In this episode, Timothy R Andrews sits down with operator and campaigner Andy Lennox in the Old Thatch pub in Dorset to talk about what’s really happening behind the scenes in hospitality right now. Andy shares his journey from building Co-Tai into a multi-site business (and the reality of private equity ownership), to launching Nusara, and growing a pub portfolio in a market that keeps getting tougher.

The conversation moves quickly from business story to industry survival. Andy explains why the sector is “busy but broke”: rising utilities, rent pressure, business rates shocks, and margins shrinking to the point where reinvestment becomes impossible. He unpacks the Wonky Table campaign, why the “no Labour MPs” sticker spread, and how press, trade bodies and political pressure combine when an industry finally decides it’s had enough.

It’s a practical, blunt, and sometimes controversial discussion about tax reform, VAT, business rates, and why hospitality needs to get better at explaining its economic importance — and the consequences when it isn’t heard.

I've learned everything from the ground up. I never came from a hospitality family, I never came from money. It was, let's do this. Once we're cooking on gas, the economy starts to cook on gas.

Cost of living comes down, employment comes down, inflation comes down, which then in turn brings interest rates down and your growth rate goes up. So when people talk to me about, basically leadership, I think I'm pretty good leader.

The problem with hospitality is that we're very, very good at what we do, but we're very, very bad at telling people how bad it is. We employ 3 million people, we generate 66 billion in taxation. We have a big deal, we've just not seen it.

Today's episode is a little different. I'm not in a studio, I'm not sitting online, I'm in a pub. The old Dutch in Dorset, to be precise.

And that matters because pubs are where many of the pressures facing hospitality are being felt most sharply right now. The wider hospitality sector has lost tens of thousands of jobs.

Official figures show around 84,000 fuels since last year's budget, with the steepest losses across pubs, restaurants and hospitality businesses. That is close to half of all job losses in the UK during that period, and it's shaping the decision operators are making every single day.

My guest is Andy Lennox, an operator who's worked across pubs and restaurants, and someone who's become a very visible and at times controversial voice in recent debates about the future of hospitality.

Over the next few minutes, we'll talk about Andy's journey in the industry, what pushed him from frustration into action, and the thinking behind some of the tactics that have been making headlines, including banning the Labour Party politicians from pubs.

We'll also explore how that approach has landed within the industry, how the Government's recent temporary support package to offset rising business rates has felt from an operator's point of view, and whether campaigning alone is enough to fix deeper structural issues in hospitality. This episode isn't about party politics. It's about leadership, responsibility and what comes next for pubs, restaurants and the people that own them.

Let's get on with the show.

The voices, you know, Timothy, Tracy and Joe on the show, from front of house to chefs on the line, every voice can shape the future each time.

Welcome to Talking Hospitality.

Hi, how are you doing? You're right, very well, thank you.

Who is Andy Lennox and what's the story behind your journey across pubs and restaurants?

So I started in the industry at 21. I was essentially, basically fell into the industry to a certain extent. I'd Always worked in bars and restaurants and.

And my first kind of assistant manager at university. And then basically I came along and some mates of mine were putting together a restaurant and they said, look, would you like to get involved?

Yeah, it's been a journey.

So I've eaten at Nasara last year. Last year. If only I knew the person I was speaking to was this guy.

Yeah, Thai has been a big part of my life. We've done, you know, we've got four Nusaras now. We had 12 code ties and essentially what happened was we sold the company into private equity.

Didn't really go that well, to be a quiet frank. And it's one of those things that you talk about as a businessman. We just went to loggerheads and I decided that I was going to leave.

So about two years later I left and then about four years later they went into administration. Then Nusara was born because all of the chefs who I've known for decades came back to me and said, look, we don't have a job.

And so the first Nusara actually was only ever meant to be a single unit entity and it was there to protect Nusara, who saw Padawan, her husband Tamanun and then two of the other chefs. And it was meant to be that kind of, let's just protect these people, basically my entire family. And it just went mental.

