Season 2 • Episode 3

00:00:00

Louisa Richards

I mean we are lucky because we have so much tenure and within that tenure is that experience and consistency. I think that senior team are important to make sure that consistency is there but we also evolve with what's happening around us and what the landscape looks like.

00:00:20

Conor Sheridan

Welcome back to What's Cooking. I'm Connor Sheridan, CEO and founder of Nory. This week we're talking about something every multi-site operator wrestles with: opening new locations at pace without compromising standards, culture, or profits. It's one thing to open a site when you've got months to plan, recruit carefully and train thoroughly. It's another thing entirely when you've got eight weeks from contract signature to the first service, all during the busiest trading period of the year. And that's exactly what happened at Hawksmore late last year.

When they opened their eighth location in London in St. Pancreas. Eight weeks, peak Christmas trading, and they had to pull their senior leadership out of the highest volume sites to make it happen. The hospitality recruitment crisis is well documented, but what's less discussed is how operational leaders actually navigate it in real time. How do you maintain culture when you're hiring at speed? How do you train a team in five days when you'd normally take weeks? And how do you balance the needs of new sites versus the stability of your existing estate?

Today's guest has opened multiple Hawksmore sites, led teams through COVID, and now oversees operations across eight London restaurants doing thousands of covers per week. She's going to walk us through the operational reality of scaling with integrity and what happens when Theory meets a very tight deadline. Let's get into it.

00:01:46

Conor Sheridan

Louisa, welcome to What's Cooking. Thanks so much for coming on the show.

00:01:50

Louisa Richards

Thank you, thanks for having me.

00:01:51

Conor Sheridan

So you've been at Hawkesmore for thirteen years. You're currently the restaurant director looking after the sites in London. that kind of tenure is quasi unheard of. It's almost a hundred years in hospitality years. maybe you could tell us tell us a little bit about your role, what you what you do at the business, a bit on your journey for how you got there.

00:02:10

Louisa Richards

Yeah, of course. So I am, guess my focus is on performance, people, priorities, supporting and challenging general managers, making sure they are focused on the right thing at the right time in a nutshell. That's what I do week to week, day to day. Yeah, I started, yeah, nearly 13 years ago now in Spitalfields, sort of first site as an AGM. I guess I was at the time.

sort of lost the love for the industry, doing that typical martyrdom, 90 hours a week, micromanager. And yeah, I started at Spittlefield, didn't really just, you know, it was sort of biding time, I guess. yeah, just all of a sudden was surrounded by people who really cared about doing good work, were really passionate about food, drink, standards. And all of a sudden, yeah, it sort of relit.

relit my fire. was just, I was like, everyone's really good and they're happy. So yeah, that was the beginning. And then I, yeah, I was there for about a year and I heard that, you know, Will wanted to open a restaurant in Manchester. So yeah, I opened that restaurant as general manager was there for like three, four years. Went to open up the Edinburgh restaurant for like two, three years. And then, yeah, kicked down, down to London to run the big site, the biggest site in Ayr Street just before COVID hit.

was in Jan 2020 and then yeah, oversaw that site over those two years. did takeaway from there and delivery from there. an amazing experience, very challenging. Times. Yeah. It's so wild to think back. Yeah. And then came out of there, yeah, as a director, we were about to open Canary Wharf, I think it was at the end of 22 and just, yeah, in the middle of a recruitment crisis.

00:03:50

Conor Sheridan

The direct

00:04:08

Louisa Richards

massive restaurant. So I focused on that really moving people around. We'd lost quite a lot of people post COVID. So just making sure the restaurants were stable, culture was intact and we had enough people for this new site. that's, yeah. And then I've just been, yeah, restaurant director since.

00:04:25

Conor Sheridan

Nice, very cool. Incredible journey, right?

00:04:27

Louisa Richards

Yeah, really interesting. I'm like very grateful and proud of all the people I've worked with.

00:04:33

Conor Sheridan

Business trajectory over that period of time, everyone listening will know Hawks more. you've recently, speaking of openings, opened your fourteenth site in St. Pancreas. So it'd be cool. I know speaking off off camera, there was a bit of a compressed time period, maybe a little bit more different than previous models. Could you talk to us a bit about how the opportunity came up?

00:04:53

Louisa Richards

I mean, didn't talk about a curve ball and a pivot. We did not expect that. You you plan your year and then just all of a sudden things just, you you have to focus on different things. But yeah, we'd sort of heard that we might have got this site. It was in like August, but by the time we had signed and it was all agreed and the, you know, all of the building works could start was in September.

