Coutts Entrepreneurs

Mike Southon: Now this is Mike Southon for Beermat Radio in association with Coutts and today I am talking to Helena Hudson of The Real Eating Company, hello Helena.

Helena Hudson: Hello.

Mike Southon: And welcome to Coutts this morning.

Helena Hudson: Thank you.

Mike Southon: Well let’s get way back because people are very familiar with your restaurants but it was not always so I mean did you go to a posh school to start of with.

Helena Hudson: I did.  I did I went to a girls school in London.

Mike Southon: A girls only school?

Helena Hudson: A girls only school and Godolphin & Latymer in Hammersmith.  They are very good school actually and at the time I didn’t really appreciate a thing what it gave me as well as a good education it gave me certain amount of confidence I guess in what I was going to do.  But I unlike most of my school friends I didn’t go to university afterwards although I was meant to.  I was one of these kids at school sort of always did just well enough but was never fabulously academic and the school sets sort of great store and obviously the girls that performed very well.  And I always had a sort of feeling even then that the sort of prospect of having another sort of three years of studying to me seemed quite a sort of a waste of time I was very… I was very… aware I just wanted to get on with things I wanted to sort of get out to the big wide world earn money do well, my father who was sort of quite an entrepreneurial himself, and he said why don’t you come and work with me for a bit. I did that and I did sort of running on some reception, I did some accounts did a bit of admin and then of course inevitably two months working for your dad at sort of 18-19 was a complete nightmare and couldn’t put up with him anymore he couldn’t put up with me and I then left to go and work for a research company in the city complete sort of change and I went and did that and from there I sort of got into more research orientated jobs then move more into media and advertising and marketing from there and that’s what I was doing before and I sort of launched my own entrepreneurial career.

Mike Southon: How many years have you been doing this in media?  Because you started when you were about 19?

Helena Hudson: About 15-16 years quite long time

Mike Hudson: All right so you had done all conceivable jobs in that time I guess.

Helena Hudson: Yes, yes, yes I’ve learned a lot as well.

Mike Southon: And what you ended up as where you management, where you…

Helena Hudson: Yes, yes.

Mike Southon: That’s you managing a whole bunch of people, How many people where you managing?

Helena Hudson: It was 45, a department of 45 as well as you know dealing with the clients and their budgets and being responsible and also them being having that responsibility to the business and making sure it was running properly.  But we were living in London I had you know with my husband two young children and we sort of reached that point of thinking a lot of people do where we thought we don’t really enjoy our lives very much, don’t see enough of the kids and we had this opportunity to move out of London, change our lives a little bit.  So we moved on to Brighton I quit work my husband quit work. both decided to take a bit of time out and work how exactly what it was we wanted to do and that’s when the idea of what I am doing now actually began to take hold really

Mick  Southon: So you and your husband were passionate about food is that what it was?

Helena Hudson: I am particularly I mean I always have been and a lot of people now say oh yeah I am foody or I am really passionate about food.  But you know from when I was I remember sort of 12 or 13 my stepmother had whole sort of collection of Cordon Bleu cook books I mean masses and masses of them and I used to sort of sit there at night that was my bedtime reading.  Actually sort of going through all these books and working out what I wanted to try I worked in restaurant kitchens during the summer holidays.  And so it’s always been a sort of theme through my personal life I guess it’s something that I have done to relax.  I enjoy it everywhere we have ever sort of travelled I always you know look at where the food markets are, the restaurants.  I have always sort of being very interested in that side of things but I felt that with my background and experience in working in an agency, running a department that I could sort of somehow bring those two things together would be a sort of great opportunity for me personally.  And when we moved on to Brighton it seemed that that opportunity was there.  There was a gap in the market for something that exists in London and had had done for a long time.  But to have a you know combined restaurant, deli, bakery in one when so many Londoners also were moving out of London down to Brighton.  It seemed like a good opportunity.

Mike Southon: So it was really a London idea that you have seen in London and you were thinking I can take this to the provinces. So what was the first thing you did?  Did you try and find that.

Helena Hudson: The first thing I did was a business plan because that’s what everyone says you should do but I mean I know you know with what I had done before that you know it sets you in some good stead to actually have something even if it’s on one sheet of paper.  What is it you are trying to do? What makes you different? You sort of you know you are rushing all I guess to sort of see that it makes sense.

