Pret & Itsu Founder: How I Built TWO Billion Dollar Brands At The Same Time!: Julian Metcalfe

Julian Metcalfe is the founder of Pret A Manger and Itsu, and since he’s been a young man has been on a mission to change the way we think about eating out and how we eat. His companies are together worth over $3 billion. But he’s also been on a mission to prove something to himself after the suicide of his mother and a life threatening car crash when he was still young uprooted his life as he knew it. Like all founders, he chose the long road back to being secure in himself. Julian spews with original thoughts on how to really take a company from zero to $1 billion+, from hiring and firing to knowing when to take the leap to expand your brand. Business is a game of thousands of little decisions, a few really big ones, and a hawks eye for knowing when to pounce. Few people we’ve encountered on the podcast had such a good gut instinct as Julian, nor were so good at articulating exactly how they did it. Follow me: https://beacons.ai/diaryofaceo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I love failure. I fail every day. I don't care about this. Just get on with it. You had Pratt and now you've got Itsu. You are absolutely an entrepreneur at heart. As all the fish are going in one way, you suddenly look around, you think, damn it, I'm going to go the other way.

• 0:14Steven Bartlett?

  When you look back at Pratt, at business, you ended up selling for two billion.

• 0:17Speaker 00

  I had no idea what I was doing. It wasn't planned. Endless moments of magic, moments of bizarre creativity and confidence.

• 0:24Steven Bartlett?

  What was motivating you there?

• 0:26Speaker 00

  I wanted to make a difference. I suddenly found myself with this responsibility to open a restaurant. From that start, we built 76 of them. We started developing it so it could become the future.

• 0:39Steven Bartlett?

  The absence of both parents.

• 0:40Speaker 00

  He was quite distant, my father. My mother committed suicide when I was seven. That created a loneliness.

• 0:47Speaker 00

  To create something new, you've got to put yourself in slightly uncharted territory.

• 0:51Steven Bartlett?

  Business isn't just business to you, is it? It's not just about the money.

• 0:54Speaker 00

  No, and it shouldn't be to anyone. I'm far more interested in the relationships with the customer and the staff and the product. I was obsessed by that. Obsessed. It's incredible what people can do. People don't trust them. People don't nurture them. Because they're too busy being selfish, nurturing themselves.

• 1:10Steven Bartlett?

  What's the worst crisis you've ever had in your business?

• 1:12Speaker 00

  I don't even want to go into it.

• 1:13Steven Bartlett?

  I want to hear it.

• 1:16Steven Bartlett?

  So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett and this is the Diary of a CEO. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself.

• 1:32Steven Bartlett?

  Julian.

• 1:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:35Steven Bartlett?

  I was exposed to a number of hardships as a child. You said that. What did you mean?

• 1:44Speaker 00

  I love the way you start off with a little killer. I can't remember who I said that to.

• 1:51Speaker 00

  And I was exposed. Well, I'm not alone, by the way. A great many people watching this or listening to this were exposed to hardships far greater than mine. But the death of my mother when I was seven, she, my mother committed suicide on Boxing Day. So I was left, and my parents were divorced. So we lived, the three of us, my brother, sister and I, lived with our mum. But that was a difficult thing. That was a, that created a loneliness.

• 2:18Steven Bartlett?

  Did you, did you realise that at the time? Did you realise the impact that incident had had on you growing up?

• 2:26Speaker 00

  Probably not.

• 2:28Speaker 00

  No, I think I that you don't, when you're lonely, you don't really age eight or nine or twelve, you don't really know you're lonely. You just, you don't feel whole, I suppose. You don't feel completely whole. Other people seem to be jollier than I was at that age. That's for sure.

• 2:46Steven Bartlett?

  As an adult, did you ever look back and try and understand the significance of that particular event and how it might have shaped you?

• 2:53Speaker 00

  I think the event, I don't know if it's shaped me, but it's definitely added a complexity to my character, which has made me, which has helped shape my, my, my relationship with people, my relationship with work, my relationship with everything. Yeah, there's no doubt it would be silly to pretend that it didn't.

• 3:11Steven Bartlett?

  Reminds me of something that I talk about this guy a lot. This guy said to me, he came on this podcast, he was Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant's trainer. And he talked about how

• 3:23Steven Bartlett?

  some of the things that happened to us early that are traumatic end up being the cause of our, what he called light side, which is the talent, our brilliance, the thing we've become known for. But they're also the contributor to our dark side, which can be our complexity, our insecurities, all of those kinds of things.

• 3:40Steven Bartlett?

  Do you think that event so early on, or any event early on in your life, that particular event, let's focus on that particular event, had a contributing factor to what people would consider to be your brilliance, this incredible career you've had?

• 3:53Speaker 00

  Listen, I think, I think people, people work, people become obsessive and they become successful and they're working extremely hard for all kinds of different reasons. They want to become relevant, they want to be, they want maybe to be careful, seek admiration they didn't get, or they have parents who didn't acknowledge them. I really, I don't know. All I know is it must have probably, of course, it had some effect on the way I work and the view of my life and have lived my life. Yeah. But I, but I think over time, over, over many years, it's, it's, it's waned as I've, as I've kind of developed as a person.

• 4:34Speaker 00

  I also, I'm frightened, I'm nervous about even suggesting that, you know, to be fulfilled and to make change and to really contribute to society, you have to come from a dark place, because I don't think you do, certainly not as dark as something like that.

• 4:51Steven Bartlett?

  You know, I think about when I meet a lot of obsessive people, it tends to be the case that something quite extreme had poked them in their life at some point to make them, give them that chip on their shoulder, whether it's Michael Jordan or Kobe, or whether it's Eddie Hearn, and that feeling of living in his father's shadow and the insecurity of that. And these other, you know, the sons of billionaires that I meet, who've built big fashion empires, their very dominant fathers have made them obsessive by convincing them vicariously that they're not good enough, for example. And so that's why I always tend to go in search of understanding where that obsessiveness comes from.

• 5:29Speaker 00

  You're right, too, and there's bound to be a correlation, as you know, from all so many of the people you've interviewed, and you're clearly very empathetic, that you will find a train, a common denominator there. But it's not, it's not everything. It's certainly not for a great many people listening or watching who have not faced tragedy or sadness like that, they need to know that it's not an essential part of being able to get on and do extraordinary work.

• 6:00Steven Bartlett?

  What about your father?

• 6:01Speaker 00

  My father was, he was quite distant, my father. He was kind of old fashioned. My parents were very, very different. My mother was Ukrainian immigrant, and kind of wild and wonderful. And my father was really kind of posh aristocratic Englishman, rather distant and cold. He then made a mistake of marrying someone for a very short period of time when I was about 10, 11. That did not end well for any of us, the three children. So it was not a great time between seven and 16. It was a messy, a messy childhood, I think, filled with problems.

• 6:45Steven Bartlett?

  Did you ever go in search of answers as to why your mother made that decision?

• 6:56Speaker 00

  Uh.

• 6:58Speaker 00

  No, I I I didn't. I didn't because not not that many people knew my mother, actually. We we lived alone with her. Um. I. She was just, she was just had serious mental issues. That she was just ill. And and sad and and it's awful, you know. Terrible, terrible, it's common. I mean, listen, it's common. This happens all the time. Um.

• 7:28Speaker 00

  This this happens too much.

• 7:31Speaker 00

  Um.

• 7:34Speaker 00

  Too much, too common.

• 7:39Steven Bartlett?

  That that distance from um. The absence of both parents, that's that's kind of what I've I've ascertained from what you said so far. There was an absence of of both parents to some degree. What I I I resonate with that for my own reasons.

• 7:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 7:53Steven Bartlett?

  I um my mum was was working so hard that she decided to end up sleeping in the shop. So I was I'm the youngest of four as well. And typically what you find, I think, is the youngest one gets treated like the older ones.

• 8:04Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:05Steven Bartlett?

  At a certain point, especially if it's a boy. And so by the age of ten, neither of my parents are there when I wake up and neither of them are there when I go to sleep. On one hand, that gives me great independence.

• 8:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:13Steven Bartlett?

  It means that I stop going to school.

• 8:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:15Steven Bartlett?

  Because no one's going to punish me if I don't.

• 8:17Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 8:17Steven Bartlett?

  Um, and that is maybe in my case, what led me to becoming, in my view, an entrepreneur. There was a void of um responsibility or sort of accountability, which led to independence. So I started selling things and doing what I liked. That made me very bad at following rules later in life, which I think is, I'm going back and connecting the dots in hindsight, but I think that led me to be an entrepreneur.

• 8:36Speaker 00

  No, I'm sure that's true. That would make complete sense. Um, so both of us have that in common. But then, you know, so so so do a great many others. Um. In addition to my, I had a real problem with authority. I went to really old fashioned schools. I was sent away to to schools age seven. And in both cases, the schools were really, really old fashioned and and in my opinion terribly badly run with all kinds of bad things going on. It was just shocking. So I had a really bad relationship with authority. I felt it completely let me down on every level. Um, I still do, actually. So maybe that's why I branched out on my own early to try and I just, you know.

• 9:17Speaker 00

  We're we're so many of us are let down by people in power and authority, I find. You know, it's sad, it's irritating, really is irritating, actually. It doesn't matter if it's people who run companies, or people in politics, or people who run schools. It's just, particularly schools, I think.