Mid September, the building work again was super, I mean, the contractors were working seven days a week. They were there for about six weeks. then, you know, meanwhile you're trying to recruit, figure out who the general manager is, who the head chef is. And yeah, was, was tight and often, you know, you have some like buffer weeks, furniture doesn't arrive. You haven't got the fire suppression unit. There were just things that, that happened that then affect the timeline. But we knew when we wanted.

the big party, the sort of launch party in the bar and sort of worked backwards from that. So actually recruitment, I think they had like three or four weeks to sort of recruits, not just recruit externally, but look within the business who wanted to move that requires a bit of focus as well. We wanted to make sure at this busiest time of year that restaurants remained stable as well as giving people the opportunity to move if they wanted to. So that was quite tricky. It's a lot of tiers.

and then, we, had seven days of training, which we, you know, we don't, I mean, in hindsight, it's not a good idea. you know, it was a lot, and you know, the teams were really, really hard. was, you know, very stressful, very emotional. But I think I said to you earlier, you know, afterwards, just thought, you know, it's kind of the point of it as well. You sort of love it because also everything that you're doing, you just focus on this one thing. So you just focused.

on the opening and making sure it's successful and, you know, making sure that we can do a good job for the people that, you know, for customers as well as make sure the team are, you know, not, not, not in tears or, you know, too stretched.

00:07:00

Conor Sheridan

Testament to the the quality of the operations and quality of the business to be able to even pull that off. Right. I could imagine September build time to December opening, you said four weeks for hiring and and whatnot. Like how different is that versus the usual rollout plan?

00:07:16

Louisa Richards

So, I mean, yeah, really unusual. So, I mean, when I opened Manchester, I moved to Manchester three months before. And so you get a feel for the city, the community. I mean, I guess the benefit of this site and the reason we were ambitious with that timeline was because it was in London. We did have another six restaurants that we could pull resource from. You know, our support team is based here. We have what we call experts.

head of reservations, head of bar, who were also very hands-on. So, you know, if we do an opening Dublin or outside of London, often it costs a lot of money because we have to, you know, fly people out there, put them up in hotels and whatnot. Here it was, it just felt like people were, I mean, we were able to have all hands, I mean, even myself, I worked, you know, part of the week. It was much easier to do that very quickly. So there was more of us, you know, with skillset and we're consistently at site. So.

It was, yeah, but it was, it was tight. And I think we're really tough for the recruitment team. The design team did an excellent job. mean, everyone just, was, yeah, all hands on deck.

00:08:22

Conor Sheridan

Yeah, if we have to be so hyper focused and you met talked about like obviously high cortisol levels but very narrow focus.

00:08:29

Louisa Richards

I mean, we've sort of set a benchmark now, unfortunately, though. I think I heard like one of the, my CEO the other day was just like, well, if we've done it now, we can definitely do it again. And we're all just like, oh my God, I don't know.

00:08:42

Conor Sheridan

Increase your new store opening target by by about four X, yeah.

00:08:45

Louisa Richards

Boston's got 12 months lead time, that's wild!

00:08:49

Conor Sheridan

Nice. You talked a bit a bit about kind of supplanting some of the core team from other restaurants. so oftentimes operators will do that, take a percentage of the headcount from the existing restaurants to bring the DNA or or the expertise. How did you manage that? You mentioned you had four weeks to turn that around.

00:09:06

Louisa Richards

Yeah, I mean, it was, I mean, we had like a gantt shot. was, it was quite complicated. guess, you know, December's a really important month for the business. it's the busiest month. you know, we wanted to make sure that the head chef and GM were internal. They're all sort of key roles to, especially cause we wanted to do this at pace. You know, we are to learn our systems, our culture in that sort of pace. The environment is for an external person, I think is probably.

quite challenging and high risk for us. So it was important that we had, yeah, a GM from, obviously it was the general manager from the biggest site, Airstreet, that came over. And then we just sort of backfilled strategically all the roles that we were moving over. And one of the challenges as well was that it is Christmas and it's a lucrative time of the year for the team.

They earn a lot of trunk in the big site. So anyone that wanted to move over, we just wanted to make sure that their pay wasn't going backwards. we gave them additional pay to marry what they would have made in their home site. So it just made the conversation fairer and easier. But as you can imagine, a lot of general managers who run tight teams weren't necessarily on board with a lot of these moves. was a bit of negotiation. can imagine.

And a lot of direction, but yeah, there was a lot of high motions.

00:10:30

Conor Sheridan

It's cool though. Like, yeah, with the incentive alignment, it makes sense, right? If you can get people and make sure that their opportunity is i is the same, if not higher, than the existing sites. When you look at you talked a bit about all hands on deck. Do you typically do that at openings where you might have the corporate or head office or central support team i inside for a number of weeks as like training wheels or or whatnot?

00:10:54

Louisa Richards

Yeah. So each department will have their time at site. So our head of ops who oversees the build and the contractors and make sure it's safe, you know, does then the handover with the general manager. But I think the benefit of this opening in particular was that the, you know, the ops team were on hand all the time because also this site is in a shared space. There's a lot of intricacies that we're not.

used to and I guess rules that the hotel has set for us as well. Entrances, deliveries were all quite different to what we're used to. So the ops team were able to help with that. The L &D team as well were on hand. So yeah, typically if we were to open a site, it'd be a handful of key people that would go and help, but they just wouldn't be able to be there all the time. It would just be two days here, three days there. Whereas for this one, I mean, they could...

but it was full time for a lot them five days a week. They could just be based at site. We have like a group of sort of like a group bar manager, group restaurant manager who are specifically there for openings as well. Set the standards, create the process, ensure that the heads of departments know exactly what they're doing. So this was, yeah, a key role for them as well in the opening.

