Mark Selby | Wahaca - The Power of Staying Curious & Always Learning

From the hustle of finance to the heat of the kitchen, Mark Selby, co-founder of Wahaca, sits down with me to serve up a story that’s as flavourful as it is insightful. With a dash of serendipity, Mark recounts the pivotal moments that took him from the world of finance into the arms of the restaurant industry, alongside Thomasina Miers. Together, they've stirred up more than just tantalising dishes, giving birth to Wahaca in the vibrant heart of Covent Garden. Their tale is one of blending a passion for Mexican culture with a stringent ethos of sustainability, setting their restaurant group apart in the UK's competitive dining scene.

As we peel back the layers of Wahaca's journey, Mark doesn't shy away from the raw, often chaotic beginnings of restaurant life. Picture this: an opening night flooded with a flooded kitchen forcing it to close its doors for the day! Mark and Tommi's perseverance through staffing challenges and operational hurdles has seasoned Wahaca with resilience, transforming early struggles into the sweet taste of success and a coveted spot in the UK's sustainable dining sphere. Their story is a testament to the fact that the road to greatness is often paved with trials, and sometimes, the best spice in life is a little bit of chaos.

We wrap up our chat by toasting to innovation and the relentless drive for sustainability that marks the modern business landscape. Mark shares how curiosity and a pinch of competitiveness have led Wahaca to pioneer eco-conscious milestones, like introducing the UK's first carbon-negative beer on tap. It's a narrative that’s as much about the spirit of entrepreneurship as it is about the steadfast commitment to pushing the boundaries of what it means to be a sustainable, culture-rich dining experience. Pull up a chair and savor the rich, unfolding story of a restaurant that's as committed to the environment as it is to your taste buds.

Transcript

Jay Greenwood: 0:00

3, 2, 1, 0, and liftoff. Liftoff. Welcome to the Recipe for Greatness podcast. I'm your host, jay Greenwood, and today on the podcast we have Mark Selby, the entrepreneurial force behind Wahaka, one of UK's most cherished and sustainable restaurant groups. His journey took him from the finance world at Merrill Lynch, working in corporate M&A and innovative roles such as Easy Group, working directly under the founder Stelios, to the vibrant streets of Mexico that inspired Oaxaca's inception in 2007. Alongside co-founder Tomasina Mieres, a previous MasterChef winner, oaxaca was recently named the most sustainable restaurant chain by the consumer review company Witch. Mark and Thomasina are also founders of DF Tacos, described as the naughty little brother of Oaxaca. Mark, welcome to the podcast.

Mark Selby: 0:51

Good to be here. Thanks for having me on.

Jay Greenwood: 0:53

So I wanted to jump in and start at you at the age of, I think, 14 or 15. And I read that you said you wanted to work. Well, you knew you wanted to work in either theatre or hospitality or restaurants. So that's very different to what a lot of 15-year-olds vision for their future. So what made you build that idea or concept of that's where you wanted to go in the future and what kind of crafted that love?

Mark Selby: 1:22

I think I was. I was sort of brought up predominantly in London and you know it was always. It was the time when sort of you know the new age of Italian restaurants and things were sort of breaking out. I remember sort of just the absolute sort of thrill on a occasional Sunday when my parents would be like, right, we're going off to have us have sunday lunch in some sort of italian restaurant somewhere in in london and we'd, you know, in back in the day you'd sort of dress up a bit smartly and you'd you'd head off and just the sort of the, the thrill of walking into these spaces and he's incredibly sort of um, vivacious and uh, charismatic italian waiters who would be there, sort of full of charm and nothing was too much, and you just be transported into this sort of world of, of, um, you know, hospitality, which was very different and new at the time, um, and and sort of.

Mark Selby: 2:22

You know, for me there was always just that, that, that the food was important, but actually it was just the, it was the decor, it was the ambience, it was the way you were looked after and that, as a even sort of you know, from from 10 upwards, I'd say just just sort of really sort of enthralled and excited me and I always kind of in my mind, loved that side and then sort of on the equivalent side, I was very lucky that my, my parents were very generous and and quite often took us uh to kind of the theater, um, and I think my siblings uh were sometimes sort of a bit bored by it.

Mark Selby: 2:56

But I would you know again whether sometimes we'd go to you know an amazing you know very luckily you might go to an opera or more more normally just a regular play, but just again being transported to this sort of this world of stories and and differences to your day-to-day life, which I genuinely, as a young sort of boy absolutely loved and you know went on to, to do theatre all the way through school and university and things, and really that that was that sort of two passions of just of just food and what you could do with food, and then also that whole world of just of theater, from from set design to taking people to different places, to telling stories, um, and so for me that that really set a tone of of, I think, consumer behavior and actually wanted to be involved with how you can get consumers to think about things differently.

Mark Selby: 3:49

So, yeah, from from 14 or 15, without sort of going, I'm definitely going to do this. Those were always my kind of big excitements and drivers as to as to how I, how I kind of thought about life.

Jay Greenwood: 4:00

Amazing. Now I want to, as the natural world of podcasting, to jump around to a few different places. Now I wanted to dig into great co-founder relationships, especially over such a long period of time. Well, hack has been going for a long time now and you and Thomas which calls itself Tommy have been working together that time consistently. So how have you guys crafted such a strong working relationship? I guess maybe. So. I guess, back to the first time you guys met up in the pub to talk about you know, possibly doing something together, why did you consider actually taking on like a partnership journey together? And then, as you've grown, both personally and also career wise, how you've managed to continually have a successful relationship over time.

