Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
HUNGRY is the podcast for Challenger Food and Drink brands wanting to pour gasoline on their growth. Fancy being kind? Want to feel warm inside? Please hit the Subscribe button. You’d really, really make my week.
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:01:16
Dan Pope
Cool. Ready to roll in? Ready?
00:00:01:17 - 00:00:14:12
Dan Pope
Sick. Well, mate, thank you for doing this. Especially in this sweltering but wonderful heat in, Pitcairn with your food poisoning already. It shows your commitment and discipline.
00:00:14:14 - 00:00:22:01
Adam Handling
Yeah. That's right. That's what makes a beautiful place. But, sadly, you're bound to happen once again when you're in Thailand. Just happens. Yes.
00:00:22:01 - 00:00:50:23
Dan Pope
Like Thailand, it's like, come out of nowhere. Yeah. One of to start with is the name Will frog. Yep. I read that it was. You called it frog because frogs either sink or swim. It was your first business whereby, you know, it was a sink or swim moment. I would love to know. What was the moment in your business journey and or career where you felt like you were sinking, like you would, you know, you're drowning your lungs almost filling up.
00:00:51:03 - 00:01:05:06
Dan Pope
You don't know which way you're going. You're sort of blacking out a bit. First and second. How did you use lateral or sideways thinking to get out of that? You know, surface to the top. You know what I mean.
00:01:05:08 - 00:01:24:04
Adam Handling
There's been I don't think you can ever say there's one of that moments in your career. It happens very regularly. I think what makes your business stronger is realizing how to adapt and get out there, of any sinking hole that you get into. I always love this phrase when you think about being buried. Uses an excuse to regrow, you know, understand what went wrong.
00:01:24:05 - 00:01:40:09
Adam Handling
Don't let it happen again. Come back even more beautiful, like a plant. So I kind of live by that side of life, but also surround myself with people that I trust. Love, I know only have the best for me and my attentions to to what I wanted to create my collection. So show me your friends and I'll tell you how successful you're going to be.
00:01:40:10 - 00:01:57:12
Adam Handling
That's basically the motto of life. Surround yourself with people smarter than you in the fields that you need. Help him. You know, chefs nowadays, they think that, just because you're cooking the food means you can run everything and it'll be successful as hell. That's incorrect. You know, you acquire a beautiful ecosystem similar to the back of a watch.
00:01:57:14 - 00:02:25:17
Adam Handling
You need them all. All come together and, And make that timeless piece of everlasting success, not just success. Now. So I would say probably my first bit of issues. My first restaurant, A1 frog, when it was in, Shoreditch, I ran into problems every single month, you know, realizing that shit, I didn't order enough, say toilet roll, for example, or the little things which I never thought I'd need to do because I had that frame of mind that I'm a chef.
00:02:25:17 - 00:02:46:22
Adam Handling
Running a restaurant's going to be easy. No, cooking is easy. The restaurant is 50% of the business. So wobbling over there, you know, messing up with payroll because, you know, you're not the smartest at that thing. Messing up at budgets, messing up and orders and then not understanding the difference between logic and passion, which is every chef's biggest problem logically.
00:02:46:22 - 00:03:01:16
Adam Handling
Do I need that passionate. We need it. It's going to make it look even better. Say for a plate example. So I think, my biggest growing as a, as a human being, as a person was understanding the two different boundaries of passion and logic.
00:03:01:18 - 00:03:16:04
Dan Pope
So it like just sink into that a bit more any like sort of, examples to add some sort of scaffolding or color to that, because I love that sort of tension between logic and passion. Like, how have you, you know, become better at that?
00:03:16:10 - 00:03:40:18
Adam Handling
One of one of the biggest and hardest things that we've ever had to do in life was to cut a restaurant off mid production. So, for example, we're building the place. We're spending loads of money at it. We've hired the team. We've we've got the the wine stock. We've put a lot of money behind it. And just before the doors open, we cut the, the arm off of the the restaurant, and we say no, because things change.
00:03:40:20 - 00:03:59:10
Adam Handling
And you realizing that this build of what it's happening. And this happened about a year and a half ago to one restaurant, and then we opened and folks with the same team that we had for this new site, the passion around it was, we can do this. Legals can. Legals take about nine months. But when you're doing something really massive, this is an overseas restaurant.
00:03:59:12 - 00:04:21:12
Adam Handling
And, but I trust the people. People don't know you. They don't trust you. They're inspired by your passion. But it's a business for them at the end of the day as well. So the the hardest, the hardest business decision ever done was even though we've put in hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds into this project, it's going to be the most costly learning lesson I've ever made.
00:04:21:17 - 00:04:35:00
Adam Handling
Really. And, I told my board I was like, it's not. It's becoming too muddy now. The Bordeaux like, if you feel comfortable that you want to cut it, it's going to be the most expensive lesson in your life, but you'll never make it again. And it's good you get it done now.
00:04:35:00 - 00:04:35:18
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:04:35:18 - 00:04:36:13
Adam Handling
So we did that.
00:04:36:14 - 00:04:37:09
Dan Pope
Where was the restaurant?
00:04:37:09 - 00:04:38:23
Adam Handling
Overseas in the Cayman Islands.
00:04:38:23 - 00:04:39:12
Dan Pope
In the Cayman.
00:04:39:12 - 00:04:56:01
Adam Handling
Islands. I was doing a lot of, a lot of work out there, working on a new project with the new developer out there and, had had the term signed, had everything like that. You know, you're spending a hell of a lot of money, but it's a different it's a different country. So you require a lot more different hoops to jump through.
00:04:56:03 - 00:05:12:21
Adam Handling
And, I'm like, I just want to start with this project, you know, I, I trust you, you trust me. We're ready to go with it. Is my money coming into it? Sure. But if it doesn't work, you know, you don't have the. We're not giving you anything back. It is what it is, and I trust you.
00:05:12:21 - 00:05:14:21
Adam Handling
Let's do it. Worst thing I've ever did.
00:05:14:21 - 00:05:30:17
Dan Pope
Really? So take me to, You say you're. I don't know whether you're in the Cayman Islands. You're in a hotel room. You're pacing up and down. If you know there's a whole sunk cost fallacy, once you're in, you're in. And I think a lot of people make foolish decisions because you, you know, once we're this far in, let's fucking keep going.
00:05:30:18 - 00:05:48:06
Dan Pope
Yep. I think what we're talking about before we, when we having a coffee downstairs mate, is about, you know, saying no, the art of the art of saying no is so hard. And again, it kind of it dance between the the dichotomy of passion and logic. But yeah, take me into your headspace. How did you come to the decision to say no?
00:05:48:06 - 00:06:04:16
Dan Pope
Because people there'll be a lot of businesses and leaders and founders listening to this who they that they're in their it and they spent they've put a 100 K in whatever 200 K and they're gonna fucking go on and they may be swimming in towards the top or driving into the Titanic, but I took me through that.
00:06:04:18 - 00:06:28:03
Adam Handling
The, the main problem was the, the finances, the debt repayment plan to, go back into it. Obviously, when opening a restaurant overseas, it requires I think this project was around about the 7 million pounds. So I required some debt financing to be able to do that. And the terms weren't quite pretty as they were at the very beginning, because obviously it went from 5 to 7 and then obviously two more makes it a little bit sticky.
00:06:28:05 - 00:06:44:03
Adam Handling
And you're in that mine frame where I've sunk in a hell of a lot of money already. We can make it work. And I've got the mindset where because I have such a wonderful, beautiful, very smart team around me that look after all specific areas, whenever we open something, we all do it together and we make it successful.
00:06:44:05 - 00:07:01:19
Adam Handling
But then that means that all seven of my directors, for all the areas, will be based in one property, and the rest of the group also still has to survive. So do we save costs to pay debt back to be able to have the directors there, or do we push them around the rest of the business like a normal operation and make everything successful?
00:07:01:21 - 00:07:14:03
Adam Handling
And, you know, I got, I got I got so much grief from my shareholders, so much grief from my well, I didn't get grief from my board. I got questioned, you know, the board are extremely questionable about really what sort.
00:07:14:03 - 00:07:15:00
Dan Pope
Of questions were they asking.
00:07:15:00 - 00:07:37:22
Adam Handling
Me? The financial my board is not hospitality. They are the best in the business. But they they they love they have a passion for my dreams. Yeah. So they they were they've pretty much all sat on my board for years, and, they love me, but they've also been kicked down many a times it through their careers and their passing on life's lessons, but they know not to push them down my throat.
00:07:37:24 - 00:07:55:01
Adam Handling
You know, my my board is there to advise me not to tell me how to run a business. And then it's up to me to, to, listen with my internal people to be like, yeah, okay, this isn't really working. And when you've got one of the closest board members there, phenomenal guy who taught me everything I knew.
00:07:55:05 - 00:08:05:00
Adam Handling
Whisper in my ear quietly. Really take a long, hard think of this. I've got I have your back. But these are the areas which I'm concerned about. And if he's concerned about it, I should be concerned about it.
00:08:05:01 - 00:08:06:09
Dan Pope
What were they? What were those areas?
00:08:06:09 - 00:08:08:19
Adam Handling
The, bullies. Bullies?
00:08:08:20 - 00:08:11:02
Dan Pope
Bullies aside from the others? Well, even on his. Yeah.
00:08:11:03 - 00:08:33:14
Adam Handling
When the when the when the terms change from one to another. Yeah. There was a lot there was a lot of, changes happening. Okay. Changes from our side to and their side too. But the, the way that they were perhaps perceiving their self or portraying their self, it wasn't as, romantic as what it first started out as an if it's a little bit muddy at the beginning before the operations even open.
00:08:33:14 - 00:08:53:09
Adam Handling
How do you think it's going to be when the operations open? And he's just extremely cautious and very much a be careful, be careful. And he's he's my working out. So you've created all your financials with your finance, with RFID hats teams. Let me edit everything up, but do it from a, from a real mean person's way.
00:08:53:11 - 00:09:02:10
Adam Handling
And let me tell you what the worst case thing of this is going to be. And it was within six months to a year, your entire collection is bankrupt.
00:09:02:12 - 00:09:20:13
Dan Pope
There's, there's a podcast I love called Chris Williamson, and he talks about 2D lessons versus 3D lessons. So 2D lessons that, you know, stuff you can read in a book, but they only actually sink in when they become 3D, i.e. you actually, you know, you know, go through it yourself. So like a, a 3D lesson would be something like a heartache, you know.
00:09:20:13 - 00:09:34:24
Dan Pope
So if you break up with you Mrs.. For the time, you're like, you can't read that in a fucking textbook. You have to go through it. You got to experience. I think that's what it is for you in your business. What you're saying, you know, was all this stuff in the Cayman Islands. I think your way of saying is when you know, when you're buried, you can grow and blossom.
00:09:35:01 - 00:09:57:22
Dan Pope
And I think it's going through that fucking enormous, you know, the pain that's in your nervous system, it's kind of ricocheting around based off that period where you were buried. What are the one, two, three principles that you now apply to the collection, you know, going forward? Well, I think I really believe that the deeper the the pain that the, the the richer and deeper the wisdom.
00:09:57:24 - 00:10:16:07
Adam Handling
The hardest part of my career was during Covid. And, I'll talk about that one more because I'll tell you what happened there. And that's where I really got shook up my first wobble of my entire, well, my main wobble that was pretty much, toxic to myself was when Covid just happened, purely because I'm a control freak.
00:10:16:10 - 00:10:37:18
Adam Handling
We were opening restaurants left, right and center, and I thought I was invincible. I was a cocky, cocky person back then. Because everything that I had touched with the team that I was around worked, which was beautiful. And it wasn't because of me. It was because I had a phenomenal structure of people around me that they believed in my visions pretty much more than I did on some occasions to make sure that everything succeeded.
00:10:37:20 - 00:10:45:05
Adam Handling
But when Covid happened, there was no fallback plan. We were living our restaurant collection month by month. We didn't have a context.
00:10:45:05 - 00:10:48:18
Dan Pope
How many restaurants did you have at this point so you didn't have like the goal was that for free.
00:10:48:20 - 00:10:54:00
Adam Handling
Or we had way more than that. But at that point of time we had. So what closed was Frank Hoxton.
00:10:54:02 - 00:10:54:24
Dan Pope
Yeah.
00:10:55:01 - 00:11:15:24
Adam Handling
Iron stock in Hoxton been in wheat. The item hunting Chelsea Hotel on the the Belmond Cadogan ugly butterfly, the original one on Kings Road, the charity restaurant. The rest of them stayed. Now that's more than half of your portfolio. It's a big kick in the nuts because landlords were still demanding their rent. Apart from the Belmont.
00:11:16:01 - 00:11:36:09
Adam Handling
The rest of them are still demanding their rent. And, you have no backup plan to be able to afford that? None at all. And we had heavy debt on a lot of our restaurants. A lot at a time. Millions of debt, in fact, on restaurants, most, most businesses do, and, everything needed to be paid.
00:11:36:11 - 00:11:57:20
Adam Handling
And I had no idea what to do. I had, literally no idea what to do. I had a newborn baby, what do you do? I melted, I collapsed, I went into the I went into the bathroom, I cried my eyes out, I was lost, and then, Nicola and Steven, Jamie. George. Most unlikely. And Steven, at the beginning, they were like, we need to do something.
00:11:57:22 - 00:12:16:20
Adam Handling
We need we need to make some money. We have an entire staff here. A lot of people are coming to, frog in particular to, to work here. And they're at home being bored. So let's do charity stuff. So get us out, start cooking. We were doing that. We did 21, 21,000 meals for charity, but then doing so, we were like, this is actually piss easy to be able to do that.
00:12:16:20 - 00:12:33:18
Adam Handling
And everyone's really appreciative that they're here. So let's do our home deliveries. But let's not do what everyone else is doing where it's one box, you get told what you're doing. Let's do what our restaurants are known for. You pick the menu, we'll create the box for you. We'll send it out to you. And, from there we were working.
00:12:33:20 - 00:12:52:20
Adam Handling
It was meadow, mental, a mental. And it was all tax free. And you were making ridiculous amounts of money and you saw your deadline go from millions down, down, down. Valentine's day, we made something like 148,000 pound on one day tax free because it's on delivery. So you're looking at these numbers and you're like we're doing 5000 orders.
00:12:52:20 - 00:13:10:13
Adam Handling
We've capped. This is this is mental. We're we're drawing down debt drawing down debt. And it's going straight to pay off the debt. Obviously there was a bit of a problem. So we got a little bit in trouble. But we were we came out of lockdown way better off than what we did when we won. And the one thing that I realized was I am not invincible.
00:13:10:15 - 00:13:30:12
Adam Handling
I thought I was, but because I was surrounded by great people that wouldn't let anything fail. But that arrogant, that arrogant in business, you everyone has it. No. No one. No founder. Start up a creative founder, create something and thinks it's not going to work. They put the hustle on. It's going to work. No one thinks it's not going to.
00:13:30:14 - 00:13:52:23
Adam Handling
So you need to be knocked down massively to be shown all of the flaws in your operations being IT financial, being IT staff, being IT marketing, anything you want to think about and that's all you need to experience that in life is the hardest lesson, but the best lesson I've ever had, because it realizes that we need to work better on controlling them cogs.
00:13:53:00 - 00:13:57:19
Adam Handling
It needs to be that watch. At the moment, it was just one. It didn't have 100.
00:13:57:24 - 00:13:58:14
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah.
00:13:58:14 - 00:13:59:23
Adam Handling
Yeah, it was one.
00:14:00:00 - 00:14:24:09
Dan Pope
Yeah. It's interesting because it's it's almost it's like the Icarus deception. You know, they could fly too close to the sun and eventually wings burn and you fall. But I think it's all well and good people saying that. But ultimately it's to get anything going. You need a massive ego. That's not the any rock band you think about any fucking Facebook, anything that's been created that has a positive impact on the world to one maniac with a massive ego speaking.
00:14:24:11 - 00:14:43:05
Dan Pope
That's why I disagree with no ego in business, because it's the ego that ultimately pushes you through the days you don't want to do it. The the vision of I can do this. And it's kind of a bit of a paradox, because if you don't have ego, you don't nothing. None of this hotel was swanky. Hotel was Saturn doesn't get built without some fucking love within vision to be what I mean.
00:14:43:05 - 00:15:02:07
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah, but it's it's not. It is that dance. So when you did fly too close to the sun with Covid, you had that kind of not like. Yeah. I think there's that moment when everything you touch was turning to gold. It was when it starts turning to LEDs, like how did, how did how did the atom handling change in that period?
00:15:02:09 - 00:15:03:24
Dan Pope
So need of,
00:15:04:01 - 00:15:11:07
Adam Handling
Every personal asset that we had went on the market so that we can, have every I had to do that. It was all tied up to the business and we were. So when you.
00:15:11:07 - 00:15:12:02
Dan Pope
Say person, I was like.
00:15:12:02 - 00:15:18:15
Adam Handling
Causes my parents house as well. You know, like everything my mum and dad come from nothing. And, they,
00:15:18:17 - 00:15:19:18
Dan Pope
So check that. Yeah. Keep going.
00:15:19:18 - 00:15:38:17
Adam Handling
Like they, they my dad, signed over the house. Over, collateral for a bank. When when when? Obviously, my dad loves his children, but it was probably not the right thing to do, but because one of his kids asked for it. And bear in mind, I come from Dundee. His house was the family house. It was probably worth 140 or something.
00:15:38:21 - 00:15:55:09
Adam Handling
So it wasn't like I come from millionaire family and that was the only thing that they gave me when I was there, just just to sign it off as extra collateral for for banks. Everything was everything had to go. Yeah, yeah, absolutely everything. It broke my mum and dad. It broke me because I did that to them.
00:15:55:12 - 00:16:12:02
Adam Handling
Obviously they're okay now, but like, there's so much trust you have from a parent for a child, even though I was an adult at the time. But I have that real dream, you know, the big eyes, the ambition. And for them to be like everything. I can see what you're doing. You're in every bloody newspaper, you're on every TV show.
00:16:12:02 - 00:16:30:01
Adam Handling
You're literally smashing life. It's going to be fine. He didn't tell my mum either, which was silly. But yeah, it's, like these life lessons and them, it happened many, many years ago. Our collections been open more times after Covid than it is before. So that was that was pretty much in the beginning stages of, of business.
00:16:30:03 - 00:16:31:22
Dan Pope
So how long did it have to go up to that point?
00:16:31:22 - 00:16:34:22
Adam Handling
We opened and we opened the first 1 in 2017 I think.
00:16:35:00 - 00:16:36:14
Dan Pope
Right. Okay.
00:16:36:16 - 00:16:58:21
Adam Handling
I think it was 2017. We opened the first, or 2016. So yeah, our group had groups past the 50% time from Covid, which is great. And it's only got stronger. It would have never been able to be this successful without that horrible knock. And, you know, that was the only time I was negative about life.
00:16:58:23 - 00:17:13:14
Adam Handling
But then I took a step back and realized, this is when I'm changing my mentality. I'm no longer going to be about what's wrong with the industry, what's wrong with the situation, what's wrong with the government? We're going to be adapting, we're going to be positive, and we're going to say that it's just a time period and we're going to move forward.
