The Pass - Joseph De Klee

0:03Hello there and welcome to episode 129 of People Doing Things. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Joe Declay, the founder and publisher of The Pass, the tabloid publication staging a coup against a shallow scroll of the hype-led algorithm. Since the rise of fast-form video-based social content, we've been robbed of honest restaurant reviews. We've traded hard graft for hype and the beauty of the written word for the like button. It's a landscape where the algorithm dictates our appetite, leaving us with a digital dining scene that's lost its soul. Joe saw this digital decay and decided to go analogue.

0:39He's created a nostalgic enclave for those who love restaurants and the written word. A space to retreat to without the distraction of the internet. It's a quarterly magazine that acts as a heat lamp on the city's most delicious corners. Written by those at the hospitality coalface, the chefs, the makers and the late night diners, the past is not just a newspaper, it's a quiet celebration of the grit and all restaurant scene. In this era where print is supposedly dying, Joe is paying homage to newsprint, rescuing our taste buds from the scroll. In this episode, we delve into the brutal honesty needed to review your peers and why the most radical thing you can do in 2026 is put down your phone and pick up a paper.

1:24Tuck in. Okay, Joe, welcome to People Doing Things. How are things? Very well, thank you. I'm very much looking forward to this and thank you for sending me all the issues so far. I had a lot of fun reading them over Christmas. So I know that you spent several years working in and building restaurants from the ground up, seeing the industry from the inside out. How and I guess why did you decide to start The Pass and how has it kind of changed how you think about restaurants? There's two reasons why I started it. One, to predominantly network in the industry, only to discover it's really small in London.

2:02And I wanted to carry on building restaurants, so it was a surefire way of meeting restaurant owners to provide them free press. But mainly, I'm of the ilk where I was just confused by the sheer mass of intel out there and what was genuinely legitimate. And everyone, certainly in my generation and your generation, everyone's walking around with a list in their pocket. And it's become such a status thing of, oh, where have you eaten? Have you been here? Have you been here? And then everyone's got that mate that they text going, I'm going on a date. Where should I go? Where should I go? So we try and be that mate from industry insiders.

2:53And we're just trying to still exactly where people or where we think you should be going. That's really authentic and genuinely good food and a great vibe. From delis all the way up to two star Michelin. So it's like we have to be really selective. So you had the idea for it. like what's the next steps because you're not from a publishing background necessarily no it's not always you know that easy just to spark things something up and a lot of people get excited by the idea but when they kind of get into it they sort of lose face a bit it was um I knew what I wanted to create, be it a journal or some kind of list or now magazine.

3:47And I worked with Fred Trevor, our great graphics designer. And we brainstormed for weeks. With a newspaper or a magazine, they're so timeless. And timely. And timely. But they don't change. Once you've made one, that's it. You can't change. So we spent weeks, I'd say six months, longer, trying to decide the format of what it was going to be. And granted, print media is not cheap and it's a struggling business. So that's why we went for a tabloid. In truth, it's cheaper to print on tabloid paper. but we tried to bring magazine style and sex appeal to a newspaper. That's why it's like heavier paper and it's bold.

4:43And hopefully, fingers crossed, anyone that reads it will hang on to it for at least a quarter of the year before it gets too crinkled and then they have to use it as wrapping paper or light fires. but it's um we spent a long time thinking about how it was going to look and for people listening can you describe like the format of it like how it takes shape what goes into the past all that kind of stuff so tabloid format crisp white pages each issue is its own color and initially we started with london and london is our focal point and our founding we split the paper into five regions north south east west and central london is so big and everyone is so attached to where they live whether you're in canton or if you're in brixton you become a part of that society yeah we needed to break the paper down so that it felt applicable to everyone across the city and so breaking up into north south east west and central which means that when you pick it up or when you buy it you can go straight to your area area and be like oh i've been looking for someone to go on valentine's day or that's a wicked new bakery i didn't even know that existed yeah and it's in my neck of the woods because it's so geographical We broke it up into five sections of the paper and then we try and do one long form article on a specific restaurant for each area and then a couple of smaller guides to or tidbits, 500 word pieces within that area.

6:36So you're getting three to four places once a quarter in your neck of the woods. and how did you go about approaching sort of writers restaurants sponsors like how did that just a lot of cold calling yeah but anyone has the first issue or gets the first issue you'll see the evolution to where we are now i mean the writers from the first issue were mates and it's helpful that katie and i katie being co-founder and editor both of us work in the food industry so we were able to just go right who are we calling who has the best black books amongst our friends and who's a quality writer so we we begged borrowed and steal for the first issue or actually for the first couple of issues and then as people started picking up and seeing it and we're like whoa as soon as you have a thing or a product people take you seriously so for the year building up to our first print everything is so hypothetical even though it's real in my mind it's not a thing yeah and then when we did our first launch party it suddenly became a thing and those people that you've been hounding for the last 12 months suddenly went whoa count me in for the second issue or i didn't know you were actually going to go through with it Suddenly there's a load of belief.