Mark Selby: 4:49

Yeah, I think it's a really difficult one, the sort of business partner relationship, and I think you know, tommy and I have been very lucky sort of in the way we work together, but also not necessarily without sort of you know, strange along the way, um, and we, so, as you say, we, we, we were introduced by a mutual friend. Tommy had just, uh, literally one master chef, um, sort of at the back end of 2005, um, and I sort of managed with, um, my investors, to basically secure finance to set up a restaurant, um, and it was going to be a mexican restaurant, and kind of knew, knew that and was excited about having. So I was working for the two co-founders of nando's at the time and I was helping to kind of think about how they were going to um launch in america and was just like looking around, going, wow, you've got these incredible mexican businesses over there which, um, you know, have this wonderful kind of ethos and America, and was just like looking around, going, wow, you've got these incredible Mexican businesses over there which, um, you know, have this wonderful kind of ethos and sustainability and and, um, and food, and thinking we don't have anything like that here. So, you know, I was conscious, having been in Mexico when I was 18, that I love Mexico, I love its vibrancy. But I was also very conscious that I get finance, I get business, I get consumer, I get marketing, I get innovation. I can do all those things sort of really well and I love it. What I'm not as a chef.

Mark Selby: 6:14

And so I was chatting to this friend of mine and I sort of had I was partly going to give it a go anyway and sort of find a chef and then this friend of mine just said well've got to meet tommy. She's the most passionate person you'll ever meet about mexican food. She lived out there for a year and a half. She likewise, when she was 18, to travel around mexico. Um, and it was just one of those sort of chart, you know, one of those chance moments you have, where we literally were put in touch. We met up a week later. We had a really good chat about what we were trying to achieve. We shook hands an hour later and we found ourselves in mexico three weeks later.

Mark Selby: 6:52

Um, and you know, I think there was definitely strains around what each of us wanted to do and I think we got to, you know, a really good compromise in the end. You know, tommy probably wanted to be, uh, a bit more kind of high end. I wanted to be I had very much in my mind a sort of wagamama, a slightly higher end version of wagamama, um, but where it was it was super casual, people could just pop in. It sort of had that sort of what I like to call, sort of some organized chaos to it where it was just know plates flying around everywhere. And so, you know, we started on that journey and I think, look, we were both.

Mark Selby: 7:32

None of us had really worked in restaurants as in run restaurants before, run kitchens before, and so we were lucky enough to have a few contacts. We had a great guy called Ian who came in and helped Tommy really kind of take her passion for food and Mexican food and turn them into workable recipes, um, I had a guy called Ed who was who's a sort of an ops director of another business, who just sort of helped in the early days, meant to just get me thinking about things in the right way, and then I had very, you know, brilliant investors who set up Nando's, who were just very, very good long term thinkers. So I think actually where we were lucky is it wasn't just us two. We managed to build a network of people who we could, we could work with and just call up. I mean, the amount of times in the early days I called up, you know one of the founders now is going shit, what the hell are we going to do about this? This doesn't work. I'm, you know, I'm the ship sinking and and he would always be like, okay, just take it slowly, things happen, you're going to get through this sort of thing. So you know, it'd be lovely to say we did it all alone. I don't think we did, and I think partly by having those other networks around, and particularly Tommy, who, tommy, was never sort of full-time in the business either.

Mark Selby: 8:46

She, you know, she wanted to go off, she was doing lots of sort of filming, she was writing books. So for me, you know, she was very much my kind of big support on the food side and the food development. And then I had sort of other support around setting up businesses and restaurants. You know, when you set up a restaurant, I think we you know the budget you know you spent you can spend a hell of a lot of money, you know, and you can lose control very quickly and I think our initial one I was like we're gonna do it for six or seven hundred, I think we spent 1.2 million, you know, and so all my cash had been burned already and I was like shit, you know. But you kind of you see little chinks of light along the way where you're like actually that's pretty cool. I think this is going to work, which kind of keeps you going and inspires you yeah, so funny about the budget we're talking.

Jay Greenwood: 9:32

before we jumped on about sort of the idea that I was thinking about setting up a place and I found a spot and I was talking to, like, say, mentors, people more experienced, and I thought you know, like a 50, 60 000 pound budget was realistic to recreate the space, and someone just laughed at me and said like, oh no, you're miles off on that sort of budget. You need to help. What?

Mark Selby: 9:50

is amazing. What is amazing and I'm sure we'll come on to talk about it is there are always ways to do things and I'm constantly. You know, a friend of mine set up Flatiron. Charlie used to work at Wahaka and you know I remember him coming and he did his first one. I think he spent three or four hundred grand. I was like there's no way you're going to be able to do it for that. And he did, you know, and it's. And I know other people who you know set up businesses and spent a hundred grand and made it work. So it there is always. You know, there is always a when someone says no, the great entrepreneur is the one that just keeps pushing that door and go. I'm going to make this work and if, if, all you've got is 60 grand, you can do it.

Jay Greenwood: 10:38

You will do it. You know that that's one of the things almost sort of you spend what you've got Absolutely. And you mentioned that. You know organized chaos. But I want to talk maybe about the chaos side of when you decided to actually open up the doors for your first restaurant and I guess I want to frame this all around sort of maybe some of the mistakes you made and how you think about those mistakes now and how they sort of helped you on in that journey. So maybe take us to sort of what it was like when you first opened the first restaurant and how it went.

Mark Selby: 11:02

Yeah, well, we looked, it was, it was, it was you know we were looking for. So tommy and I met in, uh, february 2006. We didn't open the first restaurant, um wahaka, until 2000, july 2007, in covent garden. So it took a long time, just sort of, you know, and I couldn't believe it. I was like, oh, we opened by june 2006. Um takes a hell of a long time in restaurants to find the best suitable restaurant at the right rent, the right price, the right location, etc. That took a long time. And then actually just menu development and you know we're doing some stuff with tf tacos at the moment which you know I'm like desperate to go. Can we get it open next week? And it's like you know we're now saying it's going to be at least july until we kind of get there, because you've got to even, you know, test sort of evolve.