00:17:13:16 - 00:17:32:23
Adam Handling
Because I still had restaurants. A lot of my friends lost everything. They're the ones that should have been a little bit more, you know, upset about it than, than than what I did. I still managed to bounce back, which is really beautiful. So that there was the time point where instead of the question I get asked all the time, what is wrong with hospitality?
00:17:33:00 - 00:17:40:13
Adam Handling
Nothing. What is right about hospitality? What is great about hospitality and the positives? Yes, there are negatives in any situation, any business.
00:17:40:13 - 00:17:59:17
Dan Pope
That's what we're talking about downstairs is it's like either has ever been a time since I've been alive that everyone's been, other than the Olympics, where in the UK it's such a pessimistic, culture in some regards. I think it's kind of good for our creativity, but I we've never been positive about the politicians. We never been buzzin, like, we just love to fucking complain.
00:17:59:17 - 00:18:06:24
Dan Pope
Yeah. And if you can be the one person who's like, just massively positive, it just has this. What were you saying? Like positive manipulation. Negative.
00:18:07:00 - 00:18:08:00
Adam Handling
It's like.
00:18:08:02 - 00:18:08:07
Dan Pope
That.
00:18:08:07 - 00:18:18:08
Adam Handling
Yeah. Manipulation. Manipulation on negativity. Manipulation. Positivity. There needs to be a better word for the word manipulation because it already is, is tied to so much negativity. But if you.
00:18:18:08 - 00:18:19:16
Dan Pope
Were galvanizing it.
00:18:19:16 - 00:18:39:08
Adam Handling
Yeah, but if you were, if you were to, if you were to manipulate, if you can manipulate someone to become evil, you can also manipulate someone to be the best version of themselves. And positive just depends on the it depends on the leader who's surrounded by the people. I'm very much of the illusion that just as negativity attracts never negativity, positivity attracts positivity.
00:18:39:14 - 00:18:55:09
Adam Handling
So if you've got if me and I'm as, focused and driven about the what we can do to get over obstacles, the other senior people will be around me and then they'll do it too. There's no doubt to that. They'll get to that. Or you can go down the other one, complain to your number two. This is this is this is shit.
00:18:55:10 - 00:19:15:22
Adam Handling
So, Fairlane, let's close the doors. Sure, your business will fail because of that mentality. Everyone goes through struggles in their life. Everyone in every country goes through struggles in our life. It takes a specific person to take every struggle and adapt. If you do not adapt, you do not change your business. In terms of what is offering for the area.
00:19:15:24 - 00:19:35:20
Adam Handling
What the trend is. You know this, know the alcohol spend, for example, and I got bars as well, is massively down because people aren't drinking as much. Adapt make a banging nonalcoholic cocktail menu, banging, nonalcoholic, pairing, you know, loads of stuff. Invest in nonalcoholic wines, invest in nonalcoholic this, you know, or you can just be like, oh, my bar is failing.
00:19:35:20 - 00:19:51:07
Adam Handling
I got closed doors. Rates are going up. It's bullshit. It's bullshit. You know, if you if you give up yourself, you failed. And that's why I called the frog. The frog. It gets out, the water, jumps over, obstacles come back in, and it smacks its little paws together and says, you know what? I've had a hard day. It drowns.
00:19:51:11 - 00:20:01:03
Adam Handling
So it's that positive message to sink or swim. Always adapt. Always move forward. Always stay positive. That is the ethos between my collection. The very first restaurant.
00:20:01:05 - 00:20:11:16
Dan Pope
And that's almost the thing that keeps the the essence of the the oil and the cogs between. Yeah, the parts of the of the Rolex or the watch this. So Vaseline.
00:20:11:18 - 00:20:13:06
Adam Handling
But but it's so romantic.
00:20:13:06 - 00:20:37:00
Dan Pope
Is there, is there a specific example of where, I don't know, a leader or employees being kind of in a negative state, and I think it is easy just in life, like it is easy to be negative and negative negativity bias is good for survival because it's we're always looking at what's going to be happening. You know, it could be this ultimately is kind of a good thing for survival from the fucking like from an evolutionary perspective.
00:20:37:02 - 00:20:51:13
Dan Pope
But you also need to be, you know, temperate with positivity. Is there an exact example of where someone's been? You don't have to give names here at all. But like, yeah, just the teams felt a bit like, oh, and how do you reinvigorate the recently.
00:20:51:13 - 00:21:13:09
Adam Handling
Oh, I won't say the name because it's not like someone had, someone has been having a little wobble for a little while ever since another restaurant opens. Perhaps we take a little bit of our foot off of their gas, move it onto another, but allow the management to run that operation. And, this was the first time they were pretty much doing it without the directors because we were on a new or new opening, but it wasn't that far.
00:21:13:11 - 00:21:30:03
Adam Handling
And, it was constant negativity, you know, like, this isn't working. I don't know how to do this. I'm dyslexic. We run on apps. We're a very digital company. You can't fuck up on anything, you know? So all of these excuses that were coming out, plus I'm dyslexic, you know, that's. That just means you're a little bit slow.
00:21:30:03 - 00:21:49:23
Adam Handling
Take your time. You know, there's, there's plenty of things that you can do. But everything was negative. Negative. And then I was in one management meeting and it got inundated with complaints from the team. I love my team so much, and I think everyone has a voice and everyone should be heard. Whether or not you agree with them or not, everyone should be heard.
00:21:50:00 - 00:22:15:18
Adam Handling
But there was a common theme and I will never go because I'm I would send Jamie. I would never do it myself to go around the mall and ask questions about their specific managers. I hate that sort of environment. It's so tacky. I would, you know, Jamie would subtly speak to the team and do perhaps performance reviews, so that they can see what's and doing it in a, in a, well, one illegal way, but also a very, way that we can make sure every team member succeeds.
00:22:15:18 - 00:22:31:14
Adam Handling
And there was a common theme inside of everything, what I was saying. And then I also don't like, you know, this witch hunt is. So even though it's that he's the man, he or she was the manager. If there was this witch hunt, either I would smell that out as well. And I would like, take a look at all yourselves, you know, like they cut the shit.
00:22:31:16 - 00:22:49:22
Adam Handling
We have to work together. We're still a team, you know, we have a vision. We haven't hit our goals yet. Focus. Stop bitching. Focus. Because one thing about this industry at the moment, perhaps it's a slightly more bubble wrapped, is what it used to be. That sometimes it's not a bad thing to tell people. Stop bloody moaning.
00:22:49:24 - 00:23:03:24
Adam Handling
Focus, write something down and you know we have a target to achieve. We have to do it together. But anyway, there was an ultimatum given, where I point blank they said, you need to change your attitude. The official shots from the head.
00:23:04:01 - 00:23:06:05
Dan Pope
If you it's a fish rots and a fish.
00:23:06:05 - 00:23:33:08
Adam Handling
Rots from the head. Yeah. So if you must, I know know we all have. We all get sad sometimes. You know that things happen in our lives. But as the top of that specific leader chain, whenever you walk into an operation, you must put on a facade of you're here for everyone. You know, there are specific people that they can go to, when they having an issue and they will be looked after massively because they lean on their next ones.
00:23:33:10 - 00:23:53:14
Adam Handling
But when it comes to the junior team inside the operations and the whole world is so bad to them. These people are in the same boat as you mate. You know, like you need to stay focus. You need to switch on you either with Ozzy or not. Can you move this restaurant forward? Because I love it and I will not give up and I will take it over myself.
00:23:53:16 - 00:24:11:12
Adam Handling
And he said no. Okay, let me help you on your next journey. The hardest thing to do for someone in my position is to have a manager fail, because I feel like I failed as well, but there is only so many times you can take a horse to water.
00:24:11:18 - 00:24:12:15
Dan Pope
Yeah.
00:24:12:17 - 00:24:27:24
Adam Handling
And then drown the fucker. Yeah, yeah. You know, there is only so much you can do, but you still take that very personally to be like. Because I don't lose. I don't lose senior people very often. You know, all of our restaurants are headed up by people that have been with me since the dawn of time. And, I love that ethos.
00:24:27:24 - 00:24:36:16
Adam Handling
They all have the same ethos, but you realize you've got to cut the head off that rotten fish to let the restaurant survive. Yes, we have to do that.
00:24:36:20 - 00:24:59:23
Dan Pope
Yes. When have you have? I think there's a you know, there's as you get bigger, your brain gets bigger. There can be a propensity to say yes to short term revenue opportunities versus long. And it's something I'm going through now versus long term brand equity depth connection. And again, it's like you need money to keep the business afloat.
00:25:00:00 - 00:25:15:24
Dan Pope
But also you need to protect the brand is, of course, the tricky thing. Yeah. Talk to me. What's what's almost the worst thing you've said yes to was it was the worst business decision you've made. We've not that you've cut it off like the Cayman Islands, but you said yes to something that kind of devalued the brand long term.
00:25:16:01 - 00:25:31:19
Adam Handling
I don't really think I have to be fair. I've said no to lots of things. Yeah. One of them was the Scottish Dairy Company, and they wanted to chuck ridiculous amounts of money at the group to, to be the ambassador of this specific one and do some content. And I said to my team, we need to do that.
00:25:31:19 - 00:25:55:14
Adam Handling
We really need that cash injection. You're talking like 100 K. I really need that cash injection to the business. They're like, you do that. You did. You start to do this. It's game over. You don't have to say yes to everything. And people realize that you may get very financially wealthy in the in the the quick time longevity of your brand of being everlasting like a Chanel, it's non-existent.
00:25:55:16 - 00:26:03:19
Adam Handling
You have to you have to be strong. Even when business is struggling of who you say yes to, the you end up saying no to more than you say yes to.
00:26:03:21 - 00:26:11:12
Dan Pope
That's what sells the brand strategy going. We work with his. Alicia. You have to say no to literally 90% of everything. Yeah. To keep it, to keep the brand alive is fascinating.
00:26:11:12 - 00:26:37:09
Adam Handling
But then you also find out that as much as that 90% of revenue that you've said no to, the 10% that you have will actually be better than the 90% you've said no to. But it's really, really, really good stuff. You know, it's stuff that's going to enhance your brand. You're going to learn yourself as well. And, both are going to work forward in a more harmonious manner where you can have them on your books for the next ten years, rather than just a quick payout now.
00:26:37:13 - 00:26:39:18
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:26:39:20 - 00:27:04:21
Dan Pope
I want to talk about the brand and sort of I think you said it was a, it's a collection of individual restaurants, which I think is a beautiful way of putting it. But I think I really believe a brand is a is an expression of self. It's kind of an extension of the founder. And it's. So what I want to understand is really get into the the roots of your self and then we can explore, you know, there's 50% frog, 50% letting the chefs do what they want to do.
00:27:04:21 - 00:27:14:12
Dan Pope
I love that kind of exploit the frog and then explore, you know, in the panoply of different restaurants. But talk to me like, how were you misunderstood as a kid growing up?
00:27:14:14 - 00:27:33:18
Adam Handling
As a kid growing up, I was a horrible human being. I was I was yeah, I was, I wasn't, I wasn't, I was, I wasn't very I didn't give a crap about school. I didn't give a I was very obnoxious. I was, I always wanted to be outside with my friends. I was sporty, but I didn't really care about family.
00:27:33:18 - 00:27:56:10
Adam Handling
I cared about myself and being with my friends outside and just causing havoc in school. Looking back at myself, I would have disowned me as a child. Something my mother says to me correctly. But, I think me experiencing that means how I'm going to make sure that my son doesn't turn into me. When I was a kid, everything that I was is a bad child.
00:27:56:12 - 00:28:19:21
Adam Handling
I but I also being a negative child means that you have nowhere to encapsulate your energy. For me, schools are pointless. They are not for everyone. They're probably for 25% of the population. The rest of the stuff they, they need, they need a specific angle of education that inspire and sparks, some sort of creating creation site.
00:28:20:01 - 00:28:37:16
Adam Handling
And that doesn't need to be necessarily a vocation. It can be anything but like what? What really gets you excited as a child and then run down that path. Everything else will come into play. Even if it was, chef ING for me, you still learn finance, you still learn English because you're reading so many different things. You're still learning all this shit, stuff like that.
00:28:37:19 - 00:28:51:08
Adam Handling
But you're you're you're you're bypassing the complete pointless stuff. Stuff that had no focus. And I just made me act out as a child. Am I happy of doing it? No. I look back at myself and thank my poor mum. So my dad worked.
00:28:51:10 - 00:28:55:09
Dan Pope
What was the relationship with your mum and dad from, say 12 to 716?
00:28:55:15 - 00:28:58:03
Adam Handling
My, my, I've always been a mummy's boy.
00:28:59:03 - 00:29:08:03
Adam Handling
My dad was, my dad was, very strict growing up. He was a military man, so he wasn't around a lot, but I was around men like.
00:29:08:03 - 00:29:10:05
Dan Pope
Sorry. Sorry to interrupt. Like, is he, like, on tour?
00:29:10:06 - 00:29:27:10
Adam Handling
Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So he was, especially when I became 15, we were living in Germany, and it was 14. We left Germany to come back to Scotland when he went to go to Iraq. And, my mum wanted to move us to closer to the family in Dundee so I can do my final year of school.
00:29:27:12 - 00:29:37:07
Adam Handling
And, you know, my mum is a, my mum, my mum's wonderful. She looked after all of the children pretty much on her entire own kids. Only three, but with one being able to still.
00:29:37:13 - 00:29:38:14
Dan Pope
Yeah he's doing his mum.
00:29:38:16 - 00:29:57:11
Adam Handling
Yeah, yeah. So three. But she, she did it all. She did it on her own. She did it. She cared about the children so much growing up. I will actively you know, I'm like her in terms of we're not the most smartest when it comes to the traditional English or maths way of doing things. She's exactly the same as I am.
00:29:57:11 - 00:30:12:05
Adam Handling
My dad, my brother and sister. They're all the same. They're like geeky, smart, where they can get that. But when it comes to common sense, perhaps they don't have as much as me and my mum. But, you know, the, the, the my mum, my mum tried to work hard with me because she was a pain in the bottom when she was younger to.
00:30:12:07 - 00:30:32:18
Adam Handling
So she'll, she'll make me do extra English lessons in maths lessons and things like that. And it just her dream was because she never went to university. All children go to university. It's in Scotland, it's free and be successful. Sheffield was never part of the the pathway to my career, to my future. But for my dad, he saw that university was not for me, that's all.
00:30:32:18 - 00:30:49:19
Adam Handling
So I told my mum I was like, mum, I'm not going to, I'm not going to school. I get kicked out all the time. It's not for me. It's just wasting your time is wasting mine. What can I do with my life? And she says, if you get an apprenticeship, well, you can still learn. And doing a vocational skill, you can leave school and you don't have to go to university.
00:30:50:00 - 00:31:09:20
Adam Handling
That's the only way. University or that or get out the house, that is all. And, I was like, oh, perfect. She's managed to change your change slightly. So I told my dad, but I was like, if you find anything, we'll we'll go and do some interviews together. So I found the first apprenticeship program that I'd ever seen, and it was for an apprentice chef in Gleneagles Hotel in Scotland.
00:31:09:22 - 00:31:37:08
Adam Handling
Had no idea people live that way in Gleneagles was magical. I told my dad, my dad is like, let's go, don't tell your mum we'll do it together. Wore his suit, had three different interviews. I was mind blowing. By the professionalism of hospitality in Gleneagles. Again, like I said, I'm just the guy from Dundee. This was mind blowing and I was so inspired by how everything run, how everyone was calm and how everything was passionate and fire.
00:31:37:14 - 00:31:58:22
Adam Handling
So when you're in the kitchen and there it was, it was bloody intense. You know, they don't make kitchens like that anymore, I'll tell you that for free. It was a little bit rough, but they would not let anyone fail. Now, the great thing I love about a kitchen is a good kitchen is controlled by everyone succeeding, not by one failing to other one to get a step up on.
00:31:59:00 - 00:32:17:19
Adam Handling
I hate kitchens like that. They're the ones who fail. Gleneagles was exactly like that. They wanted every single chef in that single restaurant to succeed and be the best they possibly can. And whenever a chef failed, they were removed. But they didn't like it. It's still a business. At the end of the day, you can only take a horse to water.
00:32:17:19 - 00:32:34:00
Adam Handling
So many times they would teach them and teach them and change them sections, and then teach them and teach them and teach them. They had a training school there as well. For the chefs. It was phenomenal. And I loved the fact that no one would ever give up on me there. And then I just got inspired. I got inspired to learn and study.
00:32:34:00 - 00:32:58:02
Adam Handling
So I started buying books because I was like, this is so cool. You know, I'm tasting things. I was a fussy eater as well growing up, but I'm tasting things I now like, but I've always detested as a child. Why is that? So I want to learn about it because it's something that is really exciting me, the something in my mouth and then from that angle, I got really quickly infected into what makes food taste good.
00:32:58:04 - 00:33:20:01
Adam Handling
Skills will come. I was shit until I was like maybe 24. So like ten years into my just under ten years into my apprentice and where I left that ten years into being a chef ish is when I started to be a good chef. But I wanted to learn not about the chef thing. I wanted to learn about how to make flavor, how to make the best sauce, and but also understand knowledge.
00:33:20:03 - 00:33:39:06
Adam Handling
So when someone says a sauce, what's in it? This is this I wanted to learn the classics and every single one. So I literally I had to travel at 45 minutes, from my house to Gleneagles every day that a mile, an hour and a half there and back. And I got three books from my chef repertoire de la cuisine, the Practical Cookery and the
00:33:39:08 - 00:33:55:03
Adam Handling
Oh my God, I forgot the name is Larousse. Oh my God, I forgot a huge book. There is literally like astronomic. Yeah, that is the book. Yeah. I haven't picked it up in a while though. But I would study them three books together because they were all very cross-reference and, and learn about the history of things.
00:33:55:03 - 00:34:17:11
Adam Handling
So I'm such a geek when it comes to history, such a geek. I love it so much of food. And from there, my passion to always succeed and have that same mindset of my team always has to succeed. Everyone has to be the best they can. That's how I was trained. That's how I like to train. Was pretty much the foundations of how I've still got the same team that my first restaurant had.
00:34:17:12 - 00:34:18:22
Adam Handling
Now, ten years later.
00:34:19:01 - 00:34:35:23
Dan Pope
Well, it does. That's what I wanted to go go into self to explore the brand, you know, today. And it is that is that that was your sink or swim moment. That was your from moment. The way you swim is by doing the extra work, by reading on the bus or whatever. Yeah. What other things? Because you had such.
00:34:36:00 - 00:34:55:06
Dan Pope
You'll rise because you're so young. Still is kind of wild. What were you you know, you don't have 100 chefs, not even 100 businessmen. They won't have the level of success you've had. If you were to sign 100 people, what do you think you've done differently? What's that? Your unique edge that's allowed you to get ahead versus other people?
00:34:55:09 - 00:35:18:03
Adam Handling
Inspire a small amount of people and forget the rest, I think unpack that. So for instance, everyone always, everyone always wants to be another chef's best friend. You know, they want to they want to please every single person in the industry. And then they they, you know, they go out, they party, they they're always with each other. They they bum off each other.
