Roland Horne on scaling WatchHouse cafés, from London and Abu Dhabi to New York

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1:23Alex Hunter:Hello and welcome to The Entrepreneurs on Monocle Radio, the show all about inspiring people, innovative companies and fresh ideas in global business. Today's show is a hospitality extravaganza. First, we'll meet the founder of a coffee chain with close to 30 global locations and counting.

1:42Roland Horne:People look for quality, whether you're in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, New York, Miami. But what makes Watch House in Abu Dhabi feel the same as Watch House in New York? How do we actually do that? Truly, how do we do that?

1:55Alex Hunter:And later, we'll hear from a former private jet broker who gave up the, frankly, probably more lucrative aviation gig to go into the restaurant business.

2:05Roland Horne:In my head, I was going to be able to just own the restaurant and I would just carry on selling aeroplanes. But I quickly learned that A, that wasn't going to be the case and B, I loved it.

2:13Alex Hunter:This is The Entrepreneurs with me, Tom Edwards.

2:25Alex Hunter:You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Roland Horne is the founder and CEO of Watch House, the design-led cafe chain that opened its doors in London's Bermondsey back in 2014. Since then, it's grown into a truly international business, with 28 current locations across the UK, New York and the UAE, and ambitions for 500 outlets worldwide by 2033. I'm delighted to say Roland stopped by our studios to discuss that rapid expansion, their record-breaking funding campaign, and how and why the company plans to take its premium coffee concept to hundreds of global locations.

3:06Roland Horne:I'm certainly not the coffee aficionado, and of course we have to be in our business. I'm the jack of all trades that goes in and sort of notices if something's not right in the music or the air conditioning's off or what have you. And of course, the core product has to be best in class. That's what we aim for within Watch House, wherever we go in the world. My reasoning for going into this or my previous business was an aquarium design business. And other things that I've done has always been very opportunity led. I'm not the most strategic person in the world. But I do have a gut feeling for if there's a gap in the market.

3:35Roland Horne:And I felt with coffee, with coffee hospitality, and there was a real lack of holistic experience, as I refer to it.

3:42Alex Hunter:Yeah, yeah. Listen, I was going to ask you about the aquariums. How do you even know if there's a gap in the aquarium architecture market? That's what I find amazing.

3:50Roland Horne:Yeah, I'm not a particularly spiritual person, but I would say I am an aquarius. And I had my jobs have been in, obviously, saltwater aquaria with Aquarium Architecture. And obviously more recently with Watch House. And I had a very short stint in oil straight out of my master's degree. So, yeah, there's a commonality there, maybe you could say. But no, I think the reality, no matter what you're doing, there's a sort of UX customer experience, guest experience element to all these things. and I often feel that those are, again, not done with true empathy and authenticity. I mean, they keep coming back to those words all the time and they're sort of codified and hardwired into WatchHouse's existence now.

4:26Roland Horne:But I think if you can execute whatever you're doing in a really best-in-class customer, guest experience way, you then back it up with a good product in a slightly novel difference positioning, then I think it's eminently possible to be in a very competitive space. I often talk about Liquid Death as an example. who decides to start a water brand in the most, literally, the most saturated market probably there is. So it's possible to find an edge in all these businesses. And actually, the other way of looking at this, which is often reminded by many of our investors, is a very saturated market is one that's very much a proof-of-concept market done, ticked.

4:58Roland Horne:It's not a totally novel product. So there's different ways of looking at it.

5:01Alex Hunter:And that's a kind of glass of coffee half full, I suppose. Just that point, though, about being true to the brand and having those core things that then your customers or your guests come to associate you with. As you scale pretty quickly with Watch House, both obviously we're familiar here in London, but now as we look global, how tricky is that? Because presumably the exact same things that suit... Well, it's funny, we were just talking about like the Marlabo neighbourhood where we both have some kind of coffee real estate. It's different, very different from one London neighbourhood to another.

5:31Alex Hunter:It's wildly different from a neighbourhood in Dubai, wildly different from a neighbourhood in Manhattan. So is that, I guess, one of the scaling challenges is how you stay true to those core principles whilst adapting and reacting to those new markets?

