don't see the whole back end piece and the nature piece um yeah i think i find that fascinating and you do a lot of uh foraging and i think on your instagram it's like chef restaurateur forager i think yeah i don't know what it is yeah i can't remember i think about changing that actually but how how does what does foraging add to your life like well i mean so firstly i think it just gives you an amazing appreciation of of nature because you get excited about when things happen and it makes you much more seasonal uh but in terms of what how it affects our food is more it's a palette of ingredients like any chef can ring up a supplier and order some vanilla pods or I mean what's in season now around the world or Alfonso Mango or some blood oranges or something which are beautiful amazing products but what excites me is expressing sort of where we're actually from and I love the idea of taking certain things so this tree outside you can see the first bits of blossom are just starting to come through this odd bit peaky through if we get a bit of sun this week by the weekend that'll be bright pink and cherry blossom beautiful beautiful we can forage we can we'll stand on top of this um this bay window and just pick it all off and that gets infused into vinegars or syrups as the most amazing sort of um well they're called sakura in japan in japan and it's a botanical use a lot in like gins and stuff we can use that in cocktails we could use it to finish sauces it becomes like a staple ingredient what i love is when we create food which looks recognizable but is made using ingredients that people don't know what the hell they are because actually we have a different palette of ingredients if i want to achieve the vanilla flavor i use sweet woodruff if i want to find a marzipan-y vanilla flavor marzipan-y almondy flavor i'll use some sort of blossom that would be around this time of year and and it just goes on and on um but the beauty of doing foraging it and preserving it is all those ingredients of which i literally have tons of which is all perfectly organized is like it's like a chemistry set or a painter's palette you can go and you can take a little bit of that a little bit of that and you can mix it together and create something which is our own because food's food's been done like it's very hard to be original nowadays unless you create the original food the original ingredient before it even becomes the dish but i think some of our we have a lot of different interesting techniques in the kitchen but i think some of them you'll see in other places but you won't see the ingredients a lot of our ingredients are unique to us because we've invented them like we have a different palette of ingredients and that's what really excites me um and i think by using that there's certain things that we forage that just other people don't have because they simply just don't have that tree that we have so that gives you that instant flavor i don't like using the word terroir because it's french and shit but Like it is like the flavor of that tree there is different to the flavor of any other tree in the world.

40:52So therefore we have a unique thing that nobody else has. And that's, we invest so much time and money in, in that. Well, that was because that was the dish, the Woodruff dessert on Saturday. I was thinking this is mental because it's three different types of mushrooms. It's the best, it's the best dish on the menu. I think that I thought that was unbelievable. I couldn't, I was, it was sort of back to the magic and the art like that. I was tasting and looking at art, but then I was like, what the fuck? In a good way, I said, what the fuck is going on? This is insane. But I think, so if you broke that down into its building blocks and you said, oh, there's like different sorts of tuiles and meringues on that dish, there's crumble, there's ice cream, there's ganache, there's caramel.

41:34They're all things that are on other people's menus, because they're like techniques, but there's all the other things in there, whether it's the different site, the different babylots, or the seps that we forage from up here, or the birch polypaws, which are different sorts of mushrooms, or whether it's the sweet woodruff or the smoked butter, it's the chicory root that we grow. All those things. It's impossible for anybody to recreate that dish. Absolutely impossible. People can make something that looks like it, but they can't recreate that flavour. That's unique to us. Mate, I love that. And I love exploring, I want to ask you the parallels of almost foraging with business, because I think in challenger brands, at least in sort of supermarkets, is if you look where everyone else is looking, that nothing is original, like you're saying.

42:24So if you go into a supermarket now, so many of the products look the same. Even to be honest, in London, all the pizza joints and pizza restaurants all look the same. It's all these Neapolitans saying they're all just carbon copies. Yeah, it's fashion. It's fashion, yeah. And you've got to go look where, one, no one else is looking, and two, where people don't have access to that tree. and then you create originality. But I'd love to kind of go into that with you, Tommy. How does foraging make you better as an entrepreneur, I suppose? I think actually just the location. I think I'd find it much more difficult to be original in a city because we're so out of the way.

43:01If I don't look at Instagram, I don't really know what's going on in the rest of the world, to be honest. So you end up just much more narrow, but then much more open in your thinking because you're not sort of bound by industry norms or fashions or whatever. You're sort of just plowing your own furrow. I think there's a few things to that. When I was younger, I used to follow other restaurants, things like that, and don't really know. I mean, I know a lot of the chefs and stuff. I bump into them and stuff and I have good relationships with people, but I don't really know what food they're cooking.

