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HUNGRY is THE podcast for Challenger FMCG & Hospitality Founders wanting to pour gasoline on growth.
We chat with the industry BIG HITTERS. We ooze out the HIDDEN success secrets they’ve never told before and dive deep into their gut-wrenching failures, so you avoid them.
We help you grow bigger, faster, stronger.
Over the last 6 years, we’ve chatted to some insane guests on the poddy:
Rory Sutherland, Seth Godin, Jamie Laing, Spencer
Matthews, Tom Kerridge, Sir John Hegarty,
The founders of SOHO House, TRIP, The Devonshire, Tony’s Chocolonely, Vita Coco
Look, I’ll be blunt,
HUNGRY is NOT your normal podcast.
HUNGRY is NOT scripted and sterile Q&A interviews.
HUNGRY is for pretty much no one.
HUNRGY is a deliciously fun, wild and crazy, ADHD rollercoaster of free flowing conversations.
got what it takes?
Buckle up. Strap in.
get ready to… FEED YOUR HUNGER
00:00:00:00 - 00:00:01:13
Intro
00:00:34:17 - 00:00:54:21
Karan Gokani
So for me. So we opened Hopper. So ten years ten years is 26 will be the 11th year, but ten years ago 20 15th October. Tiny little site. Never expected it to sort of grow into what it is today. Yeah, it was very much a restaurant feeding people. We've created something that we've missed a lot in the market.
00:00:54:24 - 00:01:14:14
Karan Gokani
We created a restaurant where we wanted to go and eat, and we just want to feed people for the love of feeding people and doing it at a level that, you know, we are very proud of ourselves and we were our own benchmark. It wasn't what is a market know about Sri Lankan food? Let's hit that level and that we're happy with that, which I think a lot of our competitors in the market big, very famous, very successful competitors do.
00:01:14:14 - 00:01:35:21
Karan Gokani
Without naming names, I think you go with what is the benchmark knowledge in the market, the average, because that's what you're catering to, the average, you know, especially if you're doing volume, you're doing a ten seat account. It's different because then you're catering to people who fly in and really knowledgeable people. But if you're catering for volume, then, which we were doing out of a 40 seat site as well on a Saturday, I do.
00:01:35:22 - 00:01:55:11
Karan Gokani
400 covers off a 40 seat restaurant. So we were doing volume even in the early days. Wow. Right. And if we were, if we just went back and said, look, we're catering for volume and we need to find that base benchmark and there's no need to innovate above because innovation takes time, effort, money and a lot of Pacific.
00:01:55:13 - 00:02:12:12
Karan Gokani
Yeah, you need to have more skilled chefs. I could have had base skill chefs. I could have kept it a simpler menu. I could have watered down the curries a little bit more. I could have added butter chicken to the menu and I know it would sell. So when we kept it there, so it was very much this, but from there then moved on to site number two, we saw a demand.
00:02:12:14 - 00:02:26:23
Karan Gokani
We were hungry, we were growing. We saw a site number two. It was very much may have been driven by ego at that point as well. It's like, wow, I've made a successful one. Let me get a bigger one. I want to feed more people. Then I kind of came, you know, grew older, had kids, all that kind of stuff, and you sort of see the world changing.
00:02:26:23 - 00:02:33:05
Karan Gokani
You see things happening. 2020 was again a bit of a okay, we've done two. Let's do our biggest one so far.
00:02:33:06 - 00:02:35:15
Dan Pope
So what was the second site was.
00:02:35:15 - 00:02:45:15
Karan Gokani
Second was born. Yeah. So 2015. So 2017 and then 2020. Yeah. Just before Covid was Kings Cross. Our biggest, boldest, most ambitious site.
00:02:45:16 - 00:02:47:17
Dan Pope
Was 130 seats was something like that.
00:02:47:19 - 00:03:07:07
Karan Gokani
It's it all depends man. It's like we've got a we've got a bar, we've got another thing. It was more flexible Tetris. But basically in summer I counted last time with every seat full with our all our terraces expanded, we can go up to 190 seats. Okay now. And so it's like 44 seats with two on that little patio, which we had once in a while, but 40 seats inside?
00:03:07:08 - 00:03:07:14
Dan Pope
Sure.
00:03:07:14 - 00:03:30:17
Karan Gokani
Sure, sure. So we've gone sort of, you know, almost five days. Yeah. And it was interesting. So we did that again. That was very much okay. We've tested this. We believe that there's a bigger demand. First time we're doing a site this big. I put a big island bar in there because I wanted to also show off that look, we put equal effort into our drinks and every little step of service and our food.
00:03:30:19 - 00:03:49:04
Karan Gokani
So food obviously people think, okay, you're putting all your effort into food, but our drinks by then, Martin, who now runs our operations. He was bar manager there. And he is fantastic. Like he's just such a solid operator. He knows his drinks really well. He's now he really built this team under him. We've got some fantastic young bartenders in.
00:03:49:04 - 00:04:03:20
Karan Gokani
We've got creative people in. We've got our own sort of bar CPU. So we put a lot of effort in. It's not just like stick some mint in, stick some lemon in, put two colored liquids in and stir it all up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, which again a lot of restaurants do and it's quite easy to get away with because, you know the focus is on food.
00:04:03:20 - 00:04:26:00
Karan Gokani
You can get away just as long as there's some alcohol in a thing or there's a good beer or there's some wine, whereas a house wine is our own blend. Our house beer is our own beer. We had a point where we had three of our own beers, and all our cocktails have a lot of effort and thought gone into everything from naming down to the liquid in the last to what the glass is.
00:04:26:01 - 00:04:43:10
Karan Gokani
So for me, King's Cross was about showcasing that subliminally. So you have a big bar. Yes, people will want to eat eventually because they're not going to wait for hours, but also captures the audience. You know, skincare is not an area like Soho where you can send them to the neighbor for a drink and come back. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we want to keep them in here because if they go away, they're not coming back.
00:04:43:12 - 00:04:57:04
Karan Gokani
You know, it becomes this sort of three step journey where you come in, you have a drink while you're waiting for a table, you have you have such a good time in an unexpected time because you came here for food. Like, wow, I really enjoyed this bar and it feels like a different space and vibe, but in the same room.
00:04:57:04 - 00:05:19:17
Karan Gokani
Then I'm shifted to a table, eat my meal, come back. So it was that. But in this lovely journey we grew to our biggest site we had. The design was fantastic, the journey was great, and then obviously Covid hit. But even before Covid, I think the writing was in the wall because I moved members of my team, GM included, from smaller sites to the bigger sites.
00:05:19:19 - 00:05:22:07
Karan Gokani
They were there. I don't think many of them were ready for it, you.
00:05:22:07 - 00:05:22:10
Dan Pope
Know.
00:05:22:16 - 00:05:37:15
Karan Gokani
Because because I don't think they'd seen the scale. Right. And then even me, as you know, the leader of the of of the group, I was like, I hadn't really you I underestimated growing from 1 to 2, and 2 to 3 is going to take so much.
00:05:37:16 - 00:05:39:21
Dan Pope
What the biggest misconceptions?
00:05:39:21 - 00:05:53:15
Karan Gokani
I think my biggest learnings were 1 to 2 that you can copy paste in terms of the back end. Yeah, I knew the front end is going to be different for me. The restaurants are very much a family and each one is a sibling in the yes. Yeah, yeah, but two young kids, I've got a younger brother. My wife has two brothers.
00:05:53:15 - 00:05:56:15
Karan Gokani
We all know our personalities a little different, but there's a common DNA.
00:05:56:16 - 00:06:00:23
Dan Pope
So what exactly a common DNA that you've got in the back, back, back side.
00:06:00:24 - 00:06:15:22
Karan Gokani
I think it's the culture. It all comes down to culture. It comes down to our values, comes down to purpose. Five years ago, it was also it was all led by me. I would make a lot of decisions today. I'm codifying a lot of it. We sit together as a common team, but I'll come to that in a second.
00:06:15:22 - 00:06:41:10
Karan Gokani
I say we sit together and we codify a lot of this stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We wanted there for posterity. Back in the day, I think I was making gut decisions, which today I see is very sort of having identified my purpose a while ago without knowing, I had, again, sort of taking in knowledge from the likes of Danny Meyer and the likes of Simon Sinek and the likes of Rory Sutherland and all these people listening to lots of podcasts, listening to other hospitality people.
00:06:41:12 - 00:07:03:06
Karan Gokani
And I kind of had had found it, but I didn't know I had found it, and I'd still struggle with certain decisions more than I needed to. But that's because when you say gut and you say instinct, it's actually coming from a place of deep purpose. So. This was this happened sort of, you know, along the way we had this team and then the team post-Covid Covid was the real sort of look, I'm not going to go on.
00:07:03:06 - 00:07:22:01
Karan Gokani
Everyone suffered through Covid and we can try all we want in so many restaurants. As you go on about it was the worst time for us to I was fortunate enough to lost no one in my family lost. Luckily no staff members, no team members. We lost a few friends. Sadly, like this is by lost I mean sort of actual death by.
00:07:22:03 - 00:07:37:17
Karan Gokani
And you know, I think people have had it much worse that physical loss is never going to come back. Business loss be bound back in many ways. Today we you know, I was telling someone just yesterday I went out to on a very cold night, we went out to Malibu and the whole terrace was packed. There were people were coming in like, can we sit outside?
00:07:37:17 - 00:07:52:06
Karan Gokani
I was like, this would have never happened. So maybe this is COVID's karma. Yeah. Suddenly you got outdoor dining that is now year long, which would have never happened a few years ago. Suddenly I'm looking at my covers at King Sauce. It's like my actual restaurant is expanded because people are willing to sit out at the peak of Christmas advert.
00:07:52:08 - 00:07:54:01
Dan Pope
He's a terrible thing to waste.
00:07:54:03 - 00:08:15:14
Karan Gokani
No, but I think that mindset shift of sitting outdoors and developing outdoors for all year round, something that we never had. So maybe all those covers we lost in five years time we might gain back because of the new additional outdoor seating and people's openness to it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I guess that's the glass half full. But I think what Covid did was obviously the mindset shift of the team.
00:08:15:19 - 00:08:32:13
Karan Gokani
Like, I don't want to work long hours. Or maybe it's made people question their desire to be in hospitality. And it definitely did that for my Kings GM and a bunch of other people who then came back completely haphazard all over the place, and we couldn't afford that at our biggest site where we couldn't plug those holes out, the holes everywhere.
00:08:32:13 - 00:09:01:08
Karan Gokani
The culture was destroyed, you know, and it was horrific like, and I judge culture by I don't have an office. My senior team doesn't have an office. They complain about it all the time. Now, we might get this space, but we sit at our restaurants. So whether it's downstairs in Malibu, which tends to be the sort of we've got the little semi-private, we tend to do a lot of our work in meetings out of there, or it's being in Kings Cross, in the bar area at lunchtime, or coming here now every day, because that gives you the best pulse for what's happening.
00:09:01:11 - 00:09:22:01
Karan Gokani
It's not about how they talk to me that also, but it's about sitting across the room and seeing whether someone's genuinely happy or not, seeing the little body language of the team, seeing how they vibe with each other. And that is a very clear indicator of the culture in a team at a given point of time and again today, I'm able to identify have my red flags immediately.
00:09:22:01 - 00:09:42:18
Karan Gokani
Back in the day, it was just where did I find myself sitting? My days are very happy, I said. I plan meetings around lunches and dinners and around sort of around my restaurants, but it would be let's meet in Malibu today, let's meet in Kingston, let's meet the Soho today. And I found that after little while, I was just avoiding King's Cross because when I'd go in there, something would suck that sort of energy out of me.
00:09:42:19 - 00:09:44:10
Dan Pope
What was the things that were sucking in.
00:09:44:12 - 00:09:57:20
Karan Gokani
Again that time? I didn't know what it was. It was just a gut feeling and it was instinct. But today, when I look at it, there were just people who were there who were not hospitable, like, I'd say, people at the bar at this beautiful Bobby created just make no. I contact with guests when I'd walk in. And this is not so much.
00:09:57:20 - 00:10:08:17
Karan Gokani
I've always told people I was like, treat me the worst ever because save your energy for someone else. If you want to move me off a table, give me the worst table in the house. Yes. Never feel bad about moving me off a table. Feel bad about moving a guest off a table? Yes, because sometimes you have the opposite.
00:10:08:18 - 00:10:12:06
Karan Gokani
Oh my God, the restaurant is here. Please, guys. I'm sorry. Like I won't bother you.
00:10:12:07 - 00:10:12:17
Dan Pope
So so.
00:10:12:18 - 00:10:13:01
Karan Gokani
So so.
00:10:13:01 - 00:10:14:03
Dan Pope
It was. It makes sense.
00:10:14:04 - 00:10:20:07
Karan Gokani
When I'd see people sort of not making eye contact with me. I knew that that is the lowest form. Like, if they're not doing it with me, they're not doing it with anyone else.
00:10:20:08 - 00:10:40:19
Dan Pope
The the I love from the Jeremy King book, which he detailed, he was on the show the best, best book, and he was having lunch with Ruthie Rogers from the River cafe and yeah, yeah, granddaughter, little granddaughters. And I love that Ruth. He goes, you know, the the guy who serves the drinks and Ruthie goes to the granddaughter.
00:10:41:00 - 00:10:58:24
Dan Pope
What color? Yes. And she goes, I do that mean. Yeah, she goes green. And then Jeremy's like, what's that? What do you mean, what's that? And he goes, oh, she always has to look someone in the eye and know the color of their eye and the piercing color of their eye. That is what that hospitality is. And I think it's just a beautiful principle if we let's.
00:10:58:24 - 00:11:17:02
Dan Pope
So let's say we're a bit downstream. Right. So things are going wrong with King's Cross. You've got these three sites, you've got this amazing brand that is in your gut. And we're going through this process now with the podcast. Right. Because when it started, like, I just know I know what I like now it's about we're working with this brand strategist at uncommon.
00:11:17:04 - 00:11:17:11
Karan Gokani
Are they.
00:11:17:11 - 00:11:20:11
Dan Pope
Good bro. Like I mean they're they are basically.
00:11:20:12 - 00:11:21:06
Karan Gokani
They struggled so much.
00:11:21:06 - 00:11:22:12
Dan Pope
With these mate.
00:11:22:14 - 00:11:24:20
Karan Gokani
I worked not with them with like with different.
00:11:24:21 - 00:11:38:01
Dan Pope
Yeah this guy is amazing. And so we're we're codifying it and we're codifying our values is one. So it's going to come from my gut into this thing. So when people come on board we know what we're doing. But also what's a fucking say no to.
00:11:38:02 - 00:11:40:13
Karan Gokani
Yeah that's the biggest thing. That's the biggest. This is when I.
00:11:40:13 - 00:11:58:00
Dan Pope
Learned strategy is sacrifice. This is what this is what the uncommon Guy was saying to me. Strategy is sacrifices what you say no to. So let's say we're downstream here I want to go upstream right to the top. So what have you you know, we've talked about Danny Mayo, we talked about Jeremy Kim, we talked about Rory Sutherland.
00:11:58:02 - 00:12:17:01
Dan Pope
If what would be the Karens, you know, 1 to 4 business principles that are specifically yours and really almost the compass for where this is going, no matter how big the storms are of whatever's coming. Maybe like, number one.
00:12:17:03 - 00:12:28:20
Karan Gokani
Make it personal. So again, make it personal. Yep. Make it about yourself. Right. This is not from an ego point of view, but the praise is personal. The brickbats are personal.
00:12:28:21 - 00:12:29:11
Dan Pope
The sorry.
00:12:29:12 - 00:12:36:24
Karan Gokani
The brickbats. Like when you get like, people sort of complaining. When you get when you get people throwing shit at you. When you when things go wrong. Yep. Yeah, yeah. Take it personally.
00:12:37:00 - 00:12:38:11
Dan Pope
Yes. Okay. Love that.
00:12:38:12 - 00:12:54:10
Karan Gokani
Yeah. And so all of it has to be personal. You can't just take the good, can't take credit and then leave. The rest is someone comes to you with a with a life problem. You have to make that personal. I literally you know, and the beauty is our culture today. So we've sort of skipped that a little bit.