8:06They didn't want to take the risk at the start, but then they see it's a real thing. Exactly. No one's just going to give you their time for free. So then suddenly when you've got a thing, yeah, I'm in. Yeah. Which is a good crack. I think one of the things that I loved about it when I was reading it over the holidays was the style of writing feels very real and it feels very much like at the coalface, at the front. It feels very sort of human. It has like a grit to it that is quite refreshing in today's world. Because not only have you got this like backdrop of TikTok influencers building up quite like hype around restaurants, which not only is problematic because they're really busy for a bit.

8:57Really busy. And they might not even be that good. there's not necessarily a sense kind of quality around it you don't know the sort of backdoor deals that might be going on and i think it's also damaging on the other side for some of the restaurateurs because they go through these like unbelievable spikes and one day it might be so packed and then once the hives drop down you know they can't necessarily like you know they get used to it being really busy and then it sort of dies down a bit it's super interesting i mean there's so there's so much in that one question i mean one instagram and tiktok and everything i use it personally like i'm not an anti user yeah but it's really difficult to distill genuinely good reviews from so much online yeah because everyone's having a go like who's the discerning voice behind the Instagram account.

10:00I'm not that sure. Or the rise of Substack is a testament to the yearning for written word. But the thing with Substack is it's not edited. And Katie who edits the paper really spends a long time getting the right voice across and it's also the writers that we're curating are people that are either in the hospitality industry chefs people that really appreciate food or have been food critics for a number of years yeah they are the people that you would normally go to if they were your mates and say, well, where do you want to eat? And also there's a bit of creative freedom to them. We're slightly different to the other papers in the respect that if you are a food critic and you want to come and write about what's local to you because you live in North London, that perhaps isn't on the hype train or you're not being asked by the PR companies to review it, but you need a platform to review it because you genuinely believe in it, then you come to the pass.

11:13Yeah. and then you can give your two cents about it. I think there's also quite an interesting like double-edged sword to social and essentially like the democratization of content, which is, it's great for easy discovery, for excitement, for all of these things. But at the same time, you lose a sense of kind of discovery from it. and something that I think about a lot is like Spotify great platform but it's actually taken a bit of the enjoyment out of discovering an artist listening to an album all the way through like I think back to SoundCloud days when you had to like dig really dig to find something and there was go back further you're into a record shop you have to go there for hours Yeah.

12:06And like the beauty of the struggle is it sort of makes the pie a bit sweeter, you know, at the end of it. And that's what I found about like sitting down to read the pass and like enjoy it, look forward to reading it, to slow down, to like marinate on some of the words and to feel a connection to something. It's something that you just don't get in a 15-second video. Absolutely not. You don't digest it. And you're just cortisol surfing it, like, you know, when you're just whizzing through them. You kind of, I call it brain dead. You don't really take it in at all. Yeah. But if you sit down on a Sunday morning with a newspaper and you dial in to whoever's writing that, your engagement is so high.

13:02there's no better feeling when someone texts me saying i've just been to this restaurant in issue two because of the write-up yeah and it was epic yeah which happens all the time yeah and you're not having to queue for two hours because it's just hit a wicked tiktok yeah and you get in there and the food might not be that great and you're like wow i've just wasted my weekend i think also for a lot of people that do like go to those places to say they've tried it there ends up being quite a lot of disappointment because there's so much disappointment hype's so high and then it's like just a burger i wasn't even made the food well i think that can be i don't know it takes some of the fun out of it for me i guess the second like part of that sort of statement or kind of questioning statement is also the writing piece because i think especially like now with the rise of ai the written words becoming like at the same time cheaper but also sort of more valuable for those that enjoy it it's really difficult we're in the fortunate position that we have a huge amount of people pitching to write now but it's unavoidable to see i mean you can spot ai immediately yeah authenticity is going to be seriously valuable in five well it's valuable now because you don't you just don't know what's legitimate and so when people are buying into a magazine any magazine or book you're putting the responsibility in the author or the publisher's hands and saying i'm paying for this because you're going to deliver me something that is genuine rather than spat out by ai yeah and there's a load of influencers that just i mean have their own substack which is kind of ai i love to substack but it's completely unedited yeah Its rise is so popular because people are searching for the other human's opinion rather than what's out there, which is inauthentic.