• 9:37Speaker 00

  People who are in charge of young children need to nurture them and look after them and and help them build their confidence and strength, not put them through a meat grinder. That's what happened in your school? The first private school I went to was just shocking, yeah, really, really. I don't even wanna go into it because it would just upset your view, your view. I wanna hear it. No, no, no, I'm not gonna go there, I refuse to go there, but it was just not a good experience, not a good place. And so that's where I think I learnt very, very early on to seriously distrust authority, and deeply. And perhaps then realise, okay, you've got to forge your own path and work with people

• 10:19Speaker 00

  who you trust, and people who are worthy of your your love, and people who give back,

• 10:27Speaker 00

  rather than people who, you know, climb that ladder into positions of authority.

• 10:35Speaker 00

  But a great many of us suffer from this, a great many of us are working our asses off for people who don't really support us, or appreciate us, or want to develop our characters or skills or anything. So commerce is selfish. The people who do well in commerce, I mean, if you look at your success, ninety percent of it is because of your your understanding of the way human beings work. It's about giving and taking and giving, and thinking long term. That's what really builds success, I think, I really do. I mean, one advantage, I had my father used to spend a lot of time entertaining very,

• 11:18Speaker 00

  very kind of powerful people, particularly from America, and and I realised they were in the end mostly just pretty average human beings, but who had achieved a lot. And I started seeing them with all their faults and warts and realising, wow,

• 11:35Speaker 00

  to make a difference, it's not impossible. But you need the right structure, and I think so many of us work in a structure which is simply not possible, whether it be politics, or fear, or our own insecurities, or whatever it is. There's just not enough transparency in this world.

• 11:54Speaker 00

  You know, a great many of us are working with no transparency at all in our place of work. Don't you think? I get the feeling you thrive off transparency. You like it. You face things head on and you like people around you to face things head on. That's the way to build. It's the only way.

• 12:13Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, I've been on the journey. I think when I was a bit more insecure, I think transparency felt like a risk. And then as I've developed in myself and also in my businesses, transparency felt like a great motivator. And I actually said to my team, some of which are in the room now.

• 12:30Steven Bartlett?

  At the start of this month, that every quarter, I'm going to show you all the financials of our entire business. So you can see everything. And also you're going to see that I've never taken a pound out of this business ever. Because I want them to understand, because that's an example of for me transparency in a business context, being a real big motivator. Then one of the younger girls in the team, when I was in the car one day, turned to me and said, by the way, you doing that completely changed my perception. Because I think, I think they thought that like I was making this money from doing this podcast, whatever it is, or any of my business. And then taking the money into my pocket from as it comes in. So to show them that I've never taken a penny ever, I kind of, I think.

• 13:09Steven Bartlett?

  Aligns us.

• 13:10Speaker 00

  No, no, listen, it's transparency and people being open and honest and building trust is by far the most important characteristic ever. For the day I started my work, for the last forty years, I've now realized it's what you should value and crave more than anything. It's worth everything. Transparency is everything. And so many people work in an environment where simply not there, they're just not used to it, they can't expect it, they can't demand it, and they're not going to get it. And that's bad. Move job, change. Don't, don't, you shouldn't work for people who aren't transparent. And that's transparency is wonderful thing. It gets honesty, a truth. Truth is wonderful.

• 13:48Steven Bartlett?

  Can you define your definition of what you mean when you're saying transparency?

• 13:52Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, to keep it really simple, let's let's let's stick to the world of commerce. And the world of commerce is and and probably politics, but I don't know, I have no understanding of politics and I've no inkling ever to be a politician, but in the world of commerce, there's not nearly as much transparency as there should be. So sharing information, sharing truth, saying what you feel, being honest with your your your colleagues, your teammates, as well as the people who work with you and for you. It's just, you can't take that that stuff for granted, because it doesn't happen in most places. I don't know, you need a collective, you need, you need, you need to, I don't know why. You

• 14:37Speaker 00

  tell me why. Why do you think ninety percent of businesses are not nearly as transparent as they should be and could be? We know what they are. It's all about people protecting their own fears, it's about their own insecurities, about protecting their own pay, their bonuses. There are a thousand reasons why there's not the transparency we deserve as human beings.

• 14:56Steven Bartlett?

  Because to achieve the truth, so say like I'm just for as an example, say I run an organic vegetable store.

• 15:06Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:07Steven Bartlett?

  I can, on one hand, go to the extra effort of actually being organic, which means it costs me more, I have to do a bunch of stuff in the supply chain, whatever, or I can say I am and get the same return.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Exactly.

• 15:21Steven Bartlett?

  Two decades ago, it would be very hard for you to find out I was lying, because the world wasn't connected with the internet. There was no glass doors, social media tweeting, instantaneous communication. So I think the world of business grew in a black box approach where your your PR, your marketing, your messaging was painted out on the outside of your business by the marketing director. We're now in a glass box world, where everybody can see inside and they can talk with someone in Australia in a second. So I think that there's been this, I think transparent businesses in the last ten years in the connected world have really won for that reason.

• 15:57Speaker 00

  Okay, there's no doubt. It's much harder to lie with the gut to your consumers.

• 16:02Steven Bartlett?

  These days.

• 16:02Speaker 00

  No question.

• 16:03Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 16:03Speaker 00

  But I'm more interested in in the lies, the deceit, and the and the and the lack of transparency and the darkness with the relationships people have with their employees and their employer. Where a great deal of stuff is never said.

• 16:18Steven Bartlett?

  Like what?

• 16:19Speaker 00

  Well, I mean, how many people do you know, what is the percentage of people who wake up on a Monday morning wanna go to work? I mean, it's frighteningly small. Why do you think that is? I mean, if if if eighty percent of the people who you work with, you find out they didn't want to come to work. Wouldn't you find that devastating? Wouldn't surely, wouldn't you look in the mirror and say, what on earth am I doing wrong?

• 16:38Steven Bartlett?

  I think if that was the case, I also wouldn't wanna come to that place.

• 16:40Speaker 00

  Of course you wouldn't. But the thing is, now you've got to ask yourself, well, why does that apply to seventy percent of all working people? And what are they meant to do? How do we, sitting here around this round table, what do we, how can we help them? How to, how can we help nurture a thing where people have got the courage to be transparent and say what they feel?

• 17:00Steven Bartlett?

  What do you think the answer is?

• 17:01Speaker 00

  I don't know. But but we're living in a times where it's beginning to happen. I mean, listen, just look at the Me Too movement. Who would have thought a few years ago that could have generated the speed and power it did? It's incredibly good thing. I mean, you know, that went from, I dare not say anything, to the whole world saying everything in just one year, two years. Fantastic. There's a small example of absolutely zero transparency. It's sick. Power corrupts. This awful thing to say, but we know this is true. We know it's true. As as you're a boss, you you know, you have a position of huge responsibility. You know, I know, we all know that.

• 17:44Steven Bartlett?

  What about affection?

• 17:46Speaker 00

  Affection.

• 17:47Steven Bartlett?

  One of the things that, one of the things that was definitely absent from my childhood was affection. I didn't even call my parents mum and dad. I still don't to this day. Um, their absence, I think, was one part of that, but also just, I didn't have affection. So growing up, the thought of calling someone a friend. A best friend still to this day makes me cringe. It's just a little bit.

• 18:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:08Steven Bartlett?

  In your case, are you an affectionate person?

• 18:12Speaker 00

  I've never been asked that question. I have absolutely no idea how to answer it. Because do I compare myself to other people?

• 18:23Speaker 00

  I have no idea.

• 18:24Steven Bartlett?

  You don't know if you're affectionate or not?

• 18:26Speaker 00

  I think I'm affectionate.

• 18:28Steven Bartlett?

  In your own way?

• 18:29Speaker 00

  But I also know for years I struggled with my, like, like somebody with self-esteem and, you know, and I, I, I'm sure I felt completely unlovable for, for decades, probably. I, I'm sure.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  But then, you know, I, I, I've had,

• 18:48Speaker 00

  in my opinion, I've been blessed with amazing relationships with friends and, and, and family. I mean, just completely blessed. And, and, and I'm not a baby, so I'm six, you know, I'm sixty two years old. And so this, you know, I have two of my children work with me. I mean, what more could you possibly dream of than that?

• 19:10Speaker 00

  So I must have some relationship with the concept of affection. What, how, where it came from and how I grew it, I, I'm not entirely sure. Because I certainly didn't get it from my mother and father. I must have got it from, from, from close friends and, and maybe just looking and learning that there's no point trying to go through life without it. What you, what you give, you get back, you know? Pret a mange started, you know, as like it became kind of incredible family. And the warmth and love and care which went into the building of relationships in that company was breathtaking. It was like a family. It started with one store and ended up with hundreds, but there was a time when it was truly extraordinarily extended family.

• 19:53Speaker 00

  And that's, I think, where I grew to understand the power of, of, of, deep affection and love and trust. It definitely came for me much later than for most people, you know?

• 20:07Steven Bartlett?

  You said there was, you think there was probably decades where you didn't love yourself.

• 20:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I mean, decades as in, in my teens and then in my twenties.

