I’ve had over 30 years’ experience of owning and managing successful cutting-edge restaurants and award-winning sandwich cafes. All enterprises were built from scratch and sold on profitably.
This sets me apart from many restaurant and food consultants often from a marketing background. I understand completely what it is like to be on the client’s side of the fence and work for you as though I was spending my own money.
Throughout my business career, I have avidly researched trends throughout the world, creating my own style. But never at the expense of profit.
I was a resident independent operator in the Tate Gallery organisation for 10 years, and therefore understand how to make the relationship between cafe/restaurant and gallery owner work effectively. And indeed any organisation where the catering is ancillary to the main enterprise.
My consultancy practice started in the nineties. ITN at 200 Gray’s Inn Road needed an overhaul of the catering in the media building. The brief was to reduce costs to ITN, and to update the canteen which smelled of gravy, custard and overcooked cabbage. So I recruited Aroma Cafes, a then innovative and vibrant café chain in London, to operate a more upmarket high street offering, on a nil subsidy.
Since 2007 I have been a consultant full time based in central London, and also Paris. My clients range from start-up cafés and restaurants to larger companies and institutions. Each client gets my direct personal attention.
I vigorously support the independent food and drink sector, and am a campaigner for acoustic ceilings in restaurants, so you can hear the music and have a proper conversation.
See my blog for thoughts about the London/Paris restaurant scene, and food in general.