00:12:09

Conor Sheridan

Yeah, I can imagine. and you look at the recruitment side. So four weeks you mentioned it's like a fraction of what you usually do. And you can't to get everyone's culture, the systems, the ways of working, if you're net new to the business, plus be able to deliver on everything that you need them to deliver on. Do you have to put a razor to the training plan and focus on things more narrowly? Or what did you prioritize?

00:12:34

Louisa Richards

think if you asked our head of culture and LLT managers, she'd just start crying. Yeah, I mean, was, I think we had originally planned two weeks of training, but for whatever reason, the building work ate into that time. So we had to be quite ruthless around what we were gonna do. We sort of segmented into like, yeah, culture, product.

I think it was really important for us to make sure that we did practice services as well. You can sit there and read lots of stuff, but actually when it's in motion, you're like, oh, where are the teaspoons? Or all of these things that are important. it was quick fire. mean, the recruitment team, you're just sort of taking a punt on people as well, because what we tried to do was trial people in different sites, but also you're adding stress to other restaurants that are already busy.

because we had, I think like 90 people to recruit across the whole departments. You we toyed with like, should we just, you know, put 10 in this restaurant, 10 in there. it just, I mean, the home sites, you know, there's no skin in the game for them. often be like, yeah, yeah, they're fine. You know, you don't know, you're taking a punt, I guess. So yeah, you're hiring based on personality, basically. Like, is this person warm? Do they feel hospitable? But there's also like a lot of hard skill.

attached to and pace attached to working at our restaurants. So you see in the first week if it's if it's for, it's not for all people.

00:14:07

Conor Sheridan

Yeah, definitely. Yeah, in my experience when we've tried to do that for openings, oftentimes because you're layering onto the core team, you can't get a sense of how they'll manage a busy service because they're excess. Obviously, their training wheels are still on. So the businesses where they're where they're being tr trialled or or training is open overstaffed, but tends to have a bit more and kind of buffer there. So when you do land into the realities of your own restaurants and the pace of service, it can it can be very different. He he talks about

Interviewing or looking for personality? What do you look for?

00:14:40

Louisa Richards

I mean, we have like a strong set core values. I mean, definitely warmth, know, interest, I think, you know, passion, like all the basics really, like someone who cares about other people and they're, you know, providing a great experience. think someone who also can demonstrate they have standards, but you know, yeah, work hard and be nice to people is one of our key values. And really that's, that is, you know.

you you can have a conversation with someone and feel it, but the reality is like, it is hard. It's hard working in our restaurants and it's, you know, it's not, it's not for everyone.

00:15:17

Conor Sheridan

Yeah, but it's such a high standard, right? It's one most famous and recognizable brands in the UK. The quality of the product and service is renowned. Mm-hmm. So you've got a bar that people need to meet. And that's quite daunting for new people too.

00:15:30

Louisa Richards

Definitely, but I think we also have to, you know, I think there's a new generation of workforce which we have to inspire and, you know, create careers for. And I think, you know, all of the leadership that we train within our managers are sort of the basics of giving feedback, making sure they have clarity of what their job is, giving them structure. you know, so, so we were really lucky in St. Pancras because all the managers were pretty much internal.

And so therefore we're already used to this style of leadership. So, you know, from the get go, you know, who's on your team, you know, where they're at, what feedback they need in order for them to improve or, know, or maybe they're fine, but there's a real clear process with people. you know, then you add in like the stress of an opening and, just the day to day stuff that might go wrong. It's, you know, it's a lot, it's a lot to juggle.

00:16:25

Conor Sheridan

Definitely. When you're looking at a new opening, then what are you looking at? Like metrics wise or signals wise to say this is going well or this maybe we need to readjust.

00:16:36

Louisa Richards

I mean, the non-negotiable is if you're gonna do it, do it really, really well. So, you know, we knew that St. Pancras was gonna have a lot of momentum. We knew that people were gonna be very excited. You know, as soon as you open the like soft launch book, I mean, it sold out in like 30 seconds or something. So, you know, we knew there was gonna be demand and interest, but you have to be really careful around.

how much you take in because everyone that comes in, you want them to have brilliant experience. So we really controlled our covers per quarter hour. We really staggered demand. We also wanted the restaurant to feel and the bar to feel busy. So had to be quite strategic with reservations and optimization and making sure, you know, all of those things felt doable, busy, but also that we could deliver it, you know, very well. I guess one of the metrics, I mean, the biggest metric really is CSI.

customer experience, know, people, even in a soft launch when you're offering 50 % off, if you don't have a good time, you're still gonna say you didn't have a good time. I mean, from day one, we use sentiment search, which can really dig into CSI and I guess can understand like what people think about food or price or drink or, you know, the martini bar.

in particular, cause it was a new thing for us. We really wanted to understand, you know, how people felt about it. So yeah, I'd say that the biggest metric is, is, is CSI.