00:12:54:10 - 00:13:22:02
Karan Gokani
But we mean 2020 to 2026. But the culture we have created today is just the most empowering thing. The people I have in touch. Good. I'm so fortunate. Somehow we found these people and they found others. But my core team is just when something happens, when something goes wrong, like, you know, we had a chef the other day, had he passed out in the middle of service and we had four people from different sites, senior team all land up in 11:00 at night.
00:13:22:04 - 00:13:40:01
Karan Gokani
I just cycled past, so I was close to home, but they were like, listen, don't turn around right now. We had three people accompanying him to the hospital. The senior management stayed with him, force him to come because his family was in India, and then they were there till four in the morning. And it's just it felt like families, not because HR needed you to do it.
00:13:40:02 - 00:13:53:21
Karan Gokani
Everyone was checking on each other the next day. So we've had a rough few sort of three, four weeks recently with like, you know, the opening, the team stretching and like sort of that happened. There was another lady who had a bit of a panic attack and not panic attack. She had a asthma attack and then led to a panic attack.
00:13:53:21 - 00:14:15:24
Karan Gokani
And then again, that was a big thing. We had some personal crisis in the middle, but I just see the way people react to that and we have really made it personal. I think for me, this was the biggest thing. How do you brand is personal for me? Yeah, it's about like you almost joke, like there was a time when, when I used to manage that queue for the first two years at Hopper's Soho, I sang with the iPad in my hand.
00:14:16:00 - 00:14:29:14
Karan Gokani
People used to come up to me. You smile, you chat to them. You facilitate entry by giving them a sort of wait time and they go away. You even tell them. I tell them where to go and drink. After they're done, I tell them where to go and eat dessert. We didn't do desserts in coffee, so I'd be like, listen, that's my favorite place.
00:14:29:14 - 00:14:44:20
Karan Gokani
We chat to them. So it was never transactional. It was even after the transaction was done, it was, let me look after the rest of your night. And I think there I used to joke and it was that time. It was very much a joke. Now I've realized that maybe that was just part of my DNA. It was, I should tell some of the waiters.
00:14:44:20 - 00:14:59:14
Karan Gokani
I was like, you know, when I see someone walking down, I don't say they're coming to eat at Hopper's. I say, they're coming to meet me. They're coming to meet me right now. Because if you treat it like that, if you treat that interaction like that, you made it personal. And I was like, when they come in, you make it, take it personally.
00:14:59:15 - 00:15:16:07
Karan Gokani
Like when they come to your table, you're not just serving them. Tell yourself, these guys have come to see me and come to meet me. When you genuinely believe that somehow by the end of that transaction, by the end of that interaction, it will feel like they came to meet you and they will believe it. You will believe it.
00:15:16:07 - 00:15:17:16
Karan Gokani
And that's where the real.
00:15:17:18 - 00:15:35:12
Dan Pope
They also is. One, it's a connection. But actually by being selfish, what is it? I don't know what it says, but the being selfish is selfless in the sense that it's like when you make it about yourself, this person's coming to see me. They get a better experience. The feedback you get bills. It's like a it's a full circle thing.
00:15:35:14 - 00:15:55:05
Karan Gokani
And it's the same with with feedback. You know, you take it personally. If someone has said something wrong about the food, you know, and again, when I say this is a much deeper person, you don't just go crazy like, you know, what is this person talking about? They don't know anything about food. Sometimes I have that because sometimes we have had like some really nasty, ridiculous feedback.
00:15:55:07 - 00:16:12:11
Karan Gokani
Just the other day we had someone come and give us a one star, right? And apparently he I hope he's here in this. I doubt he listens to me. Yeah. He's like literally he's like, you know, he gave us a one star on Google and this is the brand new restaurant. And I am here every single night. This was the night I wasn't here, because I was at an event at another site.
00:16:12:11 - 00:16:32:14
Karan Gokani
And the next day I see this and I was like, this guy's written about, never visit this restaurant. If you have a fennel allergy right now, something we have taken very seriously and we're very open to like we are hospitality people and allergy is not a problem and it is a common, if at all. It's a problem. It's a common problem.
00:16:32:14 - 00:16:48:22
Karan Gokani
It's not my problem as a restaurant, if you come in and you say, I don't eat x, y, z, the only time I'll get slightly annoyed is if you come and tell me I have an allergy to something gluten, and then when I see gluten on the table, and I warned you and I've given it to someone else, then you start picking into it like, oh, I don't really have an allergy.
00:16:48:22 - 00:17:05:06
Karan Gokani
I just wanted to avoid it. I was like, then tell me that in the beginning. Yeah, because we take this seriously and then because, you know, if this happens often enough, you start getting sort of trivial with other people. You start thinking, oh, someone else doesn't have one. So we always take it really seriously because I was like, put yourself in the shoes of this person.
00:17:05:06 - 00:17:22:21
Karan Gokani
And, you know, all of us have been in that position. My wife was avoiding dairy when we were when, you know, avoiding dairy and raw food and stuff for that dairy, when she was feeding raw food when she was pregnant. And it was a common thing when we go out, we'd have to be very careful about it. And we knew the impact it would have if suddenly realized something was on pasteurized.
00:17:22:23 - 00:17:39:19
Karan Gokani
Yeah, yeah. So we've all been in that position. I go on some fad diets from time to time, but I want to avoid certain things and I'd be very open about it. But now imagine a person who celiac, who genuinely is going to feel very uncomfortable and ill if they've had something. Now, this is not something they're making up and they've come.
00:17:39:20 - 00:17:55:21
Karan Gokani
They're giving you more of an opportunity to have a great time because they've chosen you. They've come here. So we've got a little more of a responsibility and we've got more of an opportunity. So you can look at it the other way. I've got more of an opportunity because chances are this person goes and feel slightly outcast in restaurants, so let's make them feel really inclusive.
00:17:55:22 - 00:18:11:14
Karan Gokani
So we are big about it. So when I see a complaint saying, oh, there wasn't enough veggie food, you've got a whole secret vegetarian menu, you know, which? We've got our classic dishes, which we've done for veggies. We've tweaked them around because of this reason. Yes. Certain allergies that you come to me and say, garlic, I've had this.
00:18:11:14 - 00:18:16:19
Karan Gokani
I can't eat garlic, ginger, chili or coconut. Then yeah. You come to me in middle of.
00:18:16:19 - 00:18:18:16
Dan Pope
Service and get a Sonic or something.
00:18:18:17 - 00:18:30:14
Karan Gokani
No, look again, I'll be open about it. It's like if you gave me notice, I would probably send you a nice email. And I'll give you 3 or 4 dishes you can have, and you'll make them as well as we can. But beyond the point, I can't freestyle in the kitchen because we have to live up to certain standards.
00:18:30:15 - 00:18:47:07
Karan Gokani
Yeah. You know, if one chef goes and freestyles today, you come back tomorrow and you ask for it. That chef's not there. So we're letting the whole team down. So there has to be a consistency of what we deliver and what we don't, and has to pass certain stringent standards. Often I'm the gatekeeper, but this guy came in and he's like, I've got a fan.
00:18:47:09 - 00:19:04:10
Karan Gokani
And I think the team did their best. And yes, fennel finds itself in contaminant like, you know, it's there in certain spice blends. It's there in certain dishes. So we gave him a limited menu, and it's there in a powder which we use across many dishes, game, a limited menu. And I think he was very cross about that.
00:19:04:10 - 00:19:18:12
Karan Gokani
And I think for some reason he didn't like it. Then he found something, some other issues at the at the end, I think his whole he came in a big group someone else had booked, they all loved it and they literally walked out without him because his guy just kept moaning, God, he stayed on and he started cursing my stuff.
00:19:18:12 - 00:19:32:02
Karan Gokani
Now I didn't know this. I just saw the monster I wrote to the team and this is what I normally do in the morning. I said, can you tell me what happened here? I don't say what, why? Why did this happen? So I'm not assuming always go to them. Say, guys, can you give me a little background on what happened here?
00:19:32:03 - 00:19:52:09
Karan Gokani
Yeah. Because my first thing is I've created a good culture and a good team. So by default, I trust my team to have looked after them. Well, yes. And I feel if something is slip, we should own up to it because again, we should take it personally. Yeah I'm there. It's like almost like with your kids. If they've screwed up, you want them to tell you because you want them, you will support them.
00:19:52:09 - 00:20:08:18
Karan Gokani
And I think that's how I treat the team. Yes. And immediately I had Michael, who's our GM here, like me, a long email saying and I was really shaken by this, this is what happened. This is what he did. He swore at the whole team before he left. He gave us all these allegations. We've gone and looked at his profile.
00:20:08:18 - 00:20:32:22
Karan Gokani
He's even given Sainsbury's a one star review. So the guy just is used to giving people one star reviews. So I said, listen, forget this ever happened. Next time someone like this happens, please make sure you ask them and to leave the restaurant and I will personally support you on this. Do it politely. You don't need to go down to his his level and culture, but make sure that you, you know, you remove a person from the restaurant because I will not have other guests watch this.
00:20:32:22 - 00:20:36:16
Karan Gokani
I would not have my team look after is, you know, spoken to in the show.
00:20:36:17 - 00:20:42:05
Dan Pope
So the first first principle is, is take it personally for good.
00:20:42:06 - 00:20:45:24
Karan Gokani
Bad, make it. Make it, make everything you do. So even if it's a restaurant.
00:20:46:00 - 00:20:46:20
Dan Pope
Okay. What do.
00:20:46:20 - 00:20:52:10
Karan Gokani
You say? I've picked up all this, like, literally. I brought them back in my. I will tell you a story behind every single element.
00:20:52:10 - 00:20:57:11
Dan Pope
In this. Okay? We'll get on to that. What's the second, second one?
00:20:57:13 - 00:21:15:22
Karan Gokani
I guess you should find your purpose. Spend a lot of time doing it. I spent the best part of five years doing it while I was writing books, and while I was doing all kinds of things and developing the site. Really find the purpose and the purpose, I think Simon Sinek does is better than anyone else. But he talks about the how, why, what money, the why, how what.
00:21:16:01 - 00:21:27:11
Karan Gokani
And I think often we sort of stop at that exterior layer of what am I doing and what gives me joy. And you know, if you ask me ten years ago, I, I'm running a restaurant, I'm feeding people. But that's like right at the outside.
00:21:27:12 - 00:21:30:19
Dan Pope
Of what was so hard about getting deeper into the. Why?
00:21:30:21 - 00:21:33:10
Karan Gokani
Because I think it requires a lot of introspection.
00:21:33:11 - 00:21:38:19
Dan Pope
Yeah, but what were you doing specifically? Journaling, traveling, writing. Like how did you get. Because I think once you get to the.
00:21:38:21 - 00:22:04:09
Karan Gokani
Question, every decision I make. And then basically I reached a point where I'd written cookbooks, I'd done fairly well on social media, grown that following, doing something totally different. I would say yes to so many different opportunities. From a burger with Shake Shack in New York to 8% of fine dining experience on the beach in Maldives, to every single summer food festival in across England.
00:22:04:10 - 00:22:25:08
Karan Gokani
Yeah. And I'd said yes to everything over one year, 2021, because I'd been so bored in Covid and locked down and just waiting to go out again, and so insecure that nothing will ever happen again. And I think that you really I was very tired. And I think that's when sometimes it's that sometimes it's sort of different things that sort of make you question.
00:22:25:08 - 00:22:43:06
Karan Gokani
I think I started questioning myself like, what is it? Each of these things are very different. The motivation to write a book, a cookbook is completely different from the motivation to be on social media. Don't want it to have a TV career one day, to running a restaurant, to scaling that to three restaurants. So I was like, what is the common thread?
00:22:43:06 - 00:23:03:13
Karan Gokani
Because I know I enter certain things with a level of passion and a level of excitement, and I know a certain things just put me off. And I was like, fundamentally like things. There must be something across these, these various experiences that give me that excitement and what is it? And when it distilled it down, it came down to like 2 or 3.
00:23:03:13 - 00:23:05:03
Dan Pope
Words, which.
00:23:05:05 - 00:23:25:16
Karan Gokani
So for me was about inspiring people. Yeah. And literally I used to think it's about feeding people. It's about expressing myself. It's about all these, you know, out there, there's a little ways of doing it, but at the end it is for me, it's about inspiring people. And this is what I was telling you earlier. I was like with Instagram, I started it as a way to connect with people, to chat with chefs.
00:23:25:16 - 00:23:40:07
Karan Gokani
It was great. Even in the early days of 2012 when I had like 5 or 6000, 10,000 followers. These were like chefs in different parts of the world. I could reach out and ask for help when I'm doing a collab in New York and didn't know anyone there. I had chefs had never met in my life, but we felt like we knew each other.
00:23:40:10 - 00:24:08:17
Karan Gokani
Someone lent me a van, someone lent me their supplier, someone actually came and cooked with me and it was incredible that community. But it was more B2B. When my account grew and I started doing more of the Indian recipes and things like that, it was about expressing my culture, expressing something I had grown up eating and, you know, learning and inspiring people to to a understand that Indian food is not just about butter, chicken, black dal and nuns.
00:24:08:19 - 00:24:24:18
Karan Gokani
There is a variety to Indian food comes from an Indian culture, something I wear on my sleeve, something I'm very proud of, and I wanted to show it to people in my own personal way, which I felt kind of, you know, lend itself to. Yeah, yeah. And I think till today I manage my own account. You'll see me on my Brompton.
00:24:24:18 - 00:24:43:00
Karan Gokani
I'll stop by the on a signal because it's 5:00 and I wanted to post something at 5 p.m. nothing is scheduled. I would respond to as much as I can. Yes, sometimes I leave things sort of unread, but even those. Eventually I will respond to because I don't forget why I started. No matter how large the account grows.
00:24:43:00 - 00:25:02:17
Dan Pope
How did you get to your why though? Because I think that I love that Simon Sinek thing. It's that, you know the is that what what how why that's something. And it's a great Ted talk I think from the Devonshire uses that. He talked about that on the podcast. But I think it's one of those things even personally, I'm like working with this brand strategy to help me get to the kind of the why.
00:25:02:17 - 00:25:20:22
Dan Pope
It's like this generous wisdom that I want to impart on people, but like, it's fucking hard to save. Someone's got a restaurant, they're going around, you know, a million miles an hour. Open up sites here, firefighting, you know, think the ovens down, the stars calling sick. What are some of the ways to get to the to get to the why.
00:25:20:23 - 00:25:26:04
Dan Pope
And then once you get to the why how how does that change everything? Because it feels like we've.
00:25:26:06 - 00:25:50:08
Karan Gokani
I think the first thing is, look, I used to be a lawyer back in the day. Yeah. And I was just not. I was doing well, but I was just not passionate about what I did. I just wouldn't feel like there's a connection to my inner self when I go into work. And again, first step, I was very lucky to find what I say is my calling and be to then succeed in it to an extent.
00:25:50:10 - 00:26:05:02
Karan Gokani
And I think having done that, then I had enough time to introspect and look back. And I think it's exactly this. It's like when I sat back in 2022 when I was writing the Hoppers cookbook, and I had a lot of time by myself, and I really enjoyed writing, and I still do a lot of it, all kinds of different writing.
00:26:05:02 - 00:26:27:06
Karan Gokani
I have a column in India I write, you know, I've written a second cookbook. I write a lot of recipes. I do a lot of like our own sort of internal writing and stuff, and I find that's a really nice. That's my form of art. It allows me to think and introspect. And I think when I said, okay, fine, like all those examples I gave you, whether it's that collaboration in with Shake Shack in New York.
00:26:27:07 - 00:26:50:01
Karan Gokani
Yeah. Doing an ice cream with salt and straw on the east, on the West Coast, doing, you know, something with a wildlife park in England doing this, you know, really fine, fine dining version of hoppers and some of my Indian dishes on a beach for nine people in the Maldives. Yes. Some of them, like some like, you know, on the surface, I'd say, oh, this was just great fun.
