The Millionaire Chef Who HUSTLED His Way To A $50M Empire｜Tom Kerridge

0:00Everyone says you all have the same 24 hours in a day. you don't have the same 24 hours. You're very lucky, right? Today we're speaking with Tom Kerridge. In 2005, Tom Kerridge remortgaged his house and used his last bit of savings to buy a run-down pub. In 2004, we told the bank that we were going to do an extension, put together these false plans and did whatever. So we got the money, we bought the contents of the Hand of Flowers pub. Today, that same pub is worth millions, has two Michelin stars, and is just one part of his hospitality empire. You want to be working 16, 18 hour days because everything is quicker, sharper, fresher.

0:33I say it to my son now, do more than everybody else and give 100%. You were so selfish about your time and your time was being spent driving that business, making it happen. Everything is chaotic and horrible and crunchy. There's been horrific crashes and there's been ups and there's been downs. Like you go through this whole period. My escape became alcohol. So six, seven pints of strong lager, then we go to the pub, then I do half a bottle of gin. At school, I didn't do very well at school. My GCSE, I didn't do very well. It was a schooling system that I didn't necessarily click into. Most embracing and encouraging industry that I can think of.

1:08It's irrelevant of race, religion, sexuality, economic background. None of it matters. You've got to love it. You have to enjoy it. That's it. And don't chase money. Chase passion. Be passionate about it. Tom, I've interviewed hundreds of different entrepreneurs, and I can probably say that if there was a way to make money, building restaurants and working in this space is not top of the list. It's exceptionally hard. And I think what's nice is it's well known to be hard. A lot of other entrepreneurs really respect it and really highlight what a challenge it was. And you started as a kitchen porter, right?

1:46So all the way back through the industry, ground zero, right in the first job you possibly can and obviously became one of the most renowned chefs and business owners in the country. So I'd love to know about those first days as a kitchen porter. What was it actually like? Do you remember what it was like to start in this industry? Yeah, I think the success of the industry and people who are successful in it is down nothing to do with business acumen or nothing to do with opening sites and recognising that, you know, it's multipliers of table numbers of seats and revenue breakdown and an understanding of gross profit margins and all of those things from a business perspective are quite important but the most successful businesses and the people that have done very well and the people the restaurants that you know of that have been around for a long long time are driven by a passion they're driven by somebody whose soul is being caught in this incredible industry that that's um has a phenomenal buzz about it as an excitement about it as a wonderful vibrancy it it operates on a different level compared to all other businesses you know it operates on a 16 18 hour day because you know you're there early you know when you're finishing late and you're providing things to everybody else that has a mundane life you're providing in an escape route and an escapism you'll also become um that there's an adrenaline fueled excitement that you get during services there's a sense of banter there's camaraderie there's team building there's and there's also a very easy kind of progressive structural route to understand from kitchens and from front of house so there's very simple learning and training techniques there's so many different areas that you can venture into as well from whether it's being a chef or whether it's front of house or whether it's an interest in wines or brewing or whether it's then dropping into marketing or or um housekeeping or an understanding of spas or hotels or it's such a varied and exciting incredible industry that you can adapt to so many things so i think um the whole industry is built on a passion for people who who have just, when you speak to them, most people fall into it and suddenly find it as their space, as their thing.

4:09And that was the same thing that happened for me as an 18 year old, I needed a job, I needed money. So I started washing up and the moment I ended up in that kitchen, there was this buzz, there was this sense of banter. There was, it wasn't necessarily politically correct. It was, you know, the swearing was used a lot. There was a lot of it like, so it felt like a naughty place to be. It wasn't uncomfortable, but at the same point it felt like, okay, this is, you know. Quite cool. Yeah, it's cool. Like a lot of people go to work, they dress up in a suit and they behave different to they do with their mates on a weekend.

4:47Well, actually this is a workspace that you're working very hard, but it feels like you're with your mates. You can have the same sort of banter. You can have the same sort of jokes. You can have the same stuff. You can be yourself. It's the most embracing and encouraging industry that I can think of. It's irrelevant of race, religion, sex, sexuality, economic background. None of it matters. You come into it. You want to work hard. You know, it's irrespective of who you are, where you come from. You all join this team of people that's trying to achieve something. and if you give to that team, the team build on it.

5:27So it's a wonderfully exciting industry and as an 18-year-old, I just found it. This is amazing. Yeah, it sounds intoxicating. Yeah, and it is. And it's late nights and it's early mornings and it's quite an extreme. It can be an extreme as you want it to be, actually. So you go in at 18 and you see what you've just described, actually. I reckon that would be like an unbelievable advert of hospitality actually sounds exciting for young people so you go in at 18 you see all of this do you then say to yourself this is where I'm going to work for my whole career like I want to now go into food I want to be a chef this is what I want to do yeah yeah that was it 100 % and it wasn't actually about the food it was about it was about the energy of the space it wasn't and then you know then you meet people and producers and suppliers and get an understanding of quality of ingredients and then the people who love the quality of the ingredients they have the same passion and energy for what they do the same as your you're the end result of this amazing ingredient and you get to alter and change it or put it into a different space and you know change its molecular breakdown and then you give it to somebody else who really enjoys it but all of the work you start to realize has come from sometimes maybe two years ago when someone started breeding this cattle or growing these carrots or doing you know that sort of energy and where it comes in and so so yeah that was the point where i just thought this is this is amazing this is the space for me and it wasn't necessarily the food the food developed and became the harder you were the more extreme it became the more banter was around the more energy and just everything about it i mean it's a real it's a dopamine same fueled industry.

7:14I love what you said about the molecular energy, learning about that as well, because I was reading a book yesterday, there was a line in there and I was like, God, that's brilliant, which is hot water will boil an egg and soften a potato. So it all depends on your ingredients. Yeah. God, that's so simple and so brilliant. Yeah. And it's the understanding of those sciences and you pick them up along the way and you pick them up as a chef. They're kind of like building blocks. It's a trade. Like it's very much a trade that you learn. I mean, and then you can implement it into many different ways.