And then we started building restaurant after restaurant.

Like your first chef, right?

First, yeah, the first ever chef we ever employed with a lady called Nusara Padawan. And so we thought, actually, you know what, why don't we name this after her?

And I bought back my operations director from Cosi, Sophie Cox, and she then came back and we had Zimbra at the time as well and she came to work for me there. Most of my head office team are again, they're like my hospitality family, but they're. They've all worked for me for 15, 10 years.

That we know each other pretty well.

Why is Thai so important to you? Obviously you don't own Koh Thai now, but what made you open a Thai restaurant in the first place - as I'm quite interested because I'd love to open a Thai restaurant in theory.

Yeah.

What led you to that?

And ultimately it's one of those things in the Marketplace. At the time we were doing Thai Taps which was very, very, very cool. And nobody was really doing Thai food in the industry.

That was cool is probably the best way to put it. It was very much family run Thai restaurants and they didn't really have a vibe.

And we thought actually, you know what, we can create something that might have a vibe. And the first we did at the first restaurant, that was a crazy journey. The whole podcast just on Koh Thai and that journey.

We opened a restaurant in Boscombe, didn't have a clue what we were doing. It was totally disaster. We literally watched Pain Dry because we ran out of money so many times. And this. I'm 21, learning what is hospitality?

Do I need a till? Here's a whole podcast and we then start to learn everything. And this is the thing for me, hospitality. I've learned everything from the ground up.

I never came from a hospitality family, I never came from money. It was, let's do this.

I've been attacked in nightclub years before and I had seven grand and I had seven grand and I was like, I'm going to put this into this and this is what I'm going to do.

And yeah, so the whole thing started for the seven grand and we basically went all the way through to relatively big numbers and then basically went back into the market. We launched Usara which was what I wanted to do with Kotai.

Kotai was after 10 years was getting a bit old, it needed a bit of a refresh and that was the kind of loggerhead moment. Arguments about I want to refresh the business, I want to make it look more premium.

And so Nusara was born basically, which was essentially my blueprint for what I wanted to do with refurbishment program. And that went from strength 1, 2, 3. I've actually bought more Nusaras. I think we've done four in four years and I think with code high we did.

I think we did three in five or so and then we went. So actually we've actually. The trajectory has actually been bigger and then we basically went into the Pubs is my local.

We're sitting in the old Thatch. I think it had 18 landlords in about 25 years. And so it was just beautiful publishing.

Yeah, really badly run and a couple of guys had basically come in here about a year before, two years before and they'd start to do a really good job but they weren't quite there.

Yeah.

And then they were like, look, we're not going to do this anymore. It's not working. And I said, why don't we just join partners, join forces, and let's see what we can do. This was the first pub.

Yeah.

And then we've got three more now.

I mean, it is a beautiful pub. Viewers and listeners, my mom's here today, so we were watching My language, but it's beautiful.

And then when we came in, it's Bow Factor and Nooks and Crannies.

Oh, I mean, there's a little bit of that.

Yeah.

This pub, ironically, is a. This pub's in the 17th century. It's the old gatehouse to the old Eden's estate.

And supposedly the old Eden's estate was big, massive house, and they were the first to have, like, gas central heating. It blew up.

And so we've got the old gatehouse door, the old Odin's estate door around the corner where there's a ghost behind it, and this kind of stuff. But this pub is. Has so much history. And actually, if you ask anybody about the old thatch, everybody has a story about it.

Even, like, I sit on a board, on the chair of the tourism board down here and my president. So that was my first job as a KP there. Everyone's got a story.

And we knew basically, if we just took it over and we just really cared for it, it would work. And we've literally just taken that year by year, increased the turnover, played with everything, added new areas. Bear island out here.

So we got 200 covers out there, which was marshland before the marquee. Out here, there was literally four picnic tables. So it just basically needed a bit of vision and that's what we did.