43:33I'm not that interested. I'd love to go to the restaurant and try it. I'll enjoy it. I'm not really that interested in what people are doing um and I think also because I didn't go work in lots of restaurants I was younger I'm not like classically trained I don't have any of that desire or any of those sort of um what's the word um any of those sort of formalities and sort of expectations that that other people would have had of what things need to be um so I think it's very easy to just suddenly you end up going down for a tangent down a a path of people go wow this is so creative and you're like well it's quite obvious actually we just did this this and this and we're sort of living our own little bubble down here and i like that i don't really want to be influenced by the outside world i quite like it that people come into our world and and see what we do but obviously there are so many crossovers when we do different strings of our business and we do go out it's all right selling that dream here but it's how we do it at lord's cricket ground or or twickenham or with our other brands that we run and stuff like that.

44:35So I think that's where there's more challenge. It's almost this whole place here, Oldstead is this sort of magic, I think. Not even in the rest world, just here in general. It's a beautiful part of the world, yeah. And so how do you do it when you are going to, say, more mass stream, you're doing Twickenham, you're doing the cricket, but how do you have the making it more mainstream but having that little sprinkle or you know a bit of panache of banks basically yeah um well so we do quite a lot of outside catering gigs through our um company made in oldstead and uh it very much every everything's different basically um so we run an amazing restaurant at lords which is quite exclusive and we very much bring it all down like we have plants brought down from the polytunnels we have all our preserves there and we kind of deliver that and we kind of create our own little atmosphere but the nice thing about the restaurant there is it's totally soundproof it's the only soundproof place on the ground so you step out the door and it's like 30 000 people cheering on the cricket you step in it's just serene and airy and beautiful so we've created this different sort of environment so that that's amazing and it's really like twickenham is a totally different vibe but i mean i absolutely love it it's bouncing it's so much fun i think that's down to the ingredients like um you know we'll still cook food which is our style we'll do things which are you know even if it's just like the pork for the pork pies comes from our farm and it's served with a um a mayweed jelly on top of it and that's maybe that's forage from the farm we're still using the same ingredients but we're making things which are suitable for that environment yeah i think it's just there's so much in that for people listening to this in terms of I really love originality and new ideas and being like no one else I think if you're trying to be like everyone else you just it's very crowded yeah and I think there's so much in that what I want to talk about so both your restaurants actually the names of both your restaurants have really interesting uh conversation sort of pathways so the black black swan is where I want to talk talk about and one of my favorite books is called black swan I don't know if you've ever heard of it but there's black swan events basically which uh well a black swan event is is an unpredictable and unforeseen event typically with one with extreme consequences so yeah the obvious one is covid and this guy by this guy called nasim taleb and i like his stuff uh a parent passing away is back because we all have black swan events we basically have two options it'd be either let it crush us or as taleb says we become anti-fragile and that's basically things that gain from disorder.