15:24Yeah. It's getting more and more confused because there's no rules so you can't publish an AI article on your own substand. Yeah. I think it sort of mirrors this sort of trend. And it's almost like there's a bit of a split starting to emerge between the people that are like hacking AI to everything versus people who are like joining the great switch off. You know, and there's like... I'm sitting in the middle. I love AI. I think it's insane. Yeah. I use it all the time, but I don't use it to write. There's just such a distinction between AI-generated words. And you can feel it. I mean, each individual that has contributed to the newspaper, you can feel their tone.

16:18Yeah. I think that's what you're saying in terms of their, like... Yeah, you know that it's written by a person because of the way, the style of the writing and the sort of rawness of it in places. Yeah. You know, like, what was the one that I enjoyed? There was a quote on the fourth issue of the pass. And the headline is, it's like doing a lot of drugs all at once. Again, that's just like, it's so good. You know, it feels you're automatically like you can kind of understand what it's getting at and it makes you want to read it. But I think that would be quite hard to AI hack. You can't. You just can't.

17:03Unless you scan the past. Unless. You can't. But I mean, the whole AI, TikTok, Instagram, it's really tricky. I mean, it's tricky for journalists because it's difficult to get an authentic review now. Yeah. Because journalists are broadly finding themselves in a position where they have to have a social presence in order to have an audience so that then they get read. Yeah. So then who is leading the restaurant review game is the social, digital, online influencers. Now, if the influencers are saying this pizza place is the best pizza place ever, and you as a journalist are starting or building, going against that...

18:05It's almost impossible. It's almost impossible. Yeah. because then you may devalue your voice or the main body of the audience. But maybe you shouldn't be chasing that audience anyway. But it's really difficult. I do think there are probably some good people that have a social presence that are still amazing writers and have a very good style and are able to do both. But I think I can imagine there's pressure on journalists of a certain generation where it's kind of novel having to do both or trying to do both. And I think that's quite difficult. We started it to have fun and we throw a party every time we have an issue.

18:48There's been no event where we've not been like, wow, people are into it and this is a vibe. And we've created something really cool. So it's a lot of fun. And a nice moment to sort of like give back to a community that gives us a lot, right? Totally. we did a dinner after our second issue for all our writers yeah and anyone that had been involved and it was a dinner for 40 people it was just like we've found or we're nurturing our little community and it was really cool how do the restaurants feel about it are they like they like ringing the bell um do you get a lot of people reaching out do you get a lot of free suppers do you go on a lot of dates no it's difficult so restaurants like it because we predominantly don't write negative reviews i mean i come from hospitality backgrounds katie works in and around food it's also everywhere in mainstream media hospitality is struggling so who are we to try and give someone a negative review if it's bad we just won't feature it yeah like we don't need to prove ourselves by having a negative review yeah base ourselves on supplying you the reader with good places so in that respect restaurants like it and then most restaurants in London have PR agents and they swamp us yeah they swamp us we actually try and keep a bit of editorial integrity try and keep a little bit of it if me and Katie have both been to a restaurant we certainly work with the PR companies because it's much easier to talk to them because they're that's their job if we need to send an editor or a writer in or do an interview with a chef that we want to speak to, of course I'll pick up the phone and talk to them.

20:52Yeah. It's like you can't, it's impossible. Between me and Katie, we get 30 or 40 invites a week. Like we'd both be huge if we kept... Yeah, you'd have to work out a lot. We'd be eating all the time. so no we try and we try and keep a lid on that and talk to me a little bit more about i think the thing you put on your your front cover which is london has been robbed of honest reviews which is almost like a founding belief right a founding sentiment of the past yeah so i mean it dials back to that whole Instagram situation. It's not Instagram. It's a lot of people can be bought with a free meal.