And then we took over the Old Beans. No, we did the Good Yard in Broadstone, which is much more of a kind of wet led sports pub.

Then we did the Old Beans in Ibsley, which is just outside Ringwood. Very much like this as well, and beautiful. We've got a sister pub, which is the Greyhound in Corfe Castle.

And then we're just about to do the Sunray in Weymouth, just in Osmonton, and that's what booty kind of lodges around it. And they. They've built the pub for us and headhunted. They headhunted us to come and run it, basically.

Is that an exclusive?

That is an exclusive, actually.

You heard it here.

There you go. It is an excuse. We actually take a. We've got Bootle Ground on the first march.

And it's one of those things where you're sitting there going, the industry is so difficult at the Moment. Why the hell would I open another pub? But this was something that we'd signed a long time ago.

It's something we've been looking into for a very long time. And it's a collaborative with the Hunt family down there. They've done a beautiful fit out and they've kind of headhunted us as operators.

So we're really excited about that. So, yeah, it's still going well. And obviously then we started on a campaign which was.

This is what we're here for, isn't it? But yeah. So on that note, obviously you mentioned. Mentioned that things are. It's a tough market. Yes.

You've talked about passion and running your own business is important and how that looks. But obviously industry is going through a difficult time. And what was the moment that pushed you from just getting frustrated?

Because we all get frustrated for a moment to do it again, actually. Another excuse.

Congratulations. Well done.

A hospitality business.

Amazing.

First of March. We also get the keys. Okay.

Cool.

Cafe.

Oh, perfect.

London.

Amazing.

Yeah. So I'll be coming to you if.

You need some kids. Loads of broken stuff, which we will. We can refurb.

Yes, yes, I've got loads. I'm recording now.

Honestly, we've got loads of. This is the thing with hospitality, you just collect stuff.

Yeah.

So we've got tables and kitchen tables and chairs and. Yes, yes. No, honestly, yeah.

So what was the moment that pushed you from being frustrated into taking some kind of action?

We have a lobby group called the Wonky Table, which is my. Every restaurant has a monkey table. Right. Or every pub as well. And that's why I used to do some campaigning during lockdown.

And so we can kind of campaign for eat out, to help out and like the COVID grants and ask the VAT relief there. And from that point, I've always basically pushed that we need to have a VAT piece.

And so I've been campaigning for years, five years, six years for vat. I've done two petitions. VAT is my kind of like, thing.

And then essentially we were looking at the first reef budget come along that took from my business about £350,000, which was just crazy. And I went, okay, we've just managed to figure that out. And that was like cutting things back to absolute bone. There was nothing left to give.

And then Reeves came back out. I think it was. It was obviously the autumn budget. I can't remember the actual dates.

And I was just like, God, we've got to do something, We've got to do something. We were then Having a discussion. We have a little.

I have a little board on my walking table called the Round Table, and there's really, really cool guys from down here. And essentially I was saying, look, we need to do something big. We need to do something. We should ban people.

We'd already banned Keir Starmer and Rachel, but I banned.

And just so we know that it's not political, I banned Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt when they did their budgets, but it wasn't resonating enough and we couldn't really get to any consensus. There was political piece. It's like banning people is not really the thing. Pub should be on political places, blah, blah, blah, blah.

And then James Fowler, the house, so his restaurant in Southbourne literally turned around to me and said, anyone, I'm gonna. I'm gonna put the sticker up. And he basically. He literally went straight, put sticker up. And essentially we've not got consensus yet.

He said, no, I'm doing it anyway.

I was like, people that might be, for example, states or people that might not be aware of the sticker this point. What did the sticker say?

It basically said no labor mps. And it was basically a bard sticker. And then it went. And actually, to be fair, it started with a couple of restaurants, a couple of cafes.

I put it in the pub. But really the.