47:20And I know you had a disease called, so I'm going to butcher this, mate, called ulcerative. Ulcerative. It's actually really quite easy. Ulcerative colitis, yeah, yeah. And, yeah, you said you'd spend a lot of time in hospital. I think you had three operations. And you said sometimes you need a setback to make you realise you're calling in life. I think the illness to find my character giving me resilience to be successful as a young chef i think part of life is is resilience i'd love to go into into this and what was sort of the darkest day on that hospital bed and what did that feel like well i was quite young so i was only eight 17 18 19 at that sort of stage i think what i mean by that is that's why i mean i wasn't unintelligent at school or anything but i wasn't really naughty but i just just wasn't focused and so i sort of left school i did one year of a levels left school and my dream was to be a professional cricketer but if i'm honest i was just a idiot teenager who just loved playing sport i like going out drinking with friends and just wasn't that keen on knuckling down doing any sort of hard worth to be honest which is probably the story of most sort of 17 year old lads especially and that's where i was at and i'd sort of arranged to go and play cricket in the following winter in australia and i still sort of harbored this if i wasn't gonna if i didn't make it as a special cricketer i would be a i'd work in the sport in some way i'd go into like i don't know train coaching or something and that was my path um and we'd but james had done something similar my brother and he'd left school he was just working as a barman and mom and dad run a bed and breakfast at the farm and they were like oh maybe we should give the black swan a go and um so we took over and sort of left us to it which was rogue um but when i was first sort of 17 and working i hated it i had no interest in it i'd wash some pots i did a few desserts and stuff and i carried food out and they i mean it was a fairly roadby village pub sort of thing um but then i got ill and all of the things that you have in youth were taken away from me as in like my health and fitness um you know i'm i'm a fairly big guy but i was i was like 10 stone I'm like 16 so I'm 6 foot 3 and big chap but I wasn't then and ulcerative colitis is a terrible disease because what actually is it sorry so it's disease of autoimmune disease of your colon so there's also you'll hear of like Crohn's disease which is very similar but it's your smaller intestine and basically your body starts fighting itself so you feel like very unwell and a lot of pain and of course the big problem is that you're basically on the toilet all the time which makes i think is why a lot of people don't get diagnosed quick enough is because it's a bit of a thing that people don't want to talk about you know um you know they start off having a lot of stomach pains and feeling very tired and then you find yourself passing lots of blood and then it just sort of spirals from there and it can be um controlled with with drugs um and usually it um it is stress related and it could often come from a trigger point and when I was that age my grandfather died and he was being like real like a father to me as well like um really really close to my granddad um I still think about him every day and this was what 14 years ago um but um that I think is what flared up the disease in me because I think it stays dormant in you and that was what caused this disease to happen so I think not only had I had this um bereavement which really hit me hard I got this disease and then my body just shut itself down and I lost all this weight and I was pretty much bedridden.

51:10They couldn't control it with drugs because it was just too aggressive. So I had to have my colon removed and I had a colostomy bag, which is the least cool thing you can have as a 17 year old lad, to be honest. So if you've got to think from being like a bit of a Jack the Lad, just like loving life, like interested in what? Drinking, playing sport and girls those three things didn't exist anymore and suddenly all your friends are going off to university and you're staring at four walls in pain spending most of your life on the toilet like it's a humbler uh i think like i was pretty dark um it was i was pretty depressed but also he gave me this sort of drive i was like wow when i get better i am not going through this i am making a success in my life because this is crap i don't want to i'm not hanging around for for nobody um i don't know what i'm gonna do and and obviously there was an obvious outlet because we had a restaurant a pub then that i could cook in and also chefs sort of became really popular on tv so um i just sort of spent my time sort of stewing sorry just to get context what year was this this was 2007 2008 2009 that sort of time yeah um so i had three major operations and over course for a couple of years and then I was sort of back on my feet but it took a long time to sort of get strong uh I just threw myself into cooking so I then and it was an unhealthy drive I think now in hindsight like I didn't really do I hadn't been having a social life for so long because I physically couldn't uh then I was just threw myself into work and I sacrificed everything for work like I worked every day of the week so I wanted to I was just determined to be successful I'd found myself a kid who'd left school with no qualifications and then had all my health taken away from me and I'd lost two three years of my life and I just needed to play catch up so I had this very unhealthy idea that well if I work 80 90 hours a week then I'm working twice as much as a standard person works so I'm going to get on twice as fast as them and I'll catch up and overtake them was just was my attitude and I was just I was just relentless for a few years it wasn't sustainable and it didn't necessarily, it made me successful in my career but not necessarily successful in all areas of life Yeah and I think I mean, yeah it's just so amazing to see you now you know for all these years on with this well restaurateur and to be honest everyone I've interviewed has a period of unhealthy drive and to be honest right now with this podcast is it's a seven day week it's not 90 hours free I don't have that sort of stamina but it's an everyday it's an everyday sort of and I'm sort of thinking to myself am I getting too obsessed with this is this because it's like I'm driven by fear because loads of people say don't bother signing a podcast down don't bother doing that and so I'm just like almost a bit like fuck you watch this watch this and I don't know how sustainable it is but it's what's getting me going through but you said I'd love to know like did you burn out did you did you burn out because i don't know if i think it's really interesting nuanced things you need a shitload of drive to get anything to really make something yourself but sometimes that can spill into burnout did you burn out yeah yeah a lot of times yeah really okay yeah um yeah i think um i think it was a lot easier when i was just working here so obviously i was working all hours um driving it forward won a mission star did all that sort of thing but i think it became harder when i had to perform more as in like be on show all the time whether it was to guests or you're doing tv or like actually the people who are coming your employees coming to work for you are no longer just like the 60 in the kitchen you're just having a laugh like employing lots of people and and you need to always have a good sort of face on that's when I started to find it more difficult.