21:45And as a result, I chase restaurants. I love eating in them, but nothing winds me up more than going to a place that has been super well publicized. And it's really disappointing yeah and I have always questioned how that had happened but it happens because restaurants and PR companies and curate that yeah and it's not difficult to get a journalist in and the restaurant know about it I mean case in point we send journalists to restaurants and we're a small publication we rely on the restaurants helping us with photography sometimes and so it's an open dialogue but sometimes that can get really blurred yeah and so you're never fully sure whether it's a biased review yeah a little backhander which is why we try this only survives on our integrity yeah if we don't rely on that we're toast yeah i've definitely felt with the podcast that yes there is a networking element of it which you spoke about earlier but i think you're completely right having a level of integrity to it having a level of like actually wanting to tell a specific story or talk about certain issues or kind of hear about like what it's like underneath the bonnet is where the enjoyment comes from and i think there is an almost like unwritten social contract with the reader which is we value a certain level of journalism and integrity and we share that with you and that's why you come to us and that's why you're prepared to to buy it or to listen to it or whatever and i think once you start taxing that in the wrong way it becomes unenjoyable for people and they start they can smell the the money it's the same with our advertisers we have to be really careful with who we are asking to advertise yeah in the paper i haven't seen a big coca-cola ad in there not yet mcdonald's on the back page um helman's mayo just plastered across it unilever sponsored yeah no i mean like we have to be really conscious even down to our advertisers to the point where it's like it needs to be the right cultural fit has to be the right cultural that if it's not it cheapens what we do and if we don't protect our brand and our authenticity then we are just like everyone else and we will lose our community rapid i think that's why i've enjoyed like when i've looked through it i've enjoyed seeing brands that i like yeah do you know what i mean i think that again there's like it doesn't feel like i'm being taxed because you're sort of seeing brands that you enjoy or you're aware of and they're obviously backing you know or have a relationship with the past because they share a similar you know sort of viewpoint on the world totally unlike traditional critics your writers are often like industry insiders what do you think are some of the benefits of like a slightly more rough off the cuff approach like do you think people find it refreshing for example I hope so I mean we're still so young in terms of as a publication our writers are getting better and better with every issue we can afford to be more discerning with every issue that goes past but I think having industry inside is like a chef or a waitress or or someone that lives and breathes food more than your average punter can give so much more in terms of opinion.

25:57I can't go into a restaurant and not look at the tables, the chairs, how the kitchen's set up, how many stuff they've got, like everything. So you're so attuned. So it's - Scanning the square feet. It's just scanning everything. And so you get that from my cousin's a pub owner. And I always text him to find out where he's been eating. Because I just know that he's so discerning. Because he's a chef. And he knows what he's looking for. And his food is brilliant. And you're like, well, if he's enjoying it, I know that I will enjoy it. So that's what you buy into. you're buying into professionals yeah i have a my friend carl who used to be uh like i think michelin chef and then started chicken and uh chicken sours and chicken chop yeah he's a great person to know because he's always like if ever i need a restaurant recommendation he's the one that you message and when he takes you out somewhere you know it's good it's just gonna be great yeah um there's a piece in the latest issue where it's an opinion piece but it's written by my cousin's wife and she's a brilliant writer and she's super humorous and her column is living with a chef or it's called underneath the pass and her last one was about how when they go on holiday and how they'll spend hours and hours just looking for the most authentic spot yeah and often it doesn't work out but it's a nightmare it's a nightmare traveling with a chef yeah you just you're constantly looking for the right spot and in terms of the right spots what are some of your favourites at the moment what would make your 2025 wrap up what would make my 2025 wrap up I don't know if anyone can take me back to A1 and pick up the bill I've been there when it didn't have a star we just had a star and now it's got two stars and hands down if I had an unlimited budget I would just go there once a week And what are the other ones when you're feeling a little bit more frugal?

28:27When I'm feeling more frugal, I have a local Vietnamese place, which is genuinely off the chain. It's called Song Hong. Where is it? It's up on Lavender Hill, Busty Rise kind of area. Yeah. I always ask writers, like, where do you go back to? regularly because it's so difficult because everyone's walking around with a list and so you'll go to a restaurant and then you'll go I've done that restaurant where am I going next it's so rare that anyone goes back to the same restaurant twice yeah let alone three times let alone four times and the places we want to feature are the places you're going back three four five times yeah I think we spoke about this the other day like there's so much choice in London that you end up sort of going to a restaurant once once only yeah and you've always got a long list and they're always sort of coming and going but it's a bit of a shame because i think i spent a bit of time when we moved to caninbury one of the thoughts was on my mind of like what makes a really good local yeah and i think the price has got to be right on some level to go again and again but also I think the service and the people really make it and then the food's obviously got to be good but it doesn't have to be doesn't have to be amazing yeah the service is right and you walk in there and you feel known and seen known seen a part of the community recognized and an environment that you want to spend some time rather than it just being a special occasion.

30:11It's a great Spanish word, I think it's Spanish, it's called sobremesa, which is the moment you sit at a table post-meal, before the plates are cleared, before everyone gets up or the bill's paid, and you know you're having a really good sobremesa, if that period of time just extends and extends and extends, when you're having that moment, you're guaranteed to go back to that spot. yeah but it's difficult because the restaurant probably needs to turn the table and do another cover but that's definitely a part of a good local where you can let kind of time feel longer what's this sort of complementary relationship with your other business businesses it's all kind of been quite fortuitous for those listening.

