Ep. 23 | The Pizza Express Finance Playbook: Scaling to 500 Restaurants Without Chaos | Dan Jarvis | Supy Talks Podcast

Welcome to another episode of Sappy Talks. Today I'm joined by Dan Jarvis, head of Finance at Pizza Express uae, one of the world's most recognizable F and B brands. And when you're running a brand at such scale, there are so many operational and financial challenges and that's what our conversation is going to be about today. Dan, welcome to the show. Thank you very much for having me on. Looking forward to our chat. Yeah, it's a pleasure. You're someone I really wanted to speak to. Could you help our listeners and viewers first by just giving it a bit of background to who you are and what your role at Pizza Express you. Absolutely. So my name is Dan Jarvis. I am the head of Finance at Pizza Express. I've been with the company now for just under six years. My journey into accounting and finance and all that sort of jazz began 14 years ago now as an 18 year old. So if you do the math, that makes me 23, looking amazing for 23. Even though I. I thought you'd be a bit older, actually. Sorry, Very kind, very kind. Very older. Yeah, yeah, I meant younger. Cut that out. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, my journey started off as a school leaver. Now a lot of people assume that you have to go to university to be an accountant, but I took what is officially known as the school leavers route. So for the first five years of my accounting journey or career, I was sort of one week in the classroom, one week in the office doing my exams, whilst also getting real life experience. Cool. So I started off at a very small local firm. There's 50 employees and one of the greatest benefits of starting a smaller firm is that you get exposure to a lot of different work. So I had exposure to accounts tax, bought it. Very, very boring. Lasted two years in the wood. But we won't talk about that. Impressive. We'll get onto the fun stuff. And then, yeah, after five years I moved locally into central London for one of, one of the big firms and that's where I really learned my trade in terms of managing juniors, leadership, learning off, you know, the big partners in the company who have had, you know, 40, 50, 60 years experience, you know. And then in 2018, Dubai came calling, so, so I upsticks from London and came to Dubai, moved over. Completely different company, completely different role. I was with them for two years and then, as I say, of the last six years I've been at Pizza Express and here we are today. Amazing. How did you find that move and how did you kind of get your role at Pizza Express? Yes, so the move to Dubai itself was something that I always, always wanted to do. I've been coming here on family holidays since 2008. So it's a, it's a home away from home. So when I got the, got the role of my previous company before Peters Express, it was an absolute dream come true. Yeah, amazing. That's really cool. And I'm wondering, like, what are the kind of responsibilities, you know, what's your roles and responsibilities at Pizza Express uae? So on a day to day basis we're just looking at, you know, sales levels, margins, cash flow, which I'm sure I'll speak a lot about throughout this conversation. And also I manage a team of four. So it's about just giving them the guidance that they need to produce the necessary reports, but also to train them to make them become more analytical and yeah, that's more of my people sort of role. And then we, on a weekly basis we have our, you know, weekly meetings, weekly reports that we have to do. I have to explain to our shareholders in the uk, you know, why we're ahead of budget. I won't say missing budget while we're doing so well. Yeah. And yeah, just as a lot of, in my role as a head of finance, it's a lot of presentations and, you know, getting our important stakeholders to understand what is going on within the business. That's amazing. And as a finance leader in an FMB brand, which are the kind of other roles and departments you have to speak to and deal with the most. Every single department. You know, we have marketing. Yeah. Obviously the main guys that we interact with, shall we say. Yeah. Not always pleasantly because they're gonna say to me, dan, if you give us this budget, we will definitely return this. And it's like, prove it. How can you do that? You know, there's always, I think it's a thing in F and B where marketing and finance is always that little squabble over budget, shall we say? I've had enough of those tough conversations. Yeah. But I, I think it will be all right having them with you. You seem pretty reasonable. I'd like to think so. Yeah, exactly. And so like at a company that's quite a large scale like yours, is finance just a spreadsheet exercise or like, does it go further than that? No, absolutely. Much, much further than that. You know, finances, the. Well, I'd like to think the pinnacle of any business, you know, without finance, you don't know how the company's doing, how profitable we are, where we could save costs, what's our bottom line, ebitda. So in terms of it being a spreadsheet exercise? Certainly not. We then have to generate certain reports from these spreadsheets from the, you know, the POS that comes that we want, we want to feed directly into the finance reporting system. And with AI, that's where we're looking at doing more and more as AI become the buzzword. Yeah, no, that's exciting because, I mean, it's been very spreadsheet based until now, but I feel like that that space is changing a lot. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And. And do you think there are things that, you know, you're from a finance background. A lot of people get into restaurants from passion and then they build their brand up. Are there things that you think they might misunderstand about finance that you, you know, if you spoke to them, you'd give them advice on and help them understand earlier? Yeah, I think when it comes to F and B, as a, as an industry, it isn't just about numbers, numbers, numbers. You know, I'll give an example. I could be sat in head office and I just want the cheapest of everything because that give us the biggest margins. But when you look at operationally customers, if we're giving away cheap ingredients or ingredients that they don't see as value, they're not going to come back. So I think, you know, when it comes to fmb, we really have to think operationally and cheap certainly isn't always best. Yeah. That's interesting because I remember when we first spoke, you were saying to me, like, yeah, you can do the numbers, you can do the maths, but really it's more of a people game, like understanding the strategy. And would you say that you are stronger with your numbers or with people like, where, where do you need to be strong in a role like yours? Yeah, I like to think I'm. I'm strong at both, you know, a bit of a social butterfly. I love getting on with everyone. Yeah. And that's why I love my role as head of finance in a globally known pizza chain. Yeah. The brand, if you're from the UK, speaks for itself. You know, with 300 restaurants in the UK, got 500 restaurants globally, and we're looking to expand that to a thousand in the next five years. So for. It's the absolute ideal role. Yeah, it's a really cool company, really cool brand and a great product. So are there some of those things where there are red lines? Like, as a company, you always make sure you go for premium or a certain quality on Some items and not others. Yeah. So we position ourselves as casual dining. So as well as serving what I believe to be great pizza and obviously the famous dough balls. Yeah. We also want to be part of a dine out experience. So as an example, our JLT restaurant, we have live music every single weekday or six out of seven weekdays. And again it's, it's that part of becoming a premium casual dining brand where families, groups of hen parties. Yeah. Kids at the other end can all come in under one one roof and have a, have a really fantastic time. Our slogan is great pizza, great times. So I nearly forgot it then. No, but I mean it does have that place in, in people's heads. Like I school going to Pizza Express and they did pizza making classes. We went with our school. You had birthday parties. You probably had never eaten garlic butter until you had your dough balls. So like it definitely holds a special place in people's minds. And I think what's really cool is you've done brought back a lot of the live music and stuff so. Because I've definitely been to your one in. I think it's in Soho in London. Yeah. And that was like, okay, wow. You know, it's good pizza but it's also like a really, you know, see an amazing musician that, that, that's really good to have that in your head rather than just like we do pizza. Yeah. So that Soho restaurant was the very, very first Pizza Express to open in 1965. Amazing. So yeah, still going strong. Absolutely still there. And as you say, back when he was at school, certainly for me, yeah it was a pretty cool premium brand. Yeah. Good value for money. So back in the sixth form I would take all of my girlfriends there. Three courses for nine outline on a Friday. Everyone's happy. Yeah, everyone's happy. I love it. Nice. I came back to the financ ops. Like where do you when you're interacting with operations because it is a very operationally heavy business like where do you guys clash most and, and how do you kind of, you work around that. Yeah. Again it's what I've mentioned previously about in finance. I, I could sit here and say use the cheapest, do this, don't worry about that. But the end of the day, what we've just touched on, it's all about the customer experience. So you know, are we not going to be in one location, for example, just because the rent is too high or on the flip side, do we need to be seen in a specific location and we'll take the hit on the rent, but knowing that our top line sales, sales will grow. Yeah. So it's a, it's a complete mishmash of having that communication with operations, looking at, you know, at the end of the day, bottom line is everything if we're not going to make money and it's not worth investing or cutting corners. Yeah. But is that like a human decision? So you know, I can see where those people skills are important. If it is. Or are there kind of guidelines and rules that have been put in place over time or is it a bit of balance, balancing act? Absolutely, a bit of balance. You know, we can play by the rules, look at guidelines, but