7:43But it is the same as building a house. You have to understand the foundations. You have to understand the infrastructure. You have to understand. And then you can add the own idiosyncrasies and things that make it individual and change it to yours. So all of those points, the understanding of it, of how it works, is very much a trade-learned industry. Cement will build a house, but it tastes awful as a starter. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Can't cook an egg in cement. You were a trained actor at the start, is that right? No, not trained. No, no, no, no. I was at a youth theatre. So I was... An untrained actor.

8:17Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I grew up... On real. Yeah, single parent family. Yeah, it's all a blag. We're all making up as we go along. I was sat in a... I went to a youth theatre. I grew up as a single parent family on a state in Gloucester. It was my mum, myself and my brother. and my best friend at the time wanted to join a youth theatre he's in the youth theatre his mum and dad didn't drive or do some my mum had a beat up old mini metro and said that she'd take him I went with him we went along we joined a youth theatre it was quite good fun on a Sunday we'd do I'd do rugby in the morning and then I'd do that in the afternoon and then um but and an agent came to see somebody in a show and then also asked if I'd like to be in it on their books and I said yeah and then literally two weeks after that I was filming a Christmas special in Miss Marple it was kind of like it was a it was one of those odd funny old things that happened between the ages like 16 and 18 and it wasn't it wasn't really my world I quite enjoyed being in and amongst people I like people I like I quite enjoyed I've always been quite comfortable and confident um so it wasn't one of those it wasn't a confidence building thing or it wasn't it was just a kind of like a social thing to do that I really enjoyed but then as an 18 year old I went into that kitchen and everything ended that was it just stopped because that that became the world so and actually as a as a kid going into that world as a porter then how do you how do you create the system to go from good to great um i think you just i see at school i didn't do very well at school my gcse i didn't do very well i wasn't i wasn't that bothered but i wasn't it was a schooling system that i didn't necessarily click into i was never worried about i always had a work ethic and I wasn't scared of working hard.

10:03Just the system of reading a book, learning about it, and then repeating it means that you're clever, actually, didn't really work with me. I always thought there'd be something, there's something more, there was something more practical, there was something that I was going to do. So when it came to improving and understanding and growing from a kitchen porter into a chef, it was a very, there's a very clear defined path in a kitchen, you know, it goes from commie chef to senior commie chef to junior chef to party to chef to party to sous chef to head chef like it's you know depending on the size of the kitchen you can see all the runs of the ladder you can go up and when you when you have that in front of you and you understand it and you're in a world that you think well i love this world i've got so much to learn i've got so much to do i've got so much to understand i wasn't in a fast career path necessarily i wasn't going i need to get to the top i wanted to just learn the process and be a part of it so pushing yourself the harder you work the more you achieve the understanding of it was something that i've always had but that industry or this industry just opened it right up in front of you and just said listen everything that you want is there the people that can be your mentors the things that you can learn from the the the excitement the cookbooks the energy levels the you know everything that you can relate is it's all all the tools are provided for you they're all there it's up to you if you want to go and get it you know so so it's a it's an open door that you can just push on and it's it's everything is there if you want it it feels like an incredibly all-in career like you just said a moment ago it's like 16 to 18 hour days so if that's the case i mean you're like rolling out of bed you're going to work you're working all the hours of the day you're just going back to bed no you're going out and partying and then going back to bed so you you kind of like give up on sleep it's slightly changed now it has actually changed a lot but back in the early 90s um when i first started cooking it was very much um work hard and play hard and be a part of but it was it's a way of life not a job like if you view it how's that working on a ship yeah but it is but it is also it's it's a it's who you are it's not your job and then you're somebody else it's not i do eight hours of this job then i've got eight hours in between where i go and do this and i hang out with my friends and i do that and then I get eight hours sleep.

12:21It's not that. Your world is, this is your world. This is it. And why do you want anything else? If you're loving this, this is it. I'm not searching for anything else. There's so many people. I'm so lucky that I went to work, but work wasn't work. It was work. You got paid for it and you have to work really hard. But you were with your friends and an energy and a space. There's so many people that go to work, can earn really good money, but hate their job. And they're always looking for something else and they've got caught in it. Like I've never had that. I've been, you know, it's a vocation.

12:51It's whether you're, I don't know, an artist or a sportsman or a chef or a, like, it is who you are. So the hours are irrelevant because it becomes, it only becomes relevant when you're tired. Do you know what I mean? And then you go, actually, maybe, well, when your day off comes, then you'll sleep loads. But it's not really that relevant if you're loving it. You know, you can get exhaustion. You can get, of course you can. But, and you're doing different hours to everybody else. That's the thing. you know you are working like you're not finishing at five o 'clock because that's when everyone else is finishing then they're coming out for dinner so you know you're the whole point of being it it just works opposite what did a really intense day look like then so give us uh like give us a flavor of what that lifestyle looks like in an intense 24-hour period at which point of when i was when you're starting out so for others that really want to you know make a dent in their career in this space like you did well i always thought that and i'll always i say it to my son now if you want to get anywhere no matter what you do do more than everybody else and give 100 that's it do more than everyone else and give 100 if you don't give more than everyone else then you're you're never going to give you're never going to be the person that's growing there's somebody else growing faster and doing more than you so you know you would get into work i don't know it depends if you're on the breakfast shift you might start at 5 30 6 o 'clock in the morning to getting everything sorted and ready and then go all the way through from breakfast through to lunch uh you might get a quick cigarette break in between setting up for lunch and that'd be it and then through to lunch service you finish lunch service at 2 33 o 'clock and depending if it was a if it was a if you were structured and organized and it would depend on the kitchen if it wasn't quite mission star level and you've got all your work done in the morning there isn't anything to in the afternoon you might get a couple of hours off in the afternoon or lunch has been so busy all your prep work has been sold and everything's done you've got to start all again because you've got dinner coming in at 6 30 so you've now got three hours to do all the work you did again this morning you've got to do it fresh again which is great because it means that the the harder you're working the better it is for the ingredients like the fresher the ingredients the everything is you know so the in an ideal world for the quality levels of the food you want to be working 16 18 hour days because everything is quicker sharper fresher as opposed to made done three days ago left in a fridge waiting for somebody to order it you know so the harder you're working the better the space so those are kind of how it actually works in hospitality you know particularly in in top end kitchens you're trying to do most things as fresh and as crisp and as clean as possible to drive flavor profile and what about the gap then i guess between like a top tier restaurant which everyone respects and is great and a michelin star restaurant like what is the difference in work ethic of the people there everyone actually not very much these days like that you can you can be in a top end burger or chicken wing restaurant and still work in the same because the same ethos of love and care goes into that sort of street food now the british food seen this change over the last 30 years from being that sort of food is being seen as just frozen product comes in dropping a fryer but actually now finding amazing free-range chicken wings for example putting a dry cure marinade on them leaving them for however long putting you know the processes suddenly are enhancing so you could get some of the best chicken wings in the world somewhere here in london that has the same heart soul love and respect as maybe a top and fine dining restaurant just means the work ethic is exactly the same.