Mike Southon: And your elevator pitch perhaps.

Helena Hudson: Exactly, exactly.

Mike Southon: What does the elevator pitch does and why you are different and what do you do

Helena Hudson: Just really for my own well peace of mind really because yeah so I did that and then obviously I had to put some figures around because everyone wants to see figures.  But of course now when I look back at what I did, even going to different people for advice on the figures is actually very difficult I think if not impossible if you are doing something new from scratch and even allowing to you research your market you look at what competitors are doing.  When I think back to those figures now they were absolutely you know ridiculous they really were they were wrong and you know that wasn’t just me sitting there and concocting something that I thought should happen and the sort of numbers we would do I went to the Finance Director I had worked with in the previous agency.  I talked to our bank which at that point wasn’t Coutts and you know I put and they also said yeah now that looks sensible that looks doable but of course you never know until you actually open what or start your business really what is going to happen.

Mike Southon: And what we described in the business plan was we are going to take a property and we are going to build a restaurant, a deli with it and a bakery together.

Helena Hudson: Yes.

Mike Southon: So had you actually found the property at that time?

Helena Hudson: No I… what I did was I was sort of I was looking around a lot of places and I mean I recognised at that point that I didn’t have that kind of experience in hospitality although I needed some kind of expert view I had a very good friend I guess who was a mentor at that point who had run restaurants before and I just said, look will you come with me, will you come around and look at these things, look at these sites because what might look good to me might not work from an operational point of view and so we did that and we went round and round looked at various places and she was very very helpful in that way you know she was sort of looking at lot of spaces big enough for a kitchen or you are going have your shoes with your sort of fire escapes and so that was very helpful.

Helena Hudson: And what about the physical location in terms of footfall in front of your property?

Helena Hudson: Oh yeah I mean I spent a long time looking at footfall outside sites that you know I have had may be two or three that I was really keen on for different reasons but I mean I knew that we couldn’t afford to be on a primary route like on a sort of main high street and to be a honest we probably wouldn’t want to be there with sort of Starbucks and M&S and paying those kind of rents and not necessarily attracting exactly the kind of person we were after so we were going to be on a sort of secondary less obvious route.  So we sort of ended up looking in Hove and there were a couple of sites that I liked and I’d sort of sit outside different times of the day and work at how many people were sort of going past.  And eventually we found this beautiful building and I knew as soon as I walked in that I had to had to have this building it was a four storey, grade 2 listed, it was at that point an art gallery beautiful art deco shop front massive windows, lovely light, south facing so we get lots of you know it was beautiful and as soon as we walked in I knew exactly where everything is going to go.  And Vicky my mentor and friend she sort of also got this sort of same feeling about it and she said, but you know Helen that you are going to have problems running a restaurant over four floors.  And at that point I mean I was I guess the sort of the naïve entrepreneur at that point where you think anything is possible and that is one of the characteristics I do have and she is very, very determined and it was through sheer bloody mindedness and determination that we got that building turned into a you know fully functional restaurant. 

Mike Southon: How did you finance it I mean did you have to take a bank loan did you take shareholders.  How did that work?

Helena Hudson: We put in half the cost ourselves in cash and the other half was from Coutts

Mike Southon: Alright so that’s how you approached Coutts.

Helena Hudson: We borrowed the money yes.

Mike Southon: I don’t want to ask you a personal question but roughly what are we talking about in terms of what you had to put in when you borrowed?

Helena Hudson: It was… we put in about, it was about 250,000 each roughly yeah.

Mike Southon: And presumably Coutts did on the basis of what you are putting your money where your mouth is…we will match that.

Helena Hudson: Yes, yes and so they were sort of in it with us from the beginning really.

Mike Southon: And why do you approach Coutts? You were obviously with a previous bank before.

Helena Hudson: We had recently switched to Coutts anyway on a sort of personal banking basis.  They have being recommended to us by friends who had used them.  It seems a lot of their business comes about through word of mouth.  And so we’d sort of spoke to them about it and I mean since then we have had a very sort of very strong good relationship with them.

Mike Southon: Were you able to get the freehold on the building?