Mark Selby: 11:47

But I think again, in the early days, we, you know, the one thing we did do, which was which I think, is that organized chaos and that sort of entrepreneurial attitudes we didn't actually and I don't think it was laziness, I think it was just like we'll make it work, sort of thing we didn't properly plan out how everything was going to work. You know we were the. We were the first people to come up with this concept of small plates. So now you go into a restaurant and it's you know everyone says order two to three plates per person. That that kind of didn't exist before. Kind of we did that and that very much came out of us in in um uh, sitting in tommy's kitchen with all these amazing dishes going. We're trying to bring this new style of mexican food over here which people don't know and if they just order one dish and they don't like it, that's going to be a bit of a problem. So we actually kind of reduced everything down to these sort of plate sizes, which would be much more enjoyable, where actually a table of three people could have, you know, 10 to 12 different flavor profiles and dishes. So one of the things when we started off, you know, suddenly realizing shit, we need a lot more people in the kitchen than we realized, because actually, rather than doing one plate per person, you're doing three plates per person and we don't want people waiting an hour for their food.

Mark Selby: 12:56

So when we first opened the doors it was pretty much 50 50 whether you're going to have a good experience. Some people sat down and you know they waited an hour for their food and this was supposed to be fast street food, um, and we went through this whole. I mean the first time, the first day. I think it was a Thursday lunch time. We opened at 12 o'clock our first day and we, about half an hour later, we had to close the restaurant because all of our drains had backed up. Um, and it was just like, oh my god, and I was just seeing money, just literally, instead of going down the drain, coming up the drain but trying to trying to go right, what do we do here? Um, and then, and then we opened and suddenly realized, god, we don't have enough people to serve everyone that's sitting down, we don't have enough team and people are waiting a long time.

Mark Selby: 13:43

And at this time we I think it was week two or three there was this big thing which I don't think exists anymore, but before it was, before social media effectively facebook was just being established, but, um, the whole sort of way you got stuff around, from a pr point of view, was sort of either newspapers or or email. That kind of email to newsletter thing was was very big, and there was a thing called daily candy and they put out in london this thing 350 000 people going, amazing new mexican restaurants just opening cotton garden, oaxaca. And that night was just the most chaotic night I've ever had in my life, where we had probably about five, six hundred people queuing to get into the restaurant and we were running out of everything. I was literally running out the back kitchen door. We were, we were free range chicken, um, but it was just like we had no choice. I had to literally go up to tesco's, take out the entire chicken, sort of uh shelving, bring it back, cook it terrible. You know, people were queuing and we just had. We didn't have enough people.

Mark Selby: 14:45

So after about three days of this chaos, I just said to my general manager, alex, who was equally as as sort of um, energetic and gung-ho as I was, just said you know what? Let's just let's just close half the restaurant. We can't, we can't keep giving people this sort of hit. I mean, some people are loving it and other people saying this is the worst experience I've ever had in my life because it's just crap in terms of service. So we ended up.

Mark Selby: 15:09

When you come into our common garden restaurant, it's sort of got a. You go in and it's a rectangle and then there's a corner turn and there's another rectangle coming off it and you can't see that from the entrance. So we literally just said, right, we're not going to seat anyone in this area. So people were queuing for like three hours and then would come in and go what the hell? You've got a whole rectangle empty. But through that we then managed it. And what?

Mark Selby: 15:31

We were super lucky because when we going back to pre-opening um, you know nowadays we're just opening our latest hacker in paddington, um, and we put out an ad on um to the usual channels and we had 400 people applied for for 12 jobs, which you know is amazing, the real testament to the brand. Back then we were opening in 12 days time. We put out this ad going it was on um gum tree at the time saying new rex can rest on opening sustainable. Wonderful, we have one person that that that wrote back going. They were interested in a job and they turned up and they were terrible um, but we had to hire them and we just had this band of people who, like us, didn't really have a clue what was going on.

Mark Selby: 16:16

But because of that success, of the queues. We then managed to very quickly go out to some of the top restaurants around covent garden and find and this is where my general manager, alex, was brilliant he just went out and just found really good waiters and said we, we need you, we've got this queue of people, we need great people, and through that it took about a month to get us to a place where we're like okay, we're now offering a sort of 75-25 experience rather than a 50-50. And so all that was just, you know, every day I mean, I literally, you know, just didn't stop working for six months. I don't think you just. Every day you're in fighting battles, oil leaks, things not turning up people.

Mark Selby: 16:57

You know complaints, and I think for me, my natural tendency is always to focus on what's not going well rather than what is going well. So there was very little time of sitting back going wow, we're nailing this. It was more just like oh my God, one person wasn't happy last night. What happened why? Why weren't they happy? Which, you know, is one thing I've definitely learned and evolved over time that you've got to kind of balance that out, because otherwise it's incredibly draining for everyone. I think the team was sort of hugely inspired by everything we're doing, but they were definitely drained by know people going constantly, me going okay, how do we get better? How do we get better? How do we get better? Um, so yeah, so that I think that sort of broadly summarizes the sort of the care. But we, you know, we got up to feeding six, seven thousand people a week out of this restaurant.

Jay Greenwood: 17:42

It was just, it was amazing and I want to move on to the next bit, but talk about a quote. Quote that you said. Now it's on the internet so I don't know if it's right or not, but you basically said hospitality right now feels like being in a boxing ring. You just keep getting punched, you get up again, but you keep fighting, and I wanted to sort of relate that back to a broader topic, that the restaurant and hospitality business is hard and your journey hasn't been shy of ups and downs, and I'm curious what makes you just keep going. Like you say, relating back to that quote, what's the motivation to just keep?