55:11But now I've suffered with burnout. It's certainly a real thing. Right through my 20s, I'm desperately trying to be more sustainable and cut down the number of times that happens a year, to be honest. And that's a journey that I think as you get older, you understand yourself, your mind and your body more. And I'm definitely making positive, made some really positive sets the last couple of years, especially not to do that. But it's a fine line. it really is um you without the drive you're not you don't create the things but it's a vicious circle i think it's almost i was talking to my mate about this who came on the podcast the other day it's almost like i always think of drive as the you know water when you're cooking pasta it just gets you going going going going and then it's like it gets too much too much it just bubbles over yeah yeah so i'd love to know how do you because i'm really bad at spotting the signs of burnout like how do you know it's coming and when it is how do you sort of let it simmer down is that because i think it's that is a as you said it's a journey i think that's that's a craft in itself is knowing when to sort of ease off a bit uh i think my wife's been really good at that right so um i certainly you i would just go through a through a time where i would i'd work ferociously and then suddenly i would just have these anxiety attacks panic attacks burnout i'd have two days in bed and i'll be back at it and i just fly at it again and i think she's been really good at telling me when i'm getting there or telling me to working with me to try and stop me from sort of doing that really um i think i think it's an interesting thing though because i also think some are creatively some of my best ideas come when i'm on the edge of sort of in a bit of almost a manic state in the when my body's about to sort of shut down on me such as any idea any examples of that?

57:06Um...

57:10pretty much everything to be honest everything that we've ever done i think has come at that sort of time i'll have like a crazy idea and i'll have so much energy for it and i'll go down tell all my family like we saw what we're gonna do we can do this and then usually it coincides with a few days later i just end up in bed um that's that's true um but no i'm i am absolutely just for the record like not saying that working yourself to that point is a good thing i think it's a really bad thing and i've felt the wrath of that over the last few years. I think both me and my brother have, to be honest.

57:44And I think that's why we're very much trying to make sure that everybody within our care will never be like that. I love the mistakes. I find it a lot with young people who are like so ambitious and like, chef, I just want to speak to you. How am I going to, I just want to push forward. I'm just like, no, you're doing a great job. Just, just be you. You know, you're 23 or something. thing just enjoy your life honestly you're on a great path within a couple years you'll be here a couple more years after that you'll be there don't drive yourself any higher than you need to because you've already got the drive you're fine now it's hypocritical i know but like i'm absolutely not saying it's a good thing yeah no i love doing these because i learned for myself so because i get i think when it comes to me so i'm i'm still trying to work out when it is last time i was saying to myself even this is like last week because i've done so many interviews i'd take on probably almost too much work in terms of the project stuff and i just get this crippling self-doubt where and it just comes down like almost like thunderstorms yeah and i'm just like but then i've got this again it's probably a bit fucked up but this sort of addiction to work like i love it this is the issues i to me this is play yeah i love doing it and i'd love but it's just trying to work out when when that's and if i think for me it's loads of self-doubt yeah and just this feeling of like no like excitement to do something is that how how does it manifest for you that's uh i think that it's a classic burnout thing when when you you lose sort of excitement for i never lose the passion or the drive no it is more um physical and uh more anxiety driven so i'll just get to a point where i can do anything in the lead up to it i can i'm invincible i can do anything and then i just suddenly fall off a cliff and i'm like i can't see people today but i think the best way to manage work even if you've got the busiest time the thing you can't compromise on is sleep and i used to hear chefs and you know that gordon rambler i remember having a bucket and like a quote saying that four hours of sleep is enough for anybody but any more than that and you're just being lazy or something so i was just like as a young chef i was like all right that must be right then that's absolute bollocks and i'm sure if you got interviewed today you wouldn't say that um if you can keep on top of your sleep then you can you know because we all go through periods in life where we've got an awful lot on but if you so long as you're getting some sleep the other thing for me that i've found uh as well is is like you tend to be busy then you tend to be here and everywhere and you tend to drink more and things like that because you're in like an environment where like you're doing especially for me it's like it's like going to an event or tv shows and back and doing this and you end up bumping to people you have a few beers you get bit of bed too late and that's when it just gets too much i think if you're more professional and you don't if you get your sleep you don't drink too much you can usually achieve a lot more i think that messes with your head more than anything losing out on the sleep oh for sure and i'm a bit weird like i always try and wake up ridiculously early but i'm just now i'm sort of getting to the point it's like it's you almost almost like how you were saying to your chef is like you would just chill mate let's try i can't do it it's impossible it's the psychological side which i think i've got way better at the last few years is when you have time off you need to try and do it well and i know i'm not good at it still but i used to almost have this guilt if i wasn't at work i'd feel guilty for not being at work and then i would just be racking myself for that all day so i don't think i actually achieved any of the rest and recuperation you were supposed to do uh whereas now i i feel a little bit uh generally i feel a lot more content like i'm happy if i'm off on saturday and having a nice time with my wife and my daughter or whatever i don't feel bad that guys are working in the restaurant whereas i used to like so that's why i would just be here all the time and there and just i would work when everyone was off work and i'd work whenever was at work whereas i just have to realize i'm doing a different i'm on a different path to other people it's fine no it's good like it's a guilt thing yeah that's the same with me is definitely just reassuring speaking to someone and sort of talking through it basically.