00:26:50:04 - 00:27:08:23
Karan Gokani
I had a holiday in the Maldives. This was great because from an ego point of view, like, wow, I'm collaborating with Shake Shack in, you know. Yeah. New York. But fundamentally what excited me about it, what made me manifest these things at what made me sort of get them and eventually enjoy them. What made me why would you write a book?
00:27:09:04 - 00:27:25:05
Karan Gokani
Why would you write a book while you were actually sharing some of your secrets with people? And be happy about that. Be excited about it. On the surface, you'd be like, oh, I've got my name on a book, I'm in publisher. But that doesn't mean shit. It's like, you know, once the book is out and you realize you're like, you know, you're hustling to sell copies like, that doesn't mean shit, man.
00:27:25:05 - 00:27:44:03
Karan Gokani
I know my life hasn't changed at all. I've spent the best part of six months away from my young kids. My wife is pissed off at me because I've been traveling the world promoting this book, and she's had to look after the kids at home, understandably so. It's like, why am I excited? And I think fundamentally, the answer came back and it took me a long time to articulate it and put it into one word.
00:27:44:03 - 00:28:02:21
Karan Gokani
But like I said, it's inspiring. Now, if I took that, then I tested that to a book. I'm inspiring people through Instagram. I mean, inspiring people. And that's why I don't do sort of content like that. It became very clear then I was like, I'm not going to do content that's about this is my hotel room. This is where I stayed in some great places.
00:28:02:21 - 00:28:19:15
Karan Gokani
I was like, I'm not showing all that shit off. It's like, this is where I'm eating. I'm eating the most expensive caviar here, the most expensive sushi over overlooking, you know, sitting on a boat that got that fish. I'm not going to tell you about that. I will tell you something that has the potential to inspire you, not to make you dance.
00:28:19:17 - 00:28:31:06
Dan Pope
Well, I think you said there, but beautiful, which has helped me, is why am I excited? And I think that's a great question, because once you figure out what excitement is.
00:28:31:07 - 00:28:32:23
Karan Gokani
Christina.
00:28:33:00 - 00:28:44:11
Dan Pope
Yeah, excitement and inspiration are two sides of the same coin. So if you're excited, you imbue this inspiration. That's fucking I think actually just people listening to this, it's like if you just ask, why am I excited? You ask.
00:28:44:12 - 00:28:49:09
Karan Gokani
A lot of time because sometimes you think it's because of I'm on this holiday, but it's that contentment as well.
00:28:49:10 - 00:29:08:20
Dan Pope
The five layers of why framework. Have you heard that? So it's got the innocent founders do right and it's induces. So basically yeah you'd say okay, so I'm doing Instagram videos to connect with people and then you go, why then you're right. Another sense. It's kind of a form of journey. And you just keep writing. Why why why.
00:29:08:21 - 00:29:19:09
Dan Pope
And it's called the five layers of why the other guy does this is David Cleaver, who's a genius. He's a big Cambridge tech guy. He owns Boca. Lupo. Yeah.
00:29:19:11 - 00:29:20:18
Karan Gokani
I love the restaurant and the.
00:29:20:18 - 00:29:30:21
Dan Pope
Ice cream. Amazing restaurant. And I think that's it. If you just keep asking, why am I excited? Why I'm excited. You'll get to that nucleus and that fodder and that once you get that, you're just fucking keeping it.
00:29:30:22 - 00:29:47:07
Karan Gokani
I think you also then need to test it against various things you've done. Okay? You need to have those life experiences. So if I just ask myself when I had only one restaurant, why do I like coming in one day, it would have been because I've got this amazing team around me. Yeah, one day it could have been because I'm like, you know, I always wanted to feed people.
00:29:47:07 - 00:30:07:23
Karan Gokani
I'd cook for free. Now I have people paying to come and eat my food. So like, used to like, you know, it took me years. Really? Dive deep. Maybe it's those five layers. Yeah, yeah, it's because I had these varying experiences, totally different fields that I was able to really go below because writing a cookbook, I'm excited because I was a published author, but that's at the surface of it.
00:30:08:00 - 00:30:12:13
Karan Gokani
Going off and cooking in the Maldives because I'm doing this amazing thing. It's like, wow, someone's paying me to come out here.
00:30:12:17 - 00:30:14:09
Dan Pope
Yes. Yeah, yeah.
00:30:14:11 - 00:30:32:24
Karan Gokani
I think a restaurant is a successful restaurant, but when you peel, when you go below all of this fundamentally like what really stirs your soul. And I think there even a restaurant. So when we are used to be about while we are doing this incredible, we're doing these many covers, we're doing this revenue, we're doing these cool dishes.
00:30:32:24 - 00:30:51:20
Karan Gokani
These people have written about me. I'm on National 100 Best Restaurants top 20 X, Y, Z has given me a five star. All that used to like, be, you know, is to be moments when you're excited. It was all. It was all transient. And then it will pass. And then next year you're not on those awards. And I was like, But I'm still excited.
00:30:51:22 - 00:31:15:08
Karan Gokani
Every time I walk into my restaurant, I see smiling people. I'm still excited. Then I realize that actually the restaurants are a platform to actually inspire people. I'm flying a flag for a country, for a region today, India and Sri Lanka. And for me that is far more exciting today, if you ask me. And I tell my team, this is well, the ultimate success is not a five star review is not a repeat customer guest.
00:31:15:09 - 00:31:32:15
Karan Gokani
We call them guess. We don't say customers usually at least facing it in our conversations, but it is someone leaving the restaurant wanting to book their next holiday to Sri Lanka or to India. And we have inspired a lot of people to do that. Now. That, for me, is inspiring people to go back to that region and actually explore it.
00:31:32:15 - 00:31:47:04
Karan Gokani
Because if they do that, if my fundamental goal is to inspire you to go to Sri Lanka, I will be the reason you went to Sri Lanka. You'll go there, you'll come back, you'll want to come back to me. So I'll have a repeat guest. There will be 100 people you tell about the Sri Lankan story. And you'll tell them why you went to Sri Lanka.
00:31:47:05 - 00:31:52:11
Karan Gokani
Because you ate at hoppers. So you'll have the word of mouth. So all those other things become byproducts.
00:31:52:13 - 00:32:05:21
Dan Pope
What's in terms of like how do you think differently versus other restaurateurs operators, like in terms of what's what the things you kind of when everyone's lives you like, how do you think differently?
00:32:05:23 - 00:32:26:15
Karan Gokani
Look, I think you've got to stick to what you are, right? I think it's very easy to get tempted when you see someone else doing something. You go for a soft launch. You realize someone's done something really well. I think again, it goes down to purpose. Really. Knowing yourself, being sure of yourself in security is very essential, and it's sadly something we live with any creative lives with.
00:32:26:15 - 00:32:50:12
Karan Gokani
I'm sure you have that. We live in this constant state of sort of insecurity that tomorrow I'll be irrelevant. Irrelevant. Irrelevance is a huge thing. I think that also pushes us to do much better. Yeah, and constantly innovate. This whole thing of, you know, imitation is the best form of flattery or BS, because when someone imitates you and someone copies you, it, you feel like shit and you're like, you know, you get angry.
00:32:50:14 - 00:33:06:11
Karan Gokani
But I think there are ways to deal with that where you say, okay, I need to be ahead of that. So I think you need to really understand yourself. You need to surround yourself by the right people. And I think a lot of us do what we do, especially in the creative spaces, not to make huge amounts of money.
00:33:06:12 - 00:33:26:13
Karan Gokani
Money just becomes a byproduct. And money is sometimes a indicator of whether you're successful or not. And also if you can, if you will have a business tomorrow or not. But I think a lot of us do this for validation. Whether it's guest reviewers, whether it's big sort of critical reviews. But the best form of validation is walking into your space and looking at your guests.
00:33:26:15 - 00:33:45:21
Karan Gokani
And one step beyond that. I think for me today, the strongest form of validation is am I aligned with my team? Does my team share my same values? I go to my wife. I go to my. My kids sometimes understand, sometimes I don't. Even my parents can't always understand what I'm doing in motivations and aren't able to. They live in India.
00:33:45:23 - 00:34:03:18
Karan Gokani
So for me, my biggest form of validation are often my wife, a few very close friends, but mainly my team because there's no one else. Even my wife isn't as aligned with me as my team is because they really are on this journey with. And I think this again, having created this beautiful culture of all of us being aligned.
00:34:03:19 - 00:34:22:03
Dan Pope
Yes, it told me, talk me through that. So on a Monday, so you're walking in on Monday right to one of the restaurants. What what are the is there like a is it you've got values on a piece of paper. Do you have like go in sink into the culture stuff. More like how do you get the myriad of different people aligned on this one ship?
00:34:22:05 - 00:34:28:18
Dan Pope
Again, something easy in theory, very fucking hard in practice. What have you learned about that specifically?
00:34:28:20 - 00:34:37:14
Karan Gokani
At the end of the day, it's just I think you need it's culture is like, this is this is what a culture is, not organization culture, but it's individual culture.
00:34:37:15 - 00:34:39:02
Dan Pope
What's the difference?
00:34:39:04 - 00:34:48:13
Karan Gokani
Individual culture sort of then plays a role in organizational culture. But organizational culture need not always align with individual like you can be different individuals with different cultures. Right. And I think.
00:34:48:16 - 00:34:49:23
Dan Pope
Sort of okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
00:34:50:00 - 00:35:18:05
Karan Gokani
So I think sort of obviously when you it's like it's like an orchestra, you could get great musicians. Right. But if they're playing their own track or if one's not very good and one's really good, you'll just have noise. But if they all sink together, even if they're all not individually brilliant, but the collective don't be brilliant. As long as they're all singing of the same piece and that that, that, that him sheet or that sort of piece of music is do you have a common culture or not?
00:35:18:11 - 00:35:27:00
Karan Gokani
So if and again it's come down to for me, it's I've thought a lot about for years I spent thinking about service versus hospitality.
00:35:27:02 - 00:35:27:24
Dan Pope
Service versus.
00:35:28:02 - 00:35:31:11
Karan Gokani
Service, which is something Danny goes on about I can't claim to.
00:35:31:13 - 00:35:32:24
Dan Pope
Service is black and white hospitality.
00:35:32:24 - 00:35:38:19
Karan Gokani
Service is the process and hospitality is how you make people feel. Yeah. And it's the sort of it's the softer side of.
00:35:38:20 - 00:35:41:09
Dan Pope
Yes. What's your definition of service versus hospitality?
00:35:41:10 - 00:35:56:18
Karan Gokani
I think Danny does it really well. You read books and you know he goes on about service and hospitality. No one can do it better than him. Bill does a good job in taking that further. But I think service is very much I bring the glass from here to you. Hospitality is if you've got a cough, I bring you warm water.
00:35:56:19 - 00:36:19:20
Karan Gokani
If you're hot and sweaty, I bring you cold water because it's done for you. What it's done to you versus for you. But I've gone a step beyond that today. Yeah. And again, I'm not taking any, you know, claim. But I think what I have identified with our team today is we have a culture of kindness. I still always talk about hospitality, but I think this year we've shifted tack to we have a culture of kindness, and everything we do is about kindness.
00:36:19:20 - 00:36:36:23
Karan Gokani
So it starts with you. Ask me who I hire and what is common about us. We are kind people and we genuinely believe we are kind people. So if someone's kids fallen off, fallen down at home and hurt themselves, all of us care. If someone's had an issue in the kitchen, it's like, oh shit, I've got to like staff this up.
00:36:36:24 - 00:36:55:13
Karan Gokani
Or first thing we care about is he's that person, okay? Everything else will look after itself because if everyone cares. Okay, I'll give you an example. My dosa chef, middle of a Saturday night service passes out, falls down. Three people around him have to call an ambulance. And this is a true story. I have to call him. I have to go to an ambulance.
00:36:55:13 - 00:37:09:24
Karan Gokani
Take him away. Right in that the first thing I got a call was like, listen. I just want you to update you. This has happened to X, chef. He's fallen down. We don't know like I am first thinking okay, who can I call it. Which hospital. Which doctor friend can I call? I said what has happened? Let me find out.
00:37:09:24 - 00:37:29:20
Karan Gokani
Right now I'm calling five six people. It's the last question that came to mind was what's happened to service? Okay. And this is not because I don't care about service. But I'll tell you what happened. The reality was my GM from that site, my head of ops, multi-site GM all had landed up. One had come from here, one had come from King's Cross.
00:37:29:22 - 00:37:45:16
Karan Gokani
The GM had pulled himself out of service. All of them were there. Two of the chefs, head chef included, were all looking after this guy in 930 at night, on the street, in the ambulance while they were doing tests. And they were all sort of all of us chatting to each other, we created a new WhatsApp group in that moment, so we all updated.
00:37:45:18 - 00:38:05:22
Karan Gokani
The restaurant ran completely smoothly. We had to wear to stop taking walk ins at that point, and we basically said the last few few, we didn't cancel a single person, but we stopped taking walk ins. So we basically closed the restaurant 15 minutes earlier. That was a decision taken by the AGM, right? The guys who were around this guy jumped in to look after him because he trusted that.
00:38:05:22 - 00:38:22:06
Karan Gokani
Okay, the head chef has pulled away. Sushi goes and takes over his role on pass. The guy who's making hoppers is doing hoppers and dosas right now. And yes, things will move a little slowly to table, but suddenly, seamlessly the AGM steps in or whoever was there that night, he steps in, he's like looks and you go and deal with this.
00:38:22:06 - 00:38:42:06
Karan Gokani
This is more important. Leave it to me now. One person thought about whether the ship will sail or not, right? Whether she bought him sails. Because we have created this overall structure, this this culture of kindness. Sparring where it's like, I know that I trust my team to look after this man the way I would because we all kind.
00:38:42:09 - 00:38:58:03
Karan Gokani
Yes. If I did not, I would have to go there right now and I'd have to worry about five other things the people who stepped in for the other guys doing this, trust that these guys have stepped away because they're looking after this person the way we would, but because he is doing it, let me jump in and help.
00:38:58:03 - 00:38:59:16
Karan Gokani
It's like family, he said.
00:38:59:18 - 00:39:06:12
Dan Pope
What's your definition of culture in a sentence?
00:39:06:14 - 00:39:07:05
Dan Pope
I guess it's.
00:39:07:05 - 00:39:30:03
Karan Gokani
The it's the fundamental that underpins everything we do. So again, another example is we were looking for in the middle. We know we've got someone here, but in the middle we were looking for a head of marketing and we hired a girl who CV was fantastic. She came in and met me, I didn't again, it was like this.
00:39:30:03 - 00:39:46:00
Karan Gokani
This is sort of understanding my gut and I think I learned a lot from that lesson. But it was like she was very good on paper, great to chat, to wear a lovely conversation. Do I interview again? My interviews are very much about judging the person. They're not technical because the team does that, and the team came to me and said, look, she's interviewed really well.
00:39:46:00 - 00:40:02:05
Karan Gokani
We think she'll be good. We're desperate. We're about to open a restaurant, can be taken on board. And I did this to our interview. Something didn't sit right. Few of the answers, I guess, had just triggered me and sort of raised red flags. And then the conversation I had in my head of ops was, we've got a he comes test.
00:40:02:07 - 00:40:24:11
Karan Gokani
We need someone right now. You're doing all the marketing yourself, which I was. Let's just get her in. We've got the notice period. We've got the probation period to deal with it. If there's a problem, is that okay? Let's just plug that hole. Let's get it right. Literally in three weeks time, she did a few things. And I think having spent more time with a person in a room sitting with them, you get this gut feeling.
00:40:24:12 - 00:40:40:11
Karan Gokani
I was like, this is not working. Three weeks time and a couple of projects going on. The way she reacted to them, we walked into our senior leadership meeting one day and back in the day when the culture wasn't great, I would have had to say, listen guys, I'm not sure about this person. She wasn't obviously in the room.
00:40:40:11 - 00:40:57:05
Karan Gokani
It was other people. Yeah, sure. I'm not sure. Then someone would have probably contested me and said like, look, but we still need someone. Like until we find someone, let's keep this person. Yeah. Someone else would have been like, look, but at least she is doing X, y, z for us. And on the ground stuff is happening.