16:25So people working in that environment and that arena may well be doing the similar sort of hours without the accolade, but they're not after the accolade. They're after, you know, amazing food. They're cooking amazing food, not interested in it, which is also, it doesn't devalue it in any way. It just shows how good the British food team is. Where can we get some great chicken wings? You knew that was coming. Yeah, there's quite a few around here, actually. There's quite a few spaces. So you said the kitchen was very much like work hard, play hard. So what does that manifest in? Do you all become best friends?

16:59Do you all go out? Sometimes you become the worst of enemies. Like it's one of those environments. The thing about, I suppose, kitchens and hospitality is it quite often, it's very embracing. I mentioned at the beginning is embracing all cultures, all different types of people from all different backgrounds. But it also, that also means that you embrace people that have, that are quite highly strung, people that don't necessarily fit into a boxed in office, nine to five, HR friendly environment. in you know waves and strays of society people that perhaps have some form of uh so neurodiverse um alcohol dependent uh drug release taking gambling addictions all of those sorts of things that might manifest in people with people with um adhd people with like so there's a whole entrepreneurs would be perfect for this well this is it but this is where the many many great chefs of adhd or undiagnosed adhd because you find calm in the chaos so if you think of an incredibly busy kitchen where there's noises going on stuff in the house of those someone front of house is talking to you about table six that's overcooked over there you can you can hear something burning on the stove you can see that you've already got the phone ringing you know that the delivery of that is late and all of this is happening within the space of three seconds your brain to it to a lot of people that becomes incredibly chaotic and people will go into meltdown there's a lot you will find there's some quite a lot of chefs will find calm in the chaos will find calm in the in everything that's going on so if you're um maybe quite highly strung or somebody that comes from um some sort of neurodiverse background kitchens are incredibly embracing places but also on the flip side of that that also means that there might be occasionally fiery temperaments or there might be arguments or things that suddenly drop out of hand that something someone absolutely loses their shit over something that you in a normal world you wouldn't think is like completely like abnormal however those sort of things of course they happen in those spaces and also there's tiredness that comes in and also there's issues with you know hr and how people are spoken to and all those sort And they still exist, but they operate on a slightly, there's much more, I suppose, focus now on mental health and making sure that people are able to operate in that space as opposed to, I suppose, a hotbed of encouraging chaotic behavior.

19:36it still embraces that but a lot of those I suppose characters are attracted to kitchens and hospitality and late nights and the partying that goes on afterwards and just that way of life it's you know it really embraces all sorts of different people that feel that they don't fit in a normal box. I think Gordon Ramsay did quite a good job of showing the sort of intensity of characters you can get in these kitchens. Yeah I think the best way of describing a kitchen is a It's a bit like a professional sport where all your build up, all your training, all your practicing, everything that you do on a training field and all those things is like all your prep and it's everything that's ready and you're making sure that you've got everything in this box off and you understand what's going to happen as much as possible.

20:21And then the game kicks off or service starts and you know how it's going to go. You know it's going to run for this amount of time. But the guests are different. Something happens, someone drops a plate, something gets overcooked, someone knocks something like it so the same as in a game of professional rugby and then there's the captain or the coaches may get in you through it there's the energy there's the buzz there's a there's the way that people are spoken to come on which in a i suppose in a hr friendly office environment sometimes it's like i can't believe i'm speaking but in that energy space it doesn't matter if you're on a football pitch or rugby pitch and it doesn't matter if you're in the kitchen because afterwards once it's all done it's great amazing well done it's high fives it's going for a beer it's like brilliant it's teamwork it's camera so if you somebody who loves so much about the output exactly and and it suits so many people a lot of people like playing sport you know even on their day off like going being a five-a-side football team or doing whatever else because you know you get a buzz and an excitement and adrenaline feel like energy that comes from it and kitchens are very much the same my so a lot of my first jobs was actually working in kitchens and like eventing.

21:33It's like you'd go around the country doing all the events. And it was carnage. I mean, you were waking up early, you were working and serving all day. And then you went out with that group of people till like incredibly late. And then you would wake up like three hours later, still pissed. You would then go to work, pissed. You would somehow get yourself into the group. But once you're in the chaos, people need food. yeah and you lift yourself it's amazing what you lift your body you lift you you're pushing yourself you're going well i'll push through this i can do that i'll push it and it makes it and then you recognize actually that you can achieve a lot more than just somebody saying you work for eight hours you sleep for eight hours yeah and that's a wonderful kind of thing that happens in some sort of like karma fueled exact science driven life but actually pushing yourself being quite extreme understanding you know what your body can do or what your mind can do and the the things that can be done to certain levels if you drive it, if you push it.