Helena Hudson: No but having said that, we’ve got a beautiful building and customers love it and it’s become one of the places that other operators now look to and aspire to be like, and what’s interesting is off the back of that, you know, we’re now sort of written up on estate agents particulars of properties around or near the Real Eating Company, you know a nationally recognized restaurant and deli. But the down side is that we’ve now attracted a nice sort of Tesco express on the corner, we’ve now a star bucks opposite us and another bakery down the road and we’ve got more restaurants. So the flip side is that you know we don’t have the sort of area to ourselves as we had before, You sort of do attract other people in off the back of what your doing i guess to some extent and you know the people and the costumers you attract.

Mike Southon: So you got the property

Helena Hudson: Yep

Mike Southon: And what job had you decided you were going to do? Were you going to do the cooking or doing the baking or doing the management?

Helena Hudson: No I was sort of clear in my mind at that point that it wouldn’t work if I was cooking or If I was running the floor or if I was working in the deli because I knew that if I did that I would be stuck doing that for quite some time and it would be harder for me to extricate myself away from that. And also I thought that when I sort of went to post recruiting people for those jobs. It was very clear that they kind of knew from the word go that whilst I would happily support them and get stuck in and do anything that was needed at any point, it was not my job, my primary job, to run the kitchen or to run the floor or to clean or to stock shelves because I thought I had to sort of make that clear from the beginning.

Mike Southon: So what was the key hires that you made?

Helena Hudson: Head chef was the first person I recruited because obviously that was important in terms of setting the style of what we did. And I recruited someone, again who had moved down to Brighton, a very talented chef, a guy called Cas Titcombe, who left us after 18 months to open his own restaurant canteen which is out in Spitlefields and is doing very well. He was my first I think recruit. My second recruit was a sort of finance book keeper person. And the third recruit was the general manager, who would obviously sort of manage the floor and the general running of the restaurant on a day to day basis. But I was there all the time at the beginning, you are, its sort of seven days a week working through from first thing in the morning right through the night and it was exhausting actually, I mean it still is in another way but yeah I recruited those three people and they were quite sort of key at the beginning.

Mike Southon: So have you still got the same general manager?

Helena Hudson: No

Mike Southon: So have you had a few?

Helena Hudson: We’ve had a few. I mean that’s one of  the things, I know that its quite common in hospitality to have a relatively high churn in personnel and I like to think that we’ve had less churn then other hospitality businesses. But we have reasonably high turn over. But at the moment, I guess in the last 18 months, we’ve sort of held on to the same people which is good. We’ve a good sort of team to push forward with but I think that because the company’s grown quite a bit in the last year, it has a turn over in the staff we’ve gone through a bit of a growing pain, I guess where we’ve had to put in a bit more of infrastructure and systems and how we do things and what I’ve found is that the original people who were there from the beginning found it quite hard to adapt to it and because I’d been at the first site such a lot, I was there for them and talking to them and sort of suddenly I couldn’t be there as much and even thought they could cope and could do things and things happened, I think it almost felt to them a little bit like their attention had gone. I see it very much like children and sort of mothers attention had been taken away and given to the new children and they rebelled a bit and they didn’t really like that and I found that faze quite hard to deal with in terms of how you sort out of ………I guess it’s a very typical kind of growing pain that companies go through.

Mike Southon: We talk about it a lot in the book about finding the right corner stones early on and for you, my take on this is that these are the people who are the corner stones jobs but they may not have a stake in the company. My definition of dream team, which is a great role to have but the essence of dream team that we found is that dream team move on and also early on corner stone dream team get burnt out and we actually call it “Corner stone burnout” where after a period of time they get worn out or the job has got to big for them and you might have sentimental attachment to them, they were there very early on but they are not stepping up as you had hoped they would step up.

Helena Hudson: It’s exactly what happened. It’s sort of one of those things I guess that would in hind sight or experience having done it before you sort of see it coming and so you can sort of put things in place as to minimise the effect but yes I mean it hit us particularly it was this time last year when we opened our third site, which was in Lewis, it was a lot bigger than the site in Hove, and at the time when I was least expecting it, the other two sites were working well and were well established, it was fully staffed, they all knew what they were doing and so I believe my sort of attention and full focus and resources could be put into opening the new site which was the biggest site we had done and suddenly we were getting a lot of problems from the first site, silly things then it was building up building up, staff problems, people not doing what they should have been doing. There was a sort of problem with morale, that the whole thing and I just thought how can this be happening how can they be doing this to me now and it was exactly that and maybe I was expecting to much from them and everyone had been motivated and understood what we were doing and at that point, to me, it just seemed that they were just giving up on me and giving up on the business and how can this be?