00:35:18:03 - 00:35:35:16
Adam Handling
Award ceremonies, all of that. I didn't give a crap about that. I picked five, five, seven people that work in my group. And we became the most, you know, tight team you can ever imagine. We became best friends. We became family. And I know we're not by blood, but we spent more time with each other than we do our partners.
00:35:35:16 - 00:35:56:00
Adam Handling
We, we will do anything for each other. They are my future. I surround myself with them sort of people that knew how to do the specific parts of the business better than I ever could. If a chef thinks they can do everything, every part of a business, you will not last over a year. You will fail. You will fall flat on your face.
00:35:56:02 - 00:36:19:16
Adam Handling
So remove yourself from them. Situations where the chef is the rock star of any industry. Bullshit. You're really not. You can cook some good food. Anyone can cook. Yeah, anyone can cook. But it's about how you can maintain a team to continually thrive. Be positive. So I run by inspiration, education, motivation them three them three names in a circle of honesty.
00:36:19:18 - 00:36:21:11
Adam Handling
So you have to tell people your directions.
00:36:21:11 - 00:36:28:14
Dan Pope
Tell them it's an inspiration education moment. Yeah. What's the hardest of those three to to crack.
00:36:28:16 - 00:36:36:14
Adam Handling
I the inspiration is the hardest one I'd say, because you have bad days sometimes, but you can't tell your team that.
00:36:36:16 - 00:36:38:09
Dan Pope
An examples of that.
00:36:38:11 - 00:36:59:04
Adam Handling
More so like, you know, there's plenty of bad things that have happened everywhere, you know? Yeah. Social media could be mean at some times. Newspapers can be mean. Journalists could be mean. You could have, someone passing your family. You can have an argument with your partner. There's financial issues is a huge problem. Personally, for lots of people, including myself, back in the day.
00:36:59:06 - 00:37:10:16
Adam Handling
So the trying to walk into a business and not allow anyone to know you have a single problem every single day is probably the hardest thing, but you need to do it. You are the leader.
00:37:10:16 - 00:37:26:22
Dan Pope
Specific systems you put in place to do that. So I'm fucking out of that. So I say it's my team. You know we've got team is set to run this. Well then. Yeah with some consultants seven and I saw these guys and Pete Tong I will let everyone know. But it's kind of like I'm trying to get better at that.
00:37:26:24 - 00:37:38:22
Dan Pope
Is it. Was it the whole thing in between stimulus and response is space. And in that space is Viktor Viktor Frankl quote. Might there's no gap with me, but I feel like it's just like street chaos. Yeah.
00:37:38:22 - 00:37:40:10
Adam Handling
Is that I used to be the same.
00:37:40:10 - 00:37:43:01
Dan Pope
How did you joke? What have you done to, like, drive?
00:37:43:01 - 00:37:58:02
Adam Handling
I drive more, so drive it like. Yeah. In my car to and from the restaurants. And from that way that gives me a little bit where I'm. I'm on. I'm not on a chip crammed in like a sardines where I can't think and I have to listen to music. So I don't want to talk to anyone. And I'm surrounded by negative people because everyone's fucking miserable in the tube.
00:37:58:08 - 00:38:15:22
Adam Handling
I'm in my car where I can zone into whatever I need to zone into. Do I need to overthink something? Do I need to unpick something? Do I need to call Nicola and say, because Nicola is my number two? Nicola, I have this idea. Let's me and you. I have an hour to get there. Unpick something, recreate something so that we can then go back to the team with.
00:38:15:23 - 00:38:20:17
Adam Handling
She's like, yeah, sure, any time of day. She's phenomenal, smart as women I've ever met in my life. Really? Yeah.
00:38:20:19 - 00:38:21:02
Dan Pope
What?
00:38:21:02 - 00:38:26:04
Adam Handling
Why so she started off as my operations coordinator, right. To,
00:38:26:06 - 00:38:26:12
Dan Pope
From.
00:38:26:15 - 00:38:41:23
Adam Handling
So not from hospitality. No. No, not from what? So her dream is to always be a publicist. So as one of the the dreams in of her life, she, she read my three books. She's her own. The publicist was like, we'll do it for you. She's like, no, it's my dream. If I'm in hospitality, I'm going to write this bloody book.
00:38:41:23 - 00:38:59:00
Adam Handling
And she knows me better than anyone. But no, she started off as operations coordinator when we were opening Frog in Covent Garden, and we had a little bit of a problem with the micro. Again, these are all learning curves for me. You go from little restaurant where it costs you 300,000 to open to the next restaurant that cost you 5 million to open.
00:38:59:06 - 00:39:21:01
Adam Handling
You're going to get a little excited and be a little bit more passionate rather than logical. And I surrounded myself with people that weren't quite ready then. This is restaurant number two, so it wasn't quite intertwined ready yet. And, the budget got majorly screwed over. Majorly screwed. We fucked up on everything. Well, well, to be fair, I would say it's my responsibility, but it wasn't my area to look after.
00:39:21:06 - 00:39:42:11
Adam Handling
It was her specific area. We all. But we all put, our eggs in our own little baskets, but we write on everything. So basically, it's like you have to take care of this. You have to care this. You have to take care of this. Let's come to the finish line together. And you allow people to have some sort of ownership in a business, not by adding finance, by adding responsibility and tasks that will make the the the final outcome be successful.
00:39:42:15 - 00:40:04:14
Adam Handling
I think that's very important. And, messed up by big time. So I had to let her go. They she started she had to do payroll for the group. Young, young girl. She was only. How old was she? Like 24 or something like that. When she first started working for me, she was fucking terrified of me because she just saw the stress that I was portraying.
00:40:04:14 - 00:40:22:23
Adam Handling
This is again after Covid. Oh, change. But saw the stress that I was, portraying over, deadlines not being hit. We were supposed to open in May. We weren't. But in September, the hundreds of thousands over spilling, you know, the usual scenario. And, I asked her years later, why the fuck did you stay working for me?
00:40:23:00 - 00:40:37:05
Adam Handling
She goes, oh, my friends told me to get out, but I didn't want to let anyone down or not have anyone. So I said, I'm only going to be with you, in her own mind for a few months and, just to get you set up, and then I'll leave because this is this is toxic. This is horrible.
00:40:37:07 - 00:40:56:14
Adam Handling
And then I was like, so why the hell are you still here at like ten years later, she goes, because you inspired me. Your constant drive to always be make the best out of specific people is the only reason why I'm still here. And she grew from operations coordinator to operations director to CEO to exact director of the entire company.
00:40:56:16 - 00:41:15:11
Adam Handling
She is the smartest person who learned on the job as well over this specific field. But, had that visionary. So like I said, inspire a small select people and make them be the best they possibly can. She was very smart. So something I was never really good at. And then from there we then obviously had Stephen who'd worked.
00:41:15:12 - 00:41:31:00
Adam Handling
He's now worked for me for what is he worked for me 18 years the chef of Lock and Tyne, who was the chef director at the time. He then went to Got Kids, realized traveling was difficult. And then now bases himself a lot. And Tyne, Jamie, who's been with me for 15 years, he's now the chef's director.
00:41:31:01 - 00:41:50:03
Adam Handling
Kelvin, the beverage director, being with me before he even started. So like ten years George Roundabout the same a little less actually nine. And I think everyone was nowhere near that position of what they were. Everyone has been internally promoted because that they love what the visions are and that whole connecting that we have as a senior team, we don't micromanage.
00:41:50:06 - 00:42:08:18
Adam Handling
We've got gems in every site, each of the managers, each of my directors will deal with them if I ever have to call someone in for a meeting in my office, they shit their pants because it's not normal. Yeah, I don't micromanage. I allow people to succeed by allowing them not to truly make mistakes, but also be told before one's about to happen.
00:42:08:23 - 00:42:24:20
Adam Handling
If you go down that route, you're going to fuck up. You know that, right? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And if it's not legal, will allow them to make that mistake. If you've told them. But if it is legal, they get point blank. No, you not do it that way. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But surround yourself with a small amount of people that you can really be close to.
00:42:24:22 - 00:42:35:12
Adam Handling
And be not afraid to be told. They're the only people in my group that can say, Adam, this is a fucking stupid idea. In their own words. Hey, no, no. Says that to me. They'll be out. But, like.
00:42:35:14 - 00:42:37:04
Dan Pope
Being some fucking stupid ideas.
00:42:37:05 - 00:42:58:03
Adam Handling
Oh my God, so many, the the chocolate shop when we open that, that was Nicola's project as well, because it's a lot of legal stuff. A lot of, we've never really done, retail products before. And the amount of issues that you have with everything, especially nutritional values of, of a product that continually changes is a nightmare.
00:42:58:05 - 00:43:10:22
Adam Handling
And it was the packaging, for example, the packaging, which we spent about 200 K on on the first order, we wanted something, but I wanted something completely different. I wanted this bizarre thing. And she's, she's she's like, no, what.
00:43:10:22 - 00:43:11:23
Dan Pope
Did you want in your head?
00:43:11:23 - 00:43:36:17
Adam Handling
I want it, I wanted things like, imagine opening a Hermes box. That's my that's what I wanted. That vision of if I'm going to do my first chocolates. The Hermes was the brand that we were. We always pick another brand to piggyback on. And inspiration. Frog is like Chanel timeless, so nothing changes seasonality in terms of Christmas, Halloween, Valentine's Day, the food change, the seasonality.
00:43:36:22 - 00:43:45:16
Adam Handling
But the environment doesn't. It's timeless. A season will never dictate how that restaurant is going to run, without ugly butterfly.
00:43:45:16 - 00:43:46:05
Dan Pope
What's that based.
00:43:46:05 - 00:44:11:14
Adam Handling
On, ugly but ugly butterfly wasn't really based on a brand as such, but the, the artist Casey Jacobson. So her art is all about nature and about location done with real things. So we wanted to create a brand where we can use surplus food from our first hotel at the time, and we can repurpose it, give all the revenue to charity, not the profits, the the revenue.
00:44:11:14 - 00:44:29:13
Adam Handling
So we will take the, the the costs ourselves and, give it to Felix project. So a charity that was repurposing food waste from big suppliers to feed vulnerable people that couldn't quite afford that, food banks. Yeah, yeah, yeah, all of that sort of stuff. And the vision was there is no such thing as no happy butterfly. There's no such thing as food waste.
00:44:29:15 - 00:44:49:07
Adam Handling
Food waste is an opportunity or laziness. And we use that. We use that theme pretty much around art. So the logo is an art piece that she created and I love, fell in love with the brand and asked, can I buy the rights to your to this piece of art? Wow. Which she kindly said yes to. So it was, it was all built on that.
00:44:49:09 - 00:44:50:21
Dan Pope
What about the Tartan Fox?
00:44:50:21 - 00:45:00:22
Adam Handling
Tartan Fox was built on history. So a 400 year old building. Yeah. 31 years younger than the Taj Mahal. I love that fact. But where it's. Do you know, a group of place?
00:45:00:22 - 00:45:03:01
Dan Pope
When was the Taj Mahal built?
00:45:03:03 - 00:45:08:13
Adam Handling
1637, I think.
00:45:08:15 - 00:45:11:00
Dan Pope
66 what? 1211.
00:45:11:02 - 00:45:20:00
Adam Handling
1660 or 31 years younger. So 1669 is when the building was built. Yeah. When you think about how wonderful British architecture is and how old it is. Phenomenal.
00:45:20:03 - 00:45:42:15
Dan Pope
There's a YouTube channel I'll send since your opinion, WhatsApp called the Cultural tutor. Brilliant. I mean, I'll go down these YouTube curiosity holes basically. And he goes through all the architecture in London and it just gives you a fucking appreciation for how, the British countryside and London and all the rich. It's such a sort of it's like a marbling of all these new, you know, the Gherkin, the shard.
00:45:42:15 - 00:45:48:20
Dan Pope
But then you right next to it is an old pub. Yeah. Where in the world has eyes? So it makes me. I love London for that.
00:45:48:21 - 00:45:49:03
Adam Handling
Yeah.
00:45:49:03 - 00:45:55:08
Dan Pope
Me too. But what you're saying is, is super interesting and actually super valuable for people, because I think.
00:45:55:10 - 00:46:01:24
Adam Handling
But let me tell you about the Fox name. Yeah. So, so yeah. So with with Taunton Fox. Do you know what, do you know a group of foxes are called.
00:46:02:01 - 00:46:16:07
Dan Pope
Oh, my God, we were talking about this last night. I really this is fucking weird. So basically I was the gaffer staying and there's loads of monkeys, and we were googling weird names, so my mate was. So it's a troupe of monkeys, isn't it? Like a squat? Oh, fuck.
00:46:16:07 - 00:46:17:11
Adam Handling
Nice and earth.
00:46:17:13 - 00:46:18:24
Dan Pope
As in, oh, yeah, that was it. Yeah.
00:46:19:01 - 00:46:21:11
Adam Handling
And Earth, which is like perfect. So we were like, we're going to.
00:46:21:13 - 00:46:24:17
Dan Pope
Dolphins is another I. They're not fucking dolphins anyway. Yes.
00:46:24:19 - 00:46:41:12
Adam Handling
So then we were like, this is where we're building our farms. It's all going to be about us. We've got three farms there, we've got our chickens there, we've got this beautiful barn that we've redeveloped that was like 30 people, to a double top that does 150 people. And we're going to cook everything on fire, but we're going to renovate the building back to its former beauty.
00:46:41:14 - 00:47:02:07
Adam Handling
So it's going to be stone everywhere. And that was the the ethos. Anita from the name came after the, whilst the refurb was happening because we broke down a wall to, to to bring it back to stone. And there was this painting on the wall that was majorly old, and it was the Foxes revenge, meaning the name of what it was many moons ago.
00:47:02:11 - 00:47:26:01
Adam Handling
And I thought we just discovered. Yeah, yeah. So I never keep the same name as what our previous business was, but I was like, this is pretty cool because it's got a lot of history attached to it. Revenge to negative for me. Tartan. I'm British and then well, let's dive into how can we work with foxes? And then we worked into by studying about all about foxes and it was all about us.
00:47:26:06 - 00:47:37:00
Adam Handling
And we built a project based on that. Yeah. We were never going to have farms there. It was never going to be about eating from the earth, and it was never going to be about fire cooking. It all came out because we we uncovered a piece of it.
00:47:37:01 - 00:47:57:12
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's just this natural. Again, it's sort of when you said piggyback off brands, it's that's something that's really, the whole thing of I love. So someone told me this in the podcast, simple does not mean easy. So it's a very simple concept like borrow off histories have really simple concept to borrow Chanel.
00:47:57:16 - 00:48:02:08
Dan Pope
Well, no, it's simple, but it doesn't make it fucking easy. It's still really hard.
00:48:02:09 - 00:48:03:14
Adam Handling
Sometimes. Simple is more hard.
00:48:03:17 - 00:48:27:20
Dan Pope
Yeah, exactly. Yeah yeah yeah yeah they have. Yeah. Simplification is the hardest thing ever. It's like cutting cutting things down to its most pure essence is, is is really hard on the. So just just to go into the sort of the the Chanel versus Hermes on. So the original frog versus the chocolate shop just talk to me about like the brand brand, the sphere of of Chanel.
00:48:27:20 - 00:48:33:01
Dan Pope
The brand is fear of of Hermes. And how they just go into that a little bit more. So I think it's really fascinating.
00:48:33:02 - 00:48:57:08
Adam Handling
I think when you look at Chanel, you look at and we always say our brands always target specific people. The frog is pretty much the target. A woman that was that's the the target audience that we go for. So we make it very feminine. We make it very, very light. We make it very, welcoming for, for for a girl, really, I know, I don't know if you can say that any more, but yeah, I think it was designed for a lady.
00:48:57:13 - 00:49:18:10
Adam Handling
And, when you look at the when you look at Chanel, you know, it's signature pieces without seeing that. See, you know how it's, it will it will outlast time. That brand will everything. Everything that they do will outlast time. It will outlast its seasons. It doesn't really change in terms of you'll never see weird things on for Christmas or any like that.
00:49:18:10 - 00:49:46:20
Adam Handling
It stays what it is. It's a true, honest brand that is very proud of what they've created. But you can also tell what it is without seeing the name frog. We wanted to do just like that. Never going to be turned by Christmas by anything like that. Never going to be turned by Valentine's Day. It's going to be completely seasonal in terms of the products we use in the way that it looks, but it it's going to it's going to always be reminiscent of of the frog without even being in the frog.
00:49:46:20 - 00:50:01:01
Adam Handling
So therefore you can see one of my dishes in another restaurant that I'm saying doing a collaboration in, and they don't know I'm in the kitchen. And they were like, this reminds me, the frog fuck yeah, that's my brand. When you can eat one of my dishes somewhere else and it reminds them of them when it actually is, you've done your job.
00:50:01:06 - 00:50:19:11
Adam Handling
So chicken butter, we have the staples, the caviar waffle, all of them specific things. There are my that Chanel suit. Yes. You know they are that they are. That reminds me of frog. Perfect. Timeless. Yeah. Obviously it gets enhanced. We don't just keep a dish on for the ten years of restaurants. We know it's been open eight years.
00:50:19:11 - 00:50:26:14
Adam Handling
Eight years the restaurant's been open, it does go through a transformation, but the the foundations of flavor is always the same.
00:50:26:14 - 00:50:28:07
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:50:28:09 - 00:50:48:16
Dan Pope
This is of the explore versus exploit theory, which just denied the fact someone told me about it. But it's it's like a big marketing guy told me about it. But the is essentially when you've got a brand which is like super, super strong and you should exploit that for all its all its worth. But then if you don't explore you become.
00:50:48:18 - 00:51:06:11
Dan Pope
Yeah. Actually this it's, it's kind of so random. It's linked to be. So bees would often when the hunting for honey would go like 90% would go and look for the go to the hive where the honey is the other 10% would go over here and dance and to signify they found you, honey. And it is basically it applies to business.
00:51:06:11 - 00:51:23:09
Dan Pope
And since I keep doing this, keep the main thing, the main thing. If you don't have this percentage of exploring new things, you become passe. I say palette die and I really want to get into this. So so on the 50%, everything has to be 50% frog.
00:51:23:09 - 00:51:24:18
Adam Handling
Yep. The whole collection. The whole.
00:51:24:18 - 00:51:38:06
Dan Pope
Collection. What are what are the brand values you have in place to to lock that in first? And then how do you allow your chefs to to like bees, you know. Yeah. Go and explore different things.
00:51:38:08 - 00:51:56:19
Adam Handling
So the 50% frog is all about being British. Yeah. Being sustainable is possible. Being luxury and being timeless. So the chicken butter and the stuff like that must be on all menus. The other 50% and also how we run our kitchens. Yeah, I don't, I don't. So within my kitchens I don't care if you're in a pub, one of my pubs.
00:51:56:19 - 00:52:10:16
Adam Handling
So you're in the mission side restaurant, you make a sauce, you make a bloody proper sauce. If you're making a carrot puree, you're using the recipe book from the grip to make a carrot puree. You know, I'm not saying that all the dishes are the same. They can't. They can never afford the same proteins as the frog does in the pub stage.