22:34We've all been there with hangovers and we can all give up and sit on the sofa and go, oh no, I can't do it, I'm not going to do it today. But make yourself do it, make yourself drive, get yourself doing it. And you mentioned there that this is why hospitality is so important because your first job was in hospitality. So many people's. Everyone's first job. And it's so important for, I think, 16 to 18 year olds to drop into hospitality in that world because otherwise the only friends and their peer group that they have are all their same age most of them all with the same interest most of them with the same background and the only adult interaction they have is either with their college lecturers or school teachers or parents and parents friends so there's no there's no real gap into real life because then when you go into real life in your real environment you go into a work environment or your team is so varied the age groups are so different the mindsets the thought process of the way that people their beliefs whether it's i don't know political or whatever it is are completely different so all of a sudden as an 18 year old your world you know in hospitality you you meet all of these people you're under the safe tutelage of it being in a restaurant you meet loads of different guests if you're working in front of house you do you know all of this thing it's a real good stepping stone into then the next point of your career in your life so my first jobs were working in a pub like a gastropub and um two things one one of the funnest things most exciting things was the lock-in you know you finish work and you close those doors and you would just carry on drinking with everyone that had worked in the pub that day for two three hours you know until like two three a.m it was brilliant like super fun um yeah but really really fun and that felt quite exciting.

24:16And the other thing, to your point, I actually went to work again in a pub when I was 21 after university. I graduated in the recession. There were no jobs. Really unfortunate. Went to work back in the pub I'd been working in like years ago. Worked in the bar and it was really, really good fun. And I got my first job out of that space from being a barman, from having good patter with all the people, et cetera, et cetera. And someone in there was a I was like, you're actually pretty good at sales. Do you want to come work for me? And that is how I got recruited was actually from working there and talking to everyone and being able to communicate in different ways with different people.

24:54And all the recruitment agencies I went through, all of the different ways I tried to get a corporate job, so to speak, none of them worked for me. But working in the pub actually did. Yeah. Yeah. Connections, interaction, human network is it's massive. And hospitality provides that with so much. So speaking of pubs, you went from restaurant to pubs. yeah so my whole career then spent in mission style restaurants and spaces um but then myself and my wife we wanted to open a business um but we wanted it to be uh a space where we'd like to be on a day off um somewhere that felt comfortable somewhere that was wasn't necessarily special occasion but could tick that box but make it um completely accessible but then i didn't want to compromise on the level of food and the style of cookery or the or the um the use of ingredients you know the quality of ingredients i didn't want to take a step backwards by just buying cheap rubbish i wanted to then be able to make you know still continue cooking at top level so it's trying to find that balance between um great ingredients and um i suppose accessibility so the thought process came from one of the early dishes that we had on was a shin of beef but thought was if you've got this amazing animal um beef cattle that's been reared for 18 months two years however long um being looked after wonderfully well and it's got two fillets in it and everyone goes oh a fillet of beef is amazing but actually the fillet beef from that animal was what about the rest of the carcass what about the rest of that so actually the shins was something that you could use from this amazing beautiful piece of beef cook them in the correct way make sure they're delicious it gives it it gives it no less value the fact that it's just a different cut of meat it's the same value just cost price comes in as more accessible from an opening restaurant point of view from a business point of view you can't just open with fillet steak on and charge 50 quid because no one wants to go there in 2005 like no one knows you no one knows what it is no one no one's going to go and spend that money but if you can use amazing produce and have something on for i don't know opening price of that might have been about 18 quid and you go actually this now works this works for me because we're using brilliant produce it now sits at a price point that is operational from a business perspective and it worked with getting bums on seats and pubs have always been a comfortable space for me they're the sort of place that i like to go i'm not i i work very very hard to not ever have to wear a shirt and a tie it's not my thing i just don't like i don't you know i don't i'm a non-believer and i mean how many people do you see wearing a suit to work every day and it's a it's a cheap suit and it looks horrible and they they look uncomfortable the suits are it's just like there's no value in that well come and be comfy wear wear your t-shirt and jeans you haven't got to dress up there's no stress like be and i wanted that environment in a restaurant in a pub um i wanted noise i want energy i like sound of people having a laugh at a table we get service reports every night um from each space and you know at the end of the night i read everything that go right what's on in that space what's up in there and sometimes you know sometimes someone's complained that one of the tables next to them is too loud and i'm like i love that i love that the table was too loud and that meant that they were having fun that meant that they were comfortable having a great time that they could be loud you're uncomfortable because they're having fun that's do you mean that's actually that's that's your issue not theirs that's like you gotta like the fact that somebody can be noisy and enjoy themselves all right not like you're not offensive but at the same point so that people can have fun that's the sort of thing that that's where you want and that's a successful restaurants people have fun i mean as a punter walking into a buzzy a buzzy noisy fun restaurant it fills you with energy before you've even eaten the food you are excited to be there yeah that's why like after covid when everything was so quiet i always i always really miss the buzz of a pub yeah whereas now i do feel like it is coming back a bit yeah um but then i am a pub lover so i am too where i want to spend all my time yeah well i think that's a big thing post covid is the fact that people recognize you can get great food and you can buy nice ingredients and we've all, then we, everyone had a go at making some sort of banana bread or something at home during, like it was just like, so you can cook.