Mike Southon: It’s attention seeking as well

Helena Hudson: Yes it was very much like that.

Mike Southon: They’ll do things and hope mummy comes back.

Helena Hudson: Yes it was exactly like that. And we got through it but people left at that time and said how they had been replaced. I found that you go through ways and were in another faze and the people who joined us over the last year have only ever known things the way they are and that’s fine and so it goes on.

Mike Southon: And now your having, what we were again talking about in the book that’s in every other start up which is a classic growing pains, accommodation of getting larger, you finally working out what it is your doing, staff not stepping up or feeling they’re being rejected. How did you actually solve it? Did the experience you have working for a agency as a job work for you? Was that a useful experience to have?

Helena Hudson: It was, I mean it’s always different a bit when it’s your business I guess ultimately and a small business at that because you don’t have the masses of resource to draw on. But what became clear when we were having these problems was that I had to somehow manage to get back in there and isolate the problems and find out what was actually really going on, was it a general morale problem or whether certain individuals there were making things quite difficult. And I just had to find the time to go back in there and talk to people about what was happening, what were you doing when I wasn’t there, what are we going to do to make things a bit easier for them in terms of support, communication was a big thing so I started a staff news letter which is something very simple but that seemed to have a big effect. So every month when they got their pay slip there was a news letter about you know what was happening, new people joining, what things we were doing as a business, any good P.R we would have that sort of thing. That small thing but that sort of helped I think everyone feel that they are part of something. We also had our first staff party. It was at a time when I thought really I’m knackred. I don’t really want to do this but I thought I’ve got to do it, I’ve got to get everyone together because also I realised that even though I would obviously happily talk to anybody in the business, people you know from one site to another, unless they had met and had spoken and had some kind of rapport they would just not talk to each other even when they needed to or I wanted them to or I suggested that they should they just wouldn’t so we needed some kind of ice breaker so we had  a sort of staff party. And for myself I’d just realised at that point that the company had got to the size where a had to let them know exactly when I would be there to talk to them and so we had meetings twice a week so I will be here at this time and so anyone who wants to come talk to me but obviously specifically the manager and head chef we can sort of sit down and go through things as I can too. So they felt they had some regular access to me which I think had been the problem because I’d gone from some being there a lot to not really being there at all so I think it was a combination of things that comes down to communication.

Mike Southon: It’s always a communication problem and restrictions communications solutions which can be dressed up as a management which means little formal proseedings everything from I’m here at a specific time you can come talk to me formally or informally and also what you said about the party, it’s classic. I organise a lot of these and it’s obviously done in a nice place and put a band on, whatever you want to do but the key thing is just to get them all together, give them a drink and let them talk to each other. If you can allow that to happen it’s a bit cofartic and by the next day miraculously communication is working.

Helena Hudson: And I mean the other thing I realised, I had to really smarten up on myself and get better at recognising when people were doing a good job and I hope I’ve got better at it. I’ve consciously made myself better at it and I think because I am myself quite self critical and quite sort of self motivating I don’t often sit back and think actually what you’ve achived is quite good and I think the side effect of that is I actually when people do a good job I always think well they should be doing a good job why wouldn’t they and actually it doesn’t work like that and of course it doesn’t work like that and I think one of those things that helped then was at that point was to go right when someone does something good then to actually publicly recognise or even sometimes if its just something like I heard about this its great well done to see the difference you can actually see it in someone’s face and their body language that does sort of pat on the back and some recognition  will go along way so I’ve sort of made a conscious effort to do that as well.

Mike Southon: I got told of a suggestion and I’m interested to see whether you do these or consider it. One is one that I’ve picked up from large companies where I do the entrepreneurship which I would actually have to say is a bit like pulling at teeth at times and again the one problem they always have in the large companies is communications and one will come up with a solution you know the leeds office doesn’t talk to the London office. And they always come up with the same solution you know the staff themselves which is we’ve had this brilliant idea Mike once a month somebody from the leeds office sits in the London office and visa versa nice and cheap, they can get passed their boss, it doesn’t cost very much and they cover it. Have you thought of doing the same thing which is someone from the Lewis office just spends the day at the Brighton one and doing the same job.