00:18:08

Conor Sheridan

It makes sense. Like you have the model down, right, in terms of the op model. So if you can nail the experience in the new venue and the retention of the guests, you'll figure everything else out.

00:18:18

Louisa Richards

Totally. mean, everything comes from that, right? So, you know, it's obviously lots of other important KPIs and I we're still in like, I mean, it's still in its infancy, but we're certainly now it's sort of phase two of where are the inefficiencies? How can we make this like a good business model? Like we know that, you know, not nailed quite so yet, but we, you know, we've done loads of brilliant, amazing things and that was just refining.

00:18:44

Conor Sheridan

Cool. We look at the business renowned culturally for great people, great culture. like your attention itself speaks volumes of the work environment. I've personally been to Hawksmore in different countries and I can testify the experience is amazing in both and the warmness of the people. How do you manage that across the US, Ireland, UK, even regionally in the UK, from Manchester to London or Edinburgh?

00:19:11

Louisa Richards

That's a really good question. mean, it's not easy. And I think also like the landscape is shifting as we grow. I mean, we're 20 this year, which is really crazy to think. It's a really different, the culture's the same, but the landscape's different. Workforce want different things, expect different things. Also, because we're bigger, expect more from us.

I mean, we are lucky because we have so much tenure and within that tenure is that experience and consistency. know, our co-founder, Will, Hugh are still here. The group directors, our COO and CFO have also been here from day one. Our COO was the first general manager at Spittlefield. So I think that senior team are important to sort of make sure that consistency is there. But we also evolve with what, you know, what's happening around us and what the landscape looks like.

You know, I think, I've already talked about the US earlier. It's a different beast. you can have the same values on paper, but it's interpreted completely differently. So that's the sort of, so you have to hire local, you know, senior team to sort of really understand that and then translate it in a way that feels right for us. it's, yeah, not as simple as you would think actually.

00:20:30

Conor Sheridan

No, it doesn't look simple. What you've said there around like the core leadership team and including yourself having been there from day one is so rare. I don't know many brands that have gone through two decades and have that in situ and that's probably why you're able to execute what you can execute.

00:20:49

Louisa Richards

There's so many, obviously so many benefits to it. mean, something we do talk a lot about those being a bit of an echo chamber. I have a lot of general managers who've also been here like 15 years. And so when there is an opportunity to, when a general manager job comes along, we do promote from within, but I think it's just really important to sense check where we're at as well and really get some more perspective into the business so that we can...

can evolve and not, you all of us have just, you know, we've all worked with each other for so long. Yeah, I worry a little bit about being an echo chamber, a little bit culty.

00:21:27

Conor Sheridan

Yeah. one of our team members was saying this even when we were trying to grow the business. First he was like, I love a good cult. You get people excited and mission driven, but you have to be careful that yeah, you don't you're not all beating the same sound on the drum and walking off a cliff together, right? So yeah it's

00:21:45

Louisa Richards

I think you also, you just then rely on people over process and that's quite dangerous. So, someone leaves, they take all that information with them, which has really made us think about how we, we talked about scaling, like, yeah, how we operate from a sort of process.

00:22:05

Conor Sheridan

You have a real high level of autonomy with your GM structure. So obviously, given the sites are high volume, high touch as well, it needs a certain skill level and experience level to run that. when you think around reliance on people versus systems, do you index for really experienced GMs and it'd be good to hear about their position in the business?

00:22:26

Louisa Richards

So our GMs are autonomous and I guess they could all leave tomorrow and be directors and other companies. They're all really skilled and also incredible leaders. But we do, think as we're scaling as well, we rely too much on that. And actually for me, well, for lots of us, I can ask for a piece of work from the general managers. I will get 12 different versions of it.

Or if I asked for a bit of data, I'll get, know, so there's lots of little things that we need to streamline. And I think be more prescriptive around to just make that process more efficient and easier. know take GM weekly reports as an example. I know each GM has their own way of tracking data, know, or stock takes, know you're nori, but they, mean, there's like 12, I don't even want to look under that lid yet. I'm sure there's like three stock takers per site. So.

like 33, 36 different ways of stock taking. can't even begin to, yeah, unpack that. So autonomy, I think autonomy is really, really important for our general managers because it is their business and they're accountable to it and they need to feel motivated. But there are loads of things we need to be more prescriptive around, which is just a process and streamlining thing.

00:23:43

Conor Sheridan

Do you benchmark ways of working across sites? Yeah.