29:23But then at the same point, the one thing you missed was human interaction. The one thing you missed was hospitality. The one thing that you missed was the noise of the space that, that in hospitality, from a punter's point of view, when you go into a busy place, now whether that, any place, you know, whether that's a, you know, where, you know, a Friday night you'll go into, whether it's a weather spoons or whether it's a top end chinese restaurant or a brilliant five star hotel or what you go into these spaces and all of you the hundred people that are in this pub have got an unwritten contract that you're there to create energy and atmosphere and no one goes in there and sits there in silence you're the noise that you're making is a table of four and having a great time is meaning that that table over there has to talk a bit louder and they're talking and they're talking and they're talking and all of you create this energy all of you you know you don't even recognize that necessarily that you're doing it but you're the people that's creating the buzz us as the custodians of the door that opens the people that the owners of that space it's our job to be able to give you the environment to be those people to make those unwritten contracts with each other to create that noise if we've done that and you drop into that without even knowing that you've signed a contract that's great you know that means that everything is working can you talk us through your mindset at the time when you remortgaged your house because again that's like huge belief in what you were doing yeah so for the hand of flowers we did um yeah yeah i look back at it now it's either belief or just like lunacy i don't really so we were living we lived in a small cottage um that uh we said to the bank at that point so this was 2004 so we opened the hand of flowers 2001 so 2004 we told the bank that we were going to do an extension so we were doing an extension of it but we put together these folks plans and did whatever else we got the money for the extension and then we bought the tenancy of a pub so the tenancy of the hand of flowers is very different to um a leasehold it's a you take you have to buy the contents of the pub um you become the tenant you have all your books you go of the brewery have so all profit all loss everything that's going on you have to buy all the beer from the brewery you you are essentially um the pub landlord but any profit that you make is yours so you're not paid a management consultancy fee you run everything but that's all we can afford to get in so but it was about the getting cost was around about 50 maybe 70 000 pounds so we borrowed we we lied we told them we'd do an extension we max out on two credit cards and we bought the contents of the hand of flowers pub well bought all the kitchen equipment which was a tiny little kitchen i mean half the size of this room um secondhand from an auction site um everything was battered and broken we put the shelves up and the tiles up ourselves we did the whole like we did the whole thing we took on the business um so it was a massive yeah it was a massive undertaking and then the bank manager obviously found out um and then they were left with two choice and this was at a point where 20 years ago you had a bank manager is actually someone who turned up someone who was there as an existing face it wasn't online it wasn't a thing it wasn't a tick box process and they had to make the decision now of either going well we're going take the money back and that's how do we all go in well i suppose in the grand scheme of things when you're 31 it's a huge amount of money like it feels massive but in the grand scheme of a bank it's not that much and they probably they went okay well let's see where we're at in a year's time then let's give them a go and and it was great and we paid it back within the year and we did the whole like so it worked it was one of those things where we we lied and we gambled and we took a risk and but i but i think every entrepreneur that you probably speak to or anybody that's been successful in business has done something that is beyond the breaks the mold of the box of the normality of the system that pens everybody in the thing that goes this is what you're doing this is what how you're supposed to do you have to break it you have to break something somehow you have to change the mold you have to you have to you have to break out of that and if that's by lying to the bank 20 years ago then great um speaking of breaking the mold you got your first Michelin star like a year into it right so that's super quick what do you actually think made the Han and Flowers different to other gastro pubs then uh well I don't think I at that point when we opened there were five pubs with Michelin stars um and we then became in that guide but there were two pubs that won a star in 2005 so 2006 guide so we opened 2005 uh and the The guide came out in January 2006 and we achieved a star.

34:14And then that, so that first 10 months, which was amazing. So it was brilliant. But I think it was because, I mean, we got inspections. I was a head chef for somebody in a Michelin star restaurant. I was the Michelin star chef. Mission is always about consistency and quality of produce. And because I was uncompromising with that, I think, you know, and the fact that I had held a star before in a Michelin star restaurant as a head chef, let them know that I was there. This is what I was doing. The inspection came, they came and visit us. But yeah, 10 months was very quick and we didn't expect it within 10 months.

34:49We didn't expect it that quick now. Can you talk us through what it takes for a great restaurant to get a Michelin star? What's the difference between an amazing restaurant that we might go to that doesn't have a star to one that gets a star? Yeah, I think, but that makes it sound that there's great restaurants that should have a star there's great restaurants that don't have a style that don't want to start, they're just great restaurants, places. Do they really not want a style? Yeah, but places. It's like saying there's actors that don't want an Oscar, it's like yeah, but I bet they do. No, because I think there's a perception that it has to drop into a specific style, if you think of Scott's in Mayfair or the Ivy the original Ivy, they're unbelievably great restaurants, they're fantastic there's some amazing places that serve wonderful food with brilliant energy and atmosphere that isn't about michelin star food it's about this creation of a that still make them great restaurant rick stein's seafood restaurant for example down in padstow is one of the best restaurants for me globally it does exactly what it's supposed to do it's amazing produce it's celebrated wonderfully it's an incredible setting it charges proper prices you know it works it works as a business it's just amazing that's not got a mission star doesn't need it it doesn't it's not that that's not what it's about sometimes the mission star say that as a mission star means it's better than everyone else is not true what it means is it ticks a box from a michelin guide of consistency of great produce of individual cooking of that is the same every single time that you go there but in terms of the levels of cuisine and that's the big thing that it's about and that's what sets it apart from most other guidebooks or most other kind of rating systems or most other great spaces that you go and eat at the the mission star is one that is consistent and not just consistent in this country globally that if you know you had a mission star lunch today you know if you got on a plane and flew to paris for this evening and you ate in a mission star restaurant it would be of equal quality and that's it it's try to make it global that works really well.

37:01But I think the one thing that separates Michelin-style restaurants from anywhere else is that there is a sense of consistency and a level of passion and produce that is just delivered relentlessly again and again, repetitive system delivery that comes into place, I think. Did that add a sense of pressure that was sort of uncomfortable a bit early, 10 months in pub? I think the first star, no. I think when the Hand of Flowers won its second star, then the first 10 months, the year after that, was a little uncomfortable because it won two stars. It was the first pub to win two stars. So it then gets compared to the Lebre, it gets compared to the Manoir, it gets compared to these great, phenomenal, brilliant restaurants that at that point had two stars.

37:49The Lebre's gone on to win three, actually. But it sits there and people are comparing it to that. And actually, you can't compare it to that. It's non-comparable. You know, the tables are really close together. Some of the spaces we've got to pass the dishes to people. Some of them, you know, you can't change that. But from a guest perception, there was a, I can't believe it's got two Michelin stars and it hasn't got a£2 ,000 bottle of wine on the wine list. But then that softened and that changed. And I think there became a lot of industry support from it. And it showed that you don't need to spend all of that money necessarily to be able to achieve a level that breaks down a barrier.

38:32Yeah, on your Instagram, you call yourself the captain of the pirate ship and I read you, you know, referring to your restaurant sort of as a pirate ship. But why do you think that is? Why is that analogy working? Yeah, if you think of the people that are on a pirate ship, if you think of pirates, there are a bunch of people that are from all sorts of different backgrounds that are misfits of society and are living slightly on the edge. And they, but they still achieve load. Like if you think of old fashioned pirates, I mean, they were pretty good at sailing. They were pretty good at, I mean, I don't think they were poor.