00:40:57:06 - 00:41:14:19
Karan Gokani
Digital marketing adds maybe the bigger picture stuff is not. Let's just keep her on until we find someone else or whatever it is. Literally looked everyone in the eye and before I could even say something, I said, okay, let's just talk about X. I could say anything. Response was, yeah, we don't think she's right. And every one of the room agreed.
00:41:14:20 - 00:41:30:11
Karan Gokani
And I said, this is where we have created a culture. It's not just different values. And like people bringing different things to the table. We've got to and we said, look, we will make it work. Let's just cut right now. Let's cut our losses because this is going to spread like in like a bit of a poison. Yeah.
00:41:30:16 - 00:41:55:21
Karan Gokani
And I'm not saying anyone is bad. They're just in the wrong place. So someone who might not work out with me might be great in another organization where there's a where something else is more, where they're more ruthless about chasing profits. Yeah. Or they're more ruthless about doing something different. But I think if you want to stand, it's a bit like, again, resonance is like, you know, that whole echo and stuff, if you can, if you were able to a understand and be, then surround yourself with people who share your culture.
00:41:55:21 - 00:42:00:21
Karan Gokani
You just get louder and louder and louder and stronger and stronger and stronger because you're just bouncing off each other and it just gets louder.
00:42:00:22 - 00:42:01:22
Dan Pope
Yes, in August.
00:42:02:01 - 00:42:04:06
Karan Gokani
Otherwise the walls just suck up the noise.
00:42:04:10 - 00:42:08:24
Dan Pope
What's the last thing? You radically change your mind on?
00:42:09:01 - 00:42:25:06
Karan Gokani
Everything all the time. If you leave me long enough for something, I was like, I'm that typical creative where if I think about something long enough, I'll keep changing it. So there needs to be a time delay and there needs to be a timeline. There needs to be a deadline without where I have to stop. It's like writing my book.
00:42:25:10 - 00:42:35:13
Karan Gokani
I write a book. I'll come up with it next day. I'll tweak something next year. And if you string me on for three months, I want to change the whole thing. This site has changed shape about six times because it was a year.
00:42:35:13 - 00:42:50:08
Dan Pope
Long for me. King's got a quote which is maintaining your standards is the fastest route to bankruptcy, which is kind of a play on the words, but this whole thing is that you need to constantly change and reinvent and stay fresh, to stay relevant. I think it's a really interesting thing.
00:42:50:08 - 00:42:53:04
Karan Gokani
We're got to question ourselves all the time. And if you're again.
00:42:53:06 - 00:42:54:17
Dan Pope
You cannot question. So you.
00:42:54:17 - 00:43:00:06
Karan Gokani
Can, you can. I think again, like sometimes I feel I am my biggest critic.
00:43:00:09 - 00:43:01:05
Dan Pope
Oh yeah, same here.
00:43:01:06 - 00:43:21:16
Karan Gokani
And I am like and I think it's a good thing to do because the world will only like if you always play to the world's benchmarks, either you'll you'll be disappointed or they'll come a point where you know, you get to. I guess you get your too dependent on something else, and I guess you get complacent because the world would say, oh wow, you know, you're great.
00:43:21:16 - 00:43:34:22
Karan Gokani
You've done really well. It's like I've moved on. And I was talking to my friend as he said the other day. So we were doing that, you know. I'm sorry. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's a good friend of mine. And he had come in and I was doing an interview with him for a paper, and we were saying the same thing.
00:43:34:22 - 00:43:40:13
Karan Gokani
He's like, I do a film. So I was telling him I was praising. This last film he did is called Good Fortune. I'd gone.
00:43:40:15 - 00:43:41:13
Dan Pope
He lives in London, doesn't he?
00:43:41:14 - 00:43:45:13
Karan Gokani
He lives between the two. Lovely. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it offers all the time. We talked.
00:43:45:15 - 00:43:49:20
Dan Pope
Listen to him on Theo Vaughan's podcast. Yeah. He's fucking amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:43:49:22 - 00:44:06:01
Karan Gokani
Just such a genuine guy. So we were talking about this and we resonated. He was like, so I was praising his film This Good Fortune because I'd gone for the premiere and I was like, dude, it's really good. And he just wasn't seeming like, I've told him 3 or 4 times in conversation with others and just to himself, I really enjoyed that film, which you should watch if you haven't.
00:44:06:02 - 00:44:27:18
Karan Gokani
Yeah, yeah, topical, really well made. And it's just like, yeah, yeah, cool. Thanks. And then he raised in the podcast because I think in on, in the podcast that was an interview for city. And Steve Dineen was with us as Steve said, you know, what do you I can't remember the exact question, but basically Aziz's response was, When I'm on a project, I'm hyper focused on it.
00:44:27:18 - 00:44:41:05
Karan Gokani
I'm all about it. But then once that project is finished, I've moved on. And like, now that film is so old that today we tell me something about it like that was old. I haven't even thought and I've probably found ten holes in it myself. So it's the same. You talked to me on Indian one on one today.
00:44:41:05 - 00:44:44:07
Karan Gokani
My book, I was all in. I was promoting it.
00:44:44:09 - 00:44:45:03
Dan Pope
Yeah. Yeah.
00:44:45:05 - 00:44:46:23
Karan Gokani
Definitely the same thing with your podcast.
00:44:47:00 - 00:45:07:17
Dan Pope
Yeah. So I get after a big event or supper club or even a podcast, I get this weird comedown, like it's like 100%. I'm just like. And I'm like, oh, there's. I'm reading this amazing book called the. It's called The Cultural Shooter. I've never seen it too fucking amazing. Like it'll make you appreciate. And actually I want to talk about this, like architecture and like that, but it'll make you appreciate London so much more or any city.
00:45:07:18 - 00:45:34:19
Dan Pope
And it really, really, really. It's the cultural tutor, the culture tutor, tutor. He's been on his podcast. He's one of the best podcasts. I'm not trying to get him on like, yeah, but he's there's a quote in its by hurt her colitis. I'm really bad at pronouncing things this Greek sort of philosopher which which is and this is what Seth Godin actually brought up this exact quote with me, which is no man ever steps in the same river twice because he is not the same man and it is not the same river.
00:45:35:00 - 00:45:50:14
Dan Pope
So by that, and to your point, it's like, yeah, we've done this podcast, right? As soon as I walk out that door, you walk out the door, it's like bang! But like, how? So that's like, how do you deal with that constant self-criticism, constant evolving? And actually, are you at peace? No, no, no.
00:45:50:14 - 00:46:01:15
Karan Gokani
That's something I've really struggled with. Yeah I think contentment, peace are things that you just have to define in your head. Yeah. And again, there are crutches and there are systems you can build around yourself.
00:46:01:16 - 00:46:03:24
Dan Pope
Which are asking this.
00:46:04:01 - 00:46:27:05
Karan Gokani
Which are people. Yeah. Very important like I told you about earlier. Like I think you I came to realize that, okay, validation is important to me in a way. But it's like who so early I would chase validation from press on critics. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Chase validation from from, you know, like big name things. I remember being on the today show two and a half weeks after touring America.
00:46:27:07 - 00:46:47:16
Karan Gokani
My hoppers cookbook had come out. We had been chasing the show for the longest time, luckily suddenly got a slot. I was over the moon about it. Our kids were young, Sue was very busy with my wife, was very busy with, you know, stuff happening here. There were some business issues and stuff like that that they were dealing with, and I had been away traveling and obviously needed to be traveling, and she was very supportive about the whole thing.
00:46:47:17 - 00:47:10:07
Karan Gokani
My kids were, this is 20, 22 or 3, so my kids would have been to in five. It's very young. I'd call them on FaceTime, on WhatsApp and one would not be interested. One was too young to chat, so I'm like missing out time with them. They don't really care about what I'm doing with. I've done the biggest collabs over America, like Powers Bookstore.
00:47:10:09 - 00:47:11:18
Karan Gokani
Yeah, all these different.
00:47:11:18 - 00:47:13:18
Dan Pope
Things, they don't care. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:47:13:19 - 00:47:27:17
Karan Gokani
And my wife was having to look after two kids on her own when she was going through a lot. And I remember this moment when I went on the today show. I was I literally had to extend my trip in New York because it got postponed once. I was scared might never even happen. And then what do I come back with to say?
00:47:27:18 - 00:47:47:02
Karan Gokani
Look, I stayed in New York for four days now and the show never happened. It was like six minutes of glory or 11 minutes of glory or whatever it was showed it really well. But I remember being picked up in a taxi from my hotel room, taken to the NBC studios doing this show, getting great feedback from the producers, the the hosts on the show.
00:47:47:03 - 00:48:05:01
Karan Gokani
We were all bantering in the background. Felt great for those like 30 minutes that I was in the studios, sat in a cab all alone, came back to my hotel room. It's like nothing has changed from 9:00 in the morning to 1130 in the morning. Today in my life. Yes, I might have had a small Instagram spike. Yes, the book might have gone up to number one right now.
00:48:05:01 - 00:48:22:18
Karan Gokani
But tomorrow when I'm back in London and there are 50 more books I think is going to change call my wife spoke to. She was busy in the middle of a meeting. He's like, okay, great. Well done. That's it. Done. And I was like, what am I chasing? What was this validation? This felt like the highest point I could have reached in America with my book as doing a Sri Lankan book.
00:48:22:18 - 00:48:43:16
Karan Gokani
No one knows about coming from London to be on this lot Prime time TV, 33 million odd people watching. It should have made me feel different, but it didn't. So I guess I asked myself at that point, like, what is the validation I seek? Because adaptation is important? And I then then I realized, okay, now today I'm far more sort of mature, grown up, not perfect by any means.
00:48:43:16 - 00:49:03:13
Karan Gokani
Struggle with this shit a lot, all the time. What I've managed to do is I've got a very small core people group of people, whether they're sort of friends, certain mentors, and then most importantly, my team here where, where I will go to. And that validation makes it. It's not enough. It's never enough. It never gives you that full contentment.
00:49:03:13 - 00:49:05:23
Karan Gokani
But you know you're doing something right.
00:49:06:00 - 00:49:20:22
Dan Pope
I've implemented. So, like, even after this, right? Every time I've got big podcasts, I have this because I'm so dulled in, like, focus. You know, reading everything. And then I'll go meet my mates who don't care about the podcast. Some of my best friends don't even fucking listen to it. And I take the piss.
00:49:21:01 - 00:49:22:08
Karan Gokani
My friends take the piss all the time.
00:49:22:10 - 00:49:36:16
Dan Pope
So I have it booked in. So I try and do the podcast on like a Thursday or Friday. So that means that I've got a runway period, you know, afterwards I have some food and they were going to get pissed with them. But we won't. I won't talk about work. I won't talk about anything. It'll just be like, yeah, you're you're like, this.
00:49:36:16 - 00:49:37:02
Dan Pope
Is that bad?
00:49:37:03 - 00:49:39:00
Karan Gokani
It's great. It's good to have that grounding factor.
00:49:39:03 - 00:50:03:00
Dan Pope
It just takes the edge off that kind of like that, you know, that almost adrenaline fucking. So fascinating. Tell me about growing up in Mumbai, right. Yeah. What's the how do Indians and your child. How did they view the world differently to the way British do, do you think? How are we similar and different?
00:50:03:02 - 00:50:05:03
Karan Gokani
It's a hard question. Very different in many ways.
00:50:05:03 - 00:50:07:18
Dan Pope
Yeah.
00:50:07:20 - 00:50:28:23
Karan Gokani
I don't know. I mean, again, yeah. I don't think it's a question I've come across before. How are we different? I think in many, many ways, I think culturally very different. Yeah. Indians have a hustle. Indians. Obviously, you grew up in a very busy environment. Yeah. I think Indians innately have this sort of struggle to want to do better.
00:50:29:00 - 00:50:44:04
Karan Gokani
There's a real energy and a hustle about things. I'm not saying London doesn't have that, but there is a peace as well. There's a contentment and satisfaction across the board generally, and you have spice. It's like you go to New York, you compare New York to London. New York has so much more hustle. You can't, like, just be.
00:50:44:05 - 00:51:05:13
Karan Gokani
If you want to succeed in an industry, you can't just be cruising. You've got to really push. And I think India is very entrepreneurial, especially today. Yeah, I've obviously I keep, you know, fingers and toes dipped into things there. Yeah. But that's more superficially more knowing what's happening. Sadly I don't have any real ties to India apart from all the food and, you know, cultural ambassadorship.
00:51:05:13 - 00:51:24:03
Karan Gokani
I do, but I think, you know, there's a there's a there's some great life lessons in there which I especially relevant to running a business in this country. Like I said, it's hustle, hustle, getting the job done. Yeah. It's it's about, you know, being result oriented, saying, okay, this is the result. Like, forget about the problems. The problems will solve them selves and we'll find ways to solve the problems.
00:51:24:04 - 00:51:41:22
Karan Gokani
Yeah. But I think over here, I guess it's that third world versus first world when you have enough, you grew up hungry versus growing up having enough, I think fundamentally changes. It's like, you know, you go to Scandinavia. People are like way beyond that. It's like now they're thinking of, do I have a four day weekend? Am I working every alternate weekend?
00:51:41:24 - 00:51:48:15
Karan Gokani
And I'm not saying anything about you need to work in Polish hunger. Yeah, it's about the hunger.
00:51:48:16 - 00:51:50:21
Dan Pope
Okay. Hunger. What else? What other?
00:51:50:22 - 00:52:10:21
Karan Gokani
Maybe I think hunger. Hustle. Yeah. There's a there's a sense of community. There's a big sense of community in Indians, which I find in the Irish over here in the Scottish, I think, you know, sort of Brits, Brits, especially in London, sadly, we've become very insular. We live in our own sort of little bubbles in India. I grew up in a block of apartments, but like everyone is family.
00:52:10:23 - 00:52:27:01
Karan Gokani
You know, you're raised by a community. Yeah. And that has its to, you know, flip sides as well. There's loads of bloody gossip. You can't be anonymous there. You know, everyone knows you. Whereas back in, in London you can be in. That's the beauty of it. You can be famous or you can be anonymous.
00:52:27:04 - 00:52:27:21
Dan Pope
Of London.
00:52:27:21 - 00:52:28:08
Karan Gokani
In London.
00:52:28:11 - 00:52:35:24
Dan Pope
Yeah. What made you come to what made you what pulls you to the UK versus other countries?
00:52:36:01 - 00:52:43:22
Karan Gokani
It's funny one, it's I guess there is something about there's a connection between the UK and India where you kind of feel it's abroad, but you still feel it's at home and London feels a lot like that.
00:52:43:23 - 00:52:44:24
Dan Pope
Yeah, I remember.
00:52:45:04 - 00:53:03:11
Karan Gokani
I guess there's a, there's a historic sort of connection. It's English speaking. Yes. To begin with. And I grew up studying, you know, I grew up in a going to a Protestant school which was founded by the British. So there was sort of X colonial, this thing there. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Very much Indian. I don't like this whole thing of celebrating the Raj and celebrating colonialism and all that.
00:53:03:11 - 00:53:20:19
Karan Gokani
I don't see why we need to be doing it years later. I think India has really found itself in celebrating modern India. But that said, I think, you know, I grew up with singing hymns in school, understanding a lot about this culture. We'd see it online, but I'd only been to England once. I've been to England for been to London for a week in 20.
00:53:20:20 - 00:53:39:08
Karan Gokani
In 2000 and then 2005, I found myself moving here in this weird way, knowing it's going to be for good. Most people would go to a three year degree and come back. Yeah, I was coming to Cambridge in 2005, and I knew when I got onto that plane that this is going to be wow, good. Weirdly, weirdly. Yeah.
00:53:39:10 - 00:53:56:19
Karan Gokani
I remember sitting on that plane coming by myself. No family. You had to drop me. I had some uncles and aunts who were very gracious and hospitable and took me to Primark shopping and then drove me to Cambridge. And I remember the first day I got to my college in Cambridge being like, shit, what second morning, first day I was very excited about my own space.
00:53:56:21 - 00:54:13:01
Karan Gokani
Back in Bombay. I'd share a room. My brother would be allowed into the kitchen certain times of the day. As long as I'm not creating too much chaos here. I had my own kitchen, negotiated my fridge space and kitchen space with the nine boys in my dorm. Second morning I bought a cycle cycle order on Cambridge. Came back.