00:23:47

Louisa Richards

Yeah. we will, when we look at every KPI across the restaurants, we sort of rag rate, you know, you'll see who's like the least efficient, who is the most. All of our restaurants are nuanced, designed differently in different locations, different customer base. So there are, you know, there's context to efficiency, but we would definitely, don't know, kitchens as an example, you've got the same menu.

they can do that, what's preventing you from doing that number. So that's the way we would sort of challenge general managers to sort of benchmark themselves against.

00:24:25

Conor Sheridan

Yeah, I like that. I like the fact that you're incorporating the nuance because it's not apples to apples. If you a basement chiller and you need to run around and if they're unsurface or you're off site or you've multiple stories and exact your speed of service is not gonna be the

00:24:30

Louisa Richards

Totally.

Yeah.

00:24:39

Louisa Richards

same. We were on two floors. know, that yeah, there's loads, loads of content.

00:24:44

Conor Sheridan

New ones. If you move into keep digging on the data side of performance management, obviously, like it's a big topic on the podcast, people being the most important. But beyond that, it's how do you look at numbers? The industry's going through a transition phase where they're becoming more data focused and more precision focused. So it'd be cool to get your take on some of that. What do you look at on the sites? You talked on customer sentiment being number one. what else are you looking at KPI wise to know if the sites are going well?

00:25:12

Louisa Richards

I mean, if you asked anyone in the finance team, they'd be demand, cash is king. You ask, you know, the guys that are more in charge of customer experience to be customer experience. I guess, yeah, we look at all of the KPIs that affect the business, but predominantly CSI being the North Star of all KPIs, think just, yeah, what do customers think? What can we do to make their experiences better? But yeah, one of the biggest ones we look at is demand and covers.

you every year you want to see, you don't want to see covers declining. It's not, not a healthy business. So, I mean, we're, we're, you know, some of our restaurants are quite old now, old for restaurants. I mean, I think like Seven Dials in particular is, you know, it's, it's a inner location, so had by loads of amazing other operators. Um, you know, it's doing really well. Actually, it's probably our most profitable restaurant, but it is not, um,

It's hard to get better and better because of its age and I guess where it's at. So something that we're doing at the moment is trying to isolate where the cover decline might be. Is it on a Sunday? Is it post 8pm? Is it lunch times? And actually because customer behavior is changing as well, what we are seeing now that we've got this data, we see light for light covers per hour per restaurant and we heat map it. We know that post eight o'clock.

that no one's really dining out anymore. When I started as an ATM in Spittalfields, we used to have a queue out the door at 11, but it's just not a thing anymore. think people don't eat out at that time. So we know that's an area that, you know, can we change it? Can we focus on from a marketing perspective? Is there anything we can do? Campaigns, run a different menu. We are actually in an after eights menu now, but like, yeah, it's making sure that we are focused on the right bit.

And then actually as a senior team, as a support team, especially with marketing and operations, we can make sure that we're sort of working, we're aligned and we're working together on, you know, this specific area of the week for this restaurant.

00:27:20

Conor Sheridan

I really like that. I think oftentimes if you can see a a mature venue, if if something is a bump in the road, for example, you can panic and the sky is falling and try to change everything. Whereas you've similar to what you said around you have a goal, one venue of eight, ten weeks to execute it, if you can isolate hype your hypothesis to say maybe actually the demand curve has shifted a little bit earlier. So can we elongate it and then you spend the time to go, what can we do to drive that metric? And

Then you can move on to your next test, do your next test. Otherwise, if you try to do a marketing strategy for every hour, every venue, change pricing, change upselling strategy.

00:27:57

Louisa Richards

And I think, you know, you can, we've done this in the past as well. You know, you can be like, we've done everything. It's a marketing problem. Fix it. It's just not helpful. You're like, but where, you know, diagnose the actual issue and, know, something that I'm doing at the moment with some of the GMs is like, what are the levers that we can pull that we need to check off in terms of what we can do to help the situation? Do we need to look at, you know, reservations, optimization, how good are your team? You know, have you got the right person on the door? Are they making good decisions? You know, what's your CSI? you, you know.

How many regulars have you got? So there is loads of operational stuff we can look at to help that metric. And then if we're like, we're doing everything, actually there is a demand issue at this point of the week. Then we hand it over to marketing who have their own levers.

00:28:41

Conor Sheridan

Nice. Yeah, really interesting on the retention stuff, right? It's becoming a bigger part of the industry, how to drive retention and and drive repeatable customers. So if we look at the you talked about benchmarking and we talked about like it's not all apples to apples and there's nuances and you've talked that you have an internal rag status of maybe summary KPIs. How do you think about looking at maybe the the intangibles that you just mentioned? The people or the personalities?

00:29:09

Louisa Richards

Yeah.