• 20:17Speaker 00

  You, you, I don't know how good you are at, at reflecting and self-discovery. I'm, I'm kind of a five out of 10 probably. I, I mean, I, I pushed my self-therapy and, and even doing this, I think called the Hoffman. Have you heard about?

• 20:31Steven Bartlett?

  He's coming here.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, I did the Hoffman. He's kind of great. He's, he's what a genius that guy was. But, so I try. What was your question? Or how long? The decades of self-loathing? I don't know.

• 20:43Steven Bartlett?

  No, not how long, just what were the symptoms of, of that?

• 20:45Speaker 00

  So you, I don't, yeah. Just, just probably, um, just that ongoing feeling of being completely unworthy. That's what you get when you don't have parents so much or, or loving. You're not nurtured, you know? So you feel lonely.

• 21:03Steven Bartlett?

  You grew up with that, that feeling of unworthiness. And I always believe, I, I actually wrote it, I think in my book or my notepad or something, that the things that made us feel invalid when we're younger end up being the things we seek validation from when we're older.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  That's complete common sense and true. But, but did you feel unloved or?

• 21:24Steven Bartlett?

  It was, I knew my parents loved me, that we just didn't have, I just didn't learn what affection was. So like, think about, I don't even call them dad and mum today. I didn't learn what it was. I also, because their relationship was incredibly dislike loud and so I've said this a million times before, it's in my book. My mum would scream at my dad for seven hours a day. My mum is African. She can really hit some notes and my dad would sit there. He's a, he's a guy from Coventry. You know, he was a middle-aged white man and he would just be totally silent. And that was my model of relationships. If you're with a woman, you are in prison. So I, I didn't get into a relationship till I was 27.

• 22:00Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 22:00Steven Bartlett?

  So I learned all of those models and then, you know, I would chase, I would chase women when I was young. I would chase women when I was 14. I would chase women when I was 21. The minute they turned to me and said yes, I would dissuade them.

• 22:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 22:12Steven Bartlett?

  I'd immediately talk them out of it.

• 22:14Speaker 00

  But why? Do you think that's because once you had them, you felt that you didn't deserve their affection? Or was it just the competition of getting them to prove that you were worthy of them?

• 22:24Steven Bartlett?

  Because I would pursue them because of the reasons why we pursue anyone. Because they're beautiful and I have those hormones and that desire. And I, you know, I have that. Okay. The minute we got to commitment, we're going to be boyfriend and girlfriend.

• 22:39Speaker 00

  So you were frightened of the commitment?

• 22:40Steven Bartlett?

  I was, I would immediately felt like my dad trapped in a cage.

• 22:45Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 22:45Steven Bartlett?

  So I would dissuade them from it. So it was literally, it took me till I was 25 to figure out what was going on. Why I was running away from women that I was chasing. Um. The minute we got to commitment, boyfriend and girlfriend, it made me, my skin crawl and it made me feel like I was trapped. So I dissuaded them. So in your case.

• 23:02Speaker 00

  Well, that could have just been because of what you had witnessed.

• 23:05Steven Bartlett?

  A hundred percent.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  So over, over years, you've just witnessed this dysfunctional relationship where in a way your father was trapped. So it's kind of, so mine was different to that because I never saw my parents together, ever. I don't think I barely ever saw them in a room together. That's not quite true. My father used to come down occasionally on Sunday. But I never saw them arguing.

• 23:26Speaker 00

  So my, my, my take on what love was and should be was, was, it must have been at my own invention. I don't know. But I've come to, it's a fascinating subject, don't you think? When you study people who are in supportive, wonderful relationships, I find it enthralling. I mean, fascinating, fascinating. It's the most fascinating thing to study. How people adapt their life to be completely in love with someone. And, and, and live their life, uh, just showing warmth and kindness and forgiveness and love. It's very enriching if you can do it. It's definitely something to, um, it's a goal. It's a great goal.

• 24:13Speaker 00

  I mean, I like, it's a goal. There are other goals, but that's got to be the greatest, I guess.

• 24:18Steven Bartlett?

  I think we admire in others the things we don't have in ourselves, right? So people would look at you and go, how the hell? The greatest goal is to build prep. And I would look at someone else and say what you've just said. I'd say the greatest goal is to, how the fuck did you stay together for 50 years? When I'm struggling to stay together for two or one.

• 24:33Speaker 00

  Yeah. Yeah, I guess that's what makes life fascinating in the sense that some people can achieve the goals that that you and I think are really very, very difficult. But it doesn't stop us, stop us struggling to get there.

• 24:45Steven Bartlett?

  What was the consequence then of you, you growing up, being in your early twenties and not feeling like you were quote unquote, sort of enough? Was that, what did you see?

• 24:53Speaker 00

  Well, on the dark side, I guess it made me focus more and, and, uh, and made me more determined, I guess, more determined.

• 25:02Speaker 00

  Just it's, it, it, where most people, uh,

• 25:07Speaker 00

  packed off and went home, I would, I would, I'd be prepared to stick it out.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  But you can't, I had an interesting conversation with someone the other day about the use of this expression, hard work. He said, it's not hard work. It's not, it's, it's a great many people work very, very hard and they don't succeed. It's, it's not that, it's about, it's about the evidence. It's about, can you make change? Are you getting better? Is your product better? Is your service better? Is your relationship with the people you work with, is it better? You know, it's about proof, it's about real facts. It's not just hard work, hard work. We just use that expression. I worked really hard. I know a lot of people who work really, really hard, but they don't work in the focused way that you and I work. So it's, it's worth kind of thinking, well, what is the difference between them and us? What is it?

• 26:00Speaker 00

  And if we have to guide anyone, if that, if they seek, if they already are in a, a rich, wonderful relationship and they want to run a company, their own company, they want to be self-employed, how can we guide them? What is it that we have that they don't?

• 26:16Speaker 00

  And would we swap their wonderful, rich, incredible relationship? To have another 500 employees? I'm not sure. I, I think you can have both. Oh, that's what I, I, um, that's my goal. You know, I, I, I'm determined to have both, determined to have both. Don't have to have one without the other. It's not true. I mean, it's hard to have both, but come on, it's it's got to be worth aiming for, isn't it?

• 26:45Steven Bartlett?

  Do you have both now?

• 26:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, not not in full because my career is

• 26:52Speaker 00

  only half there and I'm oh, I'm oh, I'm not running out of steam, but so annoying. I'm running out of time. Um, and my relationship with my, you know, I have seven kids. I've got four stepkids, three of mine. I've got, oh, oh, how long have we been together? Fifteen years, Brooke and I. I mean, yeah, I'm I'm bloody lucky. I'm really fortunate. I think I I think I picked really well. Um. You know, I'm bloody lucky with that. But I mean, I could blow it, I guess, but I'm I'm gonna do my damnedest not to.

• 27:27Steven Bartlett?

  When you look back at um starting prep, we're talking about what's driving you there. Was there any epiphanies around what was really driving you on that day when someone first came along and said they were gonna buy your company? Because for me, I thought I was being driven by money until someone offered me it. And then I thought, oh, God. There must be something else motivating me here.

• 27:46Speaker 00

  I don't know about that myself. It's I've I've often wondered, did money and the pursuit of money ever drive me? I don't think so, because I think I I saw enough people when I was young with a lot of money who were absolutely miserable and dysfunctional and miserable. Actually, my mother had a lot of money and lot obviously lost it all and died. So there I had a very good example of of someone with a huge amount of money who had nothing.

• 28:10Steven Bartlett?

  Well, I didn't.

• 28:11Speaker 00

  We didn't inherit any of her money, but she was um it was a good example of someone who was miserable with money. Money doesn't, it's awful. Uh, you know, when people like you and I say money doesn't make you happy, it's nothing more irritating than a statement like that when a great many people uh don't have a large cash reserves in their bank account. But the fact is, uh, we both know that it doesn't.

• 28:33Steven Bartlett?

  What was motivating you?

• 28:34Speaker 00

  Well, I think I wanted to make a difference. I wanted to be relevant. I wanted to be

• 28:38Steven Bartlett?

  loved.

• 28:39Speaker 00

  admired. Uh, yeah, I wanted to do something interesting and great. I wanted to people, I wanted people to look at me and think, wow, he's this this guy's serious. He's he's on to something. He matters. Then I wanted to to to create these important relationships with people I worked with. I wanted to see people flourish around me. That really mattered to me. I wanted to try and wipe away all some of that pain. I wanted that and then, deep down, I really love and passionately creative, the creative process of what I did. So the design and the food and the taste and the look and the feel and and breaking down every barrier, which I just, as far as I was, I only kind of saw opportunity.

• 29:22Speaker 00

  It's, you have to be very resourceful and determined in, in, in my particular business. You know, because it's, as we, as we were saying before, and it's basic. If you want to sell the best cake in the world at the best price, you've got to be damn resourceful. You've got to work with geniuses, you've got to have the best equipment, the best everything. And, and that doesn't happen overnight. You don't get that by picking up the phone and ordering something, you have to create it. And it's, you have to be unbelievably resourceful. But I, that, with regard to the food, the design, and my belief in, in what food should be and could be for people, um, knows no bounds, no end, no end, I'll stop at nothing.

• 30:07Speaker 00

  Love it.