00:52:10:16 - 00:52:31:07
Adam Handling
The price points massively different. But when it comes to the simple foundations of creating a dish like sauces, they're exactly the same. And I think that real, that real drive for perfection in our group, done by the chefs that are in these specific areas is so bloody romantic. And that's the fundamentals. You surround yourself by a few people, you grow together and you become great.
00:52:31:07 - 00:52:48:18
Adam Handling
You you inspire them. Stephen's been with me, like I said, 18 years. He he helped me build my brand. So when I moved him to our very first pub, because his dream was always a pub and because he helped me get out of the the hole, I got in a lockdown and we made extra revenue. We bought this for him as a present, so he had no idea he was getting a pub.
00:52:48:18 - 00:53:08:18
Adam Handling
But he's his dream is always Jamie's delicate. He's And so clever. In the head chef of frog. They're like a little teaspoon of puree on a plate, nice and pretty. Seems like that. Give me a big spoon of pure on a plate. I want a big piece of roasted meat or fish of wonderful sauce. Heavily. And, you know, he wants to he story, so he wants a plate of food.
00:53:08:20 - 00:53:24:23
Adam Handling
So for him, when I bought him this pub, he was so thankful. And I told him the name, the look. In the time he's like, why are you calling it that? And I said, well, you've been. He was very worried at the beginning. He's always been by my side. And I said, I met you in Newcastle when I was the chef of the model in Newcastle.
00:53:25:00 - 00:53:47:23
Adam Handling
And, then you followed me everywhere. So the Tyne, the River Tyne is through Newcastle and I look is the Scottish waters. And I read on the back of the menu that's still there today and and writing that if he ever needs me and he sticks to water will always find each other sick. So is it, you know, because I think a name must mean something to something.
00:53:47:23 - 00:53:58:04
Dan Pope
So I'm picking up, like you said, romanticism quite a few times. I think there's a deep romanticism to Scottish literature. Scottish Scotland.
00:53:58:04 - 00:53:59:07
Adam Handling
Yeah.
00:53:59:09 - 00:54:20:15
Dan Pope
I think there's romanticism. Amazing brands like Chanel. Pomades. There's a romance. But how? You know what? I'm trying to get into this frog. Like, how do you think about romanticism in an almost like, I know it's like some of the best writers, a Scottish, some of the best fucking, you know, Trainspotting. Like I've in Welsh. Like there's some really good writers, like, how do you think about that?
00:54:20:15 - 00:54:26:06
Dan Pope
And you're the way you kind of what you've just said was fine is by water the loch in the time. But just go into that a bit more.
00:54:26:06 - 00:54:45:11
Adam Handling
Well, I think it's easy to use Scottish stuff because it's pretty bloody good. You know, we have the best seafood, the best fish, the best game, the best meat. It's really quite easy to become. I'm Scottish, be proud of it. Use it on all the menus. Apart from, apart from Cornwall. Cornwall doesn't use any Scottish ingredients apart from scallops occasionally, but other than that, nothing.
00:54:45:13 - 00:54:55:09
Adam Handling
They are hyperlocal to the southwest. But everywhere else. The the look in the Tyne frog. They need to use Scottish and even the chocolate shop need to use Scottish ingredients inside of their food.
00:54:55:11 - 00:55:14:23
Dan Pope
SIC and are there any like, you know, there's a little magical storytelling pieces through, you know, where it's from the menu. When I go into the restaurant or the way they're welcomed or almost away from the food more, I kind of the the cinema of of service. So yeah. How does that kind of romanticism play out in that?
00:55:14:23 - 00:55:35:24
Adam Handling
Well, with The Frog is everything I guess would want or should want should always be given without a guest asking for it. That I love that sort of service. I'm a very weird chef. I'm very front of house focused, and George's a very weird restaurant director. He's very kitchen focused. So we are we're not much, you know, when you watch Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, you've got one being on one side, one being on another.
00:55:35:24 - 00:55:56:02
Adam Handling
And it's like, fuck you, fuck. None of that stuff here. We we care so much more about other areas that it works seamlessly together. And I think if you allow chefs to have more input on how something is, perhaps explained, so let them serve it, how it is. Finished at the table. So make them serve it.
00:55:56:02 - 00:56:11:01
Adam Handling
Don't let them make them. When you get them to be on the floor, they'll realize, I'm not going to create a dish. It's going to put a front of house in the shit again in case I have to do it myself. On the floor. Yeah. You know, there are so much things outside there where if you work together, you can achieve anything and you know that there is already romantic.
00:56:11:03 - 00:56:25:19
Adam Handling
But for frog, we have a team meal for the whole group. We have a team of seven and their sole job is just how do I say this nicely? Research every single guest, every single guest that comes in bar, chocolate shop everywhere, reset. Research everyone.
00:56:26:00 - 00:56:26:06
Dan Pope
How?
00:56:26:06 - 00:56:55:01
Adam Handling
Like by using social media. Using and using, using any sort of platform that's digital. If you don't want to be found, get your stuff off online. Yeah, if it's online is free for all. And with that, we will always look for things like, if we find a guest coming to say, frog or, or the other one, or any of the restaurants, and we see that they have children or they have a dog, and we find the name of the dog, we find the name of their children, or we see they're drinking a beer with a different hand.
00:56:55:01 - 00:57:11:03
Adam Handling
We mark could be left handed. We do all of that inside of it. You see them with, San Pellegrino sparkling water. They drink sparkling. You know, there are so many things that we can get you going that when a guest say, comes to the frog and, we don't bring up. We know your family. That's fucking weird.
00:57:11:09 - 00:57:12:22
Dan Pope
But, yeah.
00:57:12:24 - 00:57:24:14
Adam Handling
We would start with a set of still a sparkling, let's say sparkling or still right there. That little, little factor of saying what they already like first means that it's straight away simple, simple, simple things like that.
00:57:24:14 - 00:57:29:22
Dan Pope
Simple is not easy. Other. I'll give me some more examples on this because I love this stuff. I could just wank over.
00:57:29:24 - 00:57:43:05
Adam Handling
So when it comes to when it comes to dining in restaurants, in all of our restaurants, we have a ridiculous, ridiculous, portfolio for every guest when they transfer to and from. All notes come from it. And there is always.
00:57:43:11 - 00:57:46:10
Dan Pope
So, so, so, so if I, if I was in the lock and I went to the ugly.
00:57:46:10 - 00:58:09:18
Adam Handling
But we'll know exactly what you had, how you were as a person, how many times you went for a piss, we'll know if you're left or right handed. What water you drank. One of the things which we started doing it for is to see how much guests spend. Because I don't want guests to go to one of our restaurants where they've spent 30 pound bottle of wine or go to another, spent 100 pound bottle of wine, and then the 30 pound bottle of wine.
00:58:09:18 - 00:58:36:22
Adam Handling
They go to the frog and someone tries to upsell over 200 pound bottle of wine. You've made that guest feel shit because you know they can't afford it, because your previous history tells you their wine budgets. So if you can work on people's spending matters without being a twat about it, the worst thing in the world are French sommeliers where they make everyone feel like shit and that, because they don't know enough about them or they, they upsell wine that is outside of someone's price point where a lot of guests will say, you know what?
00:58:36:22 - 00:58:59:01
Adam Handling
Yeah, we'll do it as a special occasion. They'll enjoy the wine, they'll get the bill, it'll ruin the meal. Finance is so important to be able to make synergy from restaurant to restaurant and make every guest feel comfortable. Someone said drinking salon by the glass. Beauty salon by the glass for. I think it's like 180 pound a glass or whatever.
00:58:59:03 - 00:59:08:03
Adam Handling
They're drinking that wine. They know the price because they have ordered it off the menu. You know, you can play with them in our other restaurants. You can't do that. If someone's ordering glass. My English sparkling.
00:59:08:05 - 00:59:16:05
Dan Pope
It's so I interviewed SAT Bains, which was a great port, and he was saying, his whole thing is allow your customers to spend money.
00:59:16:07 - 00:59:18:00
Adam Handling
Never customers, always guests.
00:59:18:00 - 00:59:36:15
Dan Pope
So I guess, but as in, as in as. And we'll talk about that because again, these little things mean a lot. But he was basically saying that, you know, the, you can get people he'll change different menu. He'll open up a spot for people, for guests to come in in the
00:59:36:15 - 00:59:39:03
Dan Pope
evening, like, you know, just allow your customers to spend money.
00:59:39:04 - 00:59:43:21
Dan Pope
Whereas I feel like, as with the Hoti fruity wine, keenness of hospitality, I've.
00:59:43:24 - 00:59:44:15
Adam Handling
Oh my gosh. Yeah.
00:59:44:15 - 00:59:54:24
Dan Pope
The archetypal French sommeliers like you are two parts, but like that just needs to vanish, especially in today's landscape. Guests versus customer. What's difference?
00:59:55:01 - 01:00:16:13
Adam Handling
Customer as a transaction guest is an experience made. If you look at every person that comes into your restaurant, like a transaction, you will build zero relationship. And we are in the hospitality industry is to be hospitable. Yes. Where to make money and yes is to be a it's a business at the end of the day, but we need to get out of our mindset that everyone that comes in is the wealthiest person in the world.
01:00:16:15 - 01:00:20:13
Adam Handling
You need to tailor your service to people and how they are.
01:00:20:15 - 01:00:41:13
Dan Pope
I like your role of shorts versus suit. I think it was from both sides that how would you tailor say so? I walked in this segment between fucking holiday versus someone in a three piece suit. Same restaurant, same timespan with like, you know, how do you keep the brand consistency and brand adaptability.
01:00:41:15 - 01:01:00:18
Adam Handling
That unless it was the last table, you'll be moved to a more suitable person to because we have three we got, 27 seats and broke, but that's split over three sections and you'll be, you'll be tailored to someone who's better suited for you. So if you come in and three piece suit one, we would have known you would have done that based on what we would have found about you.
01:01:00:20 - 01:01:16:03
Adam Handling
Or if we came dressed like the way that I go to my restaurants. Just the same way, because that's who I am there. We would have technically found it. But if you did put a spanner in the works and just come out at the spur of the moment, post this. Come this way. Yeah, yeah, you would have confused us, but everyone is welcome.
01:01:16:07 - 01:01:33:02
Adam Handling
We tend to find people that dress up, want more of an experience. People that dress more casual. They do this for a living and they just want great food. We have a lot of single dinners, a lot and some one experiences. Some just want to be left alone because they eat like this every day. We got this one guest last year.
01:01:33:02 - 01:01:41:08
Adam Handling
Must have eaten about 89 times 18 on his own. The most wonderful person in his world doesn't like any attention.
01:01:41:10 - 01:01:42:03
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:01:42:03 - 01:01:59:02
Adam Handling
He doesn't like any attention at all. It doesn't drink so much alcohol. That was just for frog. We've got so many big regulars that come to our grips, so many. We've got one from Cornwall that comes to the mall as well. Who came on Christmas on his own as well. So we created a table just for him, because he was just like, yeah, I'm on my own this Christmas and I know it's so last minute.
01:01:59:02 - 01:02:16:17
Adam Handling
Do you have a table? We will make you a bloody table. And he had been, between two restaurants like 100, 100 times last year or something like that. And I think this is because they're made to feel like guests are not made to feel like a transaction. Yeah. Very important that you you look at that. And that's a weird coming from a chef.
01:02:16:19 - 01:02:26:19
Adam Handling
Build the menu experience, get to know people. We have to they have to write down one piece of weird information about the guests that goes to reception, that goes on their profile.
01:02:26:21 - 01:02:28:01
Dan Pope
Sorry, who did it last, right?
01:02:28:02 - 01:02:44:06
Adam Handling
The waiting team. So anyone who finds out they have to find out one thing. And if they don't, they have need to get a bloody good reason. Language barriers doesn't really want to talk. What you do get them, you know, specific parts of the world. Guests who come, they're like, fuck off, man, just let me eat my food.
01:02:44:07 - 01:03:05:06
Dan Pope
It's interesting because like, again, some some of the ways I get guests on the show, especially in the early if it's an outside difference, we've got momentum. But it was finding on find out one weird thing and basically Taylor weird gift I think kind of yeah, yeah weird. We've got we'll get Dari no unreasonable hospitality. Nice. 11 Madison Park.
01:03:05:06 - 01:03:21:17
Dan Pope
Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah. He I'm going to Nashville in a couple of weeks to get him on. To do the podcast. But where we got him on was we found out he likes candles. I went to Chelsea, got this personalized matchbox, you know, made the candle. And they're, like, doing these little things because I really want to get this going in America.
01:03:21:17 - 01:03:32:19
Dan Pope
And I think it's. Yeah, that finding one weird fact out is, is and what are some of those facts like it is it is not as innocuous as your dog's name or. Yeah.
01:03:32:21 - 01:03:40:23
Adam Handling
We would normally find that stuff ourselves. It needs to be something like what the. Yeah, something. Something which we can't find ourselves.
01:03:41:00 - 01:03:42:00
Dan Pope
Yeah.
01:03:42:02 - 01:03:43:05
Adam Handling
I won't go into.
01:03:43:07 - 01:03:45:09
Dan Pope
It again because this is. There's loads so much.
01:03:45:11 - 01:03:59:19
Adam Handling
The only way you can get a conversation out of someone is to start a conversation. Yeah, the only thing, it's just like me and you speaking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but. Yeah, but one serving one's food and the other one's eating it or pouring the wine, but you can still bloody chat to people and people that come for an experience.
01:03:59:21 - 01:04:08:12
Adam Handling
Like I said, some don't want it. The majority of people are very excited to be there, so they have verbal diarrhea and you can get wonderful things out of them.
01:04:08:12 - 01:04:28:08
Dan Pope
Amazing. What? So what are some of the other again, I've been to ugly most of all my family, which was astoundingly delicious. Been a zoo. My mate best mates lives right by Loch in Thailand. So I've been well, let's now. So she's got three kids but smashed the fucking shit out of that one that opened up and it's amazing.
01:04:28:10 - 01:04:32:08
Dan Pope
Those, cheese donuts, like sort little globes or planets of just.
01:04:32:10 - 01:04:32:17
Adam Handling
Yummy.
01:04:32:21 - 01:04:45:22
Dan Pope
Squidgy deliciousness. Yeah. So good. But what? So what are the other things you sort of think about with, with frog? The kind of the entire dribble brand magic. And I've talked about the weird thing, which I love. So the.
01:04:46:02 - 01:05:00:15
Adam Handling
The way the we always say it's the way someone's made to feel and the way that they know they're in one of our restaurants by the flavors they're eating sauces are very important to my group, so I would say they're the main ones there. So when you go to like contain, it's 50% there. So it's in Berkshire. It needs to be British.
01:05:00:20 - 01:05:17:22
Adam Handling
It needs to be, sustainable in terms of use that by whole use it all. And it needs to be, it needs to be proper cooking. Just because it's a pub doesn't have it. The other 50% is tailor it more to the location and more to the team. Not just the chef, the team. So I think that's the other 50%.
01:05:18:01 - 01:05:32:20
Adam Handling
Steven helped me build the frog, so it's very easy for him to do that. You know, he has the, the, the ethos of how we created our group embedded into his soul. So for him, he can walk into a place and it's like he's back in a restaurant, but he wants to stand on his own two feet.
01:05:32:22 - 01:05:47:22
Adam Handling
Yeah. And he's very, he's very honest about what he wants out of life in terms of I don't care about tasting menu. I want someone to come and eat. I want I want to go to frog for a special occasion. I want people to come to this restaurant every fucking day. So I want the menu to be ever changing.
01:05:47:22 - 01:06:05:21
Adam Handling
I want specials flying out the door like there's no tomorrow. I want to be in such communications with all suppliers that we will be able to create things all the time. And every time I go and work in that kitchen, it's electric. The guests there, they we have about we have a 36% return rate in the group as a whole.
01:06:05:21 - 01:06:12:01
Adam Handling
The entire collection together is there. Lock and dine has about a 70% return rate every day.
01:06:12:03 - 01:06:13:15
Dan Pope
So we have a.
01:06:13:17 - 01:06:30:01
Dan Pope
Circuit I thought was a genius move because Berkshire. I don't know if we can explore this, but my mate, because we often go to Marlow, it's not a million miles. Yeah, he asked us about 45 minutes from that shit. I mean, we love the whole relationship. Well, it was started as parting, but now it's sort of moved food.
01:06:30:03 - 01:06:52:20
Dan Pope
But, you know, he wants me to go to Marlow because you've got Tom Kerridge there. You've got loads of a flourishing of amazing restaurants, but. So you're kind of in that. Windsor's in the food scene in Windsor as well. Before you guys, it was all there. I agree. And so it's like a release did you was that that did you like look at the competitive landscape and be like right, this this is affluent.
01:06:52:20 - 01:06:55:11
Dan Pope
We're right next to what's the thing.
01:06:55:11 - 01:07:00:06
Adam Handling
When they do Elton John lives right next door. You know, you've got Ascot around the corner.
01:07:00:08 - 01:07:06:21
Dan Pope
What's the Eton? Yeah. Ascot. Eton. What's the fucking begins with the Derby where they play the golf?
01:07:06:23 - 01:07:09:12
Adam Handling
Oh, I forgot the name, but. Yeah.
01:07:09:14 - 01:07:21:17
Dan Pope
And it's a betterment of people, basically. Yeah, yeah. But those so did was what's the business, did you do, like, a analysis or was it very guttural, like we just found this boozer, like.
01:07:21:17 - 01:07:36:01
Adam Handling
So when we found the place, one of our board of directors friends used to own the building, and, he was just like, something's going on the market if you want it. It's in Windsor. I was like, we're only in London. He's like, well, we're closing a lot in London. This is a really good steal at the moment, actually.
01:07:36:01 - 01:07:52:18
Adam Handling
Come and have a look with me and we'll have a look. Then you make your mind up if you want it. And I went into it and I immediately fell in love with the place. This is beautiful because I love quintessential British. And, we have to do a business analysis. We do a comp analysis with everything around you looking at it, thinking, is there even people around here?
01:07:52:18 - 01:08:05:02
Adam Handling
Because everything around here is chains and like, not so good food. Like there's a lot of pubs, but they're not like pubs that I would like to say. I don't want to be mean because they may just be the skills that that yeah.
01:08:05:05 - 01:08:19:00
Dan Pope
There's actually a really good pub as you come out that come up left local time. Yeah. And you're going towards the and you go left again towards co-op that. Oh that's a proper good drinking booze. I don't think I've ever been maybe not quite. Yeah. That's actually a really good fucking boozer. But it's, there's no it's.
01:08:19:00 - 01:08:35:08
Adam Handling
Not, it's not, it's not foodie shit. Yeah. Yeah. Which we all love, but so we did that. We, we were worried slightly that, if we were to open this place, is it going to succeed because it was already a fine dining restaurant when we took it over and that was it. That's what the previous business was, but sadly didn't quite make it.