00:29:09

Conor Sheridan

Did a metric sell out story or is that more on the ground of being

00:29:12

Louisa Richards

Yeah. mean, it's hard. think as you get bigger as well, it's really, you have to be so clear with what good looks like because it just becomes open to interpretation. we're having a bit of a review at the moment of our people systems, our L and D systems, the way in which we review our teams. I think like post COVID, there was a bit of dilution in standards, decisions to promote too early, for example, just

to maintain stability in restaurants happened. And then, know, in turn, if you have a newly promoted manager who's making hiring decisions, it's just, then it gets a bit muddy and not clear and actually then the standards drop. So at the moment we are trying to, we have traffic lights for every single person. We've actually categorized, we categorize our teams, so like individual impact, team impact roles, business impact roles and growth impact roles. So they have.

different styles of reviews and job descriptions. It's something that we're working on at the moment actually. We're reviewing all the job descriptions and then attaching reviews to them, which then have traffic lights so that every individual can see where they're at, where the opportunity for growth is, and then can have a development plan attached to that. So it's a process we've not embedded yet, but we're sort of designing that is needed because I think that's what people want. They just want to know how good am I doing and what do I need to do to improve.

And at the moment, you know, the general managers will fill in these traffic lights, but often, I mean, I have a GM day every month. It just becomes a bit of an opinion piece. One doesn't agree with the other about a specific individual, you know, like you're both wrong, you're both right. But how can you, okay, without getting too data centric, cause it's so human, how do you put a number on it? And actually I think you've got to go quite granular around what the, what the areas of responsibility are and sort of grade them on each of those things. Maybe in my mind, that's how you would use data.

00:31:08

Conor Sheridan

You talked like earlier on like the alignment and and you're across different geos and you're growing and you're such a large business, that's so critical. Like at the front line, if you can be really clear what great looks like, what's expected of everyone, how you line up to the standards that the business needs to be number one or or to be a winner and then people yearn for clarity and alignment, right? The worst thing is to be operating in the dark and not know if you're doing a great job or not so great job. So it's very cool. It's not something that you see so often in the business. So

00:31:35

Louisa Richards

No, I mean, it's, I think as we get bigger as well, as I said, it's just, it's just becoming, yeah, just so important that, you know, it's our general managers essentially who, you know, lead their teams and their management teams and really have so much influence over standards and culture and the performance of the, you know, of the companies. So I think making sure they're really aligned and clear with what good looks like and what process is for certain parts of the business is like.

Yeah, it's just key to just it not being as chaotic as it needs to be.

00:32:09

Conor Sheridan

Yeah, hospitality, organized chaos is the only way. If you do a bit of a reflection on Saint Pancreas, a lot of people listening will have been there, will have been to all the other venues and like kind of a lessons learned, I suppose. So if you look back on it, what would you have done differently?

00:32:11

Louisa Richards

Totally.

00:32:24

Louisa Richards

I mean, definitely given more time, think, to the people team for recruitment and training in particular. I mean, we were just at the mercy of that timeline. And I think we did, I mean, the team did such a great job considering, but I think we would have, yeah, maybe like pushed like the directors, the group directors a bit more for like more training time, although I'm not sure if I would have got it over the line.

It's really hard as well. The management team that did this opening were all really brilliant in their own right. The GM managed to get a really good team together, but they had never done an opening before. And so it's really difficult to explain at the beginning. have, some of the support team do openings all the time. So our head of culture is like, this is how it's going to feel. You're going to want to scream and it's going to be very emotional. And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. And then when it happens, they forget all of the stuff that...

You know, so there's just something around like just reminding people like one day at a time. I mean, the amount of people that were like, I'm going to leave tomorrow. is too much. One day at a time, you'll get through it. Just need one foot in front of the other. It's really hard. I understand, but we'll get there. now they're like, it's brilliant.

00:33:33

Conor Sheridan

Internally we use this graph, which is like the messy middle, which is like the valley of despair. So like when you you start something, you have this optimism and then when you get into figuring it out, everyone's like torturous day today. It's like there is a way on the other side once you figure this out.

00:33:48

Louisa Richards

You're like, it's coming. also people don't want to hear like, well, when I did it, was, you know, cause I actually like, I have done openings. I've done some really difficult ones. This in my, you know, my opinion, was, it was actually, there was so much support. There was a lot of, you know, noise as well, but I don't want to take that experience away. Like it was hard for them. And so it's, you know, I guess it's the more you do it, the easier it becomes.

00:34:12

Conor Sheridan

What works that you didn't expect to or what worked better than expected given the compressed timeline?

00:34:17

Louisa Richards

I mean, I guess we were really not nervous, but we didn't know how the bar would take off. was kind of, you know, we've had Spittlefield's bar before. When we opened Canary Wharf, we had the low back, but we changed that model, I think after about a year, because it just wasn't working. So I think we really want, the intention was to like go big with this martini. I mean, the building is amazing and the room was really cool. So we really wanted to match that.

with the offer and the experience. I mean, that's taken off. is just, I mean, we're like nine weeks, eight weeks in, and it's just busy all the time, which is great. And, you know, I think that's really taken us by surprise a bit. at the moment now we're reviewing like the offer and how can we make it more efficient? like some of the, mean, we had, we just didn't have enough space. We sold more martinis.

in one night compared to other seven restaurants in London, one night. I mean, our beverage director was there every day at 6 a.m. just batching martinis. I mean, he was over it by the end of it. But we didn't have the space, know, like the fridge space. And so now we're figuring out, we need to change the bar to like accommodate the volume? So that really took us by surprise.