• 30:08Steven Bartlett?

  Those dinner parties, your father threw.

• 30:11Speaker 00

  Oh, yeah, yeah.

• 30:12Steven Bartlett?

  Did they have any lasting impression or lasting impact?

• 30:15Speaker 00

  Well, no, most of the time I was in the kitchen, actually. So I'd meet these, these remark, these many remarkable people. But my love of food started because I used to spend all the time in the kitchen. And there was a, a guy used to come and cook, he was really talented, Tony. And I'd spend the night with him, watching him work, from the age of about fourteen, thirteen. It was fascinating. And that's really where my love of food started with him, watching him work. So it was a combination of, of, of becoming obsessed with what food could be and should be. Um, and at the same time, not being frightened of, of all these rather dysfunctional, but immensely successful people I met through my father. I didn't really get to know them very well, but a few.

• 30:59Steven Bartlett?

  At the time, it's hard to determine when you're building a business and it's going well, it's hard to determine at the time what's actually making it brilliant and the specialness, as you've called it before. In hindsight, I think it's much easier to look back and go, that's why we were special and different. That's why we won. When you look back at Pret, a business you ended up selling for two billion or something crazy, a huge number.

• 31:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:20Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, it doesn't matter, it's a huge number. What was the specialness? What did you unintentionally or intentionally do right? What was the?

• 31:29Speaker 00

  Well, so many of it. It wasn't planned. It happened. Endless moments of magic, endless moments of, of, of moments of bizarre creativity and confidence. Exactly the same with, with your business. It's just so difficult. It wasn't, you didn't write it all down and plan it. It just, it happened with moments of confidence, endless, endless moments, you know, of swimming upstream. As all the fish are going in one way, you suddenly look around, you think, damn it, I'm going to go the other way. I'm not going to swim in this direction. This can't be right. And that takes guts. It takes bravery. It takes relationships with people.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  It takes hiring talent. You have to have the guts to hire talent. People's often much better than you. You've got to be prepared to listen and listen until it hurts. You've got to be prepared to fail over and over and over again. I love failure. I love it because it's just a damn journey. I really love it. I fail every day and I don't care about it. I just get on with it. It's wonderful. But with Pret, food is a magical thing to be able to do. It's like music or film. I mean, it's, it's, it's, because when we know it's good, it's wonderful. It's wonderful. And in those days in 1986, when we started, it was in the doldrums. It was all so boring and awful. So it was just a question of.

• 32:54Speaker 00

  But but prep wasn't just built with food, it was built with a combination, it was kind of built with a magical, magic approach to the the the respect and love and obsession about creating pride and trust with the with the with the team, with the employees. I I was obsessed by that, obsessed by that, actually.

• 33:13Steven Bartlett?

  How how important was it for you that you were naive? Because I think naive-

• 33:17Speaker 00

  Bloody, oh, it was very important. I had no idea what I was doing, none.

• 33:21Steven Bartlett?

  Why was that important?

• 33:22Speaker 00

  I have no idea what I'm doing most of the time, actually, because I spend my life casting myself out into never never land. I don't know what I'm doing half the time. But you learn, you listen, you talk, you speak to the right people and you learn. Because to create something new, you know, you've got to, you've got to put yourself in slightly uncharted territory, you know, and then you've got to be prepared to fail many, many times and keep going. That's all prep was, just a series of hundreds of failures. That's all it was, moments of failure and then moments of glory, moments of wonderful moments of bravery. Yeah, that was it, like, you you know exactly what I'm talking about. It's moments, endless moments where a light goes on, you think, okay, I'm going to take that risk, I'm going to do it.

• 34:07Speaker 00

  It feels right, something in your heart says it's go for it. Could be, could be working with people, promoting people, or giving them extraordinary opportunity, or or developing something which no one's ever eaten before, or, I don't know, hundreds of different things. Or when systems don't work and you're not getting, you're not getting the behaviors or the warmth or the trust you crave, then you have to think outside the box, you've got to think again. We used to, there was one store after about tenth, the tenth press, I think, I couldn't understand why the atmosphere in this store was so bad.

• 34:44Steven Bartlett?

  Fleet Street.

• 34:45Speaker 00

  Ah, it was Fleet Street, yeah. Bloody hell. And it was the first time I had paid a recruitment company for a top manager, suit and tie, the whole thing. And yeah, it's true, I met this girl who I recognized who worked in the store, a young scruffy girl on the tube on the way home, she burst into tears and she said, I'm leaving on Monday. Because her manager was a dick. And I didn't need her to explain what dick meant. I knew exactly what she meant. My god, I'd been at school, I'd been, all the teachers were dicks. I knew exactly what she meant, and I hated, I hated the idea of this, this determined, brave,

• 35:24Speaker 00

  trustworthy, wonderful, loving, fabulous, young lady, being bullied by a dick. So we fired the dick and we promoted her to manager and I never looked back. I think I learnt more from that young lady than any, anyone I've ever learnt in my life, actually. The hope and the joy. Did you see yourself in her? Oh my god, I've never thought about that. Oh my god, maybe. But no one ever gave me that opportunity. I had to fight for it. I didn't give her that opportunity. She earned it, actually. She earned it. Just by being herself. She was a great manager too, actually. I don't know how I knew, I wasn't, I didn't know she was gonna be a great manager, but there was something about her.

• 36:08Speaker 00

  There was something about her, and by the way, there's something about a great, great many people I meet. They all have so much going for them. They just don't believe it. They're just not working in an environment where they're giving the opportunity they deserve. People don't trust them. People don't nurture them, because they're too busy being selfish, nurturing themselves. Sounds like you're talking about your schoolteachers. Oh, well, they're just, they were idiots. They were just, it was complete idiots. And they're just downright, no one should be, they shouldn't have been paid.

• 36:40Speaker 00

  But there are a lot of authorities like that. I mean, a lot.

• 36:46Speaker 00

  And that stores sales doubled or something? Oh my god, yeah, double, triple, yeah, of course. Why? Because there was, there was trust, there was care, there was pride, there was love and forgiveness. There was goals, there was, there was everything wonderful in life, right there, right there.

• 37:06Steven Bartlett?

  Business isn't just business to you, is it? It's not just about the money.

• 37:11Speaker 00

  No, and it shouldn't be to anyone. But it is because we work short term goals. So many of us are controlled, are bossed around. We have to, we're, we're, you know, people's emotions are incredibly inconvenient in commerce. Aren't they? Let's face it. And, and some people like you and other people have found ways of being, you know, found ways of, of bypassing all that shit. And you let people be themselves. You actually encourage people to be themselves, to speak up, to be transparent. That's what you need. That shop was completely transparent. It was beautiful.

• 37:53Speaker 00

  And that's what builds great, great companies or great teams or great sports teams. Doesn't matter what it is or makes great movies. Doesn't matter or anything.

• 38:04Speaker 00

  People need that feeling of a sense of purpose and trust, openness, I think.

• 38:10Steven Bartlett?

  Funny, you talk much more in terms of culture than you do in terms of tactics and tricks and discounting and these kinds of things.

• 38:17Speaker 00

  Oh my god.

• 38:17Steven Bartlett?

  It seems to start more with culture with you.

• 38:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, I think it's, it's, if you're trying to break down barriers and do things new, which I now spent the last 20 years really taking on almost an extraordinary, wonderful challenge, which we will, we will win. We will get there.

• 38:34Steven Bartlett?

  With it too.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's affordable, nutritious food. And it's reinventing itself over and over and over again. I mean, it's 20 years old and it's had three reinventions. The, the latest ones are beginning to be, to really pay. I mean, they're really wonderful because the world, the Europe, the cities in which we live desperately need affordable, nutritious food. We are half, 40%, I think, plant based. Our entire menu is under 500 calories. Most of it's under 400. You know, this is what people need. We can't go on in this, in the developed world being 50% obese or something, whatever it is now. It's shocking.

• 39:15Speaker 00

  But this is, we can't blame anyone for this. There's no point blaming, there's no point even blaming ourselves. There's no one to blame. But it's about my responsibility, I think, is with my team to carry on pioneering the, the systems and the, and the systems to make it possible to sell really nutritious good food for, for seven quid. It's possible.

• 39:36Steven Bartlett?

  You talked about hiring and the importance of people and the right people there. One of the things that I read that you'd done very early on with Pret was to allow the current employees to sign off on an incoming team member. So when someone comes for an interview, the people that decide if that person's going to get a job are the current team members.

• 39:53Speaker 00

  Yeah, so we, the office used to pay for, for, we'd interview people. Um, we'd go through the list of, of the shops which, the Pret a Manges which needed people coming up and we'd send them there and they would spend the whole day there, paid. And at four o'clock, no one would know, they wouldn't know this, but at four o'clock, all the, the staff would vote on a napkin, yes or no. So they'd go around the whole team, they'd, we'd, we'd find ways of, of, of getting as many people to spend 25 minutes with them as possible. And then at four o'clock, they'd vote. And then we'd ring the person up, you got in or you didn't.

• 40:27Steven Bartlett?

  And why, why was that useful?