01:08:35:08 - 01:08:54:07
Adam Handling
So I'm like, if a fine dining business succeed in that area, there's no real food destination places round here unless you're going to Marlow, which is a while away. Is it going to succeed? And then you just said, seeing the potential that I know Stephen would love this as a present, and I know for a fact he'll make it successful.
01:08:54:09 - 01:09:15:11
Adam Handling
So me and Nicola and George and Jamie quietly created the plan. Finances everything. But I'm not even knowing. And then that was when we. We gave him the, We gave him this little plaque where it was Adam hunting collection. Opening date. Stephen Carr, proprietor. And I gave him that with a contract and a bottle of crude, because all celebrations should be done with Craig.
01:09:15:13 - 01:09:27:07
Adam Handling
And we were like, we have a little present for you. So he opened up. He's like, what the fuck is this? What? He was looking I he didn't even see the logo. And as I and here's the contract, here's the contracts, I signed it. And I'm like, this is yours now. I signed this year.
01:09:27:09 - 01:09:28:03
Dan Pope
That's amazing.
01:09:28:03 - 01:09:37:23
Adam Handling
So I still own it, but, it's his soul. It's his family. His missus works as the pastry chef. His kids are always there, and he's gets his soul, which is beautiful.
01:09:37:23 - 01:09:39:16
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah, yeah yeah, yeah.
01:09:39:18 - 01:10:02:12
Dan Pope
The what I want to ask you about is kind of the more of your sort of business acumen side of things and like what you've learned about making money, making a lot of money, but I want to make serious stuff out of this. I'm unapologetic. Unapologetic about that. What I'm really interested to speak to you specifically now is with my business, we have multiple verticals.
01:10:02:12 - 01:10:21:08
Dan Pope
So before we just had sort of sponsorship revenue, which is good. We now do you know, we did five supper for supper clubs last year. We get to a live podcast, get less people in the room. Great. Like really good revenue, but also great for brand. We doing so we package up a lot of the lessons and go intelligent big corporates as well.
01:10:21:10 - 01:10:38:11
Dan Pope
And then we're trying to do this sort of members club thing, but that's like a collective thing. But that's kind of separate. But how did you what's the wait, what's the art of making a lot of money in this game? Like what have you learned about that first and then how do you manage across so many different things?
01:10:38:11 - 01:10:51:10
Dan Pope
Because again, I also these questions obviously is the wheels spin out pretty quickly when oh yeah. Like if I'm looking on slack and I've got like eight different fucking channels, I'll make like a joke. I mean, it's it's tricky.
01:10:51:12 - 01:11:20:09
Adam Handling
I think the reason the when I started making a lot of money was when I allowed other people to make money for me. I think if you being the chef of the brand is always like, I have to do everything, I have to do every menu, tasting, menu, signing, menu creation, all of that. You're, you're you're missing you're missing the the key focus is where you need to pinpoint your brain, your passions, which is business development, the creation of making sure it's always going to be stable.
01:11:20:09 - 01:11:37:17
Adam Handling
What can you do outside there? I could be in a restaurant, or I can be doing an event somewhere that boosts that much. That month's worth of revenue straight doubles it because I've managed to do one of them sort of things or creating products. I think, you know, I'm very fortunate that I make ten plus million a year.
01:11:37:19 - 01:11:48:07
Adam Handling
And in our little, little, little collection and, this new year is going to be really good, but, it is it takes 300 odd staff to do it. And the only reason we went for that.
01:11:48:07 - 01:11:50:24
Dan Pope
Last ten revenue. Yeah, yeah. Amazing.
01:11:51:03 - 01:12:07:04
Adam Handling
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So we do, we do a lot. We don't we don't. It's been very difficult profit wise for the last year. But the year, the year before that we would make well, I can be quite honest, we would make just shy of 2 million pound profit, which, last year we didn't make that. We made quite a considerable less.
01:12:07:04 - 01:12:15:21
Adam Handling
But technically it's January, so I won't know the real finances to the end of this month. But it was it was more than half less of of that. But that's because of the climate.
01:12:16:00 - 01:12:16:15
Dan Pope
Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
01:12:16:15 - 01:12:39:24
Adam Handling
But we didn't we didn't we didn't we didn't, we didn't downgrade any of our products. We didn't downgrade any of our staff. We didn't downgrade any of the things that would have affected the guests. Just to take a little bit more extra profit out of the business. We kept it all fighting, and we use our ways to clamp down on, operational expenses to be able to take that surplus of inflation.
01:12:40:01 - 01:12:55:09
Adam Handling
Because we realized that whenever there's a sticky situation, it's very temporary. You need to make sure you don't get scared. So when you get a stock and you see it drops, people buy out. Why now you've lost your money. Stay in the bloody stock. If it's a good stock. I'm not a financial advisor, but, it will bounce back up.
01:12:55:09 - 01:13:10:14
Adam Handling
And it's the same as business. If you if you cut all your suppliers and be like, downgrade your meat, downgrade your fish, stop buying. They stop buying that the guests will experience your your stress through your shit food and they'll be like, this isn't as good as it was before.
01:13:10:16 - 01:13:27:04
Dan Pope
It's it's, on that point of staying in the eye of the storm when things it's good news travels slowly, bad news travels fast, or for sure. And we get so and it's interesting. So like that Paul Smith bag I've got you I'll show you afterwards. It's basically a Paul Smith. Well, for listeners I'll take this round.
01:13:27:04 - 01:13:35:03
Dan Pope
If my mum got me out of Christmas like 20 years ago, I was looking for a fucking bag. I was, Pat. So last minute I was. I'll take that. It's a picture of the skyline of London.
01:13:35:09 - 01:13:36:06
Adam Handling
Nice.
01:13:36:08 - 01:13:52:14
Dan Pope
And, you know, it's a gray and foggy and they've got a mini in the front. But you look at how small. The buildings are, you've got literally the go. Can you go and look at that same view now it's like this and it's like, that's 20 years. Go look at all the progress that has happened. But that because it's because good news travels slow.
01:13:52:16 - 01:14:10:06
Dan Pope
We don't look at it. We look at like the oh, that bad things happened where everything is fucked, hospitality fucked, the world's fucked because we, we kind of get off on it. But if you just allow things to pass and you almost need these again, history's really good at making you realize that things are actually going up like that in the long term.
01:14:10:06 - 01:14:14:02
Dan Pope
For so. Yeah. So so how did you. Yes. So on that note. So it's like.
01:14:14:06 - 01:14:36:19
Adam Handling
So when it, when it came to, when it came to really making profit. Yes. We could have ever done things like expand even quicker after lockdown. We said no we're not doing that. So what we'll do is we'll invest pretty much all of the, profits back into the business. So when I say I make just shy of 2 million pounds, we put pretty much all of that back in the business.
01:14:37:00 - 01:14:52:17
Adam Handling
Redoing the front kitchen, redoing even the full kitchen cost me a fortune. We did three floors of kitchens, redoing a look in Heinz ketchup, put it all in the base that we build a brand for longevity. Well, I don't need the what do I need money in my pocket now? Yes, I need a I need to survive. That's too much.
01:14:52:21 - 01:15:09:09
Adam Handling
Put it back into the business, make it better, get new guests coming through the doors. Wow them even more. Get awards whenever you get awards, your team around you, they get that pat on the back. There's only so many times I can say to service we all smashed that. That was awesome. These are great. They're like, thanks chef.
01:15:09:11 - 01:15:30:01
Adam Handling
They get a michelin star. They're like, we fucking did it. We did it. And it's such a wonderful feeling for them. So my advice and even this year. So we've closed Ugly Butterfly for six weeks even we made our lowest profit in history, for six weeks for a mammoth refurb. We've closed Titan Fox for a mammoth refurb.
01:15:30:01 - 01:15:50:21
Adam Handling
We've. The chocolate shop reopens in two weeks. Another kitchen? We've put more than double our profit back into the business in the first quarter of 2026. And the reason for that is that's why people like working in our group, because it's not so much, a yes, okay, I have nice things, but what you know, I'll fucking work for it.
01:15:50:21 - 01:16:09:00
Adam Handling
But like, we put most of it back in to make the business better for the not for not just for the team. You know, like when I say you need to, educate, inspire, motivate. You can't motivate someone if they don't have a good enough kitchen to work with. You can't motivate someone if they're working on chip plates or they're working on lighting strategy.
01:16:09:02 - 01:16:26:14
Adam Handling
Chopping boards or a walk in fridge. Every time you open the door, the handle falls off. You like, fuck me, I'm in the shit. I need my meat out there, you know? Like, you have to motivate them by giving them the tools to be able to do their jobs. But also they sit on a balance sheet. So as a business, you know, it's not really doing very much, but only just, you know, depreciating very slightly.
01:16:26:16 - 01:16:49:21
Adam Handling
But it, for me, people get scared too much of putting more money in when troubles happen. If you have it, make it better for the guests. If you don't keep it in your back pocket. But, don't please, please, please don't buy a cheaper product, an inferior product. Cut down on staffing, cut down on the experience your guests once had.
01:16:49:21 - 01:17:01:20
Adam Handling
Because when they come back, an experience, an inferior one, they will never come back. And they do not give two fucks. If they think, oh, they're struggling, it's okay. Same price on the menu. They know they're also struggling.
01:17:01:21 - 01:17:07:19
Dan Pope
It goes back to that short term financial decision versus long term brand value creation.
01:17:07:21 - 01:17:30:23
Adam Handling
Which I'll I'll tell you as well, which is probably one of my most exciting things to date that we're doing. Everyone knows that I love caviar. It's not British, but I love caviar a lot, and our group goes through one hell of it. Through the entire collection. They they buy a lot. One of the things that we were looking at is we go through, what, two tonnes of caviar or something like that within the group.
01:17:31:00 - 01:17:48:17
Adam Handling
Well, we forecasted to do this year on specific things that we're doing. How do we, how do we maximize on that? How do we still give all that on a plate? Let's go direct, cut out a middleman, create your own farms. So we have a new brand launching next month.
01:17:48:22 - 01:17:49:17
Dan Pope
Wow.
01:17:49:19 - 01:17:51:01
Adam Handling
Cool. Yeah. It's,
01:17:51:03 - 01:17:52:13
Dan Pope
Yeah, I'm handling caviar.
01:17:52:14 - 01:17:56:01
Adam Handling
Aurelia. So it's, Aurelia.
01:17:56:03 - 01:17:56:24
Dan Pope
How do you spell that?
01:17:57:01 - 01:18:18:00
Adam Handling
Well, don't ask me that. A it's a Aurelia. So it's like a cross between the goddess of love. Sorry. It's a cross between the goddess of, the ocean pearls, but also a slight mumble of letters, because caviar, as I know. So it's HHC. Adam, honey collection. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's not going to have my name on it, because I don't really care so much about it being, show off to me.
01:18:18:02 - 01:18:34:20
Adam Handling
I, we're creating a business plan that will help all the restaurants out there being able to not cut down on how much caviar they put on their plate, because we're going to we're not undercutting everyone to take it. We're undercutting everyone to be like, we don't need to have that much profit on every ten. A bloody caviar.
01:18:34:22 - 01:18:52:19
Adam Handling
My ideal, my my idea for caviar in my restaurants are if I can buy it cheaper, I can add more to a guest. This is the same ethos I'm going to roll out so that if any chef wants to continue the luxuries without having to up the prices or add little amount on a plate, they can hopefully get on board with this brand.
01:18:52:19 - 01:19:20:13
Adam Handling
So it launches next month. It's been in the process for a long time in the making. It's costing us an absolute fortune to do as well. But, I, I'm so excited. The cost savings within our group was was ridiculously incredible. So if we can even scratch a smidge of that with other other chefs restaurants that want to stay using the best ingredients ever, like, say, caviar, but they have to reduce it or remove it because they can't afford to buy it anymore.
01:19:20:15 - 01:19:21:12
Adam Handling
Now they could.
01:19:21:14 - 01:19:22:12
Dan Pope
Amazing.
01:19:22:14 - 01:19:24:22
Adam Handling
That's the plan. So we're saying it's London's best kept secret.
01:19:25:01 - 01:19:25:15
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:19:25:15 - 01:19:29:01
Adam Handling
Launches in, quarter one. Amazing 26.
01:19:29:03 - 01:19:33:16
Dan Pope
What? So we have so about you trying to go for two stars. What you want?
01:19:33:18 - 01:19:34:07
Adam Handling
Yeah, yeah yeah.
01:19:34:07 - 01:19:42:14
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah. So what? What are the sea frogs? What? One star. I think one of the goals for when this go be life is to get to this year.
01:19:42:19 - 01:19:43:04
Adam Handling
Yes.
01:19:43:04 - 01:19:48:02
Dan Pope
Yeah. Are you putting in place differently. How are you getting there?
01:19:48:07 - 01:20:09:23
Adam Handling
So we made clever in the proprietor in August. Frog. So he's been with me for since the day before the place that even opened. And I'm, I'm based now in Ugly Butterfly and in Taunton Fox, in Cornwall. So I can really ramp up their operations and, the only way that we can change for him to do that is to show his, like him, show his skills a little bit more.
01:20:10:00 - 01:20:31:15
Adam Handling
He's a phenomenal chef, but he's been under my shadow for so long, there's no doubt about it. Every dish they puts through it needs approval. Because it's the frog, it's the baby. But he's using a different mind frame of thinking about food under the same umbrella of sustainable British luxury, and coming up with his new ideas. Business will only progress if it has new ideas come through the doors.
01:20:31:17 - 01:20:52:23
Adam Handling
So he brings new ideas to the table about how he can change the frog, and we allow him to do it. The team is phenomenal. We've invested heavily into the front of House, so we've got this GM called Lorenzo. Used to be, Claude Buzz's GM. He is incredible. Incredible, incredible person. And very hungry as well. But believes in the brand, believes in that one restaurant.
01:20:53:00 - 01:21:06:02
Adam Handling
So we're just we're, investing in people inside of the operation rather than things. The restaurant already has everything you can possibly bloody imagine. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's investing in people to make that go reality.
01:21:06:03 - 01:21:12:07
Dan Pope
But and that's what it is. Is that kind of what it is? That's the, the next thing that takes a restaurant from one starts with two.
01:21:12:07 - 01:21:31:03
Adam Handling
So I think I will. Yeah. More finesse, more, tighter ships. You know, Lorenzo has been two stars for most of his career. So him being there will give me the insights of experiences I've never done. I don't own the two star restaurant. So, you know, like I mentioned, bring someone in who's better than you or at least has experience and feels where you want to go to.
01:21:31:05 - 01:21:45:06
Adam Handling
One of the things I've always done is never ask advice from someone who isn't where you want to be. Yeah, yeah. And I think if you ask advice of people where you want to be, then that will help you move forward. But there's too many of these ones. You ask your friend, oh, what should I do about this?
01:21:45:06 - 01:22:03:00
Adam Handling
I think you should do this, blah blah blah blah blah. What the fuck are you asking them? Literally, they're literally five steps behind you. You know, it's really good to. And I don't mean that disrespectful about bouncing ideas off of people, but I mean, like proper business decisions that don't just affect the, the, the direction of the restaurant, but also the team as well.
01:22:03:02 - 01:22:25:22
Adam Handling
The team are very important too, because if they're if they're not happy, you get so bloody see it. So, invest in people. We're, we're, we're investing heavily into the operation. Always. The frog gets the most, cash refund every single year. Keeping the team strong as hell and, and, being honest. So we're like, when we do our when we do our next year meetings.
01:22:25:22 - 01:22:41:16
Adam Handling
So for instance, quarter, three a quarter for last year, we're like, what's the goal for next year to start operation. Perfect. If we I don't think I'm going to get two stars next year. I hope it will be the year after. If we don't, we'll work harder. No one's going to be like, Fuck Michelin, they're not very good, blah blah blah.
01:22:41:17 - 01:22:59:22
Adam Handling
They don't know what they're talking about. They know what they're talking about. We messed up. We work harder. We come back fighting. So people that blame awards for not getting the awards that they won is because there was a crack in your foundations, not theirs. So use it as fire under your belly to succeed and be stronger and fight harder and cook better.
01:23:00:02 - 01:23:16:15
Adam Handling
That's the only way you get it. So yeah, but we have to still be busy, so the only thing I will not change is we have to. We do 100 covers a day in the frog. I cannot drop the covers down or I'll have to make sacrifices on team. So we've got 63 staff inside that restaurant for 27 covers.
01:23:16:20 - 01:23:34:13
Adam Handling
It's a six day operation. If I move down to five days a week, I have to remove some staff. If I do that, I'll massively hinder on revenue, which will then come into profit, which will mean less refurb moving forward. So I cannot as a business, as a business mind, this is where logic and business is very different.
01:23:34:19 - 01:23:52:04
Adam Handling
Yeah. So a passion in business is very different. Passion will be like, fuck it, let's, let's, let's make it four days a week. Let's run with a core team and let's just do the best we can with 20 covers. Sounds wonderful. That business will not financially survive to be sustainable. Change that word sustainability because it's overused. It's tomorrow.
01:23:52:10 - 01:24:06:12
Adam Handling
So if I want to be have a sustainable restaurant, I've got to make sure it's open tomorrow. I've got to make sure the team are educated to be able to cook better tomorrow. I've got to make sure that the dish that we made today is better tomorrow. All of that is being sustainable.
01:24:06:14 - 01:24:06:21
Dan Pope
Yeah.
01:24:06:21 - 01:24:31:22
Dan Pope
It's just sizzle. That's what you've said. So powerful. And just trying to, like, I would obviously get into hard luck. I think it's like you're notorious for just a relentless, maniacal work ethic. Yeah, right. Take me through. Like, what it actually takes to do this. Like, and again, appreciate every day is different. But like is there like a what a week a tip a typical week would look like for you?
01:24:31:24 - 01:24:46:19
Dan Pope
How you know you're across so many different things on a Monday morning. What happens. How do you what are the systems and then the hours that make this whole fucking Rolex? Yeah. Ecosystem tick essentially.
01:24:46:21 - 01:25:02:04
Adam Handling
So I would always say a founder would do this, but employee wouldn't because I live to work, not work to live. You know, like, if I'm not working, I'm very, destructive. I'm grumpy, I'm whatever. I need to be surrounded by people. I need to be in an operation. I have to be working. I live for it.
01:25:02:04 - 01:25:21:15
Adam Handling
I love it, but I don't expect employees to do that. But if it's your own bloody business, you have to do it. Yeah, you literally have to do it. So if you don't want to do it, don't start a business. My my week is, we always do a ten, ten, so we have, ten minutes for all restaurants and bars and, chocolate shops to tell us what happened yesterday.
01:25:21:16 - 01:25:28:16
Adam Handling
Financial guests, experience wise, good and bad. And then today, financially what's happening? Guest experience, staffing issues.
01:25:28:18 - 01:25:29:24
Dan Pope
Is it called 1010 to 10 minute.
01:25:29:24 - 01:25:49:16
Adam Handling
So ten minute, ten minutes, 10:00. All the restaurants they have like 2.5 minutes each where they yeah, yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. So, we do that and they, they have, they kind of speak more than 2.5 minutes or they have to wait until the end when everyone goes and they get the relevant people. And there's about 30 people on this call, all the directors, all the GM's, all the head chefs.