00:35:37

Conor Sheridan

Is that a a general excess volume or specifically more the change in consumer demand or

00:35:41

Louisa Richards

I mean, it's such a brilliant location though as well. mean, we have like people coming in from the Euro star and so it's the walk-in trade is just like, being great. We're a bit like to know like how it's going to be, but yeah. So we're just like trying to figure things out whilst we're still busy and not, not batching at 6 AM every day.

00:36:04

Conor Sheridan

Yeah, or for a short time. You look at openings, if you have to do one again at that compressed timeline, or if somebody else is going through a similar process where they get an acquisition or something has come up that they want to execute on, what are your non negotiables to make sure that it will work?

00:36:21

Louisa Richards

I think like a really, your head chef and general manager are like, you have to be really, they have to be really good. They have to be low risk and very resilient because ultimately they'll be getting a lot of dealing with all of the day-to-day stuff. that I think also, I think don't open the books too quick, too fast.

Don't shoot yourself in the foot. think slow and steady is really the way to go with a short timeline because you just don't know the team of new. I mean, you know, they haven't got the chat nailed down yet. They don't know allergen process or whatever it might be. I think just slow and steady and really adapting cover volume to the team. Those are real tensions there. I think like one of the directors like, we should just go big. Like, no, like.

Are you mad? It's not fair on the team and customers, maybe they won't have a great time. So I think the non-negotiables should be really considerate around that pace and those reservations.

00:37:23

Conor Sheridan

I like that. So control your like covers per hour per member and slowly loosen loosen it and and once you see the sentiment is maintaining from the guests and the team feedback is there, it's very cool. 'Cause a lot of times and I've done it too. I remember we did an opening for our third restaurant. We did like an influencer day and all these other and then just a a follower day from social media for over three days and didn't batch it. Everybody just turned up.

god.

00:37:52

Louisa Richards

I mean, that's the thing that gives you the anxiety. my gosh. Yeah. think, mean, everything's in, who you've got and your team and yeah, you just want to give them a good fighting start.

00:38:03

Conor Sheridan

You mentioned the businesses moving into a new level of maturity, obviously 20 years, global scale. You've become like the premier steakhouse and premier place to go in the UK. constantly ranked in the top steakhouses in the world and the very top places. So what do you think you need to look at as you continue to scale and evolve maturity wise or process wise to keep this going in this direction?

00:38:29

Louisa Richards

there is definitely something around like a framework. I think I spoke to you earlier and how we, you know, how we manage projects, how we communicate, sort of cadence of meetings, sort of behind the of, you know, strategy and vision to how that communicates in restaurants. think there's a process there that needs to be really simple and clear and needs to be managed with discipline as well. I think.

You know, we do have a lot of restaurants and you know, over a thousand people that work here and we have to be like, we have to be really organized with what it is we want them to do. And something that we're talking a lot about at the moment is systems and tech and what that can do for us. I mean, we have a lot of great tech in Hawksmore actually, we don't use it to its potential at all. So really looking at that area of the business to help with, yeah, streamlining and cadence and like reporting.

You know, it's painful to, like, you shouldn't have to spend an hour putting some data together to, you know, you should have a dashboard that already has it. You should have systems that speak to each other. So that, that I think is what we need in order to, to be brilliant at what we do to, you know, have resources that just help us focus more on customers and people.

rather than the admin, the stock take that might take someone 12 hours. There's a lot of opportunity there, I think, and we have to do that. The size that we are in, there's just discipline, I think, and a bit of change of mindset required at senior level as well, which we're sort of talking about at the moment.

00:40:12

Conor Sheridan

payment to common growing paints, right? The champagne problems. But yeah it's key. We do hear that a lot around and we've seen it even in in Nory a little bit on when you move from first get the accessibility of the data you need to make good decisions. And then when you stop challenging the data and the sources on there, then you can move to actually actioning it, which is kind of the the best place to was very cool. We're going to move to the quick turn. So this is the rapid fire.

00:40:35

Louisa Richards

Yeah, tie it in.

00:40:40

Conor Sheridan

elements of the podcast. Yeah. So what's one operational metric you wish more restaurant operators tracked?

00:40:46

Louisa Richards

I'm not going to say CSI because it's boring. Probably repeat custom. Yeah, think, you know, it is, you can be busy, but I want to know like how often are you here? Why do you keep coming back? Why aren't you coming back? I think that's really important.

00:40:51

Conor Sheridan

Love that.

00:41:01

Conor Sheridan

Do feel like you have a good command of that today in the business?

00:41:03

Louisa Richards

So it's actually a project that we're working on at the moment called Journey to Regular, which is really about segmenting our customers. you new person or a lifer? And then making sure that those experiences fit how much they know about Hawke's Moor and how often they come in.