I think at the end of the day in a decision, if common sense should be the prevailing factor in anything. Yeah. Okay. And I wanted to find out about like some of those trade offs you've made. So can you talk about an example where you know, you went for a more expensive option or you sacrificed revenue for a better outcome? Yeah, absolutely. So I want to flip the script a little bit here. So if I ask you, would you rather make Dh10 million of profit off of Dh100 million of sales? Yeah. Or would you rather make Dh10 million profit off of Dh50 million of sales? The latter. The latter, yeah. Why? Because I feel like there's a lot of work that goes into servicing that extra $50 million. Correct. Or dirhams. Yeah, correct. So the latter example you're looking at 20 margin. Yeah, the first, the first example looking at 10 margin. Now at the end of the day it's bottom line is what drives a business. Yeah. So why make that extra effort to get that extra 50 million theorems when you're still going to be making the same. Yeah. So I'm very big on efficiency and we want the most possible output for the least input. In a nutshell. Yeah, that's really interesting. I feel like it's probably a difficult balancing act to try and expand and do that at the same time. Yeah. How do you approach something like expansion? So we are a self funding business. We've, we open all of our restaurants through our own cash. That is any profit that we make is genuinely invested straight back into the business. Now with that and it's a touch point that we're going to, I've mentioned previously, cash flow, cash flow, cash flow, cash flow. So, so important for, for any business. And it's one part of finance which I believe is very undervalued, you know, not in F and B. We're quite lucky in F and B in that we get money straight away from a customer or within two or three days when the credit card companies pay us out. Whereas with other companies, if you're looking at 30, 60, 90 debtor days. Yeah, you know, the cash flow is very, very important. So I'm quite lucky. In F and B, the money in isn't too much of an issue. What is an issue is the money out, I. E. Supplier payment days, capital expenditure when you open a new restaurant. And the one thing that probably isn't spoken about a month enough is rental. So some of our restaurants, we pay the landlords monthly, we pay them quarterly and some we pay annually. So if you think we're going to be building a big cash buffer for a year and then we're going to say, for example, lose a million dirham one month in rent in the same month you've got to pay payroll. So you're looking at, you know, 2 to 3 million straight out suppliers. Absolutely essential that there is a succinct cash flow forecasting or presentation in place. And we do that every single week at Pizza Express. Oh, that's cool. I was going to ask how it works. Like how do you plan for that one off? Well, not one off that annual cost. Like are your forecast very accurate? Like what, what goes into making that work? Because I can imagine if it's off by even a small amount, then you can be in trouble. Yeah, absolutely. So typically my cash flow is driven from our budget and you know, we can spend two to three months each year doing a budget, iron out the nooks and crannies, looking to details, absolutely everything. So we can be sure that the budget is as detailed, is as realistic as it possibly can be. So that's a very good starting point for doing the cash flow for the next year. Now, in terms of income, we can base that on the sales budget and then because we're doing a detailed cash flow forecast every single week, if we know we're going to miss budget one week, that can be tweaked in the cash flow and you know that there isn't too much of an alarm around it. Also we have a spreadsheet of every single check that we have distributed to landlords, to some cases, suppliers, so we know when they're going to be cashed. Therefore we can predict peaks and troughs in that cash flow and also we try and give suppliers 60 days payment terms. Yeah, again, just to try and build that cash flow and make sure there's no. Make sure that the trough isn't too much of a trough that we have to, you know, set alarm bells ringing. It sounds like incredible, like a financial discipline. Yeah. And, but it is quite amazing to have a brand with so many locations globally. That is fun. Self funding. I think that's a, I guess hats off to the Finance Pizza Express. The head of finance. Yeah, head of finance, uae. Okay, fine, fair enough. Just that guy sat in Dubai. Yeah. It's just, it's amazing what one guy can do. Okay. I've got an amazing team. Let me make that clear. I've got an amazing team. Yeah. Nice. And is there like. I guess what I'm hearing is the trade offs. You're probably thinking ahead, you're probably not expanding at the rate that you could, but you're taking strategic decisions like what's. What Looking at it the other way, what would be the cost of saying yes to everything? Every opportunity, quite simply running out of cash. And that is of absolutely no use to anybody because you have to think where, when you open a new restaurant, you have the initial outlay of the capex. You then have the labor costs of training the staff, you then have the initial