5:43Roland Horne:Yeah. I mean, I think the first thing to say to start off with is you start with a mentality. I mean, one of the reasons why I got into hospitality and obviously became the founder of WatchHouse is because I believed that there was kind of a bastardization really of hospitality. It was kind of running that true sort of private equity. You know, here's a model, let's repeat, repeat, repeat. And it just, to me, just was an interesting, not an interesting proposition whatsoever. And it's actually one of the things I really love about Monocle. like you guys go into different spaces where rather than just sticking into one single space over and over and over again which I also really really admire so the first thing is could we do something that was that truly made a difference and I think the second thing really then in terms of like how we really made sure that as we scale we actually get better is a mentality so it's you know we have the opportunity now because we have economies of scope and scale where we can have a culture director in our business where many smaller businesses don't have the opportunity we can innovate on novel new products within the business, which you can't when you're a smaller business.

6:37Roland Horne:So there's different ways of positioning it. That being said, it would be remiss of me to say that, of course, as you get bigger, the beast becomes harder to tame, as it were. So what we've done is we've implemented a growth structure called Entrepreneurial Operating System. I speak about it all the time. It's kind of a sort of free agent of theirs almost.

6:54Alex Hunter:A program called The Entrepreneurs is the perfect place to do that, right?

6:57Roland Horne:So I would say when people say to me, I have to get mums and particularly mums actually saying, oh, do you speak to my child? And I hate say but typically their son about entrepreneurship and and i kind of say actually the thing that really makes a big difference is yes there's a sort of nature nurture part to it of course but if you get over the minimum hurdle of do i have a sort of a thirst for entrepreneurship is the kind of that inquisitive nature well actually the next part really is the toolkit to actually go about utilizing and ideating around your your initial idea and the entrepreneurial operating system which is an american system full of loads of american jargons that slightly make me feel a a bit quick, you know, sort of jitter a little bit.

7:32Alex Hunter:Some of them are effective. Absolutely. That's why.

7:35Roland Horne:I came in horribly cynical. I'm Irish originally, but obviously I've got the British cynicism potentially inside me. I don't know what you can possibly say. Yeah, quite. Well, the Irish was just cynical, but really I came to it as kind of, oh, it sounds like another sort of big four consultancy load of nonsense. I am the visionary in my business, which I've slowly but surely getting more comfortable with as time goes on. But the point with this system is that it really does give you the ability to go, right, what makes Watch House in Abu Dhabi? feel the same as watch house in new york but how do we actually do that truly how do we do that and it's very simple systems so like one of the ultimate points about eos is is really it creates these frameworks and whether it's the people analyze the right person right seat or it's um running your level 10s every single week where it's basically the idea is you go into a meeting and you're 10 out of 10 and that's your expectation as a as a business rather than this kind of typically European approach of seven out of ten is good right so it's just changing the way you think about culture in in a more you know it's a very transparent simple way but how do you get that mission from the CEO whatever it is the the sort of the exec team right down to or up to depending on your outlook to the janitor like in the in the building how do you get that and I think it's really important that watch us that the team know totally about what we stand for as a business in terms of the core values.

8:53Roland Horne:And then finally, the final bit, which is really, really key, is this notion of GWC. So do you get the role? Do you want the role? Do you have the capability of doing the role? So I might be the right person in terms of my core values. When do you assess them? But actually, as CEO, do I get the role of CEO, G? Do I want the role of CEO, W? And do I have the capability of doing the role, C? And if I don't GWC, then I get found another role within the business. I can't want it. I can't get it. I kind of want it. And then I have a capability. it doesn't match up.

9:22Alex Hunter:Let's zoom out a little bit. I want to talk a bit about neighborhoods, because I said we're sort of coffee neighbors in a way here in Marlebone. And you've spoken really interestingly before about some of the, I don't know, even strategic pivots, perhaps, that you wish you had made earlier in the growth story of the business in terms of what makes that great neighborhood. And I don't know, I know you've done some sort of property development as well in one of your many hats, but do you think perhaps, I don't know, did you underestimate the importance or have you changed emphasis now in terms of like, what's the resi make up in a neighborhood and actually why that's really important if you're gonna get a branch that takes root in a really meaningful way for people tell me a bit about the the chemistry or the