00:41:26

Conor Sheridan

Very cool. If we could automate one thing in restaurant operations tomorrow, what would it be?

00:41:31

Louisa Richards

rotors, I still see people using back of menus with like pencils and I'm like, we have a system that does this. But I think it just takes away the pain and the overthinking. If you have a system that knows what the weather's going to be like, or if there's an event in town or knows your history of, you know, can forecast well, you know, the capability of an individual, think, yeah, just be an automated rotor that could just do it for you in seconds.

00:41:59

Conor Sheridan

Hundred percent. and we're a thousand people across those sites. Obviously, complexity you need to need to solve. What's a common belief in the industry that you disagree with?

00:42:09

Louisa Richards

I think maybe in general managership, don't believe that GMs need to be, I don't believe in heroics, I guess. I think there is people in this industry, maybe it's my age speaking here, you have to be hands on for you to be doing a good job actually. think like it's not about heroics, it's about taking a step back and calm leadership that actually creates results and impact.

I think I'd certainly grew up in this industry with a, you know, very pacey, like aggressive style of companies. I don't, it wasn't, wasn't right.

00:42:44

Conor Sheridan

What's one or what's the biggest misconception about running a restaurant?

00:42:48

Louisa Richards

that it's easier as you get bigger. I think maybe it's just where we're at in the moment, but yeah, I think we're trying to learn to be big whilst still keeping feeling small. But actually what's happened is we just have, you know, rather than like two mistakes, it's just 12 mistakes in 12 different languages. So it's just, yeah, figuring, guess, going back to sort of process and framework and how we operate as a group. think, yeah, scaling up is...

quite hard, especially when everyone is very high tenure and also quite nostalgic.

00:43:22

Conor Sheridan

I can imagine. And then final one, what's one hire that you've made that's completely changed the trajectory of the site's performance?

00:43:31

Louisa Richards

wouldn't say there's like anyone in particular, I'd say it would be, I think going back to that calm leadership, I think I've never had to put someone in a restaurant for it to change drastically, a good hire that I've mean, I've talked in particular in Manchester, the guy that took over from me, Jack, I think what he brought to that site was something I couldn't do at the time, which did change and transform that restaurant.

His passion, his vision for hospitality, his calm leadership is really the thing that I think move Manchester to where it is right now. One of the best restaurants, I believe, in Manchester. But I think, yeah, that can't, I think I prioritize calm leadership over like chaotic charisma. Like any time of day, feel like consistency is really, really important from a leader at a site.

00:44:24

Conor Sheridan

Really nice. And a shout out to Jack. Nice name drop. Well, look, that's a wrap on What's Cooking. Thanks so much for joining us today. Really appreciate the time. Great to hear that that St. Pancreas is killing it. Look forward to see what you guys do this year. No doubt there's gonna be a few more.

00:44:26

Louisa Richards

Yeah.

00:44:35

Louisa Richards

Yeah.

00:44:40

Louisa Richards

Yeah, let's say let's say thanks for having me. Thanks Mel.

00:44:42

Conor Sheridan

What an awesome conversation. A few things stood out for me. First, the tension between speed and standards. Louisa and her team compressed what would normally be a four-month opening process into just eight weeks and they pulled it off. But the cost was real. High attrition, stressed managers, taking punts on hires they couldn't properly vet. The site worked because they had experienced leadership in place, who understood the business, the systems, and the culture deeply enough to improvise.

That's not scalable indefinitely, and Louisa and Hawksmore know it. Second is the autonomy model. Hawksmore's GMs are highly autonomous, self-sufficient, with really significant tenure. Louisa described it as not as organized as you think, but loads of people who are really good at what they do. That works brilliantly until it doesn't. As they scale, the informal, people-oriented, independent model will face pressure. The question isn't whether to systemize, but how do you do it without losing what makes the culture special? Third,

Efficiency as a profit lever. Labor hours per cover is a simple, powerful metric. It's comparable across sites, it surfaces inefficiency early, and it's something GMs can actually act on. If you're managing multiple sites and you're not benchmarking this, you're leaving money and experience on the table. And finally, recruitment. Louisa's passion for hospitality careers came true all across the conversation. She talks about making hospitality meaningful and exciting and not just a 70-hour week grind.

That's the right conversation to be having, especially as the industry competes for talent against sector with more flexible hours and pay. Culture and career progression matter. They are retention tools. And in a recruitment crisis, retention is everything. If you're scaling and you're facing similar pressures, tight timelines, recruitment challenges, maintaining standards at scale. The takeaway here is clear. Invest in experienced leadership early. Track the right metrics and do not

underestimate the value of cultural clarity. It won't solve every problem, but it'll give you a fighting chance when things get chaotic. Thank you for listening. If you found this useful, please share it with someone who needs to hear it. And if you've got thoughts or questions or even strong opinions, send them my way. See ya next time.

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