01:25:49:18 - 01:26:07:20
Adam Handling
And it's so that they can see the power behind the drive of the group by every collection. Is, is gunning and that wonderful, cute competition that they have where like in the in beat the revenue of Taunton Fox guys are you going to up your game today. Yeah I'm going to make sure I sell more donuts.
01:26:07:22 - 01:26:24:12
Adam Handling
I'm going to make sure that, we, we think of an idea to, to work with steak. So maybe we buy a special, and, Steven's like. Yeah, sure. I'm going to up mine. I'm going to buy Dover soles and it'll fly out the door, you know? So that's the financial side of life. But also the constructive one is we have an ecosystem that works together.
01:26:24:12 - 01:26:44:24
Adam Handling
We we do a lot of foraging that we store in one specific place. We have a lot of things where ugly butterfly makes the sauce for Titan fox yet, for example. So it's a very intertwined operation. And that's because the, ugly butterfly is a seasonal restaurant, but it's I wouldn't say it's a carbon copy of frog because it's it's got its own identity.
01:26:44:24 - 01:27:02:10
Adam Handling
It's got a little bit more skilled chefs inside of that one. But, we want to make sure that the consistency of, say, a sauce, which is very important and very powerful for dishes, is the same. So they can speak about on their of what they need to enhance their days. And also if people called in sick, we can fix it immediately.
01:27:02:12 - 01:27:06:02
Dan Pope
At 10:10 a.m.. Ten. Sorry. Ten minutes. Ten. Yeah. And every single.
01:27:06:02 - 01:27:06:21
Adam Handling
Day. Every single day.
01:27:07:02 - 01:27:08:05
Dan Pope
Wow.
01:27:08:07 - 01:27:31:05
Adam Handling
And then from there, we do an in-depth meeting, after lunch service, so on. It's usually about 3:00 every day, or it's straight after the 10:00 meeting, 15 minutes past the depending on which one it is. So Mondays are our directors meeting and we only have 45 minutes. Fucking waffling for meetings sake is no, it's counterproductive and you just get bored.
01:27:31:05 - 01:27:55:19
Adam Handling
You forget what it does. So it comes with every meeting has an agenda and it gets attacked. So Mondays, Tuesdays, frog Wednesdays, locking time, Thursday is ugly butterfly Fridays and folks, same time after as well. And that's where it's a little bit more detailed about events that are happening there. So it's basically the next two weeks, the past last week in that one week in that one 45 minutes, and it breaks it down into everything.
01:27:55:19 - 01:28:20:02
Adam Handling
And the whole thing about transparency, transparency in a business that financial, guest reviews, morale and the team's transparency is the only way, you know, the honesty within the circle. So you need to tell your staff guys like, did you need to have that many staff on by the hour? You fucking did no covers. It's all about being able to stay open.
01:28:21:00 - 01:28:22:04
Dan Pope
Constant communication. Yeah.
01:28:22:04 - 01:28:23:04
Adam Handling
Constant communication.
01:28:23:06 - 01:28:26:22
Dan Pope
And then once that's done, like, when does the creative side after that?
01:28:26:22 - 01:28:44:22
Adam Handling
Straight away. So depending where I am, I am in every I am in the kitchen of where I am every single day, every day. And I'm on whenever. I'll do a lot more admin side of things and and development side of things. When service is on, there is not a single direct. You can go to my head office, no one will be in it.
01:28:44:24 - 01:28:50:04
Adam Handling
Every, every director apart from Nicola, they have a job to do when service has arisen.
01:28:50:06 - 01:28:52:10
Dan Pope
So to me, through each one.
01:28:52:12 - 01:29:10:19
Adam Handling
So for George George's restaurant right now, if you're in London, he's in the frog. Other than that, yeah, but other than that, George is based in lock and dine. That's his home. So we always pinpoint one of us to be in every specific place so that we can, we're quick reactive. That's where we're going to be every day of the week.
01:29:11:00 - 01:29:21:18
Adam Handling
Whenever there's an issue, we'll switch and change. So George is in lock in time. Predominantly most of it. Nicola is in frog. So a head office area. Or lock entirely.
01:29:21:24 - 01:29:23:07
Dan Pope
Or she lives.
01:29:23:09 - 01:29:26:16
Adam Handling
Though she. So she you none of us. We all live in London.
01:29:26:18 - 01:29:29:19
Dan Pope
So you I think you make, say sorry. That's. But that's like their head office. Yeah.
01:29:29:19 - 01:29:31:13
Adam Handling
Yeah. So so we we have a fight.
01:29:31:13 - 01:29:32:09
Dan Pope
Boots on the ground.
01:29:32:09 - 01:29:48:10
Adam Handling
Yeah, we have A55 story head office. Just on the corner from the Savoy. Yeah. So we do our meetings in there. Nicola will let everyone. Nicola will be there, like, 8:00 every single morning, 7:00 every morning. Just a she. She's an early bird. She likes to get all of her work done before she, for everyone else, comes in.
01:29:48:12 - 01:30:07:19
Adam Handling
And so would the ops team be there? My my pa will be there. The chocolate team is based there. They're based in that building as well. But then the, the the Kelvin is everywhere. He is literally the beverage director because we have three pubs and bars as well. So he travels pretty much daily to every one of them.
01:30:07:22 - 01:30:25:16
Adam Handling
But during service, he's on service. He'll have his two days off. But he'll, he'll, he'll be, unless it's summer. Then we all work like crazy people. Jamie is based absolutely everywhere, including events. So director of, chef director. So for instance, he's in London at the moment doing an event that we're doing, in, in February, doing some tastings there.
01:30:25:18 - 01:30:43:18
Adam Handling
Then he'll be in Lock in Tyne, then he's coming to London while I land back there to redo the frog menus. Me and him. Then he'll be in, Cornwall with me doing well, first in Ireland, doing an event, and then he'll be doing an event with me, relaunching the butterfly with me, because that's where I'm based.
01:30:43:20 - 01:30:53:17
Adam Handling
And it works pretty much like that. We really. That's why the directors meeting is very important. Because the director's meetings are for the next three months, and it's repetitive as hell, but it's just so everyone knows what's going on.
01:30:53:17 - 01:31:13:15
Dan Pope
It's that military discipline. Yeah, yeah, the one thing I wanted to ask you about is how. And you tell me to fuck off. We don't have to go here at all. But I know you went through, like, a tricky period. Yeah. Your son or Oscar or Oliver. Oliver. Oliver. And you spent with your partner? A lot of people listening to this.
01:31:13:15 - 01:31:22:22
Dan Pope
I've got friends who are in treatment situations. When a kid gets involved, you're building all this business. How did you navigate that period? How was that? And was that tricky for you?
01:31:22:22 - 01:31:23:19
Adam Handling
I think yeah, it was.
01:31:23:19 - 01:31:25:06
Dan Pope
It was it was again, we don't have to go.
01:31:25:06 - 01:31:45:03
Adam Handling
Here. No, no, I, it was very difficult because it was a situation which I couldn't control. And I think if I hate being made to feel stupid. Yeah, if that was a situation where I didn't know something, I'd study it tomorrow. Ask me the same question. I'll tell you the answer to it. But that's my personality.
01:31:45:03 - 01:32:06:14
Adam Handling
But when it's specific stuff like, like the separation and it all started pretty much because of social media people. People, you know, I'm a big boy now. It hurt me at the time, but there was a lot of negativity about me and in social media from, from from things which no one's met me but everyone just jump on the bandwagon and assumed everything was was correct.
01:32:06:15 - 01:32:08:01
Dan Pope
Like this. Like cancel culture.
01:32:08:01 - 01:32:22:05
Adam Handling
Is oh, it is, it is, it is. Do I care about it now? Not really at all, but I did at the time, you know, this was the same time lockdown was going on as well. So I was losing everything. I was losing my relationship. I was losing my son, I was losing my restaurants. I was losing my parents house.
01:32:22:07 - 01:32:40:04
Adam Handling
I was losing fucking everything. And I'm looking around thinking, oh, do I just want to jump off the fucking balcony and make everyone's out of life easier? And it was, it was the Nicolas. It was the Georges, it was the Stephen's. It was the then people that I've said will always have my back. They're the ones that were like, fucking,
01:32:40:06 - 01:32:57:10
Adam Handling
And. Yeah, they say that to you, but you're like, no, no, I'm not going to. It still hurts me. I get, you know, DailyMail starts to speak about it. You click on the comments and it's like a scary movie. I've always been like this. I used to be terrified of Jurassic Park when I was a little boy. When it first came out, I had to watch the whole movie or it was game over.
01:32:57:10 - 01:33:05:14
Adam Handling
I had nightmares forever. And it's just like that. Even now, I have the same, same tact of what I had as a child where I have to read every single comment.
01:33:05:16 - 01:33:08:06
Dan Pope
Are you very. You're like a sensitive teddy bear underneath.
01:33:08:09 - 01:33:24:23
Adam Handling
Well, I was I wouldn't say I was, but I won't show emotion in public very much. Yeah, I do it behind closed doors. And I'm not gonna every fucking cries if you don't. You're a liar. Or you have no soul. But yeah, there are times where it gets me and I'm in the shower thinking, fucking hell.
01:33:25:00 - 01:33:29:15
Adam Handling
But I have to pretend when I go into my work, nothing's bothering me at all.
01:33:29:17 - 01:33:33:03
Dan Pope
And how often do you get to see your son if he's, quite regularly?
01:33:33:07 - 01:33:37:19
Adam Handling
We had him for Christmas this year, which is beautiful. Holly has a phenomenal relationship with Oliver.
01:33:37:21 - 01:33:38:10
Dan Pope
Holly.
01:33:38:12 - 01:33:55:01
Adam Handling
My. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, she's. They have a very, very good relationship together. And, so does Oliver. Oliver grew up in the frog. So when he comes, it's like Uncle George. It's like Uncle Jamie is like Nicola. And, it's really quite funny because I walk into the office and I'll see them FaceTiming my son. They just. They might.
01:33:55:01 - 01:34:14:02
Adam Handling
He'll just call him to be like. And how are you? How's the chocolate shop going? Or where are you? In the fox? Because we have another house down in Cornwall. So he's like, are we going to daddy's house by the beach or are we going in London? And, he just is so involved. And so, inquisitive.
01:34:14:04 - 01:34:32:00
Adam Handling
And like I said, when when you mentioned about how I was as a child, about not having the energy that a child gives off tailored stuff that I didn't give a shit about, I was being disruptive, you know, English, maths and all that jazz, everything that he's in quite inquisitive about. I go down that path with him always.
01:34:32:06 - 01:34:50:15
Adam Handling
So when we're going out, he loves food, but he doesn't. I will never correct him on what he gets wrong. So, for instance, he's very much, every, every protein is chicken, every meters chicken. Every every seafood that comes from the sea is fish. So he can be eaten. Venison, totara, beef Wellington. Pork. This chicken is amazing.
01:34:50:15 - 01:35:09:02
Adam Handling
And he's very appreciative. Is that it's the best food I've ever tasted. And I'm not ever going to say to him, that's not venison, that's venison, that's beef. That's, you know. No, he find out his own because that soon as you start to correct a child when they're passionate about something, about what they're saying is wrong, they'll lose that passion.
01:35:09:04 - 01:35:30:11
Adam Handling
Who does it bother that he's calling pork chicken. Beef, chicken? Yeah, yeah. Some sad, sad human being is just going to do. Yeah. So. And he fucking loves it because he feels he's connected by me or he's, he's connected with me by a joint passion. And I think the joint passion, was perhaps something I didn't have as a child.
01:35:30:13 - 01:35:47:05
Adam Handling
And that made me an asshole. So I will make sure that that that, that's the reason. One of the reasons why we created the chocolate shop. My son doesn't like chocolate. Yeah, yeah. I wanted to create everything from start to finish, to be able to be like, well, this is how we got you eating vegetables. You were in the gardens, like, and and we were digging it up, and you're making a salad.
01:35:47:06 - 01:35:53:07
Adam Handling
You. Everything was the best he's ever tasted. Chocolate. He still doesn't like chocolate, but he tries that. Yeah. Me too.
01:35:53:12 - 01:36:15:23
Dan Pope
About full KitKat. Chunky. But I got in last night. Yeah. It's. Yes. Fascinating. And what are some of, like, the hard things you'd want him to go through? Because I don't think a bubble wrapped existence for a child. Not like I've got kids, but like, you want them to go through some hardships because that's as well. You're saying when you're buried, you know, the seed grows and you've lost him.
01:36:15:23 - 01:36:18:19
Dan Pope
Like, what are some of the hard things that you've been through that you'd want him to go through?
01:36:18:19 - 01:36:19:17
Adam Handling
Yeah.
01:36:19:19 - 01:36:21:14
Dan Pope
He without a character assassination?
01:36:21:16 - 01:36:40:13
Adam Handling
Yeah. Yeah, he's very soft, and he is bubble wrapped. You know, now that he has two homes to live in. I think it's perhaps not as dispersed after this, but when it comes to me. But it's not as disciplined in both houses. The same. And I would like that to change because the boy needs to know he can't get everything he wants.
01:36:40:13 - 01:37:04:09
Adam Handling
He's not God's gift to humanity. And yes, he's in a, you know, he's an adorable child. It's really difficult because his grandparents is bloody Thai. So he's a super white kids because he takes after my skin color, blue eyes. But his mum's Thai and it's just like he's the prized possession to a Thai grandmother. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's just trying to be like, would you please stop peeling his grapes for him?
01:37:04:13 - 01:37:15:09
Adam Handling
Let him fucking eat the grape skin. You know, like, let him do that. He's like, no, I'm not gonna do that side. But he's like, no, it's my it's it's, it's my grandchild. I'll do everything I want. And I'm like.
01:37:15:11 - 01:37:24:17
Dan Pope
Yeah, that's fascinating. And obviously we're in. We're who captain our in Thailand. Like, how would you say the Scottish and Thai cultures are similar and different?
01:37:24:19 - 01:37:43:14
Adam Handling
I think that's similar because they're proud of where they come from. Yeah. They've got a very long history in terms of products, what they have in each each country. I think the flavor combinations are completely bloody different. Yeah. Completely. Yeah. But they're both islands as well. So seafood is very important for them. So I think the loudness of location is very important.
01:37:43:16 - 01:38:03:21
Adam Handling
Like my dream. I'm going to go off on a tangent here. My dream is to, make Britain an actual, And I hate the word cuisine because it's not British either. To make it a cuisine that people come to the UK to be like, I want to go to a British restaurant. But, you know, during Queen Victoria's reign, World War two, Britain within the first one, Britain got,
01:38:03:21 - 01:38:09:01
Adam Handling
got sought after of being, wealthy and powerful of their eating things from the other side of the world.
01:38:09:03 - 01:38:30:24
Adam Handling
Pineapple, for example, is the bloody. The gift that the gift that you give people, you know, that was better than a fucking massive basket of strawberries, you know, but, and then World War two and, Germany was seeing all of the, all of the, the, boats coming in, with products. And then we've, we literally got in the shit in this country because we were not self-sufficient.
01:38:31:05 - 01:38:52:11
Adam Handling
We've always had the mindset is, it's better to get it from abroad because we can where Britain were powerful and we learned that, well, we learned the foundations. If you go to any Thai grandmother, they can cook their socks off. You know, if you go to lots of, you know, British grandparents, some of them can cook quite a lot can the next generation can't.
01:38:52:13 - 01:39:10:22
Adam Handling
You know, they it's it's passed down to be able to provide eat from the land, eat from what is there. My dream is, is to change that and have have, people understand what British food is all about. Gone are the days French word is used to describe something posh. Creme brulée. Fucking hell. You taking the piss?
01:39:10:22 - 01:39:12:20
Adam Handling
It's made in Cambridge. Why? We say.
01:39:12:22 - 01:39:13:23
Dan Pope
It's exact.
01:39:13:23 - 01:39:29:10
Adam Handling
Translation is English cream. Why are we making French words on our specific products? When a dish that was created in Cambridge University is called creme brulée. But yeah, on a menu Cambridge meant creme creme de la creme. Replace posh as it's French. Why? Come on. Yeah yeah.
01:39:29:10 - 01:39:29:22
Dan Pope
Yeah yeah.
01:39:29:22 - 01:39:35:05
Adam Handling
Yeah I want to change the mindset about what things? What Britain's British food is all about.
01:39:35:07 - 01:39:42:23
Dan Pope
What would be your utopia in, say, ten, 15 years time? If we could paint that picture?
01:39:43:00 - 01:40:06:11
Adam Handling
Well, I got honored by the King two years ago. I got an MBA for my services. Those of British hospitality. Thank you. That was the literally the biggest achievement of my life. Because it means I'm on the right path. But I want people to. Well, I've got two different legs of that around the world. I want to create the, the I wouldn't say the history book, because the history book is all covered in French terminology and covered in French chefs creating it.
01:40:06:11 - 01:40:28:09
Adam Handling
There are still some better stuff, but it's it's not pure. It's covered in foreign, words. I want there to be a British cookbook where the, the the foundations is completely non-existent, but it's all about the products that we have. So we can create, we can create something magical. We can we have a complete blank book to be like, what is British?
01:40:28:11 - 01:40:51:03
Adam Handling
You know, what is British? And because it's the products that we use here, the way that we do them is completely new. I'm not saying don't put a title out on the menu. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, I'm saying like, course. New restaurant, for example. You know, re highlighting what British food's all about in a very, very elegant way, but very historic foundations.
01:40:51:05 - 01:41:15:18
Adam Handling
Heston Blumenthal in The Fat Duck. What he tried to do there as well. I think there are a few chefs out there that are doing phenomenal, but they're a specific, there a specific way of doing it. They're all about ancient history. I would like to do and be a part of all the other chefs that are around my age category, where they're all doing British food, and it is literally brand new, brand new.
01:41:15:20 - 01:41:31:17
Adam Handling
You go to, you go down to Spain. Yeah, I'm going to a Spanish restaurant. Croquettes in one ham in one coquettish omelet. You know, you're eating the same food in every restaurant. Some is better than the others, blah blah blah. But it's the same Italy. The same. You know, you go to Britain, you go, I'm going to. I'm going to eat in British restaurant five days a week.
01:41:31:19 - 01:41:52:10
Adam Handling
You're having completely fucking different food. But it's all from British products. That excitement of what I would love to see foreign people come to the UK, especially London, to be like, we ain't eaten where we're from. We're on the British ones. You're going to find fish and chips and you're going to find a roast beef in a Sunday roast, but you're going to find some serious magical things.
01:41:52:13 - 01:42:10:02
Dan Pope
What do you think that would week would look like again through a utopian lens? If someone comes in and says, it's because you're right, like, you know, even out out here, you know, I'm not one week. So I was like, even I said this, Lucas, I need to try the roasted pork I'm going to do. I'm going to smash the fuck out of Thai food.
01:42:10:04 - 01:42:24:15
Dan Pope
Yeah, I want that. I want is it the crowd? Kapow! Which is a holy, Well, that's correct. Thank you. I would like to fuck those. I kept getting confused with saying thank you. And, the other one is that, you know, that, you know, it's a minced, chicken or beef.