• 40:29Speaker 00

  Because, uh, I wish I'd been able to do that at school because I realised after about seven or eight pret's that it was dysfunctional. That you only needed a slightly not particularly reliable or trustworthy manager. And what would they do? They'd hire the people that they wanted. The whole system would just be abused. And there were a couple of examples where that was happening and it just made me sick. Because it was so bad for the team, it was bad for the culture, it was bad for the manager and it was really bad for the customers. So I, I just created this simple system which was so beautiful. It was beautiful because young people

• 41:06Speaker 00

  were voting on other people's lives within a few weeks of starting. That was great. Empowering them, trusting them. That was great. Good for them, huh? Really good for them.

• 41:16Steven Bartlett?

  Small details, you know, when I read through your story of both your businesses, all your businesses, I noticed that there's a real eye for detail. You know, if I think about itsu and the orchards you have there, you have real orchards in the itsus, right?

• 41:29Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 41:30Steven Bartlett?

  Could very well fake them like I do. I mean, I'm pretty sure there's some fake orchards in here. There's definitely some fake orchards upstairs.

• 41:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:36Steven Bartlett?

  You went for the real ones. In Pret, one of the things that's ultimately defined the brand, called culture at the right time, is the fact that the food is all completely fresh.

• 41:45Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 41:45Steven Bartlett?

  So none of it has a sell by date.

• 41:47Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 41:47Steven Bartlett?

  It doesn't stay there till tomorrow, ever. These small sort of concerns with detail, how defining have they been for you in hindsight? Because sometimes people are told not to sweat the small stuff.

• 41:58Speaker 00

  Yeah. Okay, so quite a lot of this stuff is, to me at the time, is just kind of obvious. In other words, if your product, if you want, expect your customers to be loyal to you, you've got to treat them with, treat them with respect. You've got to sell them something worth, worthy of their hard-earned money.

• 42:13Steven Bartlett?

  But people care about the bottom line. You get, that costs you more money.

• 42:16Speaker 00

  Oh no, that's ridiculous. I'm not a very good accountant. I, I don't, I'm not interested in, in the numbers of the, at all. I'm far more interested in the relationships with the customer and the staff and the product. The numbers are just to look after themselves. They really, really, really do. And anyway, I've always been lucky to be, to have wonderful, brilliant people around me who are much better than I at numbers.

• 42:41Steven Bartlett?

  Same.

• 42:42Speaker 00

  I hate numbers. They're so boring. I shouldn't say that because without the numbers, you can't grow. So I feel very strongly that we have to have numbers which enable us to grow because if we can grow, we can feed more people and then we can give opportunities.

• 42:55Steven Bartlett?

  Someone's told you that after the fact. I can tell that wasn't your default position.

• 42:59Speaker 00

  It was a bit, exactly. But I find the numbers awfully boring compared to the product and the relationships with the people. Um, they're just like a school report in a way, aren't they? Um. If you want to give away and refuse to keep all your sandwiches to the next day, and what's more, drive them in a van to the homeless people who need them. Clearly, they've got to be delicious, you know, got to taste good enough. So people will pay fifty p more or thirty p more, and that's just basic common sense, isn't it? I think the whole number thing is reasonable, it's just common sense.

• 43:32Steven Bartlett?

  So you never even, at Pret, you didn't even throw the food away, you would drive it in a van.

• 43:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, we had to, even when we were making no profits, we had a van to take it to the homeless. Yeah, every, of course. Yeah, because you can't expect people to make this stuff, to make the food with pride and then throw it away. Yeah, we're obsessed about not, not, not, not throwing it away. You can't, can't throw it away. Uh, and then if you take the piss out of your customers, you'll lose them. Don't you find it extraordinary how often you get shocking service where you've spent a lot of money and no one gives a damn? And I'm not going to name big companies, but I can think of some companies where I've spent five or six thousand pounds on something, and they don't answer. I mean, it can be shocking, and they still don't care.

• 44:17Speaker 00

  Oh, my God, I will answer every customer now, today, if customers write to me, I'll answer them before I go to bed, no question.

• 44:24Steven Bartlett?

  At Pret, the other thing that was quite, I remember hearing about and thinking, oh, that's cool and different, is one in every hundred coffees or something you would give away to.

• 44:33Speaker 00

  No, it wasn't that. No, it was much more than that, it's like.

• 44:35Steven Bartlett?

  Was it?

• 44:35Speaker 00

  Okay, so we didn't have a loyalty scheme for years and years and years because we, we couldn't quite know what to do and I couldn't. But what I realized is very, very early on, I think in Pret number twelve or something, we said, I know that. What we'll do is we'll encourage everyone who works there to give whatever they want away to whoever they want to. Um, that was wonderful. We used to do these things called Buddy Days, where the whole office, everyone had a Buddy shop. And, um, and my Buddy shop was Oxford, but we used to, you could give away five or six or ten products every single day to anyone, a regular customer, someone who had a long face,

• 45:16Speaker 00

  someone you fancied, it just didn't matter. Give, because when you do good stuff, it always comes back. You get it back, you've got to think long term. And so this was a good example of where we begged everyone who worked for us, just be kind, give it away. They exceed the expectations, customers, they'll come back. And you know what? Shall I tell you the most extraordinary thing? Some of the most. Profitable shops, short term, short term, we found weren't giving anything away. So the manager was saying to us, no, no, no, no, no giveaways, no giveaways. Because their margins, their profit margin was better. So we introduced a button on the till called the joy of Pratt. I didn't do this, Clive did this.

• 45:57Speaker 00

  He introduced a system whereby at the press of a button on the computer could tell us every single store which wasn't giving away enough. Because when you gave something away, you had to press, you registered on the till as a giveaway. So we quickly found out all the managers who were being, who were running their businesses too tight, they were being a bit mean. They thought

• 46:19Speaker 00

  they were doing a good job by delivering more profit. What, what, what they didn't realize is no, no, to do a great job, you need to build a long term relationship with your staff and your, your customers. So give them a coffee, give them a croissant, just do it.

• 46:32Steven Bartlett?

  Do you have any evidence numerically to support that that worked?

• 46:35Speaker 00

  No, none, zero. And everyone used to come in professionals and consultants, just say, this is ridiculous. What are you doing? Your loyalty scheme is a joke. And I just, what can you say?

• 46:51Speaker 00

  Just, no, fuck off, fuck off.

• 46:55Speaker 00

  It works great. But, but it can't, it, you know, different, different.

• 47:02Steven Bartlett?

  It works great, but you can't prove it. That's the typical CEO thing. It's like trying to explain it to a CFO. It's just like, just believe.

• 47:09Speaker 00

  Just believe it, yeah. The only reason we're sitting here now, you and I, is because multiple times we've just made decisions like this. Half the time we've had to pretend to people we work with, we know what we're talking about. But in fact, we have complete no idea. But if it feels right and you think long term, you do it. You just persuade them, you pretend you know.

• 47:31Steven Bartlett?

  You justify it in hindsight.

• 47:32Speaker 00

  Yeah, of course.

• 47:34Steven Bartlett?

  You find some study.

• 47:35Speaker 00

  Find some study or just say, let's try it. And then, and then they say, no, no, and then finally you say, we're gonna try it.

• 47:44Steven Bartlett?

  I wonder sometimes about how, you know, in your story and in my story, how our traumas and how our experiences with authority or with our parents or with shitty corporate jobs we had ended up shaping the decisions we made in our businesses and defining us. Because that's why I referenced naivety, not knowing the correct answers and in some cases, having a problem with rules and authority end up creating a more modern culture that.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  I think so. Yeah, I'm sure.

• 48:10Steven Bartlett?

  I see it over and over again.

• 48:11Speaker 00

  I bet you all the crap we went through definitely helped us break through and just, just do things differently. Must do. When you know something doesn't work, why not just try something else?

• 48:22Steven Bartlett?

  That's why founder led businesses, even, you know, you think about Steve Jobs' perspective on the world to remove that keyboard and to do those small decisions that they made. Maybe it was driven by ego insecurity or whatever, but it, but for some reason, it gives people courage of their convictions to create new things, new ways.

• 48:39Speaker 00

  And also a never ending pursuit for the better detail, to make something better. And it's endless. That's the thing about the food business. It is truly endless.

• 48:49Steven Bartlett?

  Why did I read that you don't like ambitious managers in your business? I read that you like slow and beautiful growth. Very ambitious people are a pain in the ass.

• 48:58Speaker 00

  Often very ambitious people, often, not always, but often a very short term. And they're really hiding all their crap for their own personal, their own personal gain, which I understand. They've got, they've got their own goals. They've got their own desires. They've got their own dreams of their own house, this car, this house, this school, this whatever the hell it is. But that can be incredibly destructive to someone like myself and my team and an organisation, which I take like a 30 year view to everything I do. I really do. 30 years, which drives, must drive some people I work with up the wall, but I really like to think 30 years. 30 years. Must be. And if you, if you get

• 49:42Speaker 00

  someone who's very powerful in your business, who's thinking three years, well, look at that, look, and that's, that's quite common in commerce, as you know. So they can, they can, they can move mountains and, but, but then the mountains crumble. That's boring. It's a waste of everyone's energy and passion and, and love and everything.

• 50:03Steven Bartlett?

  In May two thousand and eighteen, you sold your final stake in Pret.

• 50:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:08Steven Bartlett?

  Why?