39:07I think they did all right. I think they worked a business. Loved gold. Exactly. Had scurvy. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. yeah I had a proper accent but I think it's just that taking a selection of a bunch of people that perhaps particularly in the early days maybe not so much at the hand now it's incredibly professional and well run and but in the early days when we won that second star there was probably about nine of us in that kitchen that were like we weren't we didn't all have smartly iron chef whites we didn't all have like some of us you know pastry chef would wear trainers the whole like it would just be this bunch of people that look like they turn up to do a bit of cooking but actually it was incredibly professionally run like in terms of the process and the food that goes on a plate and the way that we get there but the sense of how it got there was you know was a little bit chaotic and also if it didn't work you'd be made to walk the plank you know like it would be like you you were talking earlier about the kitchens in your early career being chaotic and you know work all day go out all evening was it like that in your business to begin with yeah massively yeah and that carried through yeah yeah yeah my input probably got more like my world my business my i drove myself um more than like everybody else there were periods where i mean i would be in it um the first recession 2008 i would come into the kitchen about 6.30 in the morning on a Friday morning, work all the way through till Friday night.

40:44And then at the end of service on Friday night, I get all the kitchen aids and the stuff out and then I'd make bread all through the night. And then Beth, my wife would come in and take the bread and she would sell it on Marlow High Street because it was a way of making money. So that would be Saturday morning. So I'd done from 6.30 on Friday night all the way through to Saturday morning where then I would start doing the mise en place and the prep for all day Saturday. So I'd go all through Saturday until Saturday night about 11.30. And then we'd go to the pub down the road that was open until about 2.30 in the morning.

41:14So then I would go and get battered and then I'd go home at about 2.30 on a Sunday morning. So from 6.30 Friday morning through to 2.30 Sunday morning. That would be every week, yeah. That'd be every week I'd do that. Chris just told me about your, before you came in, he told me about this pint of Negroni thing and told me to ask you about it. yeah i don't have context well i saw this uh clip i can't i don't even know where it's from but you were describing i think you were describing a normal normal day yeah which was like which was like wednesday like whatever yeah my i'd finish service whatever the negroni we made him yeah yeah well i'm a non-drinking i haven't drank now for 12 years but like my world was i my escape became alcohol so it was huge but i would drink vast amounts so i would but i wouldn't drink during a day or service but as soon as i've finished then as soon as the last main course had gone i'd have a pint of negroni maybe two then i'd drink six seven pints of strong lager then we go to the pub then i do half a bottle of gin at home and then i would go to bed and then i would be back at work the next day after how many hours late no i don't know maybe four or five maybe like so it was like yeah but it was driving and pushing and pushing that business and it was extremely hard but it was also extremely amazing and brilliant to be that it was a moment in time that not not a single bit of me regrets it i loved it i like but i i'm glad i've done it um i've been there i've done that and yeah done the booze thing done like that that that that was an escape from driving a business yeah i mean it's i know a lot of entrepreneurs that like that yeah Absolutely.

42:52And reflect on it as that was the season of my life I was in. I'm not in it anymore and it wasn't sustainable over the long term, but it was necessary. I, in my 20s, ran an agency business, which ended up becoming a great business. We ended up selling it and so forth. But my business partner and I talk about that period of our life where we went out as an out out six nights a week. Yeah. And then we would turn up at the office early the next morning, meet clients, do presentations, you know, motivate the team. and then that night we'd go out again. Yeah, because you're on the edge, you're firing, everything is firing, everything is going, everything is being driven.

43:26My wife was like, you were literally, she was like, you were just a machine at the time. You just, forward momentum carried you forward. Yeah, that's it. And then you do get to a point where it's suddenly like, whoa, I couldn't do that now. Yeah. But then again, I think sometimes if you're pushing yourself so hard, that's like your way of coping with it. Yeah, that's exactly it. It's release. But you're on a rhythm and it's a world that you've found yourself in that you've pushed and you find that you've pushed and the more you push and the more you drive, the more success and the more, you know, when people say like you make your own luck, it's because you're driving, you're doing everything, you're saying yes to everything, you're driving everything and you might be doing, you might be saying yes to 10 different things but only six of them were but the four failures don't matter because six of them have now done it.

44:12So you keep pushing, you keep pushing, you keep pushing. You're just creating so much that fundamentally something's going to stick. Yeah, yeah, exactly. And I don't think that nobody is successful in business without being like that. Nobody, running their own business. And there's no such thing as an overnight success. It's all the years of energy and graft and push and commitment and sacrifice. And I think the one thing that anybody runs their own business that has done very well at it or has done, has recognized that it's been okay. And the one thing that they probably sacrifice is sleep you know the one thing that they do the working hours that how many hours you're going to put in if you can put in a little bit more than other people and sustain it it is also there was one trait that not many people would touch on at that point in their lives because they don't either haven't had time to reflect on it i'm a lot older now and i can look back at it they haven't had time to reflect on it or they haven't recognized it or no one told them is that you were incredibly selfish because everyone says you all have the same 24 hours in the day you don't have the same 24 you're very lucky right that you've created those hours to suit you to be able to drive that you're not a single parent you're not a carer for somebody at home you're not uh you don't necessarily have i had a wife but we had no kids we had no like there was no there was no responsibility everything became about your drive your passion your self-propelled push and that's That is actually very selfish in terms of you weren't giving anything to anybody else.

45:49You were building a team and you think you're giving to them. And you are. And you're giving them opportunities and they're growing with it. And so many people have come through us and have gone on to amazing other things or still with us. And have created and set themselves into that space because they've done very well. But it is a very self-driven perpetual motion that you don't. It doesn't mean that you're a selfish person. Just at that point, you were so selfish about your time and your time was being spent driving that business, making it happen. You didn't really commit to anything else or anybody.