01:42:24:21 - 01:42:26:09
Adam Handling
Egg with a and the holy basil.
01:42:26:09 - 01:42:47:00
Dan Pope
Yeah. And it's fucking spicy. Yeah. I think I kept saying we've eaten that every day. Yeah, yeah. It's banging like. Yeah. Want to try that one. Try that. But I think you're right. Like if you were to take off the naff, stereotypical fish and chips Yorkshire fucking pudding pie whatever. Like what is the the utopian British food do you think?
01:42:47:00 - 01:42:51:10
Adam Handling
Like I think it's to have a British cookbook alongside, repertoire de la cuisine.
01:42:51:15 - 01:42:52:11
Dan Pope
Yes.
01:42:52:13 - 01:43:16:07
Adam Handling
The Larousse gastronomic is about something where it's like, the history, but also the future of food because, the risk a gastronomic is the future of food, of that period of time. So I think it's to have a huge ass book with, what everyone's doing now. There's plenty of fantastic chefs out there. Yeah. You know, you go to Mark, in more whole, he's his food is British as hell.
01:43:16:08 - 01:43:19:24
Adam Handling
And it is wonderful. And it's got top, top, you know, three stars.
01:43:20:02 - 01:43:22:02
Dan Pope
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah three stars.
01:43:22:04 - 01:43:43:05
Adam Handling
We have the best awarded British restaurants in the country being British. But we also. And Simon Rogan, all of them three restaurants I mentioned apart from class is is three stars plus two green stars. You know, they are the epitome of what it is. But yeah, people still think Britain's can't cook you like, well it's fucking. You got French people giving us the top marks and Michelin.
01:43:43:07 - 01:43:49:16
Adam Handling
Yeah. Yeah, really they do. Yeah. So my dream is to have foreign people come into the UK and to be like, yes, I want to eat British food.
01:43:49:22 - 01:43:50:18
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:43:50:18 - 01:44:10:17
Adam Handling
But it's all distorted studies done by is done by. What's that word. The generations. So our parents generation where they would go or like from, from France countries, they'd come here and they'd have shit food because we would be doing MgO seedlings of everything. It would be completely beige. That was when Britain did really bad for itself.
01:44:10:17 - 01:44:30:23
Adam Handling
It was, factory produced filth that just put a lot of damage in people. So their perception is shite, their kids, their perception is going to be wonderful. And then next generation, their kids, when they come here, it's even better. So I just think it's a generational thing. I don't want anyone to die. But when that generation does pass and the new one comes in to be the, the older ones, it's going to it's going to go.
01:44:31:04 - 01:44:52:23
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah. You know, I just love the way your brain thinks about the future and just ambition. One thing I love again, this is another Chris Williams thing, which I think is really interesting, is he says a lot of like, not like advice from people who've been who are successful, who've made their millions. Is, is not always the best to rely on.
01:44:52:23 - 01:45:11:09
Dan Pope
And its whole thing is is study the rise, not the result. So a lot of these big minute people, you know, go on these some of these podcast. So they'll say, you know I wish I it's all about balance. Like taking a fucking walk or, you know, playing with your kid or getting a gym session and doing a morning routine.
01:45:11:11 - 01:45:28:10
Dan Pope
That's fine. Once they've made that though, they've got time to do that. But if you were to actually study the rise on the way up, they were fucking psychopaths. Yeah. Like what's what? What was your rise like versus where you are now. Your result like well it was like totally get me into your head, into the eye of your head.
01:45:28:12 - 01:45:33:00
Dan Pope
So you, you had about that up to that.
01:45:33:02 - 01:45:49:14
Adam Handling
Direction, about to face that. It's not saying everyone wants to know you when you're successful. No one wants to help you be successful. You know, like, ever. And. No, no one, no one, no one believes in you when you're struggling. But you're not. You're you're a stubborn ass not to give up. But then when you've achieved it, you have lots of friends.
01:45:49:16 - 01:45:58:19
Adam Handling
I hate people like that. My circle is very, very, very small. Very small for that reason.
01:45:58:21 - 01:46:17:03
Adam Handling
I don't really know that answer that question. It's like a bull run, really. I started off my career, went up really high, shut down, pretty much almost collapsed, went up again, shot down from lockdown. Now it's gone back up again. Luckily, it doesn't seem to be dropping. It's slowed down in terms of its spike. Purely for the reason of the economics.
01:46:17:07 - 01:46:26:04
Adam Handling
But we ain't slowing down. It's still going up. I sort of like that is now pushed slightly slower, and it will always move forward. It'll never be stagnant.
01:46:26:06 - 01:46:55:15
Dan Pope
Yeah. It's interesting. I, you know, grenade the chocolate bars. Because if you look at any of the founder of that he's done so ex is that for 200 mil. Went to his gaff in Cornwall actually sick. He's got like his own. It's just like his own. Like it's like a bond layer. But he was basically saying to me is you can have a better business without having better or higher profits or revenue, and the sense that you may be sort of flat lying, but you may be getting the vitamin, oh for sure.
01:46:55:15 - 01:47:06:05
Dan Pope
And I think that's really we look at so myopically through like, oh, what's all the revenues. There's no no, you can get bit of luck better systems. But yeah. And you you know all that stuff is fucking fascinating.
01:47:06:05 - 01:47:24:03
Adam Handling
I do think tech is playing a major part in in financial growth with inside the hospitality sector. Right. But I still think it's a little bit more scary to let go and specific things. I know it has been for me, but my, my ops team are very much a, we are going digital.
01:47:24:08 - 01:47:26:07
Dan Pope
So what sort of stuff we implemented.
01:47:26:09 - 01:47:48:20
Adam Handling
But everything, every single thing that the team do is completely digital in terms of how they obviously clock in and out, how they, they manage their holidays that time, their rotas, their payslips, their, ordering their shopping baskets, accounts, finance. Every single thing is all done. It's all done digitally, where, all specific people will have access to absolutely everything so they can click on it.
01:47:49:00 - 01:48:04:11
Adam Handling
They can see the projections, the forecasts, everything. And people are like, yeah, that's just a flash report. I'm a restaurant. I'm not a hotel. I don't have an endless team of of financial people that I just sit and do that. So picking up these systems in place to be able to make sure that you can control food cost as well.
01:48:04:13 - 01:48:10:23
Adam Handling
One of the biggest costs that will cripple a business is, mismanaging ordering, and being wasteful.
01:48:11:00 - 01:48:17:10
Dan Pope
The what? Like what mistakes do you think young, ambitious chefs make? You commonly see.
01:48:17:12 - 01:48:37:00
Adam Handling
They don't realize that seafood is bloody seasonal in terms of price point. One day it's this price, one day it's that. And yet they don't adapt their menu. So, you know, if you're buying turbot, for example, you buy a whole turbot in seven kilo turbot. King of the sea. Absolutely delicious. You get I don't know how many portions, say, ten portions out of, I want, like, big portions of something.
01:48:37:06 - 01:49:04:00
Adam Handling
You'll get more than that. And it's an X amount of money. So on the menu, you've decided it's a great dish. The following day, you order another turbot and it's like 15% higher, but your menu price still the same. You lost money on that dish. That whole comes into place at the end of the month. You arrive. So I think doing a complete, flexible menu of terms of being able to create things or even have a relationship with suppliers where you can say, I really want this on my menu, but I cannot have it change up and down.
01:49:04:00 - 01:49:06:23
Adam Handling
So create a floor, create a ceiling. I do that with my suppliers.
01:49:06:24 - 01:49:07:17
Dan Pope
What do you mean create?
01:49:07:19 - 01:49:23:05
Adam Handling
So create a floor. Is that if, a say for instance, it's 45 pound a kilo. Yeah. And I'll be like, if it goes down to 43, let's keep it that way. If it goes up to say 50, let's keep it that way. If it goes any lower, you make more money. If it goes any higher, you save money.
01:49:23:11 - 01:49:40:19
Adam Handling
And I do that with a lot of my high ticket items and a lot of suppliers would be like, you know what? It's scratching each other's back. It's all going to pull back at certain times of year. And so create a floor, create a ceiling again, that's a, a normal. Yeah a business term to to to think about how much how much you can work with someone together.
01:49:40:20 - 01:49:47:09
Adam Handling
Yeah yeah yeah I'd be flexible but not allow the flexibility to be detrimental. Yeah.
01:49:47:11 - 01:49:55:22
Dan Pope
Talk to me about the on the show. I've read the 4x4 menu. The flexible is that, you know, it's only through the genesis of that and what that is.
01:49:55:22 - 01:49:57:16
Adam Handling
So frog is are,
01:49:57:18 - 01:50:07:20
Dan Pope
Why now, I suppose I want to get into the, you know, be like water, swim. You know, the pool, which I always love is be like water, like swim round things. Yeah. Coming through.
01:50:07:20 - 01:50:29:16
Adam Handling
That. So we wanted to create frog as being a standalone. Nothing will come. Nothing will come in place with frog. It will be the flagship of the group. Nothing will change that. So make, make, make a restaurant that emphasizes the good parts of frog, but make it more accessible, you know. So we did a four for four menu so you can come in and pick your own menu, come here five days in a row and you can have a completely different menu.
01:50:29:18 - 01:50:30:10
Dan Pope
What's the you.
01:50:30:11 - 01:50:50:00
Adam Handling
So for starters for middles, for mains, for desserts. Also you can add on cheese. So and it's like an ala carte vibes but we call it four for four because ala carte is bloody French and I will never use that word. So it's like, just been able to been able to be more flexible. We also have a tasting menu attached to there as well, if you really want to come and experience it, but it's all about the location.
01:50:50:00 - 01:50:57:04
Adam Handling
Okay. Butterfly got changed to it isn't as affluent as what it once was in its previous location, so I don't want.
01:50:57:04 - 01:51:02:13
Dan Pope
Guests for context, places just so it was in. So I think I was in Newquay. Yeah.
01:51:02:15 - 01:51:21:08
Adam Handling
So it's in a, it's in it's in the historic Headland Hotel on the left side of the building overlooking the cliffs of Fistral Beach, which is incredible. The sun sets in the windows is so pretty. And we wanted to create a restaurant that embodies the history of what we've done. So we've got all the newspaper articles of what we've done.
01:51:21:08 - 01:51:42:04
Adam Handling
Well, done them into papier maché butterflies and hang them all from the ceiling, because you must remember the past. If you're going to think about the future. And, and then we wanted to create the foundations of, of accessibility. So if you don't want to come. I love Cornwall to bits, but it could up its food game in specific areas.
01:51:42:06 - 01:52:08:01
Adam Handling
So there's not so much in one small space of the top tier restaurants in fish in, in Cornwall, in Cornwall, everything like that. You've got phenomenal restaurants, but they're also bloody far away. And a lot of people don't necessarily like to travel, you know. Next one for me who's far away is like probably 40 minutes where you've got poles and you've got like Nathan's even further away from that, you know, you've got a lot of wonderful restaurants, like some of the best in the UK, to be fair.
01:52:08:04 - 01:52:34:04
Adam Handling
But everything is so difficult to get to. So I wanted to create a restaurant where guests can have the same standard without having to travel when I were there and now we're back, they can just create their own menu and come here in five days a week while they're on holiday. That was the ethos around it. So to be able to capture an audience and if they wanted to come just for a special occasion or they wanted to blow out the tasting menus there, we sell a lot of tasting menu on the weekends because people come for special occasions during the week is pretty much the focus menu.
01:52:34:06 - 01:52:51:02
Adam Handling
And, I've had guests come in some of this year. It was really beautiful. When we first open, we had a guests come like six times in a week, lunch and dinner because we've got a bar menu as well. So if you want to have a whole grilled lobster with garlic butter and chips, so you wanted a big bowl of steamed mussels or you just wanted the banging burger, you could do that in the bar.
01:52:51:05 - 01:53:03:14
Adam Handling
Yeah. Yeah. So we had we had guests come and try all the menus and we have afternoon tea there as well. It's a quite a large offering, but it's all about how would I like to eat if I was, I see like a seaside part of the.
01:53:03:14 - 01:53:06:00
Dan Pope
UK is Fish Beach where they've got the Rick Stein's.
01:53:06:00 - 01:53:08:11
Adam Handling
Chippy. Yeah. And and that's where they do. Boardmasters.
01:53:08:15 - 01:53:17:03
Dan Pope
Yeah. I was going to say it's where the surfers are. Yes. Yeah. And they've got that bar that's kind of the buzz pizzas below. Yeah. Yeah yeah yeah yeah I've definitely been there.
01:53:17:04 - 01:53:18:21
Adam Handling
There's a little fish restaurant there.
01:53:18:24 - 01:53:21:05
Dan Pope
Oh my I've been really amazing.
01:53:21:09 - 01:53:31:07
Adam Handling
It's amazing. Really really good. So I don't when I say there's not very much around. There are good restaurants around. I'm not saying that. But it's not as a it's not as close together as London is. Yeah.
01:53:31:07 - 01:53:34:13
Dan Pope
Yeah yeah. You got the one of my the go and it's head down there.
01:53:34:16 - 01:53:36:14
Adam Handling
I love the Guinness as one of my favorites.
01:53:36:16 - 01:53:47:10
Dan Pope
And what's the other one. Which is really good. Thank you. In. Yeah. Yeah I think I had like a red thing there which was just like mind blowing. So delicious. Yeah.
01:53:47:10 - 01:53:48:14
Adam Handling
Yeah. This there's loads of great.
01:53:48:14 - 01:54:08:03
Dan Pope
But what are the other sort of psychological positive manipulations. Because I think it's the smart thing to do. And the you you win, the guess wins. You know, I'd love to be able to go for fucking four things, you know, bang in there, you know, leave and get in a car. So people don't want to do that. I like driving but you know.
01:54:08:03 - 01:54:16:13
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah. What are the other sort of, the, the, you know, win win win win for everyone. Things you've put in place across.
01:54:16:13 - 01:54:31:09
Adam Handling
Oh we got we have two restaurant cars. That will drive you home if you want to enjoy the wine list. And you can leave your car in any of the restaurants, to be fair, and pick it up the following day because you never know. So yeah, it's all about the experience someone gets. You come first to an operation and you're like, I'm not drinking.
01:54:31:14 - 01:54:41:13
Adam Handling
I'm just going to come for a couple, of course. And then all of a sudden you've got on like a house on fire with the, with with the waiter, and you're enjoying the food so much, you're smashing out everything.
01:54:41:15 - 01:54:43:02
Dan Pope
That's right.
01:54:43:04 - 01:54:57:08
Adam Handling
And, and, they're like, yeah, you know, let's have another bottle of wine. Perfect. Don't you worry about that. The taxis take forever will drive you home. You know, you got to. You can't be living in Devon, but, you know, it's it's an hour round trip. We'll drive you for free for taxis.
01:54:57:08 - 01:55:16:20
Dan Pope
You can't get in. Come. Yeah. Those. And also it's mad like. So I took my team down there. We did like a, what I did. The gradient view sucks because our lives down there and we did. We did the rock. We did, what do we do? What's three boys or four boys in rock? Which was really good.
01:55:16:22 - 01:55:23:15
Dan Pope
And, then Paul Ainsworth's cafe wrote Rihanna, right? No, not the, that.
01:55:23:15 - 01:55:24:18
Adam Handling
Which is a great restaurant.
01:55:24:18 - 01:55:39:02
Dan Pope
Yeah. Which is really, really good. But, you know, I was I was like, back in the old days, I was like, calling these cab companies. All right, love. I'm like. I'm like, he's like, yeah, me. I'll be there at this time. And I was like, this is just fucking. But so that's it. That's if that's probably good business in itself.
01:55:39:02 - 01:55:48:12
Adam Handling
Yeah it is. We don't charge anything for it. We just want people to make sure that we've thought of everything a guest wants to do without them asking for it. That's the ethos of a good restaurant.
01:55:48:15 - 01:55:49:07
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah.
01:55:49:13 - 01:55:52:17
Adam Handling
Flow from one side to another. Do everything guests don't see.
01:55:52:19 - 01:56:16:10
Dan Pope
I want to explore your creative process like, it's really been amazing to understand your character and the way you think and navigate this world. But like the creative process is interesting. Like, you know, Paul Smith, the designer, like he's got really I was reading on the way on the boat over here, actually really interesting, kind of like rules of creativity and it's just really fascinating.
01:56:16:11 - 01:56:33:19
Dan Pope
His brand is one of the one of these things is have a fucking point of view because we don't it doesn't there's, there's a gazillion podcasts, there's a gazillion chefs, there's a gazillion graphic designers, the zillion writers. We don't people think we need another one of those we don't need. We need a point of view. That's one of his ones.
01:56:33:19 - 01:56:54:01
Dan Pope
His other ones is like, there's a difference between stay child like, but don't be childish. It's like always be curious kind of thing. What positivity really, really interesting. But, like, I'd love to know, I don't know. At one point you kind of backpacked around here in Asia. Like, how did you develop the Adam handling point of view?
01:56:54:02 - 01:57:06:02
Dan Pope
First and then what? How do you go and get these creative ideas? How do you I mean, you've got the famous lobster and lobster wagyu and caviar dish. Like, that's just how does that happen?
01:57:06:04 - 01:57:28:06
Adam Handling
Well, that happens a long way in a long way off from finding myself. Yeah, I'm a I'm a Gleneagles boy, which was very traditional, very wasteful, but incredibly phenomenal. You know, everything was very old school. So they would cut a tub into a square. I'd roll in my I literally get so frustrated if I went to a restaurant now, and I see a square that where the fuck's the rest of the fishermen fish in a square?
01:57:28:08 - 01:57:44:09
Adam Handling
But that was how I got taught. So it wasn't until I, and I do encourage everyone, whether or not you're in hospitality or any other industry, travel, see the world, see a different point of view. Because sometimes you could be quite locked into, you know, we don't have a passport. We only have we stay in, we only see what we see every day.
01:57:44:12 - 01:58:05:21
Adam Handling
You need to be inspired by anything a smell, a sound, a feeling, a fucking flavor. You eat everything like that. So when I went traveling, I realized that especially in Asia, Japan, here and China and everything, they're very much hyper local in terms of proud to be using Thai, using Japanese, using Chinese. And they don't tend to bring anything else into that country that isn't in season.
01:58:05:21 - 01:58:20:19
Adam Handling
Just then. But there's a reason why the best fruit in the world come from Japan. You know, like the the, the, the apples, the strawberries, things like that, because they only make them for that period of time. And that's you done me. If I can get strawberry in the UK out of season because people are forcing them to grow.
01:58:20:21 - 01:58:31:13
Adam Handling
So they're very much built on product and utilization of everything. And I think that was so beautiful to experience because I'd never experienced it before. And I did cooking classes in all countries. I was in.
01:58:31:18 - 01:58:33:01
Dan Pope
What country to go to?
01:58:33:03 - 01:58:50:03
Adam Handling
All, so let's talk about this area. Cambodia, Vietnam. Thailand. China, Indonesia, Bali, Sri Lanka, China, Japan. This is just this area. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I took almost a year out and went traveling.