31:06I have a business that helps other restaurants with design and build and I am now part owner in a pub in Guildford which is local to where I'm from. It's great because I get to meet growing restaurant businesses that need help or I'm meeting independent restaurants that are going, okay, well, we've got our first one. We want to do our next one. It's a huge amount of work. Can you come and give us a hand? Because we're desperately focused on operating our current business. Yeah. Also shows that you care about the industry and you're not just a supplier. Totally. And you can only get better by continually eating out.

31:54I know that's insane. People are innovating all the time. and there's new stuff coming all the time. And I'm not saying you should also evolve to meet constant trends, but staying relevant is really important for the newspaper and also for the side of restaurants and what you're putting out on the plate and where is the population's mind at? What are they spending money on? I met with a guy that helps run Ottolenghi and they're struggling at the moment. Their restaurant sales are down. I think a lot of people can feel that, but that's everyone's spending power across the board. So how is food changing to meet that?

32:42And also with rates and all the issues in hospitality, I don't want to go there. There's enough stuff out there. but it's like how how are people innovating to still make businesses viable for hospitality yeah because those that are in it are in it because they love it not because they're in it to make loads of money yeah because that is hard really difficult right now and in terms of thinking about like the future of the past are there non-negotiables of things that you like would never do you know because I think there's a lot of temptation you know I think back to like the courier days and I know Danny quite well from there who was the editor for a long period of time you know and they then broadened into all sorts of other you know channels whether that be a podcast or emails and workshops and all sorts of things like is that on the roadmap or is that something that you're going to sort of avoid for as long as you can?

33:48It's interesting. It's an interesting question. We've been looking at it. So we will always, no compromise, have a Tableau print. We've really, really struggled. You heard it here first. Yeah. We've really struggled to get into retail because we're classified a magazine because we only print four times a year. Yeah. and because we're a tabloid format we don't stack on shelves very well we're going to do a book at the end of this year which very nice which will have all of the content of the last five issues so nothing new but actually something that you can have and hold on to yeah that's really nice and then we're going to start looking at other places um we want to go to new york and do a special issue we run a down from london column in each newspaper and it's super well received we want to do some short newspaper guides to lisbon new york somerset manchester where it's tailored for the London reader.

35:03Who's going exploring. Who's going exploring. Yeah. Within striking distance. We're not going to go suddenly do it in Australia. Timbuktu. It's where can you get a flight to maximum kind of situation. And which areas are you most excited about? I'd love to see New York. Yeah. New York is unreal. I've done a food trip out there before and it blew my mind. Wow. I'd love to see the Basque Country. The food there is just so good. Yeah. Actually, anywhere in Europe could be really fun. All those European cities. Actually, North, there's so much in the UK as well. We were going to do a Great Britain issue.

35:43When we sat down to chalk it out, it's too big. So we were like, well, we're going to have to start. Just carve it up. Carve it up. Counties, areas, cities. There's so much. There's so much. it's constantly moving that's where we're gonna go nice and where does it sit in your head is it more of a passion thing is it a business like is it part of the bigger ecosystem like we spoke about i think all of it we started to only do four issues and now we've got to where we are now and we've raised a small amount of cash to take it to the next level take it to the next level yeah and it operates as a functional business now it needs less and less financial input from us yeah which is a really wicked place for it to be because then we can just double down on our current audience and not stress to go and find more people we don't if you're constantly worried about sales of course it would be great if we increased our sales but you're then not focusing in on the content and the people that you have already committed to in the early stages yeah it's those early adopters that we're like we're going to double down on you guys and try and give you what you initially signed up for yeah and from there it will it will grow yeah that's so exciting and i guess finally like what's next what's the upcoming issue what can people look forward to how can they get the pass how can they get it so sales pitch if you subscribe now online you will get issue four our last issue and our next issue and we will love you yeah yeah it'll be seriously appreciated our next issue comes out in april and it's going to be London again.

37:46We did a massive drop. We printed 30 ,000 copies of the last issue and we've brought a whole new audience to us. So we want to make sure that we're not scaring them off by doing... Too many niche things. Too many niche things too quickly. So we're going to do another London and then we're going to do a special issue on Cornwall coming into the early summer. Yeah. just in time for everyone's holidays down there yeah well thank you very much for thank you for coming on people doing things and um we'll continue to cheer on the past thank you so much for having me that was joe de clay founder of the past on people doing things as always i've been your host ed little and if you are feeling particularly generous of spirit reviews go a long way to helping this podcast grow so please head over to spotify or apple and leave one people doing things on a mission to celebrate and inspire the entrepreneurs of tomorrow