00:54:13:02 - 00:54:31:04
Karan Gokani
I was like, shit. For the next three years this is all I'm going to see my bubble. It suddenly becomes so much smaller, whereas in Bombay it's bustling, there's so much excitement, there's so much energy. Suddenly this is too quiet and sleepy. So I struggled with that for a long time. I made some friends, but I did feel there was loneliness.
00:54:31:06 - 00:54:45:01
Karan Gokani
There was. I think that's when I sort of really took to cooking, and that was my cooking has always been my respite, my unwind, my sort of way of really engaging all senses into something and really focusing. It's my like meditation.
00:54:45:07 - 00:54:55:09
Dan Pope
So yeah, the what's the most interesting thing you did at Cambridge or person you met.
00:54:55:11 - 00:55:15:19
Karan Gokani
I guess. I mean, there were loads of interesting people. Yeah. And I think again, they tended to be more in the in the legal space. I met some of my best friends over there. Some of them are doctors today. Some of them are doing biology and different things. Most interesting thing, I think for me it was it's really interesting because I, I grew up in a vegetarian household in India.
00:55:15:21 - 00:55:32:10
Karan Gokani
So we would we would bring meat in once in a while if it was cooked outside. Even that was a bit of a loophole. So the neighbors had made some really nice fish that send it over and eat that. And I somehow I had this curiosity for eating meat and fish, mainly chicken and fish, but never cooked meat at home.
00:55:32:11 - 00:55:47:22
Karan Gokani
Today we do it back in India, but at home we never cooked meat. So and weirdly, that point is like to buy meat, you'd have to go to the butcher, you watch it being slaughtered and you see all the animals carcasses hanging around to go to buy fish. You go to fishmonger. The fishmonger would come with all his fish he would be smelling and all that stuff.
00:55:47:22 - 00:56:08:12
Karan Gokani
So no package. Beautiful stuff. So, weirdly, when I came to England, it's the first time I saw prepackaged, vacuum packed meat and fish, which allowed me to disassociate with that whole process and be able to cook some of this. So I learned how to cook meat and fish from scratch, reading books, going to blogs. There was no YouTube.
00:56:08:13 - 00:56:27:20
Karan Gokani
YouTube wasn't as, yeah, big as it was asking people questions. So I actually learned everything I know about cooking meat and fish in my Cambridge kitchen. I would literally spend all weekends. Sometimes I just deep dive. Okay, today I want to learn how to make sushi, and it was like being a kid in a candy store, because back in India, when I read a recipe book, it's like you need strong floors.
00:56:27:21 - 00:56:44:06
Karan Gokani
Like, what the hell is strong flour? We have something called the which is just random Indian bread flour, white bread flour, or you have brown bread flour. You have not even red flies, just roti flour or non flour. You have two of these things and you couldn't get anything else back in those days. This is like 20 years ago chocolate.
00:56:44:06 - 00:57:03:20
Karan Gokani
There was one brand of chocolate. There was no dark chocolate, no milk chocolate, no 60%, 70% ingredients apart from Indian masala, you won't find anything else. And you weren't cooking Indian food there because there was someone else doing it well, or you just go out to eat. So suddenly I started exploring Chinese food. I had Chinese friends and like Li Come Ki and I learned all these different sources.
00:57:03:21 - 00:57:05:12
Karan Gokani
Yeah, yeah. This is amazing.
00:57:05:13 - 00:57:05:17
Dan Pope
Yeah.
00:57:05:17 - 00:57:23:03
Karan Gokani
Yeah, yeah, I do Middle Eastern food, I do. I made friends from every single communities. I actually go in and learn from them. So weirdly, I think my biggest learnings there were in food and culture as opposed to law, which was functional, I did very well. Yeah. It was like, this is work, this is play.
00:57:23:06 - 00:57:37:07
Dan Pope
What are some of the mental models from like Cambridge as a not specifically law degree, but like the caliber of because again, Rory went to Cambridge. But that kind of big a level. Thinking of that you applied to a framework. You think it's a framework. It's a framework which is.
00:57:37:07 - 00:57:53:01
Karan Gokani
It makes you answer the question, right. Dig deeper. Look at first principles, look at second principles. Look at case like, you know, whether you're studying case or you need to understand these kind of things. It's like what is my data? But at the same time, where's your gut? It's being thorough.
00:57:53:01 - 00:57:57:01
Dan Pope
With stuff. So okay so what's the difference. So let's link that to.
00:57:57:07 - 00:57:59:02
Karan Gokani
Give me one second and come back.
00:57:59:02 - 00:58:00:17
Dan Pope
Yeah yeah go for it.
00:58:00:19 - 00:58:18:04
Dan Pope
Nice. When you, when you, when you're dying for a piss, your brain just goes into meltdown. No fucking loving this. They bring some food out shortly, but just want to get into this framework. So I try and learn from first principles. But you said so. It's basically you said Cambridge and frameworks. You have first principles. Second principles. Yeah.
00:58:18:05 - 00:58:28:24
Dan Pope
How would you apply that to hoppers in business, like when you've used first and what you first. Sorry. What 17 first principle and second principle.
00:58:29:01 - 00:58:46:07
Karan Gokani
I think applying it to hoppers would be. Like from a business point of view, you look at data. Yeah. Which is obviously important. But then you look at gut feeling. I mean, again, I, I guess it'll be hard to do a first principle. What is first principle? First principle for me is purpose.
00:58:46:12 - 00:58:47:06
Dan Pope
Yes. Okay.
00:58:47:07 - 00:58:56:18
Karan Gokani
Going back to okay. Why do we do something. Yes. Yesterday I was having a chat to these guys and like, you know, I think they were like, let's do a lunch special.
00:58:56:20 - 00:58:57:18
Dan Pope
Yeah yeah yeah, yeah.
00:58:57:19 - 00:59:15:19
Karan Gokani
And then there was a little bit of an argument about price point. I wanted to go really low, more price point. So I was like £15, £15 for a full lunch with a hopper, with a curry, with a starter with this thing. Only in Shoreditch. Right. Then I had someone else come by and say, like, can we make a £19?
00:59:16:00 - 00:59:16:19
Karan Gokani
And then I.
00:59:16:19 - 00:59:18:17
Dan Pope
Had someone else for that, I'll tell you.
00:59:18:19 - 00:59:34:16
Karan Gokani
Then had someone else come by and say, look, can we just do it across all our sites? I said, let's go down to I guess this is my first principle. Like, why are we doing it right? We're doing it because we want people to come at lunch. If you want people to come at lunch, there could be various problems you have.
00:59:34:21 - 00:59:50:14
Karan Gokani
It could be people don't know you exist, which is my which is my problem here. It's not a problem, but it's what we're trying to tackle over here. Shoreditch. They don't know we exist because it's a very quiet, very hidden. It's often it's not very hidden, but it's we aren't allowed on this building to put a lot of signage outside so we can't shout about it.
00:59:50:15 - 01:00:04:16
Karan Gokani
Right. And shortage has some great food and there's lots happening. And yes, if you've read hot dinners in the beginning or you've read a couple of things, then it's there, but we're not plastered all over, so it's a visibility issue. The second issue could be because there's a price point, issues like we love to come for lunch, but it's too expensive.
01:00:04:16 - 01:00:23:21
Karan Gokani
I don't think that's an issue. Third issue is we do not eat Indian food at lunch. But you cannot solve because either you start doing salads at lunch. Which is it on brand isn't on on brand. Maybe we can do something and do we shout about it or not? And I guess those are your three problems. I was like, these are three completely distinct problems with completely distinct solutions.
01:00:23:21 - 01:00:40:17
Karan Gokani
If you use a price point solution to tackle the last one, you can just drive yourself down to like a £5 meal, and eventually all you'll end up doing is the people who are already working in will spend five instead of 13. Yeah, and you'll have cannibalized yourself. But the people who weren't weren't coming in because you're doing Indian food are not coming in anyway.
01:00:40:19 - 01:00:41:03
Dan Pope
Yeah.
01:00:41:09 - 01:00:48:18
Karan Gokani
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess you've got to ask yourself your question first you got to understand your problem or your issue. Yeah. Because most things start from a problem with an issue.
01:00:48:19 - 01:00:49:15
Dan Pope
Yep.
01:00:49:17 - 01:01:06:17
Karan Gokani
When you've understood your problem I guess that's your first principle. Then you ask yourself what the solution that matches that is. Don't confuse yourself because you have seen a deal on Instagram that worked well. Yeah, or you've seen someone post about something that you feel you can copy. So there's a time and place for something and therefore you go down to this.
01:01:06:17 - 01:01:10:00
Karan Gokani
I guess this is my structured brain working or my lawyers brain.
01:01:10:02 - 01:01:11:06
Dan Pope
This is fascinating. Yeah yeah yeah.
01:01:11:06 - 01:01:18:24
Karan Gokani
Yeah yeah. So then we drill down, I said Shoreditch has the problem of not being visible. I don't think price is an issue because you can come here and have a £10 meal.
01:01:18:24 - 01:01:20:24
Dan Pope
If you're just so just to.
01:01:21:01 - 01:01:22:23
Karan Gokani
It's visibility. Visibility price.
01:01:22:23 - 01:01:24:02
Dan Pope
.5.0.
01:01:24:03 - 01:01:39:03
Karan Gokani
It's just that the third thing is just basically your product. It's your product is wrong. There's just I do not eat Indian food at lunch. I don't want heavy food. I don't want spicy food. So if it's spicy food, let's say for example, if the problem was there's a perception of spicy food, then maybe we can do marketing around.
01:01:39:03 - 01:01:53:21
Karan Gokani
Look, it doesn't have to be spicy. There is food, there is lighter. If it's a perception about your food is to carb heavy and and we want protein. I'll be like, look, there are some great curries and maybe we can add a little bit of a salad or a stir fry to it, which gives you the right kind of thing.
01:01:53:21 - 01:01:57:18
Karan Gokani
But if I start doing like build your own salads here, it's just off brand.
01:01:57:20 - 01:01:59:11
Dan Pope
So that's where purpose falls into this.
01:01:59:12 - 01:02:00:17
Karan Gokani
So purpose is very important.
01:02:00:17 - 01:02:01:17
Dan Pope
That's the first one.
01:02:01:17 - 01:02:04:10
Karan Gokani
This yes and no purpose is already defined your brand and you know.
01:02:04:15 - 01:02:05:01
Dan Pope
Yeah yeah yeah.
01:02:05:01 - 01:02:20:10
Karan Gokani
Yeah yeah. But I think the first principle here is firstly identify your problem. Right. Like a first principle law would be case law is you kind of go down to okay what is the law. What is a case law. And then you kind of move on from there. Yeah. And I think you kind of say, okay, so what am I trying to tackle.
01:02:20:12 - 01:02:37:14
Karan Gokani
And that's where I really had to focus them and say, okay, my problem is we've been there ten years. We've been there seven, seven years now. Six years now. Yeah. So my problem there is not visibility and knowledge. Yes, there might be a little bit of that to do because you're never visible to everyone. But we are on Google Maps.
01:02:37:14 - 01:02:56:10
Karan Gokani
If you search Indian restaurants or you search top restaurants will come up on everything. So SEO is there, local businesses know about us. And now if you start driving down price, is it a price issue? Do you know it's a price issue? Has anyone told you, has any data told you that people are not walking in here because you're 14 pounds doses to expensive?
01:02:56:10 - 01:03:10:23
Karan Gokani
I do not agree because people are now being 16 quitted bread. They're paying £20 for a salad somewhere with a drink and we're offering really good value. So value has not been a problem. So find out what your problem is and deal with it. Because at my old sites, each site is a different problem. If we're at lunch.
01:03:10:24 - 01:03:15:06
Karan Gokani
Okay, lunch is never big in an Indian restaurant. Yeah. No Indian restaurant will tell you that.
01:03:15:07 - 01:03:39:22
Dan Pope
It's interesting. So Ogilvy used to Rory had that as a grads, as a question, as a framework was this was like it was how do you get back in the early 2000? It was how would you fill out a lunch service at an Indian restaurant? Yeah, very, very interesting. But the other thing which he says, which I love, is that what one of his mental models is, what problem are we solving?
01:03:40:03 - 01:03:51:06
Dan Pope
Yeah. What problem are we solving really? And I think that goes to your point of what we actually fucking solving is, is it's not a price point issue. It's not a menu issue. Like what. Yeah. So what did you.
01:03:51:07 - 01:03:51:13
Karan Gokani
Because.
01:03:51:13 - 01:03:52:02
Dan Pope
What.
01:03:52:04 - 01:04:10:22
Karan Gokani
Often happens in today's we've got so much information. Yeah. You've got really tempting models. So like like you know earlier in the early in our conversation I mentioned sometimes I go to a soft launch and see a restaurant where, oh my God, that was such an exciting, fun dinner. But it was a fun dinner. In that moment I do not.
01:04:10:24 - 01:04:27:08
Karan Gokani
You kind of go away like shit. I could have created that concept. You know, this is really cool restaurant that's doing this. That's life. I could do it. I mean, it depends on where you go and eat. It's like sometimes you just go, like, you know, I like I go with my chef as I see life, I see the live kitchen sit around the kitchen.
01:04:27:08 - 01:04:40:16
Karan Gokani
I was like, watching all that. I was like, we maybe not hoppers, but we could have easily created this concept. Shit, I wish I could be the first one to do this. You know, you do like a real you do something else. So like I see a pizza concept. I love pizza in my dream world, I love it, love to be doing it.
01:04:40:17 - 01:04:40:23
Dan Pope
Yeah.
01:04:40:23 - 01:04:52:12
Karan Gokani
Yeah, yeah. So. But then when you come back and you allow it to settle, it's one of those ideas that feels amazing. Keeps you awake one night, but three nights later, it's like, I'm glad I didn't work on that anymore.
01:04:52:13 - 01:04:52:23
Dan Pope
Yes.
01:04:52:24 - 01:05:11:20
Karan Gokani
You write it down. You have it in the back. Maybe someday there'll be some sort of variation to that you come back to. Yeah. So it's very much that and I think, you know, come down to first principles. The issue is there's so much noise out there that suddenly you see something that you are fed a the algorithm might have felt fed it to you and it makes it look much bigger than it is.
01:05:11:21 - 01:05:27:22
Karan Gokani
It's like, oh my God, this, this, this little campaign that that competitor is doing has come to me in three different ways is because it's you. It's not really that big, right? Second thing is, it'll come to you and you'll suddenly feel like, that's so good, I need to do it myself. I was like, maybe it worked for them.
01:05:27:22 - 01:05:47:00
Karan Gokani
Even though they're in the same market, they overlap a lot, but they are trying to solve a different problem. They are different brand. Let's go down to the basis of why we would do that thing here, and how we would do it if we were to do it. A I would not copy paste. B if I were to do it, I would adapt and do it, but only if it made sense.
01:05:47:00 - 01:06:03:22
Karan Gokani
And I think this is how my thinking has evolved. Yes, we will really sit down and question. Don't be, you know, very often it's symptomatic or very often it's a solution that you have before you have a problem. Yeah. You then. Yes. And then you've matched this wrong solution to the wrong problem. You've created a problem because you want to use a solution.
01:06:03:23 - 01:06:05:18
Dan Pope
That's fucking genius. Yeah.
01:06:05:18 - 01:06:26:10
Karan Gokani
Yeah I think that's where we really broke it down. And we said, okay. Actually, when we look, even though it's called hoppers, Soho has a slightly different problem because there are not many people around for lunch anymore that, like they used to be. Mala born, has a different problem. Although there are people out for lunch, they go into certain different restaurants or they suddenly shifted to eating higher protein salad meals and things like that.
01:06:26:10 - 01:06:46:00
Karan Gokani
So is basically salad project is busy King's Cross. Maybe there's a visibility issue, maybe there's something different. And Shoreditch, it's definitely visibility. So suddenly you realize that the symptom is the same. My lunch is not busy. The underlying cause of that is different, and the solution is different, because you need to match the cause and the solution.