• 50:09Speaker 00

  Because I wasn't, oh, I wasn't asked. I had no choice. The new owners of Pret a Manger have nothing to do with me. I met them, I've met them once for five minutes. They, they probably think I'm an absolute idiot. They have, I've never met them. They have no interest in working with me. That's their choice. It's completely, you know, that, that is, that's their choice. I hope it works for them.

• 50:35Steven Bartlett?

  So you own the business with your co-founder and then?

• 50:38Speaker 00

  Oh, that's a long, yeah, it's a long story. Pret started in eighty six and.

• 50:42Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. I'm trying to understand.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  I brought a founder in who was, who I, who I met at, at college, who was much, much cleverer than me, much more disciplined than me. And I had this really strong vision of, of, of wanting to do this. But I knew I was smart enough back then to know I needed someone who was respectful of numbers and discipline and the law. So I said to him, look, if you leave your job, I'll give you half this company. And he did. He was brave. He had a good job and he left his job. And I think probably in the end, after about fifteen years, we, we've become immensely successful, the two of us. And he wanted to retire. I think the pace, the, my endless, never-ending pushing on the vision

• 51:25Speaker 00

  of what this could be probably drove him mental. But he, he, he was smart. He, he retired. He works a bit now, but he kind of retired completely, which I respect completely. That was his choice.

• 51:37Steven Bartlett?

  Did it suck at the time when Sinclair told you that he was gonna retire?

• 51:39Speaker 00

  No, no, no, no. It was, I rather admired him. I could never do that. I really admire people who, who are able to take control of their life like that. I can't.

• 51:48Steven Bartlett?

  Are you being dragged?

• 51:50Speaker 00

  What's that mean, being dragged?

• 51:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, so take control of their life like that. So.

• 51:54Speaker 00

  No, no, I genuinely, I promise you, I think people who are able to, to take control and I'm, I'm gonna go walking in the, in the bloody jungle for six months. I have nothing but admiration for people who can do that.

• 52:04Steven Bartlett?

  So that's why I ask if you're being dragged, because like we said earlier, you're admiring something that you don't have yourself.

• 52:09Speaker 00

  Yeah, I don't have it. I don't have it, I'm. So you don't have control of your life? I do have control of my life because I definitely make the choice to do what I do. But you couldn't stop. And I love it. I really, I'm happiest creating. There's no question, I'm completely in love with what I do. I love it. I really enjoy it. That may sound weird, but it's the truth. I love it. I don't want to be walking in the jungle. I love doing what I'm doing. Every day, I've just had a food meeting now. It was fantastic. We've cracked something we've been working on for a year. We cracked it today. It's incredible. And millions of people will eat this thing in a year from now. And it's because of our relentless passion and hard work to get this thing right. And today, I think we cracked it. And that's wonderful.

• 52:54Speaker 00

  And then earlier this morning, we cracked a bit of design, which was incredible. I really enjoy it. So I don't want to be in the jungle. He did. He wanted to retire and I respect that. But it left me in the ship because we didn't have any paperwork between us. And suddenly, uh, different kinds of people came into the business. And they were much more formal and some of the joy went out of it. Did he sell his stake at that point? Uh, yeah, he sold a chunk of it. But it really changed. It became professional. Uh, and then, and then private equity came in. I mean, we had a very good private equity company, a UK one. They were, they were fine. They were very honorable, decent people. But it was definitely, um, the business became more about becoming a very successful business

• 53:36Speaker 00

  than, than developing a very beautiful relationship with a customer and staff. And it was acquired by McDonald's? No, that's not true. No, what happened is, um, for a very short period of time, McDonald's owned thirty percent of it. Okay. Because I thought McDonald's, or no, I didn't. At the time, the leader, the CEO of the business persuaded me that McDonald's would teach us the disciplines we didn't have about global expansion. And I, in the end, I kind of caved in. I thought it was a pretty weird idea, but I caved in. But after, it was pretty obvious after a few months, it was a bad idea because, you know, they didn't really understand our business. But I'll tell you what, there was a very, very powerful distinction between

• 54:16Speaker 00

  a pursuit of real beauty of a product and a relationship with your customers and your staff to running a business and, and generating sales. It's driving it two different outcomes, right? Two completely different. A really clever person can do both.

• 54:34Speaker 00

  And we did do both. The the business was then run by a friend of mine who's I'm I still work with now. I have huge respect for and he did a great job. But in the end, the business was then, of course, sold in two thousand one. Was it eighteen?

• 54:47Steven Bartlett?

  Eighteen.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. And will the business continue to thrive? I I don't know. I hope so. I I just honestly don't know. But they certainly don't want anything to do with me.

• 54:55Steven Bartlett?

  Are you disappointed in the way the business is?

• 54:57Speaker 00

  No, I'm not disappointed.

• 54:59Steven Bartlett?

  But do you ever walk in there and go, because I know I did when I left my company, when I resigned, my company had gone public. And I remember walking, seeing things they're doing and seeing seeing the office and hearing this story and thinking, oh, fuck, they've lost the special.

• 55:11Speaker 00

  No, no, no. I think on the whole, for years, the relationship between the company and its members of staff has been wonderful. So I'm often inspired by that. And I've never, no, I never think that. I think I don't know.

• 55:22Steven Bartlett?

  You never walked in and gone, if I was still running this?

• 55:25Speaker 00

  No, I don't really. What I think I sometimes go in, I think, wow, I wonder what just think what that could be. And then I think, God, how complicated that would be to get it there. And thank God, I'm not doing both, because that's what I'm doing on a daily basis now with with Itsu. Because Itsu will become in five, ten years from now, a really remarkable home for affordable nutritious food. That's it's that's what it will be. There's no question that's what it is becoming. It's hard to see that right now, because it sells too much raw fish. You know, thirty percent of our sales are a product which it used to be ninety percent. It's now down to fifty, I think, or something. But we're we're changing and

• 56:09Speaker 00

  developing all the time now, getting faster and faster at the reinvention of the company.

• 56:14Steven Bartlett?

  I couldn't quite figure out where the crossover happened between Itsu and Pret.

• 56:18Speaker 00

  Well, ninety seven, the first Itsu opened.

• 56:20Steven Bartlett?

  While you were still?

• 56:21Speaker 00

  I was at Pret and and we had a supplier, a wonderful, the head of marketing at the Japanese centre was a young Japanese woman. And she said to me, I said to her, why day, why are you working for this terribly boring company? Why don't you open a Japanese restaurant, which is affordable? Because in those days, Japanese restaurants were really stuck up, really expensive, really boring. And and she said to me, OK, I'll leave my job if you help, if you pay for it. So I said, OK, I'll pay for it. You lose your you you leave your job. I promised you two weeks later, she rang me up, she said, I've left my job.

• 56:58Steven Bartlett?

  Love that.

• 56:59Speaker 00

  And I said, what have you done? What have you? So I suddenly found myself with this responsibility to open a restaurant. Um. So when we found a site and we opened the first Itsu, which was very different from what it is now, but it was a start. And from that start, we built seventy six or something of of them. And then about five years ago, we started developing it so it could become the future. But but we had to open seventy six and keep it private. It was a hundred percent private company. I never ever again wanted to end up in a situation where I owned a minority where the business would take over. In other words, you will do this, you will do this, we will deliver these profits and we don't care about your vision.

• 57:42Speaker 00

  So I was able to build it to such an extent with the team that we owned it, all of it.

• 57:47Steven Bartlett?

  And now you have, what, seventy five stores in total?

• 57:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:49Steven Bartlett?

  Seventy four in the UK.

• 57:50Speaker 00

  We're opening in lots of interesting places, really fascinating. Just now, in the next twelve months, we're opening, I think we open Bromley next week, but it's changing so much.

• 58:01Steven Bartlett?

  What's the worst crisis you've ever had in your business?

• 58:05Speaker 00

  Well, I wasn't there. Uh. I'd left Pret when the crisis happened, when the the the um sesame incident of that poor girl who had food allergies. I wasn't there then. That must have been very difficult for everyone then. And and and the ups and downs, as you know, as you will have experienced in your business, there are ups and downs every week, every month. So you often think this is a, this is, funny enough, I think most of my job today is telling people not to worry. A lot of people I work with um come to me and say that we're in terrible, this is, and I, no, it's not, it's gonna be fine.

• 58:37Steven Bartlett?

  This sesame incident.

• 58:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:38Steven Bartlett?

  You're referring to is a young girl.

• 58:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:41Steven Bartlett?

  Who had an allergic reaction to a sesame seed?

• 58:45Speaker 00

  A baguette.

• 58:46Steven Bartlett?

  In a, in a big, in a baguette.

• 58:48Speaker 00

  She had serious food allergies and she had bought without, her mother wasn't there and she bought a baguette and and ate it, which was covered in sesame seeds. I mean, it was tragic, really, really sad. And as a result of that, Natasha's Law has changed, uh, brought in far more labeling, food labeling in this country.

• 59:06Steven Bartlett?

  It's called Natasha's Law?

• 59:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, after her. But it was very painful for her, her family and everyone, uh, uh, uh, proud, it was awful.

• 59:17Speaker 00

  But the crisis, uh, they'll come thick and fast and we'll be fine.

• 59:23Speaker 00

  We'll be fine.

