My Favourite Failure: Chef who got rave reviews, celeb diners and a bustling business but couldn't sustain it

0:00This might sound like the plot of a spy novel, but UK startups are increasingly at risk of state actors trying to steal their assets. Take one Scottish renewable manufacturer that was harnessing wave power. They were visited by a 60-strong delegation led by a senior Chinese official. A couple of months after that, some of their laptops were stolen. Guess what happened next? Yup, pictures emerged showing a Chinese firm making a product that was virtually identical. This is why we're working with the National Protective Security Authority and the National Cyber Security Centre, the UK's security experts.

0:36They got in touch with us because they see such a growing threat facing UK startups. How are they responding? With the launch of a new campaign, Secure Innovation. It's not just your cybersecurity that matters, but your physical security too. If you want to get a better handle on your security, check out npsa.gov.uk forward slash innovation and download their free quick start guide. There's a link in the show notes. I was pretty devastated. You know, the restaurant was a big ambition of mine. I wanted to make it a success, of course, open more restaurants, become a sort of famous chef, as it were.

1:16And that was my dream and ambition at the time. And when we had to shut it down, yeah, I was devastated. Samir Vaswani is a co-founder of Prodigy Chocolate, a company that's taking classics like Snickers and making them more modern and child-friendly, like less sugar and more eco-packaging. Before this venture, he built a very successful food manufacturing business in West Africa. But before all of that, he failed. He set up a restaurant called Rain, which boomed for a few years. He was living his dream life. But gradually, that dream slipped away.

1:57Samir had grown up in Hong Kong, a foodie place in a foodie family. He got a law degree, like a good, sensible young man. But he was now living in London in the late 90s when the food scene was beginning to take off. He told his family he was turning away from the safe bet of law to start a restaurant. Well, there was lots of laughter. I have two older brothers. They kind of laughed at me a little bit. My father was a bit frustrated having put me through law school for four years or so. But he kind of said to me, OK, well, if you want to do this, go ahead and try it. But you have to go train, go work in restaurants, go work as a waiter, go work in kitchens and see what you think and come back to me in a while and let's see if you still want to do this.

2:43He probably thought that I would find the work too hard, too challenging, too manual and that I would come back with my tail between my legs and say, okay, dad, no, thanks. It's okay. I don't want to do this anymore. But I just loved it. I loved every minute of it. I love the adrenaline of it. I love being in those commercial kitchens. I love putting on my chef whites. training at the Barclay and these other restaurants. I learned all my chefing skills, my knife skills. So yeah, it was a bit of a negative reaction to begin with. But then, you know, I guess I demonstrated that I was really keen to do it.

3:17And so we, you know, I got their blessing as such and we went for it. Went for it, they did. The restaurant was a hit. Located at the dodgier end of Portobello Road, they were one of the first in London to do Southeast Asian fusion, and people loved it. The critics loved it. The first two years were absolutely brilliant. I was living in dreamland. We were packed out every night. We had celebrities coming in to dine. I remember Robbie Williams coming in. I remember Gwyneth Paltrow coming in. Nikki Clark, the one-time famous hairdresser at the time. I don't know if you remember the All Saints, the girl band as well at the time.

3:58So the first two, two and a half years were really, really good. Then, funnily enough, 9-11. I don't know if you remember, 9-11 happened at that time. I remember so vividly sitting with my dad one day, watching just being gobsmacked in front of the telly, watching this all play out on the news. we had a lot of very loyal american clientele at our restaurant and i can't explain it till this day but after 9-11 which was probably two and a half years after we opened the restaurant things started to tail off to begin with there was already you know a very low level of lunch trade in that area, in that neck of the woods.

4:45We tried set menus. We tried Sunday brunches. I mean, look, we were a bit of a premium price point. We certainly weren't a canteen or a low-priced restaurant. We were high-end. And so, lunch trade was challenging. It was next to nothing. And then we ended up being... From being packed out five, six nights a week, we were only packed out three nights a week or four nights a week. And so that's when things started to become more financially difficult. Classic situation of not enough bums on seats. And yeah, those last two years of the restaurant were really quite challenging. And then we finally decided, you know what, it's time to shut it down and move on.

5:32Two years of highs and then two years of soul-crushing lows. The extremes are so much more extreme in founder life, aren't they? Samir had to cut headcount, got late paying suppliers, bringing in a junior chef. It just didn't work. And he decided it was over. And then the final indignity. I would go as far as to say it was traumatic. And the trauma started when we decided to put the restaurant property up for sale. restaurant properties are leases just like many commercial properties. And you can actually sell the remainder of a lease, right? Whether it's 10, 15, or 20 years. And you get paid a premium for that lease.

6:22The goodwill of whatever certain clientele of the restaurant and so on. So we put up the restaurant property for sale or the lease for sale. and what should have taken probably three or four months to sell ended up taking almost a year. And those last sort of nine to 12 months of still operating the restaurant but having it up for sale and having that sort of very low trade and low revenue, I mean, those were some really dark times and really quite difficult. you know, dragging yourself into work every day. And you know, with restaurants are very long hours, you're in at 9, 10am, receiving food supplies and deliveries, prepping all day, then running your service from 7pm until 11pm, bar license going on till 1am, shut down, get home by 2am, go to sleep, wake up and do it all over again.

7:21When there was not much revenue happening, not much trade, and also trying to sell the property. I mean, it was a very mentally challenging time. He found a buyer who negotiated hard. Samir lost basically all his savings, which he'd put into the restaurant. You know, I had to declare bankruptcy, which was another traumatic experience. And within a week, I was on a plane to West Africa. I literally landed in Nigeria. I landed in the capital city of Lagos. And I had tears in my eyes all the way home to the apartment. He moved on very quickly, helping his brother set up a biscuit and manufacturing company, which boomed.

8:07There was no time to wallow. But he says he had an unusual amount of confidence despite the failure. That's great to hear because your confidence normally takes a big blow when you fail. Samir did the best thing for him, which was getting straight back on the horse and turned that horse into a prize-winning stallion. Sometimes you need to grieve after a failure, but if a great opportunity comes your way, try to calm the fear and jump on it. Samir had learned from his mistakes at the restaurant. But at 25, I knew nothing about accounts. I knew nothing about the financial side of running a business.

8:41I was a creative person. I was a trained chef at the time. And I just had a vision that I wanted to execute. So that restaurant business, I remember in our first three months, I would see the bank balance in the restaurant account just building up. And I remember looking at the bank statement saying, wow, this is great, right? You got a whole bunch of cash in the account. And this is looking great. I didn't clock the whole cash flow side of things that you get credit from your suppliers, your meat supplier, your fish supplier is giving you 30 days credit. And so your bank balance is building up.

9:21But in 30 days time, you've got to start paying those bills. So it was a pretty, I wouldn't say harsh, but a pretty strong lesson for me. And it forced me to understand accounts better, to understand cash flow better. And so that was a big eye opener for me and a big learning curve for me as well. He also learned about HR, payroll, lots of things you just don't know about the first time around. And he wouldn't have it any other way. Failures are always part of the journey. They always teach you something and they always put you in a much better position for whatever is coming next than you would have been without the failure.

10:04I firmly believe in it. I firmly believe that. again age old proverb everything happens for a reason and although at the time I couldn't see it looking back I'm 100 % certain it was all supposed to be this way I ended up building a super successful business in West Africa I mean it just grew like a mushroom and it just kept growing and kept growing and kept growing we could never meet our demand we ran production 24 hours a day seven days a week. We kept expanding and growing. And I'm not sure I would have made it as successful as it was had I not had the restaurant experience.

11:06review. See you next time!