1:01:52And the other one I want to talk about now is Roots. So I want to go into your Yorkshire roots. Obviously the other very famous chef from Yorkshire is Mark O 'Pierre White. I listened to a podcast you did and you said, I think we were in maybe Staffordshire doing a podcast. Yeah, the Nightcap one with Paul yeah yeah that was it yeah it was really really good but I think you said you know you weren't a perfectionist said your mum was a perfectionist but you weren't a perfectionist and you had no formal training yeah so the archetype of a chef is someone who is a perfectionist and someone who's got you know got got the formal training so in a world where perfection and training are sort of like revered how did having no formal training and not being perfectionist actually help you win mitchellon star win the second mission so i opened the second restaurant do you mean yeah um yeah i do so i think there's there's quite a journey in that front i mean like i i wouldn't say i don't think i'm capable of being a perfectionist because i don't think i have like just like the motor skills to do it if you know i mean like some people are just so precise and great i mean i i just i try very hard uh i think uh i don't compromise though and I think that's so what's the difference between perfection I think people who are perfectionists and I'm not a perfectionist because I don't think I'm almost capable of achieving it in a lot of ways uh but I don't compromise on things like I have a standard that I will not compromise on I think that's been the secret to success um but then after that and in more recent years actually it's about surrounding yourself with people who are better at doing something than you are so i don't think i'm the single best at doing anything in our business at all i'm not and that's um that's really important and i think that is the secret to success i think the thing that i'm probably best at in the business is probably one-on-one communication and group communication and having having vision but other than that technical skills for anything from computer things to running anything there's somebody better than me everywhere across the business but I just sort of I'm the football manager not the star star I'm not Lionel Messi I'm more Pep Guardiola and I think I always will be but I think that's where recruitment, nurturing, creating a great environment it comes in I employ people who are perfectionists and that's important but I'm not that's I love doing these because you get so much nuance and things.

1:04:34It's almost like you said there's a difference between almost perfection, but your role almost as a manager, as talking for football, is to bring that standard up. So I know we talked right at the beginning about non-negotiables and standards. What are some of those standards and non-negotiables that have got you here today?

1:04:57Well, I mean, they're across the board. I think having like strong principles, whatever they might be, help filter down into sort of quality QC sort of checks. Because I think like it's a funny one because in a kitchen, a lot of it is sort of quality control, isn't it? It's like making sure everything's the same and perfect and nobody ever steps out of line in that respect. But I think what that comes from is actually just drive and culture. I think the fact that I'm so passionate about the journey that we're on, whether it's the regenerative farming model or whether it's training and bringing people through or the fact that I'm totally uncompromising when it comes to the culture within our business.

1:05:39people can see that no like that's that is the way we do things and there's a real drive there's something you can buy into because it's clearly spelt out to you i think that fills down quite well into the qc side which is which is really really important um but also we just have lots of boring systems in place which you have to have which should just you know and actually i think a A lot of times in hospitality, those things aren't there because it's just a bit more organic, whereas we've sort of tried to combine the best of both worlds. We've got this sort of holistic, organic approach, but also behind the scenes, everything's non-negotiable really in terms of how we conduct ourselves, in terms of how we make an individual thing.