Where it all, I suppose really started was that Tom Hayes, the local MP for Bournemouth east, essentially started campaigning against James in terms of saying, look, this is not on. You shouldn't do this kind of thing. And being quite robust. And that was not on in my mind. There's one me thing saying I'm going to. We should do it.

There's another thing saying everybody should have the right to do it. It was that. And then basically I said, look, he basically said, I'm going to campaign against this. I'm quite a good campaigner too.

And so I basically turned around to James, I said, don't worry, it's up in the pub now. We'll take the pressure off and we're going to go. And at that point it was, right, okay, let me get out my black book.

We should dust off the black book from the old Covid days, start the networks back up again, and we started a proper campaign.

The problem with hospitality is that we're very good at what we do and we're very good at basically running our business, but we're very bad at telling people how bad it is. And so it was, okay, this is how it's going to resonate it resonated, obviously, with the public. It became a thing. It went wild.

Doesn't matter how good the campaign is. If you can't get the press to hook it, there's no point. And they did and they did it in there. We're talking about if you've got people in America.

So this pub here has had the New York Times in, has had the Wall Street Journal in. Both of them have done pieces on with me on here, on the campaign. Ironically, there's a picture of George Washington here and I was like, why is.

I've never understood why it was always here, but actually transpires that George Washington's forebears were from just down the road and so that's why he's here. But anyway, so. And so the New York Times did a real great piece and all this kind of stuff, and we got to global press. This is not.

We didn't just get a couple of rags, we got absolute national, then we got international, then we went global. When you've got the New York Times coming in for an interview, you potentially done like quite a good campaign.

And then you've got the trade bodies, so that's another thing we would talk about. But then you got the trade bodies and so you've got corral them as well, because they are brilliant, actually.

All of them are very good people, but they all obviously have their own agendas in the sense of what they have to support. They can't support me in the sense of they can't support no labor campaign because they need to be able to speak to labor mbs.

So what it essentially became was the stick.

Yeah.

That the trade bodies also needed and the press needed to be able to then deliver the piece to Labour MPs, to Conservative MPs, to all MPs, to say, look, we need help here. This. We have got to the end of the line. And that is, we are at the end of the line. This is not. We're not taking this and that's enough.

And then I think it was. We were about 65, we're about 70 days into the campaign now. And I think it was when Rachel Rees announced the U turn.

We just announced that there was going to be Westminster protest and we were going to march on London and all this kind of stuff.

Did you say that's a coincidence?

It was within about eight hours. Yeah, yeah. And then obviously we then had the two kind of weak. Wait where we said, look, okay, all right, hands, tools down for a minute.

Let's see what labor do. They then obviously came out with the pub relief, which was great and to be fair, acknowledged that they did that.

Yeah.

The problem is they didn't do it for the whole of the industry.

And that's what I wanted to ask you. Right. Is. How did you feel when you heard that about that U turn? And temporary as well, isn't it? Only temporary.

Is it enough or are they still missing the point?

If you look at the kind of state of the nation now you've got Wales who have come out and basically they've given 15% for the whole sector. So all of the hospitality sector, I don't think it includes hotels, but I think it includes everything else. And they've done that for one year.

We've got three years for pub. And that is good for pubs, to be fair. You've got to acknowledge that is good for pubs.

The three year temporary piece is always going to be three year temporary. And this is. There is a. It's difficult when you're campaigning because you've got to say yes, but voa.

So the valuation office do things in three year cycles. So it is temporary, but it will always be temporary because they do it every three years.

On that note, sorry, just because we've got this, that might not know the situation because we've got people that are listening that may be thinking, might be aware of the campaign and they all heard that there's a U turn but they don't know what that U turn is. Would you like, could you explain to them what was proposed or what has come, what that relief is?

Yeah. So essentially what was proposed was that there was going to be. This is. I've tried to explain this to my mom loads of times, by the way.

So essentially we were in a situation where they proposed that they were going to remove the trans. Remove the COVID relief that we had on hospitality, which was 75%, then 40% and then that was.