• 59:26Steven Bartlett?

  How can you be so sure?

• 59:28Speaker 00

  Because, because just stick to the truth. The truth is,

• 59:37Speaker 00

  you know, the truth is good in the sense that of all the things which could go catastrophically wrong, we kind of know about them with regard to the dangers of being on our businesses. Health and safety, for instance, we have a five star record, the highest record in this country. Every single one is five star, always. No one else has achieved that before. And that is because the head, the C O O of our company has a fantastic relationship with the head of, it's awesome, unbelievable. Our head of safety got up on stage last week and the entire two hundred and twenty people just completely clapped. I mean, it says a lot because usually those people, you know. So there's culturally, that says something.

• 1:00:20Speaker 00

  So health and safety in our industry is really, really a fear. What else? All kinds of things.

• 1:00:26Steven Bartlett?

  Did that incident with Natasha, she fifteen year old drops dead on a plane, from what I read, did it change you in any way? Did it make you think differently about? Because that's, for me, that's the inconceivable. It almost reminds me of Bob Iger.

• 1:00:43Speaker 00

  You're at Disney.

• 1:00:44Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, Bob Iger's book about a four year old that was playing at Disney and a crocodile comes out of the Disney pond and eats him.

• 1:00:50Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:00:51Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah.

• 1:00:51Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:00:52Steven Bartlett?

  And Bob Iger about to go up on stage in Asia, gets a message from his senior leadership team saying, a four year old at Disney has just been eaten by a crocodile. And, I mean, it had a pretty profound impact on him, to say the least. So.

• 1:01:07Speaker 00

  Well.

• 1:01:09Steven Bartlett?

  He was the chief exec at the time.

• 1:01:10Speaker 00

  I know that it was terribly hard for the senior team at practice, although they hadn't, I mean, they, everything they'd done was completely within the law. Not that that, who cares about that, but it was, I mean, it was, you know, the, it was just a, a number of terrible things which, which took place, should never have happened.

• 1:01:31Steven Bartlett?

  A really remarkable thing happened in your life at a certain age when you found out you had a daughter out of the blue.

• 1:01:38Speaker 00

  Yeah. I had a feeling you were gonna ask about that. That went public, didn't it? Yes, okay, so my, yeah, that is absolutely true and I work with Celeste now, she's on the board and she sits next to me two days a week and it's incredible.

• 1:01:54Steven Bartlett?

  I had at some point in my early life, a man walk in, he walked into my mum's shop and he said that he was my uncle. Turns out he was. I didn't know I had any uncles in this country. Turns out I did. But tell me about that day for you. What, how did it happen? How do you find out? And what, what age are you when you find out you have a?

• 1:02:13Speaker 00

  It was about fifteen years ago.

• 1:02:15Steven Bartlett?

  And she was twenty six.

• 1:02:16Speaker 00

  I was about forty five.

• 1:02:17Steven Bartlett?

  You were forty five, she was twenty six.

• 1:02:18Speaker 00

  No, she was nineteen.

• 1:02:19Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, nineteen.

• 1:02:20Speaker 00

  She had just started at Bristol University. And her mother called me, who I hadn't seen for ages. And obviously I had absolutely no idea that her daughter was my daughter. No, absolutely no, I'd never met her, I had no idea. And her mother asked to see me, so I said, yes, me and we met in, we met in the King's Road. And she told me, I sat down, I.

• 1:02:41Steven Bartlett?

  Weren't you suspicious when she asked to see you?

• 1:02:44Speaker 00

  No, I wasn't suspicious, I certainly wasn't suspicious of that. I thought maybe she needed help or I, I don't know.

• 1:02:52Speaker 00

  But she was a kind of cool, intelligent, rather wonderful, eccentric, brilliant woman. So I remembered her very fondly, I hadn't seen her for ages, but, so I met her immediately and she, and she just told me there and then, my daughter, I have a daughter and she's your, she's your daughter. So I asked her, when did you tell her and how's it gone down? And she said, I told her two weeks ago, not well. So then we, then I tried to contact her, she was a bit standoffish, it was hard to get through to her for a few days. And then I drove up to Bristol University and we met.

• 1:03:26Speaker 00

  We met and I had nothing but, but an overwhelming desire to, a deep overwhelming desire to get in there and, and try my hardest to build her muscle and her strength and her, you know, what, what had happened to her was incredibly unjust. And I wanted, from the depth of my heart, to do everything I could to try and repair it. And I will do that and continue to do that to the day I die. And she's fantastic and she's really close to my children and my other two and, you know, it could be much worse. But I feel this is not an easy thing to go through for her.

• 1:04:09Speaker 00

  Not an easy thing for anyone to go through.

• 1:04:13Speaker 00

  So she's strong, she has, she's married, she has two kids and a third one on the way and she's really rather remarkable.

• 1:04:20Steven Bartlett?

  So the person she thought was her father.

• 1:04:23Speaker 00

  Wasn't.

• 1:04:23Steven Bartlett?

  Wasn't.

• 1:04:24Speaker 00

  Correct.

• 1:04:27Steven Bartlett?

  And why, why hadn't her mother told her who her father was?

• 1:04:32Speaker 00

  Because her mother, I don't, she wasn't, uh.

• 1:04:36Speaker 00

  I don't, when, when this happened, they, they weren't close, the mother and the father, they weren't, they really weren't close, if you understand what I'm saying, they really weren't that close. And he, the, the father figure was pretty distant through her life. And when she got to the age of eighteen, I think probably more distant. And I think the mother realised that this couldn't go on forever. And she, the mother was very brave. She took this hugely brave decision. Do I tell her the truth or do I not? I have nothing but respect and absolute admiration for the mother having the courage to tell her daughter the truth. It must have been agony.

• 1:05:11Speaker 00

  Agony all round, but she did the right thing.

• 1:05:14Steven Bartlett?

  What was it like arriving to Bristol University that day?

• 1:05:18Speaker 00

  Oh, what's it like when you, you funny, you know, when a, when a child's yours, I can assure you, you know immediately. You just know. So it was lovely.

• 1:05:30Speaker 00

  It was lovely. I was really, uh. Funny enough, things like that you would have thought would be completely, totally crushing for someone who wasn't that well equipped to deal with that sort of shit. But actually, I found it one really, really, really enriching. And the way my two boys embraced her was incredible. It was really an opportunity to really shine and, uh, and do, and it was great. It's, it's, it's, it's. You know, I have nothing but admiration for the way she's handled it. Anyway, she, let's change the subject because she went like this.

• 1:06:10Steven Bartlett?

  But you work together now, which is awesome.

• 1:06:11Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah, of course we do.

• 1:06:12Steven Bartlett?

  She, she, she works in the marketing team? She leads marketing?

• 1:06:15Speaker 00

  No, she, she leads the brand and she's on the board and she's been extremely helpful from day one. She ran the marketing team for four years, actually. She was bloody good at it.

• 1:06:26Speaker 00

  But now she has three children or about to.

• 1:06:28Steven Bartlett?

  Sounds like a really nice movie to me. What are you scared of?

• 1:06:34Speaker 00

  Uh, what am I scared of? Uh, oh my God, I'm scared of death.

• 1:06:38Steven Bartlett?

  Really?

• 1:06:39Speaker 00

  I think.

• 1:06:40Steven Bartlett?

  You did say you were scared.

• 1:06:41Speaker 00

  I'm quite a hypochondriac. I'm scared of that. Uh, that's about it.

• 1:06:46Speaker 00

  Maybe that's, that's about it.

• 1:06:48Steven Bartlett?

  Why does death scare you?

• 1:06:50Speaker 00

  No, I think just, just the whole thing with health and not paying enough attention to your health and, and it's completely beyond one's control. I mean, totally. When that goes, you're in, when that, when you're in trouble, you're in trouble. And that could happen tomorrow. So that, it doesn't really scare me. I don't ponder on it too much. But I think we're all hypos. Me, my sons are hypo. My wife Brooke is not a hypo. I spent my life saying I'm dying. She, she, and then troubled, I've cried wolf so many times.

• 1:07:23Speaker 00

  And then one of my stepdaughters is quite into medicine, so I refer my illnesses to her quite a lot.

• 1:07:29Steven Bartlett?

  Or any of these illnesses real?

• 1:07:31Speaker 00

  So, no, so far we've had quite a lot of false.

• 1:07:38Speaker 00

  We're not gonna go there. But the fact is, yeah, I, I'm not even, I'm not even feared death. No, I don't fear, I don't think I fear anything, actually. I really don't. There's no time to fear. It's all time to hope. Hope and believe and hope and, and, and, yeah. The, the, it's incredible what people can do. Not just, not me, but all the people around me.

• 1:08:02Steven Bartlett?

  If I had a recipe here and it's the recipe of happiness, what are the ingredients on your recipe?

• 1:08:09Speaker 00

  Listen, I, I, I, I, I don't think about it. I really, really don't. I, I can think about that I'm not unhappy. I'm very, very privileged and I'm very lucky to be not unhappy. I have all the material things. I have food, warmth, love, I have everything. So the idea of me pondering on how I could be happier is kind of ridiculous. For me, the concept of thinking about how, how I could be happier is kind of, I mean, really? I'm, I've not got enough. Got everything. I'm so lucky. I'm happy.