Mark Selby: 18:19

pushing on and keep going. I think I mean, I've got a huge sense of pride and purpose in what I do and I'm very competitive, but equally, I care about stuff, stuff. So for me, I would never do a business that I wasn't proud of and deeply proud of, um, and so the thing that you know, when all these sort of you know will come on to all the trials and tribulations over the last five, ten years in hospitality, but, um, I think it is literally sitting down with someone and having lunch or dinner in Oaxaca and tasting the food and seeing the smiles on the waiter's face, and having a cocktail, and I suddenly go, we're actually doing quite a good job here, and, and that genuinely is is the only thing that inspires me. Where, you know, I'm sitting with someone who goes, wow, this is, this is good food, and and and for value, for money, and, and that's the bit that makes me go. Okay, we've got something great here.

Mark Selby: 19:12

We've just got to keep going and keep pushing and keep this business going and we've got great. You know, we've got. It's all that, and again we'll touch on that, I'm sure, but it's all that great teamwork that goes with it and being part of a team and all the rest of it. So I think, yeah, that's it, and and all the rest of it. So I think that's it. And also, you know you're heavily invested. Once you set up a business, you know, and you've got millions of pounds of invested money and all the rest of it. You have a sense of responsibility to those guys to keep pushing and keep going.

Jay Greenwood: 19:44

Yeah, I completely agree, and I think with hospitality sometimes it can get wrapped up as too much as a business which it is, of course but there's something so beautiful about hospitality which I don't think many other industries can do, like that connection with, like, say, those two people having that dinner or a group of friends like you just can't get another experience. And I think you sort of we've been literally touched on there sort of the economic environment now with business rates and things like that you think it should be being a bit more done to actually, because how foundational they are to just core relationships between people is just insane yeah, I mean it's it's, it's, it's, it's sort of criminal.

Mark Selby: 20:15

The business rate side particularly. I think that that you've got these businesses who don't do anything to help communities, um workforces, as you say, mental sort of well-being, and all of that is about getting out having opportunities. And all of us in this world have been put in the hospitality world in the last five years through some generally well-intended things like minimum wage increases of 10% a year for the last seven years which, if you think about it, inflation has been running at 2%, apart from the last two years, obviously. But um wage inflation in hospital, you know, in in that sort of low income sort of size, been going up 10 and and we have to adapt that and not put our pricing up too much because we still want to be able to offer people a great value for money kind of proposition. So that side is, is is really difficult.

Mark Selby: 21:11

And and the business, yeah, I'm fighting kind of. But but business rates, when you're there going, how can you charge people who are trying to keep areas open, huge employees of people, huge developers of people, those sort of business rates? And then you got to things really badly thought out, things like apprentice levies, which is sort of two to three percent of your of your revenue, has to be put into this, this box called apprentice levy, which you then can't use in your business, because it's just that they've been so ill thought out that they only really work for sort of more sort of manufacturing and or office based environments, sort of manufacturing and and or office-based environments. So there's just lots of really sort of annoying things where you just don't feel the right support is in place to protect what is, you know, and that's hospitality and and everything from entertainment, theater, all those kind of elements I couldn't agree more.

Jay Greenwood: 22:05

Now I want to jump back to you and your first career uh, merrill lynch, working in m&A. Now that's a pretty lucrative potential career path. But you didn't stay there and I want to go back to that moment where you decided I think it was to send out 30 emails to sort of business leaders. So I want to dig into your approach about sort of why you decided to to reach out to these people and how did you craft that sort of conversation with them, to to reach out to these people, and how did you craft that sort of conversation with them and what was your goal?

Mark Selby: 22:35

yeah. So I I only ever really went into finance, uh, and it was something my dad heavily pushed and I you know forever thank him for it that you know he said, before you just go and do business, you should just go and understand business. Um, and I I did. You know, I was at university and I had this. I was at edinburgh and I was sort of in a play and I basically had a role in a play, um, in the edinburgh fringe, or I had a job opportunity at merrill lynch to do an internship in the summer and I had this big sort of you know toss up in my mind of like, okay, do I follow my heart, do I follow my kind of my brain on this one? So I ended up taking the internship and you know toss up in my mind of like, okay, do I follow my heart, do I follow my kind of my brain on this one? So I ended up taking the internship and, you know, at the end of that I was very luckily offered a job for the following summer, uh, to go back and full-time work at Merrill Lynch, um, but for me it was like it was always a stop gap of okay, uh, you know, I'm not. I'm I'm not a naturally sort of very, very financially driven person. For me it's about business. I love business and deals and consumer behavior and stuff like that. That's what enthralls me. And just sitting down doing endless pitches to people about how they can raise more money or how they can merge with this company or that company, wasn't that exciting.

Mark Selby: 23:56

The one thing that really excited me've worked on the burberry ipo and there was this phenomenal lady there called rosemary bravo, who'd taken burberry from almost a sort of you know, bankrupt business and basically built it into one of the in a period of about 10 years, into one of the big fashion powerhouses of the world. Um, and I was the analyst so the youngest person on that and I sort of wrote a lot of the, the um, what's called the ipo, sort of um, uh, sort of teaser book, sort of describing the business and all this kind of stuff. And just as I read that and the opportunity with it and the journey of it I did that really kind of got me going. What am I doing? Sitting doing this, writing on a bit of paper while I'm out there doing it, and we had what was called an analyst lunch um, for all of the um sort of analysts who were going to be writing about the business to then effectively sell it. Um and uh, lots of big wig bankers, and everyone was there and I was, as I say, the kind of most junior person and we got to the sort of rosemary bravo had done this big sort of presentation.

Mark Selby: 24:53

Um, and it was the lunch. It was lunch and I sort of, she was sitting there at the table talking to someone and I noticed there was a place next door to her on the left, and I just thought, sod it, I'm gonna go and sit next door to her. So I just sort of went and sat next door to her and was like, oh, I'm, mark, one of the analysts and we just chatted for about an hour and she was very, I mean, she won't remember this, but I, you know, for me I was just, oh, you know, I was probably being completely above my station going on who you thought of this and that, uh, and it was. I just left there going I've got to, I've got to get into, I've got to get into a consumer business. I can't like, you know, this is what I love doing. So after that I was like, okay, I sat down, you know, every weekend I just read all the newspapers and anyone who was doing anything interesting in business I'd be like right, what's their name, what are they doing, how do I get in contact with them? And I then sort of, yeah, just spent probably three months just emailing loads of people, just anyone I met, kind of going sounds really interesting. Can we meet? Some people kind of met me, but, to be fair, most people didn't.