01:58:50:06 - 01:58:52:22
Dan Pope
And what country was the most surprising?
01:58:53:00 - 01:58:57:20
Adam Handling
Thailand. Because their their usage of sweet and sour. Spicy.
01:58:57:22 - 01:58:59:03
Dan Pope
This is exactly what Lakey was saying.
01:58:59:03 - 01:59:17:02
Adam Handling
So I think that there is something we don't do in British food and we don't and we definitely don't do in French food. So how I was trained. So when I'm when I'm having sour sweet and, you know, spicy, I'm like, what the fuck is going on in my mouth? Why does this taste so fresh, so delicious, so, so yummy?
01:59:17:08 - 01:59:20:21
Adam Handling
And then, I wanted to dive deeper into that sort of one.
01:59:20:23 - 01:59:26:21
Dan Pope
And is there a way to do that with the British menu now with the, well, British. So how do you create that?
01:59:26:24 - 01:59:35:09
Adam Handling
So the thing is as well, because British, old British food is historically based on French. That's why it's bland. If I'm honest. That's why it's.
01:59:35:09 - 01:59:37:11
Dan Pope
Bland. It's okay. So I can't show.
01:59:37:11 - 01:59:58:07
Adam Handling
You the history of the history of British food was, you know, like, yeah, yeah, the Savoy, the first chef. They're French, you know, all of the big chefs that are around everywhere. French. They put their influence on it to make what is British food now. French. They, they had that. So Britain didn't have the opportunity to be able to be sour, sweet and spicy.
01:59:58:10 - 02:00:18:16
Adam Handling
Didn't have the opportunity. Interesting. So when you go over there, it's not about taking the foundations of a phenomenal Thai dip where they would pour over their rice or whatever. Yeah, and bring it back to the UK and I'm doing just that. No, you can use British ingredients to achieve just that. I wanted lemons for my restaurants. So I worked with a farm called Pasha's Patch in Cornwall to create my own lemons.
02:00:18:16 - 02:00:34:06
Adam Handling
We create Meyer lemons for our restaurants, for example. So the thing is, now we have sour, but we also have sour. We have unripe and grapes. So all of the grapes that they start pruning off the vineyards, we have our own sparkling them, ones that we press and we've got ourself virgin basically.
02:00:34:08 - 02:00:35:16
Dan Pope
So. So that's sour.
02:00:35:18 - 02:00:52:24
Adam Handling
Yeah. Sour. So an unripe which I think you bite in, it's like sour is how you can feel your teeth disappearing. You know like you've got an in vinegars, you know, you have creating a scoby, creating vinegars from bread, from beer, from whatever. You can be able to create something. Again, there are a thousand different ways to create a sour flavor.
02:00:53:01 - 02:01:13:12
Adam Handling
Now how do we implement non British food using berries and gradients very easily, very easily. Now things like Emami, like soy I love soy, such a huge flavor. Yeah, we don't need soybeans in our soy. We use our leftover bread so we dice up our bread, we ferment our bread, we bake our bread, ferment it, put it in water, leave it there for two weeks, reduce it right down 100 to 1.
02:01:13:14 - 02:01:18:24
Adam Handling
Add some salt. Soy sauce made from bread, not soybeans. Same flavor.
02:01:19:01 - 02:01:39:14
Dan Pope
If there was a dish to kind of for people to cook, say the random handling 30 minute mail dish to create what your dish utopia like. What would that be for someone to whip up to kind of experience the new wave of. Yeah, like what? British food could be something we could definitely get there. What would be like?
02:01:39:18 - 02:01:49:06
Adam Handling
I'll say a posh version. A posh version will just be a barbecued lobster. Yeah, barbecued lobster in half. But then when the head is barbecued, squeeze the head all over the meat.
02:01:49:08 - 02:01:49:22
Dan Pope
Yes.
02:01:49:22 - 02:02:10:02
Adam Handling
Rush it and be fat. You do that two things. Britain is very squeamish because they've never had to get their hands dirty. Foreign people come in and they do everything for us. You go to Spain, you're having all of the gambas cooked on the on the boat shaped barbecues in the south of Spain. And people are sucking the head and squeezing the head.
02:02:10:02 - 02:02:36:12
Adam Handling
They're eating the prawns. And then someone does the same with the lobster and they're like, oh, that's gross. I'm confused. The same bloody thing. Yeah, one's a little larger. So it's about people's mindset, about what is gross, what is flavor. But if you were to be a little bit more, use a different cultures way of working with British products to understand that what they do, they've been doing for years and it's bloody delicious, sustainable, zero waste.
02:02:36:12 - 02:02:37:17
Adam Handling
Use it all.
02:02:37:19 - 02:03:01:16
Dan Pope
How would you apply the Japanese principles to British? Because, well, I went to Japan 2019 and what I found interesting about there is they'll specialize in one thing. Yeah. Like you'll go to like the pork katsu place or like this very specific type of shoes. Jamie. And like that just kind of maniacal obsession with one thing. Like what would that be for if we to put that through a British eat Asian fish.
02:03:01:16 - 02:03:24:05
Adam Handling
So aging fish. So aging as cod aging a turbot aging mackerel, aging a fish like they do over there to really impact the flavor of the ocean. That's something they've been doing for ages. We've only just started doing. It's a preservation system for us to be able to make fish last for longer, but because we're on the ocean, we and we've been very gluttonous in our time.
02:03:24:10 - 02:03:47:18
Adam Handling
We were very wasteful, but been able to, age a fish in a chamber or even nicely wrapped in a fridge. You take the information about how they then treat a fish to really maximize, flavor, bring it back to using British fish. That simple thing there. One, one little element of how they make the best fish over here.
02:03:47:20 - 02:04:05:22
Adam Handling
That little key will will open up a world of experience, but also a world of excitement because you know how wonderful taste it will cook even better because it doesn't have excess water. And, it has more of an intense flavor because, again, the water has no flavor has gone, it's dried slightly. So the caramelization on specific fish is, is even better.
02:04:05:24 - 02:04:07:04
Adam Handling
It's fucking wonderful.
02:04:07:04 - 02:04:09:03
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
02:04:09:05 - 02:04:15:20
Dan Pope
Such an interesting way of viewing the world. And so it's so exciting. Take time. How could you not be excited about applying all these.
02:04:15:22 - 02:04:26:16
Adam Handling
Techniques of history? They've been doing them for longer than that. It's like, come on, the whole world is very Europe is founded on, and Asia. People go to Italy and they. Oh, Italy is one of the oldest foods, foods in the world.
02:04:26:16 - 02:05:01:08
02:05:01:08 - 02:08:41:06
02:08:41:14 - 02:08:44:06
Dan Pope
Yeah. Sorry. Just, just quickly about buildings in London.
02:08:44:11 - 02:08:52:11
Adam Handling
Yeah. Do you know, way in, like, that side of London, the, all the buildings are, like, slanty or like, the cheese grater building is like that.
02:08:52:12 - 02:08:53:10
Dan Pope
No, no, no.
02:08:53:12 - 02:09:09:11
Adam Handling
The real that is that, Henry the eighth, created was no building can ever block the view of, St Paul's Cathedral. So wherever you are in London, you can always see it's supposed to be there. So these buildings have to be the shape of supposed cathedrals so that it can be so high.
02:09:09:13 - 02:09:10:07
Dan Pope
That's mad.
02:09:10:07 - 02:09:11:02
Adam Handling
Fucking cool.
02:09:11:04 - 02:09:28:16
Dan Pope
So. So, I think what we what we talked about the before, that camera stop being a knob, but the, the was it the British? It was the Jap. Okay, so Japan and the Japanese just doing one thing. Well, yeah. What would those be for Britain like in the new era?
02:09:28:17 - 02:09:33:21
Adam Handling
A lot of people are doing it, but it's the preserving of fish. The Asian. Yes. Aging fish.
02:09:33:21 - 02:09:34:09
Dan Pope
Fish is a.
02:09:34:09 - 02:09:45:22
Adam Handling
Really good way to enhance flavor. To make something prolonged, you know, that one little technique they're brought over here? It's just transforming the way British seafood, isn't.
02:09:45:24 - 02:10:00:01
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah, yeah. What did you what would you say is, like, if you could only spend two hours a week on your businesses or clubs, that thing, where would you spend it?
02:10:00:03 - 02:10:22:18
Adam Handling
I would probably spend it in either the the development kitchens or the labs. I get so excited about being adventurous. I'm so excited about creation of things. So we have, we have lab, we have we have food lab, drinks lab. We have development areas, them sort of ones where you're really honing in. I try and make dishes that connect with me, but also will connect with somebody else.
02:10:22:20 - 02:10:40:14
Adam Handling
I think that's very important. That is, as much as I only cook for myself, I'm a normal person and the average Brit has experienced pretty much what I've experienced growing up. So if I can create a reincarnation of that real happy memory that I've had as a child or as an adult or as whatever, they would have experienced it too.
02:10:40:19 - 02:10:50:24
Adam Handling
So when you give them that dish to eat it, they say to you that reminds me of you. Like done it, done it. I didn't tell you I wasn't going to tell you, but I did.
02:10:51:02 - 02:11:11:11
Dan Pope
Because I think we were talking about pools. Then we kind of got. Yeah, that was was talking about my Portsmouth bag, which is kind of been, you know, for me around this trip. And I love it because it kind of just stands out as it reminds me to sort of just look for things that stand out. And his whole mantra thesis is, is, you know, stay like childlike, not childish.
02:11:11:11 - 02:11:15:15
Dan Pope
But then you said you met him at the British. Yeah. Thing. Oh, no. Foreign office.
02:11:15:16 - 02:11:17:05
Adam Handling
Oh, great. A great dinner.
02:11:17:07 - 02:11:32:23
Dan Pope
Great dinner. What? Where? On that. If you could speak to that about where do your ideas come from? How do you have to exist in the world to get those ideas? Like, does creativity come to you or is this quite fucking ethereal and spiritually? But I love this stuff. Like, yeah.
02:11:33:00 - 02:11:51:17
Adam Handling
I think creativity comes if you're willing to learn and work for it. It's not something that you wake up in the morning. You think, I'm going to create this and it's going to be magical. You know, like the that there happens to a very few people, but it does happen. And and I'm so envious of them. But for me, I need I need substance, I need to be inspired by something.
02:11:51:17 - 02:12:11:10
Adam Handling
Hence inspiration is one of the words. So I need to be able to find something that inspires to me of how I feel right now. How do I feel in the moment? How can I create something that contains a memory, and also promote Britain in its best light possible? That's how I create my food. That way it's how I feel and what I want to eat now.
02:12:11:12 - 02:12:27:04
Adam Handling
Because I'm a normal person. So it's not an arrogance one where this is the frog we're talking about. The other ones are 50% frog, 50% the team. It's all about. It's all about if people are coming to the frog, which is my main restaurant, they want to experience, I would like to think what goes on in my crazy head and now crevice in this crazy head.
02:12:27:09 - 02:12:46:07
Adam Handling
So if they were to come in and they would eat something and it's like, oh my God, this is obvious, my grandmother made this bit of shit. You just managed to make me feel and miss her, you know, like you've just done something like that where it's it's really quite encapsulating of an experience. Chicken butter. The reason why people love it is because it reminds them of a Monday morning.
02:12:46:09 - 02:12:57:12
Adam Handling
A loaf of bread, lots of butter, leftover roast chicken sandwich. That chicken butter reminds everyone of that experience. That's why it's a memory. And that's why it's a Chanel dish. Timeless.
02:12:57:12 - 02:13:02:09
Dan Pope
Other Chanel dishes that tap into that keep going. Yeah, the other ones that you think.
02:13:02:12 - 02:13:21:01
Adam Handling
That, not some, not one. There is the predominant main one. But things like the, the lobster aged in beef fat and the cheese donut and the mother dish. They are pretty much the staple for that hour on. I wouldn't say all the menus, but half of them are on all the menus.
02:13:21:03 - 02:13:26:13
Dan Pope
Fascinating. What would you say is some of the most underrated foodie city in the world, do you think.
02:13:26:15 - 02:13:31:11
Adam Handling
Underrated foodie city in the world.
02:13:31:13 - 02:13:42:14
Adam Handling
I love Sri Lanka. I know that's a country, not a city. Yeah, yeah. But the the variation between all corners of Sri Lanka, the food changes and I think it's completely delicious.
02:13:42:15 - 02:13:46:10
Dan Pope
Really? Yeah. So like, what are some of the dishes you'd have that I go, where would you go?
02:13:46:10 - 02:14:00:18
Adam Handling
I could never tell you the names, but Yeah. Yeah. So I was there last year and I was a mind blown by the location of food. As in, like, each place is completely different to another, even though it's the same country. And yeah, stupidly, I thought that way. It's the same as Britain. You go to Scotland in the bottom.
02:14:00:22 - 02:14:18:14
Adam Handling
They are different. But the ingredients that they were using, the proudest of their heritage of my grandmother, my mum, my this, my that used to make it. I do it the same way, using the same ingredients. Grown right there. I thought it was so romantic and, the food was so fresh. It was such a clean country, obviously.
02:14:18:14 - 02:14:33:03
Adam Handling
That's probably one of my favorite places to go, or that I've been to for that specific type of food, because I don't know that area of food. I don't know Indian. I don't know Sri Lankan. It isn't my forte at all. And I'd love to dive into it a little bit more.
02:14:33:05 - 02:14:37:15
Dan Pope
Final question, mate, how do you think most people misunderstand you?
02:14:37:17 - 02:15:00:07
Adam Handling
How people misunderstand me? I'd like to say that they don't. Again, it's they don't see the graft. They just see the reward. They don't. They think that I was handed everything. They don't see the the tears, the the the heartbreaks, the broken families losing kids. They don't see any of that. They just see me pick up an award at a ceremony in a fancy suit, I think.
02:15:00:09 - 02:15:15:17
Adam Handling
And but that's because I keep myself pretty closed off. I would love for people to, you know, drop me a message and say they asked me a question. If you want to ask me a personal one, ask me a food one, ask me whatever. Yeah. Or if I'm in the area or someone asks me, do I want to go for a coffee?
02:15:15:17 - 02:15:26:08
Adam Handling
I want to chat to you about stuff. I will pretty much say yes to everyone if I'm in the area, because I want to inspire people. And the only way people are going to get to know the real me is to ask me a question or meet me too.
02:15:26:08 - 02:15:28:19
Dan Pope
What do you think? People are fearful of meeting you? Or do you.
02:15:28:19 - 02:15:29:10
Adam Handling
Think they're fearful?
02:15:29:14 - 02:15:44:01
Dan Pope
What do you think? Or do you think because of like just you wanting to create, create your own sort of, as you say, you're very on the same. I don't know anyone in I like close. My boys have been with me for fucking since I was 11 years old. Anyone else? I'm kind of like, keep at a distance a bit.
02:15:44:04 - 02:15:46:22
Dan Pope
Yeah. What would you is that. Is that what it is?
02:15:46:22 - 02:16:03:14
Adam Handling
Was it? Yeah. I've always been an extremely shy person. So me holding a small group of friends is really easy for me to do. I don't want to be the favorite person in the room. I'm happy if my ones that I'm close to like me. But yeah, I'd like people to want to get to know me.
02:16:03:14 - 02:16:18:16
Adam Handling
Perhaps, speak to the team that work in my restaurants. 300 wonderful people. You know, there's this. How is Adam? Is he a, you know, is. You know what? How is he as a as a person? And I guarantee you they'll say he's strict, but he's proper passionate and he works.
02:16:18:18 - 02:16:24:22
Dan Pope
What do you think? There's that misconception about you. Yeah. Really? Yeah. What is it? Why do you think that is?
02:16:24:22 - 02:16:43:08
Adam Handling
Just perfect example. One of my most senior people that we just hired, I just said, why are you why are you coming with me? You're getting interviews and left, right and center and all the best restaurants in in London. And he was like, because you inspire me. And I. And I was like, I don't understand you.
02:16:43:08 - 02:17:04:05
Adam Handling
You've never met me. And he goes, I came for a trial. And I felt the energy in this room you created that I'm like me and the team created that. I said, he's like, at least from the top. If the chef is an aggressive, angry person, the entire team mirror it. It's all about mirroring. And, he said he was warned not to come work for me because I'm angry and I'm aggressive and I'm straight.
02:17:04:05 - 02:17:06:07
Dan Pope
There's no hey is about you because you've got all this.
02:17:06:07 - 02:17:08:03
Adam Handling
Well, there's haters in every industry, isn't there?
02:17:08:07 - 02:17:24:13
Dan Pope
But I feel like for you specifically. But it's because you've because you're so young in the grand scheme of things. Yeah. And we'll see you. You made the kind of dollar, young. Yeah. You know, there's, I don't know, maybe there's this kind of this feud or spend.
02:17:24:14 - 02:17:42:20
Adam Handling
There's a, there's a lot of people that like to latch on to a negative thing. If someone starts to fall. We all make mistakes in life. I'm. No, I'm no fucking angel. But, you know, mistakes are a lesson. They're not a life prison sentence. So I suppose that, there are times where I've got way too excited and I've got wasted at a party, and I'm.
02:17:43:00 - 02:17:57:04
Adam Handling
And I make a fool of myself. You know, that's a life lesson. I don't want to do that again, because I feel horrible the next day to be like, I made myself look like a twat. But that was when I was in my younger days. You get handed a lot of things when you're doing so well and successful that it goes to your head and you make a twat of yourself.
02:17:57:10 - 02:18:11:04
Dan Pope
Like, even like just in general in life. The ones that were like like I remember like vegans who would tear people down for, like, eating meat. Yeah. They're sniffing cocaine. Yeah, well fuck me. Look at the manslaughter. That's literally the death that's happened in that fucking supply chain, love.
02:18:11:05 - 02:18:11:14
Adam Handling
I know.
02:18:11:16 - 02:18:26:11
Dan Pope
I mean, and it's just like, yeah, it's interesting and yeah, it's is that. Yeah. I just feel like that misconception I and I think it's a British British thing of build them up, tear them down and you're fucked because it's like.
02:18:26:11 - 02:18:41:18
Adam Handling
But again, I don't want this to be, me playing my little fiddle. And I want everyone to say, oh, poor Adam. Adam, I've had a wonderful life. And it's every every bump in the road has made me a stronger person, a better role model for me, for my son, a better role model for my team, and more drive to become better and better.
02:18:41:18 - 02:19:01:00
Adam Handling
Because I don't want these idiots in the background to be like, look, he failed! Haha. So it's my it's my. This is the passion I need. I need that sort of negativity in my life to make me be stronger and prove every fucker right. Everyone is holding their breath waiting for you to fail. Let them all suffocate.
02:19:01:02 - 02:19:04:18
Dan Pope
Mate, perfect way to wrap up your fucking joy. Thank you so much brother.
02:19:04:22 - 02:19:05:10
Adam Handling
My pleasure.
02:19:05:16 - 02:19:06:08
Dan Pope
Mate, that was.
02:19:06:08 - 02:19:08:09
Dan Pope
Brave. That was sick.
02:19:08:09 - 02:19:44:07