MAGAZINE

Read the latest issue online here

This year’s Inside Dining Out feature makes for fascinating reading. From page 20, you can discover what seven leading operators from a variety of businesses have to say from the inside of their organisations. 

Our annual piece asks the people at the top of restaurant outfits key questions about their current performance, strategy, overcoming challenges, consumer trends and what’s to come, all amounting to a goldmine of insight from some of hospitality’s finest.

I think it’s the fact that our subjects all represent myriad styles and sizes of operations that makes the content a must-read – you can see the priorities of these leaders based on the concepts and brands they oversee. For example, James Brown from Brava Hospitality Group is seeing huge rewards from offering guests value and family-orientated rewards. Whereas, despite arguably being in a similar section of the sector, Tom James at Bill’s has been acting on his guests shifting away from multiple courses in favour of ordering one course with a selection of sides – “We have done a lot of work improving our sides and additions proposition,” he reveals. 

Then there’s the likes of Bow Street Group, headed up by industry veteran David Page (PizzaExpress, Franco Manca, et al), who is busily turning around the fortunes of Wildwood and dim t, doing what Page does best and building a business around a couple of scalable restaurant brands. His next 12 months, unsurprisingly, is all about growth – those two restaurant concepts, given the state they were in when Bow Street acquired them, are certainly ones to watch over the next year.

Our Inside Dining Out feature is always worth a read, but this year’s felt rather impactful when putting it together. It represents the wonderful variety, ambition, intelligence, drive and passion within UK restaurants, no matter the cuisine, concept or size. And that is what this industry is all about.    

Tristan O’Hana
Editorial director