Mark Selby: 25:54

Um, I remember there's one very, very successful uh, business restaurateur guy who I emailed three times and I see him around. I don't think he has a clue that that was me and I've never really brought it. Well, I haven't ever brought it up with him. But um, emailed three times and saying, look, I'd love to come work with you, this is me. And he just never came back.

Mark Selby: 26:12

And then, I think the fourth time, I just got an email flatly about going not interested. That was it, uh, which, yeah, and then, on the flip side, I, um, I was reading about stellios who set up easyjet, um, and he was launching an easy cinema business and I was reading about that. It's like, you know, cinema theater, sort of similar. Guys love that kind of side of he's going to be trying to turn the cinema world upside down. So I emailed him and sort of had this. I was like, right, how do you, you know, how do you create a sort of a shock moment where someone's actually going to read something and I mean it doesn't sound particularly clever or innovative now, but at the time I wrote an email which was easy to delete, but why always take the easy option dot, dot, dot, um? And then sort of said, hey, celios, this is me, here's my cv banking. But I've always sort of loved, you know, consumer facing things, would love to talk to you, there are any opportunities. Uh, and this guy worth god knows probably over a billion pounds then within one minute emailed me back and was like mark, great to hear from you, let's meet up next week. So I was just like, oh my god, at the age of whatever, 22, 23, getting a, getting an email back from him, I was just like wow. So I met up with him and he very kindly said great, I've got a, I've got a team of three or four people called the new business development team. I think most of them were sort of Harvard grads who about 27, 28, super bright. I was 22 I think, um, and I joined them and it was.

Mark Selby: 27:41

It was sort of a year and a half two years. Just every day you'd go in and it's like, right, uh, easy hotel. What does that look like? I remember I think the first thing I got was easy easy gym and it was just like uh, easy hotel. What does that look like? I remember I think the first thing I got was easy easy gym. It was just like mark easy gym. You got three months, go and think about how do you set up easy gym? What does that business look like? What's the cost structure? So I you know, go, go and sort of pretend to look around all the gyms and sort of trying to find out about how their pricing mechanisms worked, where they got all their kit from. Could you buy a secondhand kit? How would you price these things and all that? And it was just we did that, we did hotels.

Mark Selby: 28:16

I did the first business plan for Easy Cruise, which they then launched. My recommendation it was a terrible idea, which I think it then turned out to be a terrible idea, but they went on and did it Anyway. So that was yeah, that was really, you know, absolutely loved working there and every day it was like you heard about all the different businesses that were under the easy brand um, and it was just very, it was very entrepreneurial. It was very sort of you know, there weren't any detailed business plans, it was all concept. Business plan led to the thing. You know, it wasn't like right, what, how big? Well, no, you looked at how big the market was but it wasn't like right, we've got to understand every element of the pnl down to the end before signing this off. It was like does the concept sound good? Does it broadly work? Right, let's give it a test pilot and give it a go. Um, so that was, yeah, I was, I was super lucky to get that opportunity.

Mark Selby: 29:04

And then I was still with my theater sort of restaurant hat on, I was.

Mark Selby: 29:08

I was sort of thinking about a sort of, effectively, what would have been the first immersive theatre, sorry, the first immersive restaurant experience.

Mark Selby: 29:17

Now, obviously you get all of these things which are wonderful out there, but back then it was, you know, no one was doing it and I wanted to sort of take actors and create this sort of this great restaurant dining experience, which was going to be very impromptu sort of thing. I mean I think it would have been an absolute disaster. But I was thinking about it and this friend of mine said look, before you go and waste all your money doing that, come and meet these guys and introduce me to the two founders of Nando's who he got to know. And they were, I think Nando's had about 70 or 80 at the time. And they said I think Nando's had about 70 or 80 at the time. And they said look, love to have someone like you on board. So I went and worked with them as a sort of a right hand man for about three years and then off that was able to understand restaurants and then was able to persuade them to sort of back me in setting up a restaurant business.

Jay Greenwood: 30:07

What an incredible story and what an incredible opportunity to learn from these people. And I want to go back to the meeting with Stedos, because it's one thing to get the meeting but then to actually then convince to turn that meeting into a job opportunity. Was there something you did or said to make him sort of invest some time and energy in you? What was it that he maybe saw in you to bring you on board?

Mark Selby: 30:29

I don't know. I mean, I think it was just just, I think it was probably energy, not not confidence in a sort of arrogant way, but just someone that was, you know, almost the approach of I'm willing to do anything. You know, I just want to learn, I just want to have fun, um, and I'll work really hard. You know, I've come from banking where you work till you know you, you start at six in the morning, you finish at one in the morning. You know that was sort of the background. So I think he knew I had that and I think very generous, and I think you know I'm a little bit like this.

Mark Selby: 31:00

Now, if I meet someone and they, yeah, and funny enough, the one thing I have subsequently learned is what I try and do very much is, if anyone ever emails me who just wants some business advice or, you know, has an idea they want to think through, I generally, you know, time permitting, I will go back to them and I will try and meet them to help them. Just because of what stellios did, and actually the nando's guys as well, where, where you sort of employ someone, I think based on their character, you know, rather than anything else, it's like okay, just understanding. Are you willing to work hard? Are you willing to listen, are you willing to learn, are you humble? All those things which you know you can mold and teach anyone. As long as they're determined and I was definitely determined and they are up for working hard and for learning and they don't think they know everything, then I think, and I imagine that's probably what he saw- and you mentioned that of the uh, the uh, the nando's uh co.