10:01Roland Horne:alchemy that goes into that process yeah it's really interesting we don't have and we haven't spent significant money with market research companies and management consultants etc to come back and say this is the area the street the location should be targeted because of the a b c cds whatever it's not what we do what we tend to do really i mean again part of your question earlier was about this notion of saturated market so there is an element whereby if we look and we see a comparable premium offering the gales for example would be a really good example or a lot of the co-brands that we rub shoulders with the esops the mean m's those kinds of brands diptyque is another great example so there's all these brands we kind of look at and go this feels like a neighborhood which i should be in obviously our first ever location on bermsley street in london bridge was uh was very much not that so we were one of the first movers there before the gales word moved into the neighborhood um and by the way we're delighted they're there do a great job but i think from our perspective really what we're trying to do is like where do we feel we can be a true local hero and actually interesting enough one of our designers deirdre hodson she's she's amazing i was actually looking at a space in east london and we kind of oh it doesn't feel quite right and and she made some made a comment to me and she said you know you must remember that Watch House was able to start in a 266 square foot old church building, you know, with£5 ,000 a year rent, because there weren't those bigger companies coming in and dominating the space.

11:21Roland Horne:And actually, it's really important to allow for the next evolution, the next iteration of those businesses to have their own space as well. So we kind of looked and actually, no, that's not where we belong. And do you wear that quite lightly?

11:30Alex Hunter:Because it's funny, I mean, I live in Walthamstown, East London, and there was this big thing, and it was like counter-punching, one lot saying, yes, but look what it does for house price aggregate rises. And then the other mob saying, well, you know, the small independents, as ever with these things, the true path is somewhere down the middle. You know, watch house is one of those indicators now. Presumably that kind of impact wasn't in, well, maybe it was, I don't know what's in your mind, going back to 2014, 15. What do you think when people are like, oh, actually, if there's a watch house there, we might look at this as a are you proud is it funny is it mad or yeah i think it's really easy

12:08Roland Horne:in life and i think it's quite lazy in life to be negative about people's success you know we've been on a number of recent publications on on instagram and in the media and you get the usual their private equity back their venture capital backed and all that kind of stuff and i get to a degree why people have hesitation around it because you can i mean my kind of view of it really is if you do something great even if you're a tiny business and there's some great examples across London your cafe on Chilton Street is a really shining example of it I mean we looked at Chilton Street years ago and one of the reasons we didn't do it was because we looked and said actually hold on there's a few operators here principally Monocle and actually it might not work for us because it's not really enough necessarily to go around that was our kind of viewpoint and moreover and the most important thing was that the product you were doing was good so I would argue that and you know I live between London and Bristol I sort of spend half my time between them and I was in bristol at the time when people were talking about girls coming in you know let's spray them graffiti them and all that kind of stuff and this local operator is not performing very well so it will damage them well my sense is like if the local operator is doing good stuff people will go if they're not up to a standard then as much as that might be hard to accept the reality is if girls as products or anyone else's product is is better than may the best person win and so you can't in one breath say private equity venture capital is really bad because it just creates really rubbish products and they just scale it and whilst also then saying well that same product then is so good that it will then damage local operators so it can't be about one of both i think gals is a good example they do good products i'm one of their customers i'm also one of their competitors and they are with me as well so i just think build good stuff people will come and if you can't get keep up with that then that's the way the world that's how capitalism works and i don't

13:48Alex Hunter:think that's about it and that's the mix right i mean it's the same in media we can't compete with the massive, hugely commercial global corporate, we probably can compete in some ways with, say, some heritage brands or some public broadcasters, for example. But what you want is an ecosystem that allows all of those things to be there. Is that annoying? Look, we've done a big, in our forthcoming Monocle magazine, we're looking at all kinds of players in coffee globally, and there's a reflection in there about, obviously, is it Mark Bezos, who's one of your backers, is that a frustration for you when people are like, Oh, but look, it's the family of the boogeyman.

14:23Alex Hunter:Or are you like, hey, yeah, and that's great. These people are pretty discriminating and they know how to back a winner. Are you fairly sanguine about it? Do you mind me bringing it up?

14:30Roland Horne:No, no, no, I don't mind. I mean, I think we just a bit of context for your listeners. So the background on this was that we closed a round of investment last year, which was anchored, not totally done by Hypo's Capital, which is effectively the fund that was co-founded by Mark Bezos, who is Jeff Bezos's brother and the founder called David Maroose. They founded our fund. We were introduced to them in New York. I've met Mark Bezos a couple of times. Seems like a really nice guy. But the fund itself is brilliant. They just connect loads of dots. I mean, one of the reasons why we were in the US, truthfully, was definitely a bit of ego, because who doesn't want to open up a place in Manhattan and Fifth Avenue?