And they were going to put in some transitional relief which would then basically essentially help us for a couple of years whilst we got to that. Well, they didn't know.

Which they did know was that basically the valuations office was about to put in the new valuation which then increased rates substantially. So my pub went up by 116%. So it went from about 33 to about 82.

And so then that relief that they put in that transitional relief, after they removed Covid, put in the transitional relief, wasn't anywhere near actually helping us in any way, shape or form. It was actually basically our bills were going mental and that's where we turned on.

Literally within 24 hours of that announcement, we said, you are wrong. You are absolutely and utterly wrong. This is incorrect. And some parts of the sector were hit more than the others.

But the whole idea and what we've been told, and I know this for a fact, we've been told that when the new rates valuations came down the line, the new VOA stuff, it would be to benefiting of the hospitality sector. And so your likes of Amazon and your likes of supermarkets would go up a bit more and the high street would come down. That didn't happen actually.

It was complete. And so everything she said was a complete and utter lie, which she obviously then did a U turn on.

So we had these kind of two parts of the campaign really, which was like, obviously get this race relief piece done. But that's just stopping a bill that we are not already paying.

And it's really key because people, they say it's, we've come to the, we've come given 15% off. No, you haven't.

We're just paying what we were paying or we're doing some kind of package to help to save hospitality because it literally is just making sure we're paying what we're paying, not going up. And so the second part of that was vat and obviously I've been campaigning for VAT for God too long.

And so the second part of it was to get VAT into the conversation and to talk about proper tax reform because our industry has professionalized massively over the course of the last 15, 20 years. If you think about hospitality, 20 years ago we were really quite crap with no France and Europe were miles ahead.

We're now the beacon, we're the shining beacon of hospitality in Europe. And so we've upskilled, we've professionalized, we've made our everything look better, feel better.

We've stripped that, the, the 90 hour week, that 80 hour week, that, that's gone. Okay. Bad operators will still do that and they should be called out for that. Yeah.

But we like to say, look, guys, we want you to do 45 hours, 48 hours a week, we want you to have two clear days off, we want you to have a non negotiable. If you've got a book club on Wednesday, we want you to say, we've got book club on A Wednesday and to block it out. And we'll never ask you to.

If you want to work more and you want to do 80 hours a week, that's absolutely fine, but we're not asking you to. And that kind of professionalism.

And this is why I basically, I've been made a Fellow of the Institute of Hospitality recently, because one of the things that. Congratulations, you think it was really. It's a great honor and it's something that is really close to my heart. Going to chartered status.

That's their key. Their key thing is to become like a chartered accountant. We have chartered hospitality. And so I'm massively supportive of that.

And to be made a fellow is a real honor. And my team now are all joining up. It's really good and it's. It gives you a little bit of pride in what you do. And I love hospitality.

I love what I do and I love the industry and I want it to be recognized as the industry that it is. We employ 3 million people, we generate 66 billion in taxation. We're a big deal. We're just not seen as it.

In Europe, it's seen as the career is a really good career to have people who are in hospitality are respected. Over here, it's, oh, you're in hospitality, but no, it's a real career. And so, anyway, basically, we're getting.

That VAT piece on the agenda was really important. So now we're at 70 days, something that I didn't think would ever happen. I've been campaigning for this for such a long time.

It's quite emotional to finally get to a position where you've got two of the major parties with VAT now forming part of their manifesto pledges. The Conservatives are very close to that also. And I have a big meeting next Wednesday about that.

And I actually think that there are plans afoot as well. I know that. And not actually think I know that there are plans afoot.

I can't go into details, but I think we will have VAT as part of every single party's manifesto pledges, if not a VAT car this year. And I think that's incredible. That is what the industry has needed for such a long time.

I mean, we have. And it's fingers crossed that things go that way. But it is the fact that the politicians are not.

Other parties are recognizing that this is something. And it's a huge number of people work in the industry to say all of a lot.