outlay of the ingredients you're going to use. So these are all outlays and the restaurant's not even trading yet. So we have to take a, you have to be very, very cautious when, when opening these new restaurants. If we say yes to everything, the, the, the golden pot would run dry very, very quickly. Yeah. So you're, you're the no man as much as you are the yes man. Absolutely no man within very, very, very good reason. Okay. Otherwise I like to give everyone, you know, their own, their own space to do what they need to do to, to make the brand a success. No, but that's cool because I think it gives a good examp properly strategic partner in the business and it clearly having a positive effect on the business. Whereas I think some earlier operators might think of it as more of a pure support function. Just making sure we do the bits we need to do to be compliant, to make sure people are paid. And it's quite interesting to hear that in your business it is actually quite strategic. Absolutely. Yeah. And you were telling me the other day about one of these decisions, like quite tough decisions you had around delivery. Do you have delivery on in all restaurants at all times or are there times switch it off. Yeah, so that's a very, very good point. So delivery in, in essence should be incremental revenue because the restaurants are already there, the staff's already there, the Chefs are already there. In essence, this incremental revenue, however, and this happens when our JLT Friday brunch is going on. We typically turn off delivery for a few hours because we're servicing 300, 400 guests. They're all wanted the food. At the same time. The kitchen quite literally cannot cope, and rightly so, it should be turned off. So at this point in time, yes, we're sacrificing the sales, but overall, the guests will get the best pizza. Express experience. And also, you don't want the hassle of online customers complaining that their pizza took two hours to be delivered. So that's where we sort of trade off between turning delivery on and turning off. Yeah, you're keeping, like saying no to badge revenue and making sure that the guest experience, like, stays high so you have good retention. Absolutely. I think saying no, not saying yes to every bit, every sale, every bit of revenue, it's not. It can't be healthy. Certainly not in the long term. You know, missing out on those few thousand dirhams worth of sales. But keeping your current customers happy, I think is essential for longevity. That's really interesting. Okay, cool. And then now I want to dig a bit more into your menu. So, yeah, menu engineering is a term that's thrown around, but I know you're one of the teams that actually do it. What is menu engineering? How do you go about it and what's the point of it? Yeah, so menu engineering is where we look at every single item on our menu. And essentially, in a nutshell, we see. We look at how popular the dishes, the margin on the dish, and we have this. It's like a matrix, isn't it? That's what I'm looking for. The matrix has got cash cows, dogs, can't remember the other two stars, and flower horses. Yeah. You know, more than I do swapping rolls here. Our software has this built in. So. Yeah, so we do this typically twice a year. And so we place every single project product into this matrix and look at items that are doing very, very well, that there's no need to change anything. Could we do a price increase? And how sensitive is that product to a price increase? You know, if it's doing really, really well at its current price, would or 1. Would a 1 or 2 dirham increase significantly change that demand? If it doesn't, fantastic. Bigger margins. If it does, then, you know, in the long run, it won't do as well. And then on the flip side of that, the products that aren't doing so well, should we take Them off the menu. Should we do a marketing or something? Marketing around those not selling as well products. So yeah, we do this two or three times a year to gauge, you know, what, what items are selling well, what items aren't doing us any favors. And also with the items that aren't doing well, you got to think about the wastage behind that as well. So it's extremely important to look at that, at least on an annual basis, at the very minimum. Yeah, that's interesting. And are there any examples of items that have gone off the menu or items that have been created off such a process? Yeah. So we at Pizza Express specifically we had Pescataria. It's like fish on pizza. Okay. Yeah, I absolutely hate fish. So from day dot I was like, you wanted to get rid of it anyway. Absolutely. It's from a personal point of view. Fish is, I don't, I don't eat anything out of the sea. Okay. So I'm very anti fish. Yeah. But the cost of fish is expensive. So if we're paying suppliers and it's not being shifted and you know, it's, it's, it's not good. Not good. Get that off the menu. Not to go to fish. Yeah, but at least I had a financial reason to back up my. Yeah, anti fish. It seems like the, the people voted with their dirhams and they were on your side on that one. Absolutely, yeah. Thankfully. Thankfully. And also pineapple shouldn't go on pizza either. I made it very, very clear to all the viewers should not go on pizza. Very clear. They've got