01:06:46:03 - 01:06:49:11
Dan Pope
And then trying to have one solution across, all right, i.e. build this bar.
01:06:49:13 - 01:06:49:22
Karan Gokani
It's very.
01:06:49:22 - 01:06:52:24
Dan Pope
Tempting that space is a problem out of a solution.
01:06:53:00 - 01:07:01:20
Karan Gokani
No. If you say £15. Menu. Yeah. Let's just do a £15 menu. Yeah it matches and it aligns with Shoreditch. And then the easiest solution would be let's just do it across.
01:07:01:22 - 01:07:02:07
Dan Pope
I'm saying.
01:07:02:13 - 01:07:20:06
Karan Gokani
But suddenly it's trying to solve the problem. And that might create another problem. Because suddenly you have a value perception now. So you have a £15 menu in King's Cross where someone who's already coming to be 30, happily, he's now having that. So you can say, but more importantly, that person not going to come back at dinner because now they've eaten this for £15 and they don't want to come back for dinner when it's in Shoreditch.
01:07:20:06 - 01:07:37:19
Karan Gokani
I don't mind someone eating 15 because it's not a I'm not discounting value, which is something I never do. I'm saying all I'm doing is this is my generosity. I'm giving it to you in a really cheap price, because all I want you to do is come and taste the food. I'm not doing it because I've suddenly realized ten years on that I was charging too much, and I'm suddenly giving you a discount because I wasn't charging.
01:07:37:19 - 01:07:55:15
Karan Gokani
I'm always lower than market, so it's not that admission of shit. I'm too expensive because once you go to Sports Direct and you buy shoes for half the price, you're never going to buy for full price. I never shop, I shop as Sports Direct, but even if I see something at good value, full price, it's like I'm just waiting for the discount.
01:07:55:17 - 01:08:19:08
Dan Pope
Interesting. The what would you say? Have you read? You read the book sold for acid heat. What would you say the marketing principle like that equivalent is marketing to fill your restaurants. So I think you've talked about visibility as one thing, but like the four maybe levers that you can pull or they can sort of amalgamate together and you actually get bums on seats and you, you build a restaurant group for like ten years, you know.
01:08:19:10 - 01:08:42:12
Karan Gokani
Oh, maybe I'm just a one trick pony. Maybe I've just done one. It worked. Well, I don't know, that's my insecurity talking, but I think it's sort of there's no perfect formula. Yeah. I think it comes down to that same thing. If you've got to make it personal. Yeah. Because a restaurant is much more than food. Food. I've always said it's just the language.
01:08:42:12 - 01:08:48:01
Karan Gokani
The conversation is how you make people feel. We bring people.
01:08:48:01 - 01:08:50:07
Dan Pope
In so good. Hang on. So food is food is.
01:08:50:08 - 01:08:52:10
Karan Gokani
What is the language? You could be speaking any language.
01:08:52:11 - 01:08:52:22
Dan Pope
Yeah. Yeah.
01:08:53:00 - 01:09:09:16
Karan Gokani
But the conversation is something that you can you can't necessarily determine. Yes. Yeah yeah yeah. You can put the language in place. You can have the circumstances in place. But that conversation is something that's going to be hyper personal to each person who comes to eat. And all you do is create a beautiful framework around it and create the environment.
01:09:09:16 - 01:09:29:03
Karan Gokani
So you can't have a conversation on a noisy train where you're moving back and forth, but you can have a conversation. I'm not saying physically like we can have noisy sources, yes, of course, but it's conversation, metaphorically speaking, is what we are here to create because you might not remember the language, but you remember conversation. So you speak five languages.
01:09:29:05 - 01:09:35:18
Karan Gokani
You have a really deep conversation with someone. I'll ask you five years later. Do you remember what language you spoke to that conversation? You won't. You mean.
01:09:35:20 - 01:09:36:20
Dan Pope
You remember how you feel?
01:09:36:21 - 01:09:53:15
Karan Gokani
You might remember you ate a bone marrow at my restaurant. But more importantly, you remember how I made you feel that day. And that is a collection of whether the lighting fell well on your face. You felt confident because the other person looked good. Did your life did your wife look slightly prettier than she normally is? That made you both open up to each other?
01:09:53:20 - 01:10:06:18
Karan Gokani
Did your date go really well because the music was right level where it was like engaging you to this thing? Was the music too fast? So you were chewing too fast? Was it a little cold? So even though the food was warm and your conversation was great, secretly you need to go for pace five times or you're like feeling cold.
01:10:06:18 - 01:10:29:21
Karan Gokani
And so if your hands are clammy. So there's obviously the physical stuff you can do to create that. But then there is a real soul of a restaurant which only comes from a restaurant, from a good restaurant steer stirring the, you know, steering the ship, which he then passes, he or she passes on to the team. And that is where culture is the most important thing.
01:10:30:02 - 01:10:32:18
Karan Gokani
You know, Danny is all 51%, I think.
01:10:32:20 - 01:10:34:05
Dan Pope
51%.
01:10:34:07 - 01:10:52:02
Karan Gokani
So in setting the table, Daniel says he's got 51%. It's like you can have the perfect CV. It's a hiring construct so that you can have the perfect CV. Yeah. Which only gets you to 49%. 51% is how you make my team feel when you come in for an interview and how you make us feel when you come in for that trial shift.
01:10:52:07 - 01:11:03:15
Karan Gokani
So it's something we've always imbibed and something we always use. Yes. Not perfectly. Sometimes you get it wrong. Yeah. We're trying to sort of hone that skill, and that's about bringing in right people who fit in your culture and all that stuff.
01:11:03:16 - 01:11:06:20
Dan Pope
So you get those things right. The marketing will kind of take care of itself.
01:11:06:20 - 01:11:10:07
Karan Gokani
No. So then he had this interesting thing when I met him for breakfast one morning.
01:11:10:11 - 01:11:11:14
Dan Pope
You met Danny Meyer.
01:11:11:16 - 01:11:12:09
Karan Gokani
I met him many times.
01:11:12:10 - 01:11:13:08
Dan Pope
Oh, really? I realize.
01:11:13:08 - 01:11:13:14
Karan Gokani
That, yeah.
01:11:13:15 - 01:11:13:19
Dan Pope
Yeah.
01:11:13:21 - 01:11:19:10
Karan Gokani
That was my. My highlight was serving him for the first time in Hopper. So in year one, a year or two of opening.
01:11:19:11 - 01:11:19:18
Dan Pope
Wow.
01:11:19:23 - 01:11:28:08
Karan Gokani
Richard Wines brought him in, and then we became good friends afterwards. It's amazing videos for my team, and I hold him in huge respect, and he's one of those few years that, you.
01:11:28:08 - 01:11:30:04
Dan Pope
Know, some of the questions you were asking him know.
01:11:30:06 - 01:11:55:02
Karan Gokani
So this was one of those like, you know, we might have asked like I think it was a conversation. He said, currently I've got this interesting theory on 51%. So he said, I've used it in the hiring contract context, and this is in 2016 or 17 said, I've got the 51% theory, which I've applied to spaces to to restaurants and to this whole Instagram culture you can take a picture of is only 49%.
01:11:55:03 - 01:12:29:14
Karan Gokani
So anything I can take my phone out and capture on my phone is 49%. 51% is something you can never capture and that is the soul. And I truly, genuinely believe we've had copycats along the way. We've had people leaving us and joining competitors or opening their own spaces they will never be able to create. I think also as an insecure restaurant, it also gives you that sense of okay, of security to know that look, at the end of the day, you play this invisible role behind in controlling, guarding, directing culture.
01:12:29:16 - 01:12:42:21
Dan Pope
With word insecurities bubble up a lot. And I think creatives, great creatives, insecure like, what are some of the insecurities that you're currently even now were ten years, 111 years now long that you're still fucking grappling with what's.
01:12:42:22 - 01:13:01:07
Karan Gokani
What's the syndrome all the time? Again, someone who studied law come in here. I still sort of pinch myself. I'm still as excited, if not more excited about being in this industry. So even if you got a junior chef, come in, you know, and sit on a table. I will go up to the table. I'll start chatting to them, asking them about life, because everyone's got a different experience.
01:13:01:07 - 01:13:14:21
Karan Gokani
And I still remember the day when I was a lawyer, and I'd find any excuse to get into a kitchen or get into a restaurant, talk to the restaurant, talk to the manager, talk to a chef, you know? Yeah. So for me, imposter syndrome kicks about.
01:13:15:01 - 01:13:21:06
Dan Pope
About what? About the dance between being hyper competitive but actually sticking to you and your purpose?
01:13:21:08 - 01:13:31:20
Karan Gokani
Yeah, I think the sticking to the purpose is a is a system you create to not be astray. Like I said, you can be out there and you can see a restaurant that's done really well. You kind of part of the.
01:13:31:22 - 01:13:33:05
Dan Pope
Same thing. You have this as like you've.
01:13:33:05 - 01:13:34:13
Karan Gokani
Got a lot of it written down. We've created.
01:13:34:13 - 01:13:39:07
Dan Pope
A like almost like the like, you know, the, the Constitution. What are some of those?
01:13:39:11 - 01:13:55:17
Karan Gokani
We've been working through that. So like kindness is a big part of it. Yeah. Making it personal is a big part of it. Yeah. The sort of what why how is a big part of it? Yeah. Sort of the big. So purpose statement, mission statement, all that stuff is sort of got codified to an extent. But again, that evolves.
01:13:55:19 - 01:13:59:18
Dan Pope
That's what I thought the Tonys did amazingly well, was how they you know, they detailed that.
01:13:59:19 - 01:14:01:22
Karan Gokani
That's how you grow to that level going keep that right.
01:14:01:24 - 01:14:02:11
Dan Pope
Yeah yeah.
01:14:02:11 - 01:14:03:12
Karan Gokani
Yeah yeah yeah.
01:14:03:14 - 01:14:06:02
Dan Pope
We've got I think some food arriving. I think.
01:14:06:08 - 01:14:06:23
Karan Gokani
About time right.
01:14:06:24 - 01:14:07:12
Dan Pope
Yeah yeah yeah.
01:14:07:13 - 01:14:09:17
Karan Gokani
Sorry. We opened to early chat.
01:14:09:22 - 01:14:10:19
Dan Pope
To early. It was.
01:14:10:19 - 01:14:11:16
Karan Gokani
So good that we're sort of.
01:14:11:17 - 01:14:32:08
Dan Pope
Firing up. But I'd love to know what the, Because I was in Thailand with Lucy Farrell, you know, from fucking legend. I bet you said to him I was like, bro, like, take me off piece. I want to go to all the like, you know, the man if a man for that. Right. And he said, and I think it was beautiful way of putting it.
01:14:32:09 - 01:14:55:06
Dan Pope
I think, you know, food is culture. Culture is food. But he said the best way to understand a culture without either going to a country or speaking their language is food. Like food is almost the gateway to a culture and societies soul. Right? And I know with your different restaurants, as you know, here's a mix of like in every restaurant is kind of slightly different.
01:14:55:07 - 01:15:18:24
Dan Pope
Here's Indian, the Sri Lankan, that kind of southern Indian. Sorry. Yeah. Like once the dishes arrive. But I'd love to maybe beforehand. Like what are some of the across India like how are how does it differ in terms of the way they feed the world? Obviously, you know, again, we're a small country, but the way northerners and Southerners think, there's a lot of similarities, a lot of differences, like how southern India different to other parts.
01:15:19:00 - 01:15:43:13
Karan Gokani
It's as different as, say, fallen to England. In fact, I'll say even more really, I'd say that the diversity across India, north south east, whereas even every 200km, is often more than different European countries. Wow. It is, you know, you can take like no way to Spain. The differences between them are, you know, probably seen across South India from one side to the other.
01:15:43:13 - 01:15:52:11
Karan Gokani
Whereas if you go south to north, you wouldn't even recognize the people, the language, the culture, the diet is all totally different. Like think of India's is huge. It's almost a continent. That's where, you.
01:15:52:13 - 01:15:52:24
Dan Pope
Know.
01:15:53:01 - 01:16:11:22
Karan Gokani
And then you have Sri Lanka, which is a totally different island, which for years I thought was only this sort of competitor cricketing nation. But then when I went and discovered it for the first time and had friends from there, I think, I think that's where I really learned that luxury Lanka is this whole has an identity of itself.
01:16:11:22 - 01:16:15:07
Karan Gokani
It's an incredible melting pot of different cultures and backgrounds.
01:16:15:08 - 01:16:18:20
Dan Pope
Yeah, my one of my best mates from uni, Pradeep is is for Lankan.
01:16:18:21 - 01:16:24:00
Karan Gokani
I mean it's the I always say it's like a bite sized version of India. In fact, you know, being Indian, I'm allowed to say this.
01:16:24:06 - 01:16:24:18
Dan Pope
Yes, of course.
01:16:24:19 - 01:16:37:01
Karan Gokani
Someone comes to me and say, oh, I'm going to India for the first time. I said, okay, how long do you have? If they say, I have a week? I said, cancel your ticket. Go to Sri Lanka instead. Because chances are you'll go to India. You'll try to north, south, east, west, and you have this FOMO. It's like, I'll do Agra, I'll do Delhi.
01:16:37:06 - 01:16:39:00
Karan Gokani
You'll get a little taste of everything.
01:16:39:01 - 01:16:42:05
Dan Pope
It's the best things to do in Sri Lanka then. Like if you're there for a week.
01:16:42:07 - 01:16:59:17
Karan Gokani
Yeah. The the diversity of stuff you can do. You can be surfing one morning on the most incredible waves. You could be doing a safari in the afternoon. You could be steeped in, in sort of Dutch culture in the afternoon. In all.
01:16:59:19 - 01:17:01:11
Dan Pope
Is the Dutch colonized Sri.
01:17:01:11 - 01:17:05:07
Karan Gokani
Lanka, colonized Sri Lanka, British colony, Sri Lanka. They've got lots of those influences.
01:17:05:07 - 01:17:06:02
Dan Pope
Wow. Interesting.
01:17:06:03 - 01:17:14:23
Karan Gokani
Yeah. And then you could be in a bustling city, which I think Colombo is such an underrated city. It is one of the best international cities in that region. It's not got the.
01:17:14:24 - 01:17:16:21
Dan Pope
Why is it so underrated then what is it?
01:17:17:00 - 01:17:30:09
Karan Gokani
I don't know, most people land there and fly through. I just spoke to someone yesterday and she was like, oh, this is the first time I stopped in Colombo and actually really enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's a very international city. Yeah. It's a it's a very like you know, it's it's developing, it's not developed as fast as many of the Indian cities.
01:17:30:09 - 01:17:45:22
Karan Gokani
But Indian cities are chaotic because the population is mad. And they often just trying to keep up with a population. You'll have a great time in Bangalore if you get from one place to the other. You love Bombay, but getting under the skin is over, you know, genuinely overwhelming for the first time. Yeah, Delhi can be is gorgeous.
01:17:45:23 - 01:18:09:02
Karan Gokani
It's beautiful. It's got this thing, but it's got pollution issues. It's got people. If you've got time, India is phenomenal time do a month. But just doing the north, just to the south, really get under the sort of skin of the country because that's where you really begin to enjoy it. Yeah. Whereas if you've got a week, I think you can literally travel across Sri Lanka, there's very less impediment to sort of getting you.
01:18:09:06 - 01:18:21:19
Karan Gokani
You won't get under the skin of it, but you'll have a really good time and a seamless time. You don't have to bargain. You don't have to watch over your shoulders. Crime is much less. The streets are cleaner, roads are much better. And it's a smaller country.
01:18:21:20 - 01:18:22:14
Dan Pope
Yeah yeah yeah yeah.
01:18:22:14 - 01:18:28:18
Karan Gokani
Yeah yeah. I've always suggested Sri Lanka as an introduction to the region. Yes. And then go to dive deeper into India.
01:18:28:20 - 01:18:54:17
Dan Pope
What's the. So with the traditional arcane but traditional sort of Indian curry house that the UK, you know, which is which now is being, you know, rightfully and happily kind of changed from people like introducing us to different types of cuisine. But how is that not necessarily like a wrong representation of the culture? Like, is it those Indian curry houses?