Helena Hudson: Yes we have and we try to do it whenever. In fact I mean hospitality is quite well suited for that because sometimes you know someone can’t come in because they’re sick or whatever so you can actually just rota in someone else from one of the other sites. That works on an informal basis I guess. It’s definitely a positive thing. Where I’ve found it harder though is in the kitchens because kitchens actually work very much I mean it is hard physical work, standards are high and they work as a quiet tightly knit team and when you sort of try and suggest switching and chopping and changing their teams they don’t like it. They really don’t like it.

Mike Southon: It’s a tribal atmosphere isn’t it?

Helena Hudson: It’s very much like that. So I’m a bit stuck on that one. They’ve resolutely failed and it’s just they’re not going to do it unless I force it and even then I don’t know if it’s going to work so that’s a hard one.

Mike Southon: I’ve heard of the, and I’m sure many people do on the television of your kitchen you know of there being flames and there’s servers in the corner, somebody shouting at somebody else and is it like that?

Helena Hudson: A little bit, it can be like that on a very, very busy service. It’s a kind of pressurised environment. You do get sort of tempers and yes I’m sure it is the case in most kitchens really.

Mike Southon: So best practice varied between different places. I mean you can’t necessarily force one places to use one best practise if they don’t accept it.

Helena Hudson: Well what a female thing to say but I actually want everyone to be one big team rather than lots of little teams sort of you know fighting each other. But that’s how they seem to work best if you sort of say well they’re not doing it like that and it works better there. They’re like gasps, they don’t like that and that could work to some extent but in the end it doesn’t sit or rest easy with me because I don’t like undermining it. Its not really such a positive motivator but they do seem to respond to it more like the stick than the carrot and the kitchen is an interesting dynamic group of people to manage.

Mike Southon: Does the atmosphere change when you walk in?

Helena Hudson: I wouldn’t really know to be honest. Its hard. I like to think not. I don’t get people saying to me its actually different when you walk away. I hope not. I mean I think that your own motivation your own characteristics to some extent permeate  through a business and we get bigger obviously it gets harder but I like to think that I’m always sort of quite fair to people, honest, transparent. If I say I’m going to do something I will. Everyone is treated equally and I’d like to think and I do get a sense of that that this how other people are towards each other and I think that’s important but whether it’s like that as much when I’m not there I don’t know

Mike Southon: The final question is because essentially what the message I got from you was you know very successful career in media then you decided I am going to follow my dream. And by then you had business experience and so on.  Specifically I think in the area of research I mean it struck me, you did much more research than the average entrepreneur tends to do, they tend to go with a gut feel, you did it with gut feel and research.  You were sat outside the outlet seeing the footfall and you found a place?

Helena Hudson: Yes that’s right.  Yeah so I did a lot of analysis but the interesting thing now is that I think I would go more on gut instinct because the learning now from the first business plan that I did which I sort of think I mentioned was that figures were rediculess it was out you know you can sit and write the perfect business plan based on what you think should happen looking at all of the sort of evidence and it didn’t turnout to be because in the end its very difficult to predict how customers are going to react to what you are doing.  And there can be lots of things that you just you know hadn’t really thought about the weather, who opens up around you all kinds of things and I think that no kind of research or analysis is going to telling you that I think you have to stay in touch with your yeah with your gut instinct it’s very important.

Mike Southon: Well my gut instinct is continued success for the Real Eating Company.

Helena Hudson: Thank you.

Mike Southon: So you have Hove, you have Horsham, you have Lewes and probably plans to open up another place as well.

Helena Hudson: Yes another two hopefully got on the pipeline yeah.

Mike Southon: Until you are ready to announce those formally we will keep it and keep a veil over those, in the meantime lots of mentoring from Coutts and others.

Helena Hudson: Yeah

Mike Southon: You are getting the best advice you can and the best of luck.

Helena Hudson: Thank you very much.

Mike Southon: Well this has been Mike Southon for Beermat Radio in association with Coutts speaking to Helena Hudson of The Real Eating Company.  Thank you Helena.

Mike Southon: Thank you.