the message with menu engineering. How do you test some of those price increases if they happen? Is it a test or you just wait six months and look again? Yeah. So, yeah, this is the thing I was getting at in terms of we should be doing menu engineering at least once a year and then if you have made material changes every three months, every six months just to keep an eye on how it's performing, there's no point in going right. We're going to increase product x by 2 dirhams and in one year's time you only come to realize it hasn't sold as many. So it's important to really keep a track on any, any products where you change the price that might be sensitive to a consumer's demand. Yeah. Is that normally just the fact like the financial data you look at or do you speak to people in store to get feedback on the floor? So we get. It is generally 90 financially data driven, but we do get feedback from restaurant Managers. I think it's important to get the qualitative feedback as well as the quantitative feedback, especially in F and B. I think that goes without saying. It's all data and sometimes people can think that data just means numbers, but, like, data is qualitative as well, and they kind of. I find that, like, the quantitative data tells you which direction to go in or points you in the direction, and the qualitative kind of probably gives you the backing up to follow through on it or pull back or just give a bit of context next. Absolutely. I was going to say that's the. The qualitative stuff is kind of the backup to, you know, is a restaurant buzzing on a Friday night? It all seems good on the restaurant floor. Yeah. Can we back that up with the financial stats in head office? Absolutely. That's one of the quite cool things about F and B, because there is constant feedback. You know, in store, teams are speaking to people every day, whereas in some businesses you might sell your product, people use it, you don't see them using it. And that's quite an interesting angle of F and B, I think. Absolutely. Nice. And I wanted to touch on, you know, you're a global business, you've got restaurants in many, many countries. Are all Pizza Express restaurants the same or are there regional kind of variations? Yes, it's a. It's an interesting question. So, as I touched on before, we've got 500 restaurants globally from the UK to Hong Kong, Cyprus, Gibraltar, India. We're quite big in India. Oh, nice. There's 25 restaurants there. Now, in terms of the UAE, the example I give is, if you look at JLT restaurant, JLT licensed, full of Brits having a good time, shall we say? I think we've all seen that. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Maybe been there Friday brunch. And then you compare that to Fajera and you know, that's within the same country. Completely different concepts, unlicensed. 90% of our customers are locals and we actually sell more pastas than pizza in Fajera. Wow. And we also typically see a higher average spend per head. So what they do, the. The Emirates, they tend to, like, order a spread of food. Yeah. So order a lot more food and have that as sharers and stuff like that. You compare that to jlt. Completely different. Yeah. You know, you go to Fajera on a Friday night, JLT on a Friday night, you wouldn't realize it's the same restaurant. Yeah, yeah. So that's where we have to really, really be careful. And localized demand and localized Taste on what they want. That's really cool. So like the cultural differences drive. Yeah. Different kind of purchasing decisions. And do you adjust the menu at all or the format or the layout or is it more just the, the behavior is different. Yep. So in our licensed venues, we, we typically have a more expensive menu, but that is to cover the cost of, of Dubai municipality tax. Okay. So you'll see if you go from, you know, a margarita in JLT or business bay, another license venue will be only a couple dirhams more than what you see in our core restaurants, unlicensed venues. And that's probably just, just to cover the tax. Okay, interesting. And are there any kind of big misconceptions? Like imagine you're in your position at a new pizza chain and you're going from one or two countries to like say 20. Are there anything misconceptions or things you'd help, you'd say to them to help them avoid as they expand globally? I think it's all the, the fine details. As a customer, you don't, as a customer, you don't think about it at all. So if you're expanding globally, you've got to look at local suppliers. If you can't find a local supplier, what is the cost of distributing it from, let's say the UAE to India or Gibraltar? So there is so much things that go on that customers wouldn't even bat an eye. You just go, oh, there's another Pizza Express. But the workings that go on behind it, the operations are absolutely incredible from, as I mentioned, the suppliers right through to the marketing, you know, and also the local taste. So if I use India as an example, they have a much more appetite for spicier food. Yeah. So their menu is different to the uae. Have a lot more spicy ingredients. Yeah. More green chili on things. So nice. Very, very different. Very different. And you have to have, you know, experts who are, who know the local market. You can't just go, right, we're