• 1:08:43Steven Bartlett?

  Are you happy?

• 1:08:43Speaker 00

  Yeah, whatever. Yeah.

• 1:08:46Speaker 00

  I'm not unhappy.

• 1:08:48Steven Bartlett?

  It's a different thing. There's unhappiness and there's happiness. Are you happy? Is it different? I remember the day my girl-

• 1:08:53Speaker 00

  I'm often happy. Listen, I get up on Monday and I can't wait to work, to, to race to work with so many people I, I admire, love and trust.

• 1:09:03Speaker 00

  And I leave home surrounded by people who I love, admire and trust. Christ, what more could you possibly want than that? I don't know.

• 1:09:13Speaker 00

  But it didn't come by accident. So I don't want, I'm not, I'm not, I'm not just saying luck fell in my lap. That's going to be confusing for anyone who's watching this. I got into this situation through um doing a lot and working and acting on the evidence. In other words, when things don't work out, it's obvious. Change it, work harder, if, you know.

• 1:09:35Speaker 00

  It's the same with your personal relationships. This is all within our domain. We can all do this.

• 1:09:40Steven Bartlett?

  What advice would you give to me in my, you've, you know, your career's spanned longer than mine?

• 1:09:44Speaker 00

  I'm older, I'm much older than you.

• 1:09:45Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah, a little bit, little bit.

• 1:09:47Speaker 00

  Well, I don't, I think you're on the right track. I mean, that is why you are, you stand out as being, uh, this, you know, very, you've had a huge amount of success at a very young age. So if I was you, I'd just, just stick to what's working.

• 1:10:01Speaker 00

  And your endless pursuit of transparency and truth, that is what's got you to where you are today. Actually, you, you don't, don't underestimate. Uh, I don't know how often anyone in your life congratulates you or pats you on the back. But I think you must carry on as you are with showing great empathy and, and warmth. So even on, I've watched on Dragon's Den, it's interesting that you, I've noticed you never put anyone down. You somehow, very human the way you deal with, with everything. So your ability to work within the world of truth is, is fabulous. So just don't lose it. Don't lose it and don't forget however much the money's all crap.

• 1:10:48Steven Bartlett?

  We have a closing tradition on this podcast where the last guest asks a question to the next guest and they never know who they're asking it to. So in a nice way, all the guests are talking to each other and they write it in this book and I don't get to read it. If I, if I try and peek, Jack does, he actually, he like shoo's me off with the, hits me with the book.

• 1:11:06Speaker 00

  Okay. I thought about this last night, so I can easily do that.

• 1:11:10Steven Bartlett?

  You don't know what the question is.

• 1:11:12Speaker 00

  Oh God, you're gonna ask me the question?

• 1:11:13Steven Bartlett?

  Yes.

• 1:11:14Speaker 00

  Oh Lord. I, I've thought about my question.

• 1:11:16Steven Bartlett?

  Okay, good.

• 1:11:17Speaker 00

  Okay. So let's, oh no, I wonder who this was.

• 1:11:21Steven Bartlett?

  Oh, okay. Interesting.

• 1:11:23Speaker 00

  You really don't know what it is?

• 1:11:25Steven Bartlett?

  On my mother's life, I do, I do not look. And sometimes we have a problem because the handwriting can be an issue. But Jack always checks and I'll, I'll say what else happens. Jack will tell me if it's a shit question. So if we had one guy was like, what's your favorite meal deal? So Jack told me.

• 1:11:37Speaker 00

  Oh goodness sake.

• 1:11:38Steven Bartlett?

  Yeah. After this, so Jack was like, Steve, the question's shit. I was like, oh fuck. But it only happens once in a while. You can keep that in. Jack mate, you bastard, ruining my show.

• 1:11:49Steven Bartlett?

  He's my friend, so it's okay. And he actually knows. He watched the next episode and was like, he didn't ask the question.

• 1:11:53Speaker 00

  Are we allowed to know who are, who asked the question?

• 1:11:56Steven Bartlett?

  You're not allowed to know.

• 1:11:57Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:11:57Steven Bartlett?

  One day you'll be able to find out though, because we're going to release them all as cards. So, but anyway, the question that's left for you. What is an inadequacy?

• 1:12:10Steven Bartlett?

  You admit to that you could work on starting tomorrow?

• 1:12:16Speaker 00

  Honestly, I mean, where do you begin with something like that? I mean, it's a perfectly good question, but the list is so long. So the only way you can answer a question like that is, is to choose the biggest inadequacy. And I wouldn't even know how to do that. I think what I need to do, and we all need to do, is embrace all our inadequacies and, and know what they are and accept them and, and thrive knowing they're there. That's what we need to do. Yeah, I'm not going to give you, I'm not going to answer that question by saying, oh, I could, I could, I could, I could kiss my wife goodnight, you know, or that I do that anyway. Or I could go to the gym more. I could the hundreds of things. I'm a very inadequate person.

• 1:13:02Steven Bartlett?

  What about in your relationships then? Cause you, you've referenced kissing your wife.

• 1:13:05Speaker 00

  Well, my relationships are, there's so much I could do better with all my relationships. I honestly don't know where to start, but at least I'm aware of that.

• 1:13:15Steven Bartlett?

  What are you aware of?

• 1:13:16Speaker 00

  I'm aware of the fact that uh to create the way I do, to work the way I do, comes at a cost.

• 1:13:23Steven Bartlett?

  And the cost is?

• 1:13:24Speaker 00

  And the cost is I don't spend enough time nurturing, loving and being supportive to the people I love most. That's just a fact. Do I regret it? No. Do I accept it? Yes. Do they? I pray.

• 1:13:42Speaker 00

  And when I'm gone, and if if we continue to build something remarkable, they'll know that

• 1:13:50Speaker 00

  we're all part of this together. This was made possible by by them and and and myself together with the team.

• 1:13:57Steven Bartlett?

  Have you ever had that feedback from them?

• 1:13:59Speaker 00

  No.

• 1:14:00Steven Bartlett?

  Being as loving?

• 1:14:00Speaker 00

  No, they've never they've never actually outrightly criticised me for it, but I'm aware of it. I mean, I'd have to be an idiot, you know, you don't have children. You're not married, you're in a relationship, right?

• 1:14:14Steven Bartlett?

  Mm hmm.

• 1:14:15Speaker 00

  So you you this is all stuff for you to face in the future.

• 1:14:18Steven Bartlett?

  I get the feedback, that's why I asked the question. Yes, I did. I find out about most about myself from my girlfriend turning to me and saying, she's been with me for three years or something like that, three years isn't enough, saying something to me and me going, what are you talking about? What? And then walking away and going, fuck, she's right.

• 1:14:31Speaker 00

  No, I I my my all my children, Misha, my son, my eldest son works in the business and he is fanatical and brilliant and works really hard. Billy, my youngest son, is a very talented artist. Uh, and Celeste is is there too. So those three are all, they understand exactly what it's like to be completely committed and and work really, really, really hard. My four stepchildren, equally, the youngest ones just got into an incredible university. Uh, my eldest one, Ines, they're all very committed and my wife is just the same. I've never known a a person with more energy, more determination, who's more supportive and generous and loving. So

• 1:15:14Speaker 00

  if I've let them all down, they've done a bloody good job of not telling me.

• 1:15:18Steven Bartlett?

  When was the last time you cried?

• 1:15:20Speaker 00

  Oh, I cry in movies all the time.

• 1:15:26Speaker 00

  Brooke says I cry at all the wrong things, like I cry in movies, I cry in this and this, but I don't. She thinks it's weird. She thinks it's really weird to cry in, you know, The Voice or something. I don't think it is, it makes me really moved.

• 1:15:43Steven Bartlett?

  What about it makes you moved?

• 1:15:44Speaker 00

  Well, you know, when you see a young terrified person come on and perform way beyond their expectations and do a remarkable job, particularly when they're young and they have no confidence, but they're just remarkable. Just, just people who dare, dare take a huge risk. Don't you think, don't you find it, it's so incredible? The way people dare take a risk, it's what we all need to do. So everyone listening and watching needs to do more. Seek transparency, take a risk, say, say it, do it, just, just go for it. If some, you know, and you can do more than you think and you can say more than you do. So do it.

• 1:16:26Steven Bartlett?

  Julian, thank you.

• 1:16:27Speaker 00

  You're welcome.

• 1:16:28Steven Bartlett?

  It's been absolutely fascinating, amazing, inspiring conversation. Your, your personality is just so engaging.

• 1:16:37Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:16:38Steven Bartlett?

  And you're, I feel like I'm getting the truth, which is, which is really, really phenomenal. When you, as a speaker, especially in the medium of a podcast, the passion you have in everything you're saying is so captivating. It really, really is captivating. And I can imagine, I, I, now I understand the business and it's funny that, that now having met you and asked you these questions and sat here with you, I understand the love and the passion and the attention to detail and the care for the people. All of those things come through so much and I also think I know where it comes from.

• 1:17:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:05Steven Bartlett?

  And the, the journey you've had, that's led you to really prioritize treating people well.

• 1:17:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:17:10Steven Bartlett?

  Um, and, and creating things that are for the long term. So Julian, thank you.