46:22You did transition as well, like from being this incredible chef with that drive, with that energy, with those hours, everything into a business person. So actually like a respected business person. So beyond restaurants, beyond cooking. So how do you feel like that transition has gone? Has that been like very smooth and obvious to you? or has it been a bit of a change? No, nothing in business is smooth and obvious. It's horrific. Like there's no, there's no, there's no, like from the outside, people might see that what you do is your business goes like this. Everything is chaotic and horrible and crunchy and swampy and just everything.

46:57Like the line to get anywhere is so, now at the end of it, you might draw a linear thing through that goes, it's always gone up. But actually there's been horrific crashes and there's been ups and there's been downs and there's been like you go through this whole period there's no there's plenty of books about business right and people can write books about business and you can read them but they can only help you give you a guideline of when you're going through the motions of it being rubbish like and hard and committed and driven and all of those sort of things so it doesn't matter what business you're in um we've done i've done stuff in the festival world we run effect now i find that now fortunately it's another company that runs the festival I help put it together in terms of curating chefs or bringing teams together.

47:43But I find that's the most ludicrous business model in the world because you create something on a poster, right? Then you go and tell everybody about it. Then you take money for it, tickets that you sell to something. It doesn't even exist. the only thing that exists is it's in your mind and on a poster and you've talked about it someone's giving you money for it so there's now something in the future that has to be built like so then you go okay and then the date comes then you've got to build the thing and then you've got to deliver on the promise that you've made whereas like most other businesses there's tangible things that exist i mean restaurants are very simple you borrow money you lie to the bank you set up a space you buy ingredients right then you ask customers to come through the door you hope they turn up you sell those ingredients that you hope with a small amount of profit to be able to pay back all the money that you borrowed to get it like but there's a tangible thing there's there's walls and there's ovens and there's tables and there's a door that people walk in and out of festivals are just figments of people's imagination that you're asking people to give you money for there's something doesn't exist it's bananas you know so that is another business world that you went to integrate and this is this you ever see the fire uh fire festival documentary i have yeah yeah we won't do one of those no exactly yeah that is terrifying when you were describing i was like that sound a lot like fire yeah yeah yeah exactly yeah it's mental in it so from from being a chef obviously successful chef then thinking about your own business what was it when you were a chef like what did you learn from that experience that then led to creating a great business because like like we've said before so many restaurants do fail yeah you know so many restaurants find it very hard to make tangible consistent profit uh and so what was it that you took into that business that that made it work you always have to be hands-on completely you can't walk away from things you have to be a part of it you have to you have to understand it you have to feel it um you have to be in it i think there is a big step from being a head chef in a space to then being an owner because you then have to understand it doesn't suddenly becomes not about your ego as a chef of what you're cooking it actually has to become about what people want you know the business of being in a restaurant world is creating something that people want you look at i don't know pizza express has been around for decades and decades right well and every time you probably order from there you have the same pizza because it's the one that you know it's the one that you like it's and it's been on that menu for 20 or 30 years because you go actually this is the one that i really like and they do it consistently well and you have to recognize that it's not always about creativity it's not always about being um something new it's actually about being something that's good and consistent and i think those are the big key things that you've got to realize that good and consistent and over delivering on value for money now that doesn't we've grown the hand of flowers is now 175 pounds to have the a la carte menu whereas the butcher's tap and grill one of our other spaces you can have a burger and fries there for less than 25 quid you know and you go well actually what's you know there's two different huge price points but both of them you want to over deliver value for money doesn't always mean cheap as well recognizing that but i couldn't open the hand of flowers 20 years ago and tried 175 pound free cause because no one ever come what happens is you have to build you have to go on a building and a journey and a process you have to understand there's the you have to the guests come to you and they'll come back because they trust and believe in the process of what's going on as a business and what you're doing and they know that every single time that they come they get something that makes them feel great irrespective of the bill and those are the sort of things that the simple simple correct hospitality is what restaurants have to focus on not not the creative fluff all around the outside smile say hello over deliver and if you something up because things go wrong all the time like it's it's a human thing restaurants are human it's not ai and it can't ever be AI because it's all about cooking and the process and the soul and when things go wrong recognize when you get something wrong don't you know be the first people to go yeah we absolutely mess it up yeah no bill no no worries no stress you know next one's on us whatever like whole you know be honest with your faults as well you've said in the past there's a big difference between being a head chef and an owner so why did you want to make that change personally uh I think it comes down to uh value of um if you're going to commit a huge amount of time i got to an age where i thought well and it was beth my wife that said listen if you're going to do those sort of hours we may as well do it for ourselves beth come worked for herself she's an artist her father worked for himself his whole career and you just go well you know you're making those efforts and anything decisions that you make are yours and you know you might be able to make more money than being a head chef or you might make less but either way you're going to make those decisions yours and they're your efforts and they're your spaces to be able to they become your decisions and and i quite like i quite i like i couldn't imagine ever being an employee now you know 20 years of running your own business it's just like i'm unemployable like you know it just becomes you know i know what i want to do i know how i'm going to get it and this is what i'm going to do so I think it was the sense of self-control is probably the first thing it wasn't about making money and restaurants aren't about making money in fact every business people earn more money than me out of every business I don't earn my money really from restaurants like I earn my money from the restaurant being what it's been built to and the connection with it and everything else that's surrounded with it and without those restaurants being there we wouldn't be the chef of being the but you know there's there's people in my businesses earn more money than me from my businesses I earn more money I earn my money being me yeah when you I mean that that is fascinating and when you think about a young person now thinking about launching a restaurant if you could talk to them about you know the economics of the business what's the advice you would give them because like you say it's a tough business to make scalable profit from I think if you wanted to talk about the sensible economics of it you go right i would go through the process of being a head chef and then get an executive head chef job in a nice five-star hotel in london where you can earn i don't know 150 000 pound a year you get five and a half weeks off a year you will get a company car you'll get health care you'll get um probably most weekends off you know that's that's the drive that maybe you want to get to if you wanted all that safety you wanted a good salary you wanted all of that stuff that goes with it great or if you want to cook exactly what you want you came into this industry because it's full of passion and you want to do it and you love it and you can create a space work for yourself do it for yourself but don't do it for money don't do it for the security don't do it for the safety because the safety is there and it's provided by other big corporate spaces and and restaurants and hotels but if you're in it because you love what you do 100 % do it but don't if you're doing it for cash you do you're in the wrong industry it's the wrong space to be so it feels like you know i don't even watch star wars that much but it reminded me of like that work for the empire or be one of the rebels yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah but just enjoy it i mean you know what and also i i also live with a thing of i don't want to get to like 80 years old and go oh what if i'd done that i wonder what if there's like have a go at stuff like you know just have a go at stuff do stuff have a go at it can you talk to us about the like how you actually run a restaurant so what are the margins like everyone to start one today i was like do you make money on the beer yeah you know do you make money on the on the main very little very little beer is very very difficult like heart of london here and you pay eight pound eight pound fifty a pint and you think my god that's a huge amount of money for a pint of beer but there's very very little margin in it it's tiny tiny tiny by the time it's taxed by the time people have paid for it by the time most insane beer that you buy like the value of it you have to buy an inflated price most places from brewery because most breweries own pubcos will own not breweries pub companies will own pubs that then you have to buy the beer from then that is an uninflated price that then your rents are really high your rates are really high your staff costs are really high that and also you got to think you think eight pound fifty is expensive for a pint of beer but i mean don't you think eight pound fifty is expensive for a pint of beer well it is expensive for a pint of beer crazy but it's not eight pound fifty going into the restaurant as profit they might make 75p out of that yep they might i mean and that they might I mean, if you are operating at 10 % profit in a hospitality industry venue, you are doing unbelievably well.