1:06:30It's like very regimented. like and i think i've got some great people within the business who help to to make sure that happens as well and what are what are some of the the bank's principles that are kind of under almost they're like the roots yeah the principles like roots i think that makes you unshakable almost like you're looking like a tree that when things come this way if you've got strong roots you're not going to get moved yeah i think it's a it's a respect thing um i have a great relationship with everybody who works in the business so i think there's just a respect there that i can sit down with people i know they know i'm not mugging them off or taking advantage of them or they know i've got like a genuinely care and but they genuinely care about the business and me too and it and it works i i really feel like like uh josh who's a really good lad he'd been with us for a few years and he was just leaving drinks i was just talking to him it was just like you know for me like we have once you you've come into this environment you're part of this environment for life like josh is a member of our family now like whenever he comes this way he'll come up to the far he'll see us i was talking we'll talk about it's like when i'm 16 he's 56 we worked out and you know we'll we'll still be mates because we're on the same page and i think it's just about having shared ideals and shared principles um and that's i guess you're asking me why are they so it's integrity is massive uh i like respect like integrity i want people no matter who they are they've got to work together to achieve something and i think as soon as you all buy into it you treat each other well everything else goes together because you're enjoying being in each other's company as soon as you're enjoying each other's company then you're like what can we achieve together and that's exciting and honestly i mean i think i must be the worst if someone's tuning in to listen to this thing they get loads of like foodie chefy stuff i'm probably the worst interview for that because I believe so heavily in creating culture and a great working environment and like that honesty integrity treating each other well respect for each other and then trying to take that and achieve something together with people who you like problems aren't problems need to be embraced like every running a business is about solving problems but if you can be solving problems with people you not just respect but people that you know and like then you're doing it together and it's a problem that's shared and the problem solving becomes easier because that's basically what you do no matter what business you run it's a problem solving business what's been the biggest problem and how did you solve that as because again i think there's a get back to this sort of the obstacle is the way thing yeah so there's been a lot um i think 2008 was the first one so that was the economic crash uh in 2008 and we were running this black one as like a simple village pub sort of thing but we're in the middle of nowhere and there's about 15 houses in the village so instantly what did you do like pubs were closing like daily in the uk at that time um we for about two weeks we did the discount thing like um steak nights buy one get one free or whatever no one's traveling out into the middle of nowhere for a bargain thing because you can get a bargain thing anywhere.

1:09:51So we decided to go the other way, put our prices up and try and make it really good and make it into a destination. And that was painful. That took years, but we stuck at our guns and we made it into a destination. That's the only way we survived. And then obviously endured plenty of success after then. The biggest obstacle there was COVID probably. COVID really stopped us in our tracks. because we don't have backers. Like we are, it's just us and we've done it ourselves. So we don't have endless money just to throw at something. Obviously, COVID closes down in both restaurants, but also sort of the business model, we use a ticketed restaurant.

1:10:35So people pay in advance, but you got to give all that money back and suddenly you just don't have the money to actually pay the staff or anything. I know there's furlough, but it's not for free. and the other the problem I also found with that was we had members of staff who'd we'd had about six or seven members of staff who'd just started and the furlough was if you started a new job after a certain date you couldn't get paid I can't remember the exact dates so I remember like I'm going to go Max he's a really good guy he actually just got promoted to junior C the other day he was living in the staff accommodation in the village down there and I remember just walking down to see him alright so this is what the crack is Max we've got to close the restaurant now and it was just like he's like I can't go home because his mum was quite ill at the time so she needed to isolate and stuff I can't go home I don't have a job how can I get paid and I was like right well we'll just start making food boxes and delivering them and me and you will do it mate and we'll just make them and then whatever money we get I'll pay you out of it and I'll start paying off some of our customers and that's what we'll do so we started off in here there was about four of us doing it in here and then my mum and dad, my brother, my business partner, Matt, and my mother-in-law and my wife would just drive around the villages dropping them off.

1:11:52And it was a difficult one because we had such a... Everybody wanted their money back that they'd paid because we were closed. And obviously we just didn't have all that money to give back. So I was basically ramped up this business within weeks and we were selling the boxes out here. I was taking that money, we'd given it to the guests, paying the staff going and rolling and rolling within four i did it for four weeks here and i got up to a few hundred boxes and then um a friend of mine who had an industrial kitchen that had been closed down um as well well he'd supplied like cruise ships and um football stadiums stuff like that which all that business has stopped i managed to take the lease on from him on that industrial unit and i just started bringing people back to work by the june so a lockdown was obviously end of March 2020.