Jay Greenwood: 32:04

Well, founders um, robert, robert and fernando, I think their names are um and you're also stellios. Were there any key lessons um that you took from either of them to um about business or life or anything? Anything that you remember, this sort of distilled yeah?

Mark Selby: 32:20

I think so, the two, I say the two founders. And then it's easy to say that way what? So you're either, robert f Fernando, two South African guys who started Nando's the actual kind of what Nando's is today was was came out of the UK. Nando's, which was a guy called Robbie Antoven and Charles Lux. They basically took what Nando's was in the in South Africa, had the rights to it in the UK and then created it and turned it from what was effectively a sort of KFC type business into the sort of the world we know and that then has sort of gone to backfill and change Nando's in South Africa, which is the original one. So they sort of I call them founders. They effectively they run that whole business and they are effectively created what is nowadays today, I think, different ones.

Mark Selby: 33:09

Really, I think, stelios, I learned about the idea of giving everything a go, keeping yourself informed daily as to what is happening. So you've got that knowledge. And then he was quite, he was quite cutthroat. You know as well. Not that I learned that side of him, but in terms of how you negotiate stuff it was very interesting.

Mark Selby: 33:32

I remember that I was working with um. I was business development director for a small period of time for easy car, which was the fast growing sort of element of that portfolio and we were doing this whole sort of world of it had gone from taking huge sort of uh, 500 car parking spaces, businesses in the middle of birmingham to actually going how do we scale this and make it much more adaptable? So we created this model which said, okay, we'll just take season tickets. We'll take 15 season tickets from ncp car parks or euro car parks or whoever they were in the middle of their normal car parks. We'll take 15 season tickets from ncp car parks or euro car parks or whoever they were in the middle of their normal car parks. We'll put a little mobile hut in it, we'll make it all digital and then from those 15 parking spaces we will, um, uh, we will run a fleet of 150 cars and we'll use price utilization to make sure that we just keep those cars out of the car park.

Mark Selby: 34:23

Um, and my job is to go and sort of work out where the best place to go and how to get the best pricing on the season tickets, and I think season tickets at the time were priced at like 25 quid a day or something. Instead of sort of. I sat down and went right, you know, I'll try and get us a 10 discount or something you know, to get the price down. Instead, I was like no, like no, no, I want two pounds. I was like I can't get you two pounds. He went go and get me two pounds. So I was like, okay. So I basically started with the mentality of shit, I've got to get to two pounds here. So I think all along he probably was going to settle for something a bit higher. But it was just that.

Mark Selby: 35:13

How do you get your team and the other side and all these people to to an understanding of where you want? You know, it's that whole negotiation place. I think I've actually changed the way I negotiate a bit. Um, I don't, I don't work like that. I'm actually much more, and it's not this traditional one. I'm much more like I work out what I want and I just stick to my guns on that one.

Mark Selby: 35:33

And and everyone now knows I'm pretty, you know, if I say what I say is what I want, sort of thing, as it were, and therefore I'm not going to bullshit, I'm not going to do anything. That's, that's what I'm aiming for, and I find that just an easier approach than this whole sort of playing around when everyone knows the sort of you know where where's your, where's your settling point, um, so that was really helpful. And then I think Nando's guys was just culture unbelievable culture and respect for people and empower are able to develop, grow, create this sort of wonderful feeling within a company and they really put their money where their mouth is with regards to investing in people. And I remember, even at 70, I think, they did a conference or something where they took their guys out to South Africa and they did all this stuff and it was something like a million quid or something for five, for five or six days and it was just like oh my god, how, how, why are you spending this?

Mark Selby: 36:31

and and you know they were both just like. It's about building a long-term culture where people feel valued and you know to this day they have probably the best culture in in the world in terms of sort of people and people loving to work for that business. Like you know, I've met anyone that hasn't still there or left Nando.

Jay Greenwood: 36:49

She hasn't got utter love and respect for it amazing and I want to talk about culture at Oaxaca and I know, um, I think maybe this is something you said again, can't read everything, can't believe everything really in it, but it was a happy team equals happy restaurant and you, you're so big on culture, we're hackers, so for you, what does a happy team equal happy restaurant mean?

Mark Selby: 37:12

I think, yeah, so we always. Yeah, it sounds a bit twee, but we, we, we say, look, we're not about. We want to make money, but we only want to make money in the right way. And we make money in the right way by having happy people, happy customers, great food, and that will lead to profit, rather than how do we make profit first? Um, and for us, happy people and look, you know, I'd love to say we get it right all the time. We clearly don't, but our everything from our value proposition to the way we turn up at sort of with our new opening, etc.

Mark Selby: 37:43

Is about joint respect for people. It's like, you know, what we won't tolerate is someone taking the piss, but our big thing is about having fun. That's our, that's our number one principle at work. We want people and I, you know, literally stood up yesterday in front of 30 new people working for us and going. What I want is no, no one wants to go to work. No one wants to wake up and go. God, I really want to go to work today. You know everyone wants to go to work. No one wants to wake up and go. God, I really want to go to work today. You know everyone wants to go and do their own thing. However, I kind of said, what I want you to do is wake up and go. Do you know what? I don't really want to work, but if I'm going to work anywhere, actually Oaxaca is a great place to work and that's my principle of we've got to make people feel that there is development for them and even if there's not a job you know, I quite often had blunt conversation people I go look, I. We are not in the position to be able to give you that job now, but we have trained you to get to that job, which is great. So you probably need to leave, to go and have that experience somewhere else and then come back and see us, um, when an opportunity comes up with us, sort of thing. And I think, leaving with that honesty and having, you know, a really good relationship and the amount of people you know we just got back a general manager had exactly that conversation with two years ago. He's just come back joining us um, and I think it's been a great experience for him and and we will benefit from that and hopefully he'll benefit from it as well um, and so for me, I think it's that it's about feeling value.