01:18:54:17 - 01:18:59:12
Dan Pope
Are they like amalgamations of different parts of one of India? Like what?
01:18:59:13 - 01:19:06:19
Karan Gokani
So Indian curry houses using a very broad brush term for the word curry house. Yes. As it's sort of generally.
01:19:06:20 - 01:19:10:09
Dan Pope
Yeah. Yeah. That's that's what I'm sorry. Yeah. Yeah. That's the.
01:19:10:11 - 01:19:29:14
Karan Gokani
Tended to be people from Bangladesh. Yes. But if a city called Sylhet you came over years ago I don't know. Must have been an entrepreneur. They definitely have a very strong entrepreneurial spirit. And they have a spirit of community because again, I don't know the history to it, but few of them came over and they brought the rest of the village along.
01:19:29:14 - 01:19:36:10
Karan Gokani
And weirdly, most of these curry houses were run by people from it. And then they had second generation. By now it's sort of third or.
01:19:36:10 - 01:19:38:01
Dan Pope
Fourth like a big city, small.
01:19:38:03 - 01:19:56:14
Karan Gokani
I don't know it. I've been to Bangladesh, but again, it's the city that most of the people have come from. I think it's like second or third city after Dhaka, which is the capital. So weirdly was people from here. And again, hats off to them because they have an entrepreneurial culture. They probably realized at the time, it's a bit like now, today, if I was to sell butter chicken, probably do twice the sales.
01:19:56:20 - 01:20:16:04
Karan Gokani
If I did a typical North Indian menu, maybe it wouldn't resonate with my purpose at all. But from a financial point of view, I'd do much better than doing what I do today, because I think there's just less of an education piece, is less of a barrier to entry. Today I've got to educate first. When a person reads my menu for 15 minutes, they just struck us to what is what?
01:20:16:05 - 01:20:34:13
Karan Gokani
Even ten years on. So I've got to then have a smart way to sit and educate you. Whereas if I had a black girl know the chicken and just worked on making sure they're slightly different or tasted really good and served in good, you know, plates in a fancy restaurant, I'll probably it'll be easier, much easier way to get it right.
01:20:34:14 - 01:20:57:24
Karan Gokani
So for that reason, I think maybe these guys realize that, look, Indian food was the way into the Bangladesh. So entrepreneurial hustle started built it, tweaked it to the Indian, to the English palate. Maybe there's sort of sweetness of a korma came in there. Maybe there were certain other things that that sort of lent themselves well, to, to how the locals would perceive it.
01:20:58:01 - 01:21:14:20
Karan Gokani
And I think they sort of picked up and I guess it got busy. It got this thing. And I think slowly over time, these are people who didn't inherently come from there. Now, I don't use the word authenticity because I think it's a bit of a nothing word. Yeah. What is authentic? Yes. Because we might come from the same place.
01:21:14:20 - 01:21:39:14
Karan Gokani
Your grandma cook something one way I mind cook something different way. Which one is authentic? Yeah. Authentic for me is an intention. So maybe the intention at that point was not to represent Indian culture in the right way, but was to create a menu that was unique with Indian influences, with presented in a somewhat sort of ethnic way, with sort of all those the typical music and the fanfare and clothes and the tropes that you have.
01:21:39:15 - 01:21:46:06
Karan Gokani
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then over time, maybe it was a consumer start calling it an Indian curry house. So I don't know what it was, but maybe.
01:21:46:06 - 01:21:52:01
Dan Pope
I love I love looking into archeology and anthropology, anthropology of food. I think it's.
01:21:52:01 - 01:22:17:11
Karan Gokani
Just yeah, it has that journey right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So I think what they did and I don't for once knock it, I don't think there's ever sort of I'm so happy that people on the I know there are lots of people out there who are now wearing India on their, you know, as a badge of honor. Earlier just happened to be brown today suddenly found there found themselves loads of commentators in this market, chefs, commentators in this market who had nothing to do with Indian food in the past and then sort of now suddenly becoming big voices.
01:22:17:15 - 01:22:32:00
Karan Gokani
For me personally, there's such a big market to educate. We feed 6500 people a week, and my stats show that at least 70 to 80% of those people are new customers every week, new guests every week.
01:22:32:04 - 01:22:33:06
Dan Pope
What's what.
01:22:33:08 - 01:22:42:21
Karan Gokani
Ten years? The volume. So this just shows you the number of people that are in this market. It's not a tiny market like say, Bombay or Delhi, not even Delhi, but like, you know, you look at small cities, bring it on.
01:22:42:22 - 01:22:45:00
Dan Pope
Yeah. Bring it out. Yeah. We can now start scoring.
01:22:45:01 - 01:22:55:03
Karan Gokani
The, the interesting thing, that is what these guys did from an Indian perspective, from British perspective. They gave you new food that. Thanks Raghu.
01:22:55:04 - 01:22:57:04
Dan Pope
Thank you mate. That looks incredible.
01:22:57:05 - 01:23:00:04
Karan Gokani
I'll tell you all about that dish. So I don't lose my trade.
01:23:00:05 - 01:23:00:21
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:23:00:23 - 01:23:26:14
Karan Gokani
Just from a from an English point of view. They gave you new food. From their point of view, they created a new business and they used certain influences to do something well. And I think what it did in the long run was educate in market to a certain kind of food, which nobody else would have been able to educate if I had come and opened this kind of restaurant back in the day when the first Bangladeshi restaurant open, we wouldn't have had a single guest in because no one knew about it.
01:23:26:16 - 01:23:42:09
Karan Gokani
So sometimes people are like, you know, they'll be quick to criticize a Jamie or a term for writing an Indian recipe. I was like, I do not care, man. Yeah, like if their restaurant, if their recipe is not the same as mine, doesn't make it less authentic, fine. It might show laziness. Not on their part, but I'm seeing some.
01:23:42:10 - 01:23:56:00
Karan Gokani
If a British recipe writer or chef is writing a recipe or Indian food, if it's badly written, it's just laziness. I could be lazy as well, but writing a recipe from a region I don't know, but just because I'm brown doesn't make it any more authentic.
01:23:56:01 - 01:23:56:09
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah.
01:23:56:09 - 01:24:04:21
Karan Gokani
Yeah, I think the beauty is someone like Jamie, someone like Tom, is probably able to reach a segment of the market that might not listen to me. And I'm being realistic.
01:24:04:21 - 01:24:07:03
Dan Pope
About increasing the total Dressel market.
01:24:07:08 - 01:24:35:22
Karan Gokani
So once they've watched their recipes, yes. It might not be close to what my recipes. They might teach her to make a routine a totally different way, instead of scoffing at it and writing notes and posting things about, oh my God, that was inauthentic. That's all BS, man. I was like, I would much rather whoever it is sitting in, you know, far off reaches of the country who don't, doesn't know who I am, doesn't come to London, but knows Jamie, respects Jamie, tries this recipe out because once they've had a taste, chances are tomorrow they'll say, I enjoyed that.
01:24:35:22 - 01:24:51:01
Karan Gokani
Let me find more Indians. Somewhere down the line, three layers down, they might find my book. Come to me. Come eat my restaurant. So it's all a discovery process. And that's exactly what the Bangladeshi restaurants did. They still have a place in today's market because there are still people who enjoy a curry house.
01:24:51:02 - 01:24:51:13
Dan Pope
Yes.
01:24:51:14 - 01:25:02:18
Karan Gokani
Right. My kids still go to Pizza Express. Now, I've got nothing against Pizza Express, but there are hundreds of pizzas. Much bigger than that. Much better than them. I personally don't eat a Pizza Express. My wife loves it because of nostalgia.
01:25:02:22 - 01:25:03:22
Dan Pope
Yes, I love.
01:25:03:24 - 01:25:08:09
Karan Gokani
If if you grown up here, you love it. Now why do you love it? There are hundreds of pizzas that are better.
01:25:08:10 - 01:25:29:10
Dan Pope
Well, so there's a Seth Godin has got a theory on this, which is why does and there's a, there's a, there's a heuristic, a behavioral science heuristic on this, which is why is crack on these which is why is Heinz ketchup so over everything else 100%. It's basically just purely because it brings back memories, memories of childhood, because ketchup often meant a happy.
01:25:29:11 - 01:25:45:24
Dan Pope
If you're having ketchup as a kid, it means you're usually probably having like naughty quote unquote food. Again, that's a vacuous claim. Such things is not what food, but it brings back nostalgia. And now if you give me any other fucking ketchup. And that's what I think Pizza Express is, I don't think it just I remember going to kids parties, having the hats, the coloring.
01:25:45:24 - 01:25:49:05
Dan Pope
It was remind me of half term, you know, or squalling.
01:25:49:08 - 01:26:05:23
Karan Gokani
My kids, you know, I make pizza at home more than I make most things. Wow. They enjoy the pizza. But my kids still love Pizza Express. Why? Because it's become their thing with their mum. So Sue will take them when I'm traveling or when she knows that I'm not part of that thing. They will go to a lot of restaurants together, but when we go to Pizza Express, it's all about her going with them.
01:26:05:23 - 01:26:21:21
Karan Gokani
So suddenly that same nostalgia is carried on to them. Yes, they're like, now this is their date night with their mom, so it's so special to them. And so it's a great branding thing. Hats off to Pizza Express. But they're not doing the best pizza. Yeah yeah yeah. And I think this is important to understand that, you know, you can go up your ass about food.
01:26:21:21 - 01:26:40:12
Karan Gokani
I'm serving the most authentic. I'm serving the best. That's BS man. You're creating what I said earlier. You're creating spaces. You're creating opportunities for a conversation. You have to be realistic about that. Food is a language. Pizza express. The pizza Pizza Express is a language for that communication. My wife and my kids.
01:26:40:15 - 01:26:41:04
Dan Pope
Yes, yes.
01:26:41:04 - 01:26:57:18
Karan Gokani
Yes, this will be the language for what you do. Discovery will make the make the conversation more exciting like give you something new. It's going to make the conversation more exciting. If I give you something consistent, it's going to make the conversation more, more consistent because you're not then worrying about, oh, this doesn't taste the same as utterly or distracted.
01:26:57:19 - 01:27:18:05
Karan Gokani
You're coming there. Why do people go to certain restaurants that do average food, serve good wine, and serve good food? It's because average food, because they actually want you know, I used to work with lawyers and they used to go to I won't name restaurants, but in the city there are certain restaurants that do not do great food, have a very consistent wine list, and they have certain things, mainly steaks.
01:27:18:06 - 01:27:36:01
Karan Gokani
These guys love those restaurants. They won't go to anything exciting because they want to have that conversation. They want a setting which makes them feel comfortable, welcome. Where they know the wine list, they recognize the ones they can quickly order off that list and look knowledgeable. They want to steak because they know what they want to eat. They've kind of prepared themselves to come over not.
01:27:36:01 - 01:27:37:05
Dan Pope
Wanting to learn.
01:27:37:07 - 01:27:48:10
Karan Gokani
Because you can use the Lord. Like, this is about discovery. Guests who come in are coming to discover something, or connecting nostalgia, or about to travel to Sri Lanka. So we serve a different purpose. And if you give them that, then the conversation.
01:27:48:11 - 01:27:58:16
Dan Pope
Because I love let's jump in on these because let's jump in. So and then just tell me again, let's be honest, we've got and anthropology of this dish because this looks fucking. So this.
01:27:58:18 - 01:28:11:07
Karan Gokani
Is a brand new dish. These two are dishes that are only in hopper shortage. Yep. So I've got three elements here. And this basically represents an incredible day we spent in the city called Madurai.
01:28:11:09 - 01:28:13:22
Dan Pope
Yeah. So just what is so it's.
01:28:13:24 - 01:28:28:23
Karan Gokani
You've got a null paratha which is like a 3D perata. Lovely shredded up. You've then got an omelet with crab in it. So that's your omelet I'm going to serve you some. So let me get you the ferrata.
01:28:29:00 - 01:28:32:13
Karan Gokani
May I turn the music on? Because I'm conscious that guests have walked into.
01:28:32:13 - 01:28:33:00
Dan Pope
The restaurant.
01:28:33:01 - 01:28:34:06
Karan Gokani
I don't want them to have anything.
01:28:34:06 - 01:28:35:14
Dan Pope
But you go first.
01:28:35:16 - 01:28:41:18
Karan Gokani
We need guys. Let's get the music on. Please don't make it too loud. But turn the music on.
01:28:41:18 - 01:28:43:09
Dan Pope
It won't be fine.
01:28:43:14 - 01:28:43:23
Karan Gokani
Sorry.
01:28:43:24 - 01:28:45:19
Dan Pope
We won't be. It won't be picked up on this.
01:28:45:20 - 01:28:47:23
Karan Gokani
Hopefully not. Yeah.
01:28:48:00 - 01:28:49:00
Dan Pope
Looks gorgeous.
01:28:49:00 - 01:29:07:17
Karan Gokani
So that's the omelet. And then. That is a lovely soft shell crab, which is for crunch, for texture and little more crabby. Now, the idea there was, we spent a day in madre. We went in the morning to this little mess on the street. Like off a highway where this lady's deep frying omelets. Just plain omelets with onions like masala omelet.
01:29:07:19 - 01:29:24:12
Karan Gokani
Then we had these, this crab curry alongside that, which was intense and flavorful. And then night we went and had a roti. And I kind of wanted to bring all three. I didn't have space for three dishes on my new menu. How do you bring them together? And we then came up with this dish that has all three.
01:29:24:13 - 01:29:40:23
Karan Gokani
So we've kind of again, it's not an element. It's not about deconstructing. It's not about like overly engineering, but genuinely this represented that day to me. So there's there's a sense of authenticity, of wanting to represent an experience of my life. I want to share with guests who walk in here. And I think it works.
01:29:40:24 - 01:29:41:22
Dan Pope
Yeah, it does. Absolutely.
01:29:41:23 - 01:29:49:03
Karan Gokani
I think it works. That is a chili cheese. Rosa. This is a one dish, actually. Let me go and get you some Japanese with that.
01:29:49:05 - 01:30:03:10
Karan Gokani
Which I think. So no matter what diet I'm on, if I'm walking past this dish in the in the kitchen or at a table, if I'm eating with someone, you'll see I'll avoid having that because I want to cut carbs. Right now. I want to go to the gym after I'm done with this, but that I'm going to have to have a dip off.
01:30:03:10 - 01:30:18:14
Karan Gokani
So that's chili cheese in there. So you got melted cheese. You've got body, you've got green chilies. We did this dish about five years ago. And I think this has been one of my favorite dishes in the menu. So you just have that dip into chutneys or you can dip into a curry.
01:30:18:16 - 01:30:20:00
Dan Pope
Pull it with hands. And then.
01:30:20:02 - 01:30:38:03
Karan Gokani
You know, you're talking about anthropology of food. I think the beauty about, again, something we've come to represent and show is that we also stand for regions of India and Sri Lanka. And I think you know that dosa is totally different from this dosa. They're made from different batters. Yeah. So it's like showing people that bread is not just bread.
01:30:38:03 - 01:30:56:19
Karan Gokani
So we've come to play this role where without being too over the top, we're also educating and giving people a taste of different places from this, from from the region we represent. So that's from Bangalore where you have something called this a. So it's actually practically fried in butter. It's a bit thicker than that though. Service is more of a Tamil though sir.
01:30:56:24 - 01:31:03:19
Karan Gokani
And then we've just take it over the top. We've stuffed it with a lamb and some pickles and and herbs.
01:31:03:20 - 01:31:04:17
Dan Pope
Right.
01:31:04:19 - 01:31:06:08
Karan Gokani
So we've got to just.
01:31:06:08 - 01:31:09:15
Dan Pope
Dig into the again.
01:31:09:17 - 01:31:33:00
Dan Pope
It's absolutely stunning. Yeah. We used to when I was at that peanut being a peanut butter company. What is it. I'll send you something. It's the same. Yeah. We had a lot of the team, you know, nights out. Not the one in Marlow bone. Yeah. It was just so good in that in between Covid period. I mean, well, motherboard hoppers.