All of us can vote, I think, when. So we have a very.2 kind of distinct proposals or two very distinct places. One being we've got this kind of VAT proposal, 13% food and drink.

We've got that out so that every single party has. That every single party are using that. They're using the modeling behind that.

Yeah.

You know, this was. Come from our campaign. This is from me, basically. This is from the wonky table. And the second part of that is like, oh, you do understand.

And their eyes light up. You do know that there's 6 million votes in hospitality, right. 3 million people work for it.

If they get one person, they convince one other person a lot of bloody vote.

So if you're a politician listening, you know what you need to do.

Just because obviously there's been a lot of support from you, but you're not without your critics because obviously it's been controversial sometimes, particularly when you're banning Labor. Mps being said that.

That sometimes, you know, that tax isn't the silver bullet that you're presenting and businesses themselves should look at pricing, leadership, accountability. How do you feel about that comment?

I think this is the same thing I've said to the MPs that I. Before we took this no Labour MP campaign piece, I did engage with every single MP of all political crew.

I can't tell you how many MP meetings I've had and every single color creed, whatever, if it. Whether it be red, whether it be blue, whether it be green. Like we.

We've engaged with people, they get it, they listen to it, but they don't do anything. And we're sitting in this pub here. You talk about leadership, we talk about is a dying industry. We shouldn't be having a tax car or whatever.

One being it's not a tax car, it feeds itself basically within a couple of years and actually is in line with Europe. So it's basically saying. All we're saying is that we should be with every other hospitality industry. Bloody hell. Not Liberal Democrats.

Ireland have got 9%. We're at 20. The average in Europe is 13.

Actually, it's actually come down a little bit now because of all of the people that are bringing their rates down. Started it was 13%. It's actually come down more. But we want a really busy pub here. So this pub has basically tripled its turnover since I took over.

We employ a brigade of 50 people. Really amazing manager, great ops team behind it. It does 400 race on a Sunday. It's busy every single day of the week. It's well controlled.

We know our margins, we know our wet margins, our dry margins. Every single element of the business. But I can't make money. And that's because the margins are just too tight.

Yeah.

And I'm quite. And I said this to publicly anyway, so we knew this business would have turned over 1.6 million last year and made 50 grand.

And that's not food, that's.

The margins are good, the wages are in control, but you've got utilities that have gone through the roof, you've got rates that are now back in, you've got rent that still keeps them going up every year. It doesn't matter what you do, it still goes up. The landlord still put it up or whichever.

And so you could say you should be doing better on your margin. Okay. But I physically can't do better on my margins unless I'm charging a burger at 25 quid, which no one wants to buy.

Or you could say you've got too many staff on. Some shifts that we have are run by one manager and one bartender. How much can I go? To the extent where you've got nobody.

And then does it become hospitality?

No.

Yeah. And this is the other side of the coin is hospitality is not just about.

I like to say that basically we don't give service, we give hospitality service. You go to McDonald's, you get your food as it you're out. We give hospitality. And you can't give hospitality if you're literally don't have any staff.

And also, what does that do for the. What does that do for the economy? We employ young people. We employ. I love one of my favorite parts.

It's close to a lot of the wonky table guys, especially a guy called Chris Crumbell who owns a brew house and kitchen and fantastic bloke, but really close to him. Young, young employment, that kind of youth mobility.

And one of the things I love doing is seeing the fresh 16, 17 year olds who are coming in their first job. We don't have them anymore. We used to have one or two for every single restaurant. Okay.

Yes.

They get a little bit cannon fodder and they just do bus tables or whatever, but you're not there. That's not where they're there.

They're normally there because one of the locals has asked, my son's a bit shy, could you give him a couple of hours and see if you can bring them out of his shell? And we do. We've always said that basically we can train a monkey to serve people. We can't give that monkey a personality.

And so you can take a personality and we can mold it and we can. We can pull it out and then we can really give them the skills they need to get on in life. It's not about getting one.