going to put a Pizza Express here. A lot, a lot of work goes into it. I remember speaking to someone on the podcast who had opened a lot of nobu restaurants globally and they are very specific about even where the ducks. Ducks coming from. And I didn't realize how much there was about importing a certain type of duck. Whereas there are some ingredients that you can find, you know, a lot of locally and normally the quality is quite good. But some, it's really challenging. Are there any key ingredients like that for Pizza Express? I'm glad you asked. So for every Single pizza express in the world. The tomato comes from one supplier in Italy. Wow. And has done since 1965. That's cool. Where are they, where are they based? Naples. Ah, cool. That is really actually interesting because you know you're getting that like Taste of Italy in every. Absolutely. That. That was the Peter Buezzo who started the firm back in 1965. He wanted to bring the taste of Italy globally essentially. And that's where he bought his imported a pizza oven to Soho. The restaurant's still there and you know, now we're at 500 restaurants. That's cool. And I have, when I've been to Italy and tasted tomatoes, they taste sweeter. So you don't have to kind of add any. I know that some, some pizza places add some sugar into their mix. I feel like with those Italian tomatoes it's just like they're good as they are. Straight from the feel to the plate. Yeah. Absolutely amazing. That's really good. I didn't know that before. I don't think many people do. No. There's an exclusive there for. Exclusive. Amazing. Well bring about sort of finance and costs. Labor works a bit differently in the UAE to a lot of other geographies. How does that work and how do view had to adapt for it? Yes. So in the UAE as we know labor in nature is fixed so we don't have any part time employees. Now there has been some recent legislation that allow for part time but it's something that I'm not, I'm not too familiar with. Yeah. So bearing that in mind, when restaurants aren't busy, we can't just send people home and save on there hourly rate, for example, which you can do in the uk. So we have to really manage. Right. Restaurants aren't going to be busy. Let's say lunchtime, for example, let's say one of our quiet restaurants isn't very busy lunchtime. So therefore we'd only put on one or two staff. They would do their nine hour shift but we know in the evening is going to be busy. We'd station the bulk of our staff, you know, from three o' clock till midnight because. Because we can't save on costs. We have to be clever about when they're actually working in the restaurants because it is by nature a fixed cost. Yeah, cost. Sorry, you got a fixed cough. Okay, cool. And are there any strategies or things you've had to adapt to account for that? Because I imagine it must be difficult when demand fluctuates like a Saturday in JLT might be really Busy. But a Sunday, you know, it might drop down. Yeah, just another, another point on, on the labor. We're seeing labor costs, labor salaries, you know, nearly double, triple since COVID Now what's happening is a lot of beach clubs are opening in Dubai and they, they can afford to pay much bigger salaries. You know, their income's massive. You know, when they're selling bottles of vodka for stupid amounts of money are very, very high. Definitely a cash flow cow on the, on the matrix. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what we're seeing is as well as that bigger salary, they're then getting bigger tips and then that comes down that all of that filters down to the, the, the restaurants. Yeah, yeah. So we're getting staff coming or leaves saying, I'm going to go to a beach club, for example, I'm going to get a much bigger salary, I'm going to get much bigger tips. You know, there's, in terms, financially, there's no reason for me to say stay. So as well as the, you know, the nature of fixed labor costs as well as labor being expensive to a business, you know, you've got to think about medical insurance, visa costs, gratuity costs, you know, it's becoming expensive in F and B and I'm, I'm sure that other operators will say the exact same. Yeah, that's interesting because I also feel like in restaurants here you often have higher staffing levels than in some places in Europe. So maybe it will in when you're being paid more, maybe the expectation is higher, further training, further kind of develop these stuff so they're more efficient as well. That'll be really interesting to see how it changes over the next couple of years. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. So in, in terms of training, we actually give some of the best training. So our staff are in the restaurant for or in and out the restaurant, inductions, etc for 45 days. And we're quite well known that if you've got Pizza Express on your CV that you tend to be of a certain caliber. Yeah, absolutely. And I guess being so good at what you do sometimes comes to bite you in the back because they will happily go to another, another. I keep using the term, you know, beach club. Yeah. If they see that in your CV because they know that they've been trained so well, they then leave us for a higher paid job. You know, it's not swings and roundabouts but you