Mark Selby: 39:02

We close all of our restaurants once a year, um, and uh, we're doing it in july this year. Um, we fly people down from edinburgh, cardiff, bring them in from brighton um, and we put on again. It's a. You know, learn from the nando's days. We spend something like 250 000 pounds in one day putting on the most amazing festival for our teams and it's all the food, drink. We have incredible fairground rides um, we eat massas and everything we just give. We just make them feel really, really valued and invested in which they are, and again, everyone leaves that it's going wow, that's a. You know, that's a. That's a, an amazing thing that someone's willing to to do that, particularly in something as hard as hospitality, where you're not only it's not like you're just saying we're not in the office today You're literally closing your revenue streams on that day to go and give people, to show your team that you value them.

Jay Greenwood: 39:55

I love this as well, like you guys, aren't afraid to say like we're going to have fun.

Mark Selby: 39:59

you know we're going to go out no-transcript, speak so openly about it as well yeah, I think if you can't, you know, ultimately, to your point earlier around, the great thing about hospitality is is sort of engaging and creating a moment for people if you've got very dour people who aren't engaged. You know, I was in a restaurant the other day. I was absolutely amazed quite a well-known uh restaurant of of high quality food and this waitress came over who was very sweet but she was very deadpan and she literally couldn't speak english and I was just I was like how? You know, no disrespect to her, there are other roles and opportunities, but how can you go, how can you think that's okay to have someone that just isn't representing your brand and what you want them?

Mark Selby: 40:52

You know what you want the experience for a customer to be and it just clearly was no investment in this person or no thought around. Okay, what? What is that role and what do we need that person to be in and how do we get them to that place? And kind of setting them up for failure.

Jay Greenwood: 41:04

Basically yeah, so funny say. I was actually a restaurant about two weeks ago and the server just looked so uninterested, like unhappy, that I was ordering from them and you think, just change, like everyone in the restaurant could be doing an amazing job, but that one person can just change your experience and you suddenly go. I don't know if I'm enjoying it here, and it's still. It's like you say that touch point is so key and it's not easy.

Mark Selby: 41:24

You know, we've got some 19 restaurants and it's not easy to to keep everyone happy the whole time.

Mark Selby: 41:30

As I always say to people I say look, when I'm I do it every four weeks I meet all the new people in the business and chat to them for an hour and I kind of go look, these are our values. But you know, unfortunately I can guarantee you that we will not always. You know we as a leadership team will always endeavor to follow them, but I cannot promise you everyone in this business will. However, 90 of people, 90 of the time, are following it. Then we're going in the right direction and we all have to try and you know it's all your jobs as well to keep keep the vibe of our business alive. So you know, but there are times where you know, fully, admit, in our restaurants we've had some waiters and you just go what? How have you managed to do that kind of thing? But you know that's, that's that's life and that's working in a human sort of environment I see, and I want to touch on sustainability now.

Jay Greenwood: 42:17

I know that's such a core pillar in the foundations of Oaxaca. So I'm curious, where did that come from? Because we're going back to sort of 2007 here, where you know it wasn't trendy a call, where now, where people just say it to get a pat on the back, but you guys actually lived and breathed this from day one and it's, you know, still such a huge part of the business of us. It mentioned sort of in the introduction about um sort of top the table for chain restaurants and sustainability. So where did that uh, sort of you know foundation come from?

Mark Selby: 42:46

I think just a curious curiosity. Um, you know, we, back in 2006 you know kind of murmurs of what's happening to the planet and waste and and sort of um, looking after your own body, all these things were sort of beginning to succumb to fruition on a very light level. Um, and I think we just we tom and I, both on that initial meeting said we, you know, let's, let's get out there and prove that you can grow a truly sustainable restaurant business. Now, as I quite often say, we didn't exactly know how to define that, we didn't know what that sustained. You know how even define sustainability? In every year, what sustainability is changing? But we, we said we're going to do everything we can without having a grand plan. We will do everything we can to do it and we will invest in it if it seems like the right decision, and not the right decision necessarily commercially, but something that is going to be worthwhile. So you know, the first thing we ever did was we went down. We took over this restaurant in covent garden sorry, it's a nightclub which had been sitting vacant for about two and a half years in a basement, um, and it was called bad bob's nightclub and you went down and it was literally all the floors were, as you can imagine, sticky, nasty kind of uh, nasty kind of place, very dark, um. And but we said, look, there's all this wood around which is the dance floor and you know, huge sort of 3 000 square foot of old sort of wooden planks and things, um, and we just said, well, let's use this to build the restaurant. Why, why would we go and chop down new trees? So, to the utter sort of dismay of these, these builders at the time, I said, right, let's, can we rip up all of this wood, sand it down, clean it, take all the nails out and then let's build the bar and the kitchen with this, with this wood. Um, you know, I don't suppose we'd save many trees, but I think it was. It was that sort of policy.

Mark Selby: 44:41

And then we were like, okay, well, what else can we do? And we said, okay, well, re, you know, waste, we're going to generate loads of waste here from packaging, glass, plastics, cardboard, food waste, all this stuff. Okay, how do we, how do we do this responsibly so we're not just throwing one bag into landfill? Um, and we were the first people in the UK, I think, restaurant business to be zero landfill. And back then we literally had nine bins in the kitchen lined up where people would have to go. Right, is it wet food, dry food? Is it wet paper, dry paper, is it plastic?

Mark Selby: 45:15

And we worked with quite an innovative sort of rubbish business in London which was just starting to think about recycling. So we went through it and you know, and it wasn't nearly as sophisticated as now In our restaurants. Now I kind of say to them, guys, you've only got three bins to choose from. Back then we had nine bins to kind of get your head around. And again, it didn't always work, but it was the principle of okay, come on, this is what we, you know, we thought about putting a wormery in there on full vision to everyone with our food waste. We just thought, actually people probably wouldn't like that very much seeing worms eating and digesting the food and sort of a live restaurant.