1:12:42By the June 2020, I had 35 people back to work and we were doing what we're doing, 1 ,500. So we're doing minimum, probably 3 ,000 people a week we were cooking for or we were delivering nationwide. And we managed to pay off all of our debts and everything that come out by COVID and create 30 odd jobs. But then what we managed to do as well was bring back so many other employees and people indirectly as well in all the other local businesses. so that was a massive that was the biggest one I think every time we've been hit with something like that you come out swinging and you get your thinking cap on and you just have to be more creative so we were the I think the biggest probably success story in terms of the food box thing we started Made in Oldstead it was hard we knew nothing about e-com we knew nothing about logistics so overnight we had to become an e-commerce logistics business if you look at like HelloFresh or something I don't think they see themselves as a food business they see the sort of yeah and e-com and logistics and that's what we had to do so but also we had to create food and we had to make sure it shelf-lifed and we made sure it packaged and how would we deliver it on the other side and we had to well within our business we had all these people and none of them had that skill set and we didn't have it so we all had to learn overnight it was like episode of the apprentice every day he was trying not to get fired it was literally like that um but we had this ridiculous time with that where to a point where you'd have like 40 50 000 people a week would want our boxes and we'd be doing like 1500 of them um we had to we couldn't keep the websites live um because there was so much demand um so we actually had to we ended up buying a queuing system which is what barcelona football club used to stop their tickets from crashing when they get like the champions league final or something but literally what we had to employ and you'd get like a slot and you'd be on the waiting list and yeah we just worked we had the rug pulled out from the defas i had a week of being thoroughly depressed and upset and crying a lot and then we just went for it and um yeah we we created a really big business really quick and it was it was hard you've got an amazing mindset and what we're talking about is like you know what you're talking about earlier about it's just as we just as you're on the precipice of burnout that's when all your banging ideas come yeah so i've got to come back out swinging what are you saying to yourself when you're at home and you're looking in the mirror and like everything you know covid's coming in and is shackling and ripping everything to shreds what are you saying to yourself because people listening to this have got to build even myself like build a strong mindset to deal with adversity what is what are you saying to yourself my i think that period made me realize the responsibility of employing people more than ever before i think i think before then i was more thought about the food and being a chef and like enjoyed working with people and stuff I remember literally stood just there and everyone sat around addressing people and about trying to say you know before we even knew like there's a furlough gonna come in and stuff and just saying look guys I don't know what it is but we'll make sure everyone's looked after don't worry and I remember just crying my out I couldn't get through the speech I was trying to make to people to ride them together and I don't I like to be in control and I think the thing with COVID was it was out of our control so you had to wrestle back control and I remember saying I'm going to set up this food box business i remember saying having a conversation with my dad and i was like look it's riskier to do nothing than to take a risk and do something so let's do something and and he's always the first one who wants to do something so he's just like we'll do it then right we'll do it um and and yeah i i think like i mean i thank people i think at that point anyone trying to be any way shape entrepreneurial and get people to work and stuff i think we were you know had a very generous audience at that point like people just wanted to i you know even if i think early dolls our product probably wasn't as great as it certainly is today you know we were learning but i think people were very generous because they wanted to they wanted to help as well do their bit um it's the effects of idleness though i can't um we used to have used to be a paint i don't know where it is i quite like it in my house we used to have a painting which my dad must have bought off ebay or something uh that used to be in the restaurant upstairs before we had a bit of a redesign and it which had it was like a victorian family and they were all sat around in their like fine clothes looking thoroughly depressed and it just said the effects of idleness and it's so true if you're idle you just spiral like you've got to keep yourself busy haven't you got to keep yourself busy and like i knew there was no way i could personally sit still for two weeks let alone whatever it ended up being however many months i need to get my teeth into something um and i wanted i worried about people not i know people had a great time and a lot of our guys had a great time being off work and it was beautiful sunshine stuff like that but for me i can't handle that and i think it's unhealthy for every anybody to not be productive so um you know that was a big driving force for me but the main thing was just that security thing I think when your back's against the wall we did not have financial security for ourselves at that point and we definitely didn't have it for our employees so we didn't have it across the board and you saw people just make it for redundant in some businesses that happened, that was a thing I was employing people who'd been made redundant by other people because they wouldn't pay the, you know, because furlough alright, was great but as an employer, it cost you a lot of money as well, you were still paying all the national insurance, you were still paying the holidays, things like that if you employed a lot of people, you still had a big wage bill every month on top of it.