If they want to be an accountant, I can't tell them how to be an accountant. I'm basically an untrained CFO anyway. But I can give them life skills, how to talk to people, how to.

How to actually get themselves through university. Look, if you're a cocktail bartender or you're a waiter, you can work your way through university.

And then all you want to go traveling, you can go and go around the world. And we've got a network of thousands of people that we've employed that basically are all over the world doing different things.

And if we don't have that, where does it come from? They've already suffered from COVID Where does it come from? This is where all of this stuff comes down to. The margins are just too tight.

We're going from 10%, 10p and a pound, 10 to 3, 4p and a pound. And you just can't. Yeah, you can't reinvest. I was at a trade show yesterday.

I do a speech, a Southwest conference, and I was walking around this trade show, and there's like, robot, you know, people and bus tables, all of these people saying, oh, this is a new fat fryer that does amazing things. And this is all this stuff. No one was buying anything. They're looking, and I'm looking, I'm going, that's wicked. That's wicked. I won that.

But we're not buying because we can't afford to. And this is where you're going back to this kind of, what is hospitality? What is the engine room of the economy? Because we buy from everything.

We buy everything. We buy so much, much. We employ people, so many, and we buy so much. And you need quite a lot of stuff to make a restaurant work.

And so you're actually going through all of this stuff where you go, once we're cooking on gas, the economy starts to cook on gas. Cost of living comes down, employment comes down.

You then have basically the inflation that comes down, which then in turn brings interest rates down and your growth rate goes up. So when people talk to me about basically leadership, I think I'm pretty good leader. My staff, they think I'm a relatively good leader.

I'm quite hard, I'm quite firm. But I think we run a really tight ship and I think we're really good at what we're doing, but the margins don't work. Anymore. They don't add up.

And that's not through the fault of the industry.

Any pub that doesn't do well because of a bad leader or because they don't know their margins or because they don't know how to run a pub should go bust. I'm not saying that they should stay. I'm not saying they should be supported in any way, shape or form.

But if you are running a really good pub, Dorset's award winning pub. We are the best pub, endorse it and we're doing 400 roasts every Sunday. It was like we're not. It's not, we're not busy.

It's not that people aren't going out. Adapted to the 0% we've adapted to. We've got everything. We've adapted to all of the things you just. It's just too hard to make money.

Yeah. It's not about the running of the business by decision that you've made. It's thermal that are controllable. So I totally understand.

I was speaking to somebody yesterday, got a restaurant in York, multi seater. It's electric bill, 60 grand a year. Yes. And it's been a like 20.

Yeah.

And she's nuts. Yeah. So accommodate that.

So I'm going to kind of find a question actually, because there are people out there that we know, like yourself, admittedly, to break. It's a struggle. What have. I guess there's two questions really. What's your call to action for the operators that might be struggling?

Do you have any sage words for them or advice in them that say take right now?

Funny enough, I actually did a speech on this yesterday. Two things, I suppose. One, and I said this in a question someone asked me, is our industry needs to be robust in its response to the government. Yeah.

So we need to basically make sure that. And this is what we have done and it's my wonky table. And don't get me wrong, there are trade buddies as well that have been doing lots of good work.

But this is what our campaign has done is we have driven robust conversation. Controversial at times, but it made the conversation and that's the key.

It got us into the news, it got the conversation, talking and people were like, really? You only make that, you only make that. So there's that kind of sense of be robust, be robust with your mps. Talk to them.

If they don't answer, you go back to them again and ask and keep on doing. I know one person, actually, my business partner's wife, she sent numerous emails to her mp until he answered.

And so I do think that basically, as an industry, we need to be a little bit less scared, a little bit less British, you know? But ultimately, as I said in. In the interview we did with the New York Times. Oh, I think it was a Wall Street Journal, actually. Country.