56:55Right. Like you're doing well. You're doing good. Most places are going. And think of those margins they drop. If you think of December, how busy spaces are to then January now, like the variant is colossal. But the staffing was probably the same. they don't just come to january and then make a load of people redundant just in case like you've now got levels of stuff like which is you and if you think i don't know you're paying people in london by i don't know 15 pound an hour so if you're paying someone 15 pound an hour but you're in there and you have two pints of beer all right at eight pound 50 well then you've spent 17 quid but the barman's earned 15 and out of that 17 like that's the only way they make it like it's it's really it's everything is expensive but it's not making money like everything is like eating out drinking going to pub being in bars everything is expensive but the only way that restaurants and pubs and bars make money is by what they charge you for a pint of beer or for a plate of food whether it's a portion of loaded fries or whether it's a posh five-star meal in a hotel that you go that's the only way it makes cash because culturally it does seem like a problem right so if i just think about this from like a practical point of view um the difference between your average people we're probably not your average people right at the end of the day like what is it we eat out a lot well we eat out a lot and we you know like we're entrepreneurs like you know have had success in business we're not the average planters like we will have more price elasticity right to go out and eat if that's what we want to do etc but like the normal consumer mindset of um you know i'd like to go and eat out more but i can't do that multiple times a week because it's so astronomically expensive to do so and then also working out the fact that you know okay well now i can only really go out sort of once a week which is bad for the whole industry as well but then you're also not making that much money when i do go out that once a week there doesn't like no one in that chain feels good about that that's kind of problem right the restaurant isn't happy about that they'd love to have more bums on seats in january as they do in december but the price means that well i already spent all my money in december so i can't really go and do that loads in january the whole system there just feels like everyone's a loser yeah yeah and it is but food inflation is massive there's been two um minimum wage price increases ni is going up rates have gone up which are huge and the cost of everything that goes into a business has gone up whether it's from the cleaning sanitiser spray and blue roll through to like logistics delivery just everything everything has gone up so there's a there isn't anywhere to hide in hospitality and it's one of the most heavily taxed um industries as well so why do you think that is why is it heavily taxed yeah as in why is it so that badly treated by this or by all governments yes yes by all by all i mean it's it's not just this singular one in fact this one is probably listening a little more than the previous one but in terms of there's a number of theories on it one it's not seen as valued as much as it should be it's not it's not it's not a global trading conglomerate it doesn't have you know there isn't it it's it's localized it's no lobby no power lobby exactly and there's lots of like little shouty voices of you know we need help but there's no real sustainable power force that talks about it secondly i also think that um we briefly touched on it from the pandemic that um communication and human interaction is something that's vitally important to the success of people and we use hospitality all the time whether it's grabbing a coffee from a coffee shop through to popcorn at cinema through to weekends away through to posh dinners or just going for something to eat around the corner like it it's used all the time but if somewhere if everywhere shut if everywhere shut tomorrow right for no reason we just they all went bump within a week they'll be somebody else would have done it because somebody there's a need there is a need for us to all go out there is a need for so the value in it it's not like british steel of going once it's gone it's gone or British coal where all the mines shut down, like it doesn't work.

1:01:23Like this is a case of, well, if it closes, someone else will open. So there isn't really... Also, the pub is just so quintessentially British. It's absolutely cool to our culture. But it does much more. It does much more. The understanding of what pubs or coffee shops or connections do when people go and have business meetings, when people go and celebrate, when people go and do... It's not seen as an industry yet. It's not seen as a profession. And it's seen as, you both talked about it, your first jobs were before you went on to something else. So it's just seen as a thing that exists rather than as a force of good.

1:01:59And the connection that it has to agriculture, to fisheries, farming, to everything that is connected to it, it needs to be recognised in a much bigger, interactive way and how important it is, I suppose, on a national scale. yeah if you could change something in hospitality what would be the thing you'd change to make the biggest difference like how would you reduction in v80 so that it would be brought in line with the majority in the rest of europe so where you've got from i don't know anywhere from eight to twelve and a half percent on v80 whereas we sit at 20 so the rest of europe like it's seen and that's where it is also seen as a profession if you go to italy you go to greece you go to spain France you go to Germany you go you know it's it's seen as a much more of a professional job and that's done because people are paid better because the reduction in VAT allows businesses to operate on a better space the um the recognition in terms of growth in terms of I suppose training and management and apprenticeship schemes and all of that because it has a lot more um relevance and drive to being seen as a profession that is allowed to sit alongside doctors, sit alongside healthcare professionals, sit alongside, I don't know, architectural, you know, someone who is a top sommelier.