Mark Selby: 45:52

But it was just constantly sort of, you know, pushing ourselves to go right, what can we do? What can we do? What can we do. And then, as we got bigger and, you know, could afford to get someone on, we now have a head of sustainability in the business, um, and you know, he really drives us to bigger and better practices the whole time.

Mark Selby: 46:09

Um, and when we build our restaurant, we build the most sustainable restaurants we can build. We give ourselves we have to get a gold level, which is the top level of scar, which is a rating for sustainability in buildings, and we have consultants who come along and get us there and tell us what we need to do from. You know even came a time when we had street artists who came in, because a lot of our restaurants decorate street artists and we're like I'm sorry, guys, you're gonna have to use, um, non-lead sustainable paint. So we had to go and source all this highly expensive sort of sustainable paint to do that as well. But you know, again, I think each time those things got cheaper, but at the time they were quite expensive investments but we just felt that was the, that was the right thing to do.

Jay Greenwood: 46:48

Yeah, and before we move on to the quickfire question, I was just thinking then it seemed like Bahak has been at the forefront of sort of innovation and sort of moving before the sort of wave comes. So we mentioned sort of the small plates big thing on culture as well in the restaurants and, um, then sustainability, is it you sort of mentioned that? Maybe it's curiosity, is that sort of what keeps you always being at the front of all of this?

Mark Selby: 47:12

I think that. And competitiveness. I'm quite a competitive person so I hate to hear that someone else has come up with an idea. So I'm always going and our team. I think half and half they hate it and sometimes they like it.

Mark Selby: 47:27

Um, but, like in paddington, we're just putting on the first, the uk as the world's first um uh, fully carbon negative, without offsets beer on tap which we've done a partnership with gypsy hill and I've been dying with. It's called cerveza so, but not so. It's basically s-i-r space v-e-z-a. Um and that is a um, obviously a play on cerveza, but it's a mexican inspired british brewed um uh lager which is absolutely delicious and I've been trying to do this for ages. Work out how do we get this sustainable uh, british brewed, really nice lager. And gypsy hill, who are brilliant um uh beer company in south london, kind of teamed up with them and got got this, this beer. So you know, again, for them it's like, oh, for god's sake, mark, well, now we've got to go and design a brand and we've got to go and do this and that and I'm just like, yeah, but it's fun, it's exciting kind of thing and it is, but it's, you know, I do cause much more work for our team than they would probably like and other businesses would do.

Mark Selby: 48:31

So I think it's just. It's just that element of it's that element of, and a lot of it's led by fun. It's like we sit there, okay, is this going to be fun? Is it going to the consumer's going to find it fun? Are we going to find it fun? Um, and is it? Is it something that makes a bit of a difference? And if it makes a bit and I, I'm also someone that will always challenge going okay, what exactly are we trying to get out of that? What is it really going to lead to that? Or are we wasting our time? Um, and, and people likewise will challenge me, and you know, I've got a great md in the business who is very, very good at standing up to me and kind of going no, I don't want to do that, and this is why and we'll have a bit of a battle and one of us will win, but there'll be no hard feelings at the end of it, kind of thing amazing.

Jay Greenwood: 49:09

Well, I want to finish off, some quick five questions. I know you love tequila. You like to get people experiencing it, so, uh, can you recommend a tequila that people can access for under 40 or 50 pounds? You can choose the price mark there uh, yeah, I think um two.

Mark Selby: 49:25

Two classics are um don julio, which has always been one of my favorites this is a blanco reposado, I think around the 50 pound mark. The aniexa, which is an h1, which is delicious. It's probably more 60 70, but really really good, staple, fantastic uh. There's grand centenario, a little bit cheaper, which is our house um uh, tequila, but actually it's fantastic, fantastic value for what it is um, really, really good tequila. There's another, slightly smaller one called calle 23, which is a lovely um uh, set up by a french lady called sophie um, who lives out of mexico. Really, really good tequila.

Jay Greenwood: 50:06

Favorite restaurant in London and you're not allowed to say Oaxaca, no I wouldn't do that.

Mark Selby: 50:10

It's really difficult. Because I live out in the Cotswolds now and also I tend to not because I don't live in London, I tend not to go back to the same restaurants. I'm always looking, if I am going to go out, what's the new one. So I'm excited in a couple of weeks going to Mountain on Beak Street, which would be good, I think the one I love was Bocca di Lupe, which you know was an app, was a, is a, is a beautiful kind of uh, restaurant, um, so I think probably, yeah, that that that's probably one, but I tend not to go to the same place really more than once and favorite burger and pizza in london favorite burger?

Mark Selby: 50:47

I think has some patty and bun. Big fan of that. Um favorite pizza? Uh, I think, probably.

Jay Greenwood: 50:56

I think the guys at pizza pilgrims are pretty good job on pizza really agree and I was, uh, just when, uh, talking about favorite restaurants, I heard you talk about that restaurant in province and actually I went on this big search and learning about that restaurant in province and I was I've got to go there. That sounds amazing. So, yeah, that's definitely my, it's great.

Jay Greenwood: 51:13

It's great fun, it's absolutely well I want to thank you so much for coming on and sharing the time here. I've probably taken up too much time, but I just want to thank you for coming on, show this journey and also, like I say, all this innovative stuff with wahaka. You know it's caused us you more pain and the team more pain, but it's so incredible the innovation you guys do. So I want to thank you for doing that and also sharing your journey with us today. So thank you, no worries thanks for having me on, as always.

Jay Greenwood: 51:38

Guys, thank you so much for listening, really appreciate the support and if you guys like it and you're enjoying what you're listening to, please like and subscribe and write a review. We'd really appreciate it again. We'll be back doing this weekly and, yeah, if you want to know more about starting a food business, head to wwwjgreenwoodcom. But, guys, as always, thank you and be great.