The British have an amazing threshold to not do anything until they reach a point where enough is enough. And you can go into a lot of history where we have what we have won wars, what Tyler is, peasants revolt.

We have done a lot of stuff where basically once we read that threshold, we get really angry. And that's where we. That's the point we reached.

In terms of your pub or your hospitality business, look, we all know that utilities went through the roof. And it really was a unbelievable time. And it still is. It still is incredibly high. It's come down a bit, but it was mental. The.

How do you control that? And you can't add it to anybody. It just is what it is. What I say to everybody is, hospitality is like being a dj, okay?

So you're always trying to find a perfect beat and there's a load of different knobs that you need to pull to make that perfect beat. And you need to. Basically, it's like. It's the same as hospitality. It's like being an orchestra. Your strings have to basically work with your drums.

Everything has to basically work together. And I think too many places. Forget that, that I walk into too many places and I sit there and I go, what the hell is going on with their lights?

I turn too many places, the service is rubbish. Or the service is there, but they're not giving hospitality, which is a different thing.

Yeah.

Or the food is okay, but it's not. And ultimately, you can actually get away with relatively good food. So we always say, be consistently great. Don't try to be excellent.

Don't be poor, obviously, but don't try to be excellent. Just be consistently great. You can get away with consistently good food if you're. Your experience is great.

Yeah.

If the lights are right, if the music's good, if your hospitality that you're giving is spot on. All of it has to come together and it's a thousand. There's a light over here, which, if you actually looked at that light underneath it.

I have myself personally gone and stuck little brown, like the brown tape under every single light, because when you touch it twice, it goes to a white led.

Yeah.

And so to make sure that people can't do that, I. I've gone around and these. The attention to detail pour the perfect point. It's very simple and a lot of hospitality is very simple.

It's simply getting all of those things in line and anybody.

I'd say, basically, if your business is struggling, look, if you're a 40 cover restaurant in York, you're going to have a tough time of at the moment. It's going to be a tough time of it because actually 40 covers isn't enough to run the unit. So that is a hard ask.

And actually we've, to be fair, tried to exit as many of our units that are that small.

But you can still make it good if you really concentrate on the hospitality and go, okay, so I've got a 40 cover restaurant, I'm busy, but I want to have a couple more people. How do I get my returning customer to come back? Look at every single detail. It is the attention to every single element of hospitality.

So I will go round.

I'm looking right now, for example, I'm looking down the pub and I can see that there's one dirty glass, there's two wine menus that are the wrong way around. These are the things you have to basically have a complete eye on. You don't make sure that your cooling unit is working properly.

It is every single element and it's like being a DJ and when you find out perfectly, you can feel it, you know, the atmosphere is eclectic. Everybody's having a really great time, everyone's enjoying themselves and you know, and you always have bad services.

But if you're constantly working towards that element of that kind of perfect be that perfect service, you can't not win. It is a science. It's not actually just. You're going to be able to feel it.

And I've got managers of mine who can't and they haven't lasted because they just. You just don't you really there is that. You even know it or you don't.

I know within 60 seconds where someone walks through the door if they're employing them, whether they're hospital or not.

Yeah, yeah.

You could just tell. But if I can train them to be a good server. But they may not be a hospital.

Yeah.

And knowing and understanding how to run a service. So it is eclectic is in the bones. But there are very key things. Just make sure you are getting the basics right.

Be consistently good, be consistently great, don't try to be excellent, don't try and make a dish that is unbelievable, but you get wrong at five times a week. Just make it really great and get it right every single time. And that brings your returning customer base back. You know, our roast here, we have 400.

We do 400 roasts every Sunday. I said about five times now.

And people know that every time they go to the patch, they're going to have a great race. And that is why we are full all the time, because they know they're going to have it.

On that note, Andy, thank you very much.

Thank you. Thank you very much as well.

Hospitality, thank you as well for what you've done for the industry and best of luck with your new venture.

Thanks very much and you too as well. Talking hospitality, the voices, you know.