15:06Roland Horne:That's super cool. But also very much because two main reasons. Number one, because the optimism around brand growth is there. There's not this kind of like slightly kind of like, oh, it's a chain, right? people see that and go well actually I know I can trust Chipotle or whatever it is so there's this kind of optimism around brand growth and they celebrate that success but I think also importantly that because also to do what we're doing we're now as we speak today and in May 2026 we're now 28 houses globally open we've got another 15 or so currently across the globe that we are either designing building or in that process it takes fuel in the tank to do it right it's just the way it is and so we wanted actually even saying that like i don't think taking investment is a bad thing i think a lot of people again i think i'm kind of their views but this notion of like i have 100 % the equity of the business great congratulations and that works for you then i mean it congratulations my perspective is super cool to like be able to pick up the phone one of our investors is a private investor lives around the corner actually here in marley bone she's a significantly senior person within the cosmetics industry and working particularly things like ar and the e-commerce element of their business will obviously remain nameless and i can pick up the phone and say to listen give me a sense on this we're doing this a new app and we're doing this new engagement with our guests and so the point here is like if i need to speak to someone significant it opens doors for us and as for the the sort of the b word i don't have an issue with that we're not backed by the bezos we're backed by high post capital of which it's part he's one of the founders but they have loads of businesses and all they've ever been to us is really really great and really supportive and nice so people again if you want to be lazy you want to be negative by all means do it.

16:45Alex Hunter:No, no, no. We're going to end. We're going to be optimistic and positive. I'll just do one last quick thought. You talked about neighbourhoods, talked about expansion. You mentioned WBA. You mentioned New York. How exciting. Just to connect back to something you said right at the beginning, which was about the sort of seven out of tennery of the European approach to business. Is that in part, Roland, why you're in those markets? You've just explained it about the excitement in the US about opportunity. Yeah. Okay. UAE, slightly more complicated moment at the moment, but there's the same, it's not only risk appetite, it's just an appetite to get things done.

17:14Alex Hunter:Is that part of the reason, as well as the fact that you can see those same neighbourhood values there?

17:18Roland Horne:Yeah, absolutely. I mean, again, people look for quality, whether you're in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, New York, Miami, we're going to open up in California the next 18 months as well. So there's these aspirational neighbourhoods that want to do things that are interesting and significant, which is very, very motivating. But I would actually say as well, something that we, maybe when we get outside of these shores of the UK and actually stand on a foreign shore and look back, the British brand is super strong. It is so revered. And I know we, again, going back to that sort of British mentality sometimes of sort of, you know.

17:48Alex Hunter:Well, don't tell anyone about it. No, not quite. I don't want to make a big deal out of it.

17:52Roland Horne:But when you do go abroad, you do business, people are like, oh, yeah, these guys are the British guys. And again, as an Irishman, I find it slightly tricky, but I kind of Chris smile and take the compliment. But the point here is the British brand of quality, a driven quality brand, is synonymous. You know, you see so many brands here in the UK that have boards above their doors that say the name of the brand. they don't put where they're from. You go across the UAE, you go across any of these international locations and it's the name of the brand and underneath it will be London or it'll be the UK or whatever else, Great Britain.

18:19Roland Horne:So the point here is I think there's a really great capital associated with being a British brand and I am delighted by that and I think there's optimism abroad as well. And I think there could be optimism here in the UK. I think it will come back.

18:31Alex Hunter:That was Roland Horn, the founder and CEO of Watch House. You can find out more by heading to watchhouse.com or pick up a copy of Monocle magazine. The June issue is on newsstands this week and in its handsome pages, you'll find a global coffee special with dozens of brands like Watch House that are worth knowing about and a handy little list of the very best coffee shops in the world.

19:06Alex Hunter:You're listening to The Entrepreneurs. Former private jet broker Alex Hunter is the founder and CEO of The Sea the Sea, a seafood restaurant and fishmonger based in London's Chelsea. After launching his first restaurant, Bonny Gull, in 2012, Hunter went on to open The Sea the Sea in 2019, building a loyal following with sustainably sourced seafood and a daily changing menu. This week, the restaurant is moving to a new address just across the road from its current location, with a space that's five times the size of the original outpost, complete with a seafood bar, grill, restaurant and a bigger retail space.