01:31:33:02 - 01:31:43:18
Dan Pope
Yeah. Yeah. It's so good. Oh. How do you think about the architecture of the different.
01:31:43:20 - 01:31:44:14
Dan Pope
Cities.
01:31:44:17 - 01:31:45:01
Karan Gokani
Yeah.
01:31:45:03 - 01:31:55:03
Dan Pope
And then applying that to the restaurants to get a unique vibe. So people feel that they're almost like to help stoke that conversation. As you said.
01:31:55:05 - 01:31:56:14
Karan Gokani
Are you talking about decor or food.
01:31:56:14 - 01:32:07:22
Dan Pope
Or what. So like as you'll go to a city, you'll try, you know,
01:32:07:24 - 01:32:13:08
Dan Pope
Try the food, bring the menu. When you're doing like southern.
01:32:13:10 - 01:32:17:02
Dan Pope
Southern India, like how do you think about because, you know, the one in Soho is very different.
01:32:17:06 - 01:32:24:12
Karan Gokani
Is, again, the beauty of social media and YouTube and all that kind of stuff today that the world's a lot flatter.
01:32:24:13 - 01:32:24:23
Dan Pope
Yeah.
01:32:25:00 - 01:32:44:18
Karan Gokani
And, you know, I have this model. So in a way research feels easier. But there's nothing like, you know, I know enough people who will find dishes on Instagram from restaurants around the world and like, send it to chefs and be like, okay, fine, let's try and create this. Let's do that. This will go viral just for the look of it.
01:32:44:19 - 01:33:13:07
Karan Gokani
Wow. That's good. No, there's nothing quite like getting to a place, immersing yourself in the culture. The amount you learn, you know. And see. You spoke about Luke Farrell. I mean, he runs some of the best II restaurants here, but practically living there. But then he gets his team over there, and I and I meet that team, and they're so enthused every time they come back because, you know, we have had over the last ten years, every year I've taken some members of my team over.
01:33:13:13 - 01:33:27:09
Karan Gokani
When I see those people come back, it's a sea change in the way they think they develop, they behave, they realize that what they're representing. So we take everyone from like from bar to front of house to kitchen. We're going to nine of us right now.
01:33:27:10 - 01:33:28:05
Dan Pope
Amazing.
01:33:28:09 - 01:33:29:13
Karan Gokani
And I think that's really.
01:33:29:13 - 01:33:32:24
Dan Pope
Essential part of a great research trip. I just have fun.
01:33:33:00 - 01:33:52:01
Karan Gokani
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We don't have fun. You're not gonna do this thing. And I think again, the beauty and the luck of it is that now because of social media, I think you can put one post out there saying we're going. And again, the world is so interconnected that back in the day with Lonely, Lonely Planet or like having to email people and hook things up, you find that you know, you had to do a lot more work.
01:33:52:01 - 01:34:07:00
Karan Gokani
Whereas today, again, we're in a position where you put it out there, you love people, then you quickly plan your itinerary. I've gone to like cities I've never known and had the best recommendations. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess that's also part of karma. You know, you do a lot of free recipes for people. Then you get back that goodwill when you need it most.
01:34:07:00 - 01:34:25:14
Karan Gokani
So so that that research trip is really important, you know, and we try and again coming back to what we bring back I think again over the years, it's like sharpening a pencil. Back in the day, you had this blank pencil where like you'd just draw everything. Today we've gotten a lot sharper. We know certain things will work in certain when not.
01:34:25:18 - 01:34:42:13
Karan Gokani
There are two questions to that. One is does it fit within my menu? Obviously, chances are that a lot of the stuff that we see around that region, whether it's South India, Sri Lanka would arguably fit on my menu because that's the region we represent. And then there's the second question as to operationally, is it going to work or not?
01:34:42:14 - 01:35:01:10
Karan Gokani
Suddenly, if I lowered the the cover or the the plunger with two more dishes because I've eaten something exciting, it's going to break him in service. And which means that consistency, why is it not going to get something? So we've got to think about the operational impacts of issues as well. Or if you really like something, you take something else off.
01:35:01:10 - 01:35:14:09
Karan Gokani
We've had seven new dishes on the menu here, which we don't have anywhere else, because I think we've now been a lot of our team has been eight, nine, ten years here. My chef and I have been he's been with me from day minus three months.
01:35:14:09 - 01:35:14:18
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah.
01:35:14:19 - 01:35:34:20
Karan Gokani
Yeah yeah. Both of us have had so much we wanted to express over the years. We've kind of really found our voice. We found ourselves in hoppers, and I think we wanted to really represent those dishes and say, okay, here's a space and shortage. Was that space to come up with some of this creative stuff? And the beauty is that all the feedback is like this.
01:35:35:00 - 01:35:45:14
Karan Gokani
None of these dishes feel out of place in the menu. They feel very hoppers, but also like evolve and exciting and new. And I think that's why we've had such a great reception with the press and with the public.
01:35:45:15 - 01:36:06:17
Dan Pope
What I love, and I think the art is and creativity as an expression of self. Right? 100%. Yeah, it really is. And it's like when you're telling me you're detailing that wonderful day of, you know, having this WhatsApp called like the omelet on the side streets and then on the club and it's just like, that is Karen and a dish, you know, that is your trip in a dish 100%.
01:36:06:18 - 01:36:12:16
Karan Gokani
Again, making it person means there needs to be a little bit of you. Yes. In everything that needs to be the test for me, the simplest test.
01:36:12:17 - 01:36:21:20
Dan Pope
How does right. Because I write. I write a newsletter weekly like I've done post it for six years every week. It's lessons from the podcast, but.
01:36:21:21 - 01:36:25:08
Karan Gokani
It's not. What do you send it out of? You need to subscribe to it.
01:36:25:10 - 01:36:43:03
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll definitely sign up. Yeah yeah yeah. So it's like but again it's like my inspiration from like my, my favorite authors. So like Tom Wolfe is very esoteric and kind of irreverent like a lot of people unsubscribe. But the people who fucking love it love it. But I think writing helps the expression of self. Sure.
01:36:43:09 - 01:36:47:24
Dan Pope
What are the similarities and differences of writing and cooking in terms of you expressing yourself?
01:36:48:01 - 01:37:19:14
Karan Gokani
I think this is what I love about cooking because what is cooking? This yesterday was a bag of lentils, was a little packet of fenugreek, was two packets of cheese, was a bunch of different spices. And from that it's turned into this how there's been human intervention to create that, that human intervention by virtue of time, effort, knowledge, background, skill, passion is all in this dish.
01:37:19:18 - 01:37:38:05
Karan Gokani
That's why when you look at a dish, it's often, you know, the GP might be 30% within the staff corps. People stop at GP's restaurant and stop it like, oh, what's my GP on a dish? It's like a GP doesn't stop at what the dish, what the raw ingredients cost. Did your profit, your your cost of the dish should also be the human intervention which is your your labor cost.
01:37:38:07 - 01:37:59:08
Karan Gokani
So you know, I was having a chat with someone else the other day. It's like, wow, that must be really good GP because all it is is like fermented lentils and rising. You're charging £5 for it, I said, but I'm creating beautiful spaces. I'm hiring some of the best staff and spending a lot of time training them. I'm putting for staff on the floor instead of two, and I'm getting some of the best chefs to make it to a standard that's consistent and of a very high level.
01:37:59:09 - 01:38:09:23
Karan Gokani
Now all that costs money. I might save money on an ingredient, but I put money on staff cost, and I think all that should be looked at together, because that staff cost is also passion.
01:38:10:00 - 01:38:15:15
Dan Pope
The restaurant's filling up. So want to ask two more things and more? Sorry, I'm just we can go on.
01:38:15:17 - 01:38:17:08
Speaker 3
We will go on.
01:38:17:10 - 01:38:22:12
Dan Pope
Is so JC's your your wife is one of the co-founders.
01:38:22:12 - 01:38:22:23
Karan Gokani
She's a yes.
01:38:23:01 - 01:38:23:20
Dan Pope
Yes, yes.
01:38:23:21 - 01:38:24:09
Karan Gokani
Yeah, yeah.
01:38:24:15 - 01:38:45:14
Dan Pope
What's the if you could boil down the like why would you say they're so prolific. Yeah. As a group in Luke was sort of detailing some things but I'd love to know from like. Yeah. From your perspective. Like why are they so like important in the, in the evolution of London as one of the greatest food cities in the world?
01:38:45:14 - 01:38:46:14
Dan Pope
Like what I think with.
01:38:46:14 - 01:39:07:23
Karan Gokani
The three of them. Yes. That boils down to a lot of the lot of us as partners and family and everyone else is it comes from a place of genuine passion. Yes. It's not. And again, the beauty that they have is between the three of them. They bring three very different skill sets to the Indian restaurants. And then the way they partner with people and I very much treat myself as a partner for hoppers is I will give you the Hopper story.
01:39:07:23 - 01:39:30:00
Karan Gokani
So for instance, you plug into the infrastructure and I think depending on where you are in your, in your journey, you will take or you will take as much as you need or, you know, as required operationally. So back in the day, there was a lot of like, you know, ten years ago, I took a lot of marketing assistance, I took commercial assistance, I took ops assistants.
01:39:30:05 - 01:40:00:24
Karan Gokani
Then slowly we built our own people and we kind of spun off ourselves. But they allow creative people to do. Restaurant is often the most successful restaurants you'll find have a partnership between someone's very commercial and someone who's quite creative. That might be a chef, or might be a fan of house person who has a vision, like someone like Jeremy, and then you have the commercial side of things, and when that goes wrong, then you have the fights and often that goes wrong with this, be involved, because then there's like the only commercial, there's one bigger part name, but when you waited or somewhat equally waited and each one respects the other, which there is
01:40:00:24 - 01:40:20:04
Karan Gokani
a lot of over here, like there's a respect for creative and there's a respect for commercial. So when we sit in a board meeting, there's a great respect for knowledge, for background, for for commercial, you know, what is suggesting. But we've been independent for a long, long time for operationally my food perspective front of us perspective, even marketing perspective.
01:40:20:04 - 01:40:31:22
Karan Gokani
We've taken help commercially. We're getting much more independent now as we've grown and there. Yeah, yeah. So I think the beauty is, you know, it's the same with with beer and Jack. Veteran Jack maybe leverages off certain different aspects.
01:40:32:01 - 01:40:36:15
Dan Pope
When you say the infrastructure like how do they build that. Was that just over time? Was it like I.
01:40:36:15 - 01:40:56:03
Karan Gokani
Think they built it with the first Indian restaurant now? Yes. And there was Gymkhana. Yeah. And then two Indian restaurants that were built, owned, operated solely by three of them and teams around them. They said, look, we've got this. We've got these really good teams. Now, let's utilize these teams to also assist other people with like minded sort of philosophy.
01:40:56:03 - 01:41:16:12
Karan Gokani
And that's where, you know, James Lowe came in for Lyles, where bubble Dogs came in for bubble dogs kitchen table. And then, you know, then there was the bow family that came in. There was parent Jack. So these are people who are aligned fundamentally on certain things and then needing different levels of of like Bowies now independent because they got to a point where they could be fully independent, they didn't really need them.
01:41:16:12 - 01:41:37:08
Karan Gokani
And I think JC realized that, okay, our resources now are better spent focusing on Indian similar with the pubs with Dom is a fantastic publican, you know, a lovely, lovely guy. He's built some really cool stuff. That was a shorter journey, but he joined them when he needed some support commercially and he needed some support creatively. We gave the support quickly realized that, okay, now he's running it all himself.
01:41:37:08 - 01:41:54:09
Karan Gokani
That's spin off. So it's like an incubator of sorts. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But then you can kind of hold their hand as long as you want and as far as you want. And I think in that sense they're very gracious, very, very savvy operators. I think that beauty of the mix between Sue is very operationally on this. Like she's got a great instinct for human beings.
01:41:54:11 - 01:42:09:13
Karan Gokani
Jo is commercially one of the smartest guys I know and then current creative for the Indian side. But he also has a good sense of, you know, what's hot in the market, what will work, what not across the board in sort of finding the partners initially, then his involvement can be different in different fields. You know, he's mainly involved with the Indian.
01:42:09:14 - 01:42:25:06
Karan Gokani
So interesting. I think those three worked really well. And then kind of, you know, then it's and I think that's where that lovely synergy of three people bringing really different things to the table. But then because they're family also, they might fight with each other and I might fight with them as well. But then at the end of the day, it's all cool when you're.
01:42:25:07 - 01:42:27:06
Karan Gokani
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:42:27:07 - 01:42:39:17
Dan Pope
As Luke, he was saying, that's incredibly important for everyone's going on in London and really driving that catalyst for purely selfish here. What are some of your favorite books? Favorite books?
01:42:39:19 - 01:42:44:01
Karan Gokani
I think grinding it out. Ray Kroc, the McDonald's story, right?
01:42:44:02 - 01:42:44:14
Dan Pope
No, no, I have.
01:42:44:14 - 01:42:46:18
Speaker 3
No, no, the movie The Founder. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
01:42:46:24 - 01:42:49:23
Karan Gokani
Again, it's got 10% of what the book actually had. That was a book that was.
01:42:49:23 - 01:42:52:15
Dan Pope
Really the other night. He was then that wasn't in the film. I mean, there's.
01:42:52:15 - 01:42:56:24
Karan Gokani
Lots it's like the little stories and like getting inside, but it's the same as, you know, films are always very superficial.
01:42:57:00 - 01:42:57:07
Dan Pope
Yeah, yeah.
01:42:57:07 - 01:43:06:18
Karan Gokani
Yeah, yeah. I mean, that setting the table obviously discussed many times. Yes. A really good book. Bruce Springsteen, huge character in my life, I love him, I look up to him.
01:43:06:18 - 01:43:08:05
Dan Pope
Why is he such big characters?
01:43:08:06 - 01:43:24:16
Karan Gokani
I just think I think there's, you know, sometimes artists like, I love music, I love rock music. I grew up, he was a soundtrack of my life. There's an element of nostalgia, a bit like Inside Express. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My kids have grown up listening to him. I think what he stands for is very important. So I resonate with his wife.
01:43:24:20 - 01:43:26:03
Dan Pope
What's his wife?
01:43:26:05 - 01:43:42:11
Karan Gokani
I think he's just, you know, he he puts himself behind what he does. He makes it personal. He was he's the one guy at 76. He's playing concerts for like an hour longer than people who were freaking 25. You know, he's not this he's huge, is larger than life. But he's not a diva. He's there because he's giving.
01:43:42:12 - 01:43:56:05
Karan Gokani
He go after. They talk about giving, giving, giving we want to give ourselves. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He sings for the common man and he knows that journey. He's not a common man, but he knows the journey. He's very honest about everything he says, at least superficially. And again, there's no reason to believe that that's not true behind the scenes.
01:43:56:05 - 01:44:10:08
Karan Gokani
So Springsteen's big Born to Run great autobiography also sort of shows you the insides of the journey of someone you know you came to respect. Yeah. And you only see a superficial side to.
01:44:10:10 - 01:44:21:08
Karan Gokani
What else? What else am I reading at the moment? I read, I tend to read more sort of the self-help nonfiction kind of books. I don't read as much fiction as I want.
01:44:21:08 - 01:44:23:02
Dan Pope
To, such as.
01:44:23:04 - 01:44:26:24
Karan Gokani
Just I mean, depending on what the flavor of the month is, I listen to a lot of books.
01:44:27:00 - 01:44:27:06
Dan Pope
Yeah.
01:44:27:06 - 01:44:28:13
Karan Gokani
Yeah, yeah.
01:44:28:15 - 01:44:32:16
Dan Pope
But your restaurants filling up, that's been. We'll have to do another one, man. Actually.
01:44:32:18 - 01:44:37:06
Karan Gokani
I was scared how I chat to someone for two hours. Yeah, yeah, yeah, but I could go on. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I.
01:44:37:06 - 01:44:38:12
Dan Pope
Feel like we, mate.
01:44:38:12 - 01:44:39:22
Karan Gokani
I hope you can.
01:44:39:24 - 01:44:42:18
Dan Pope
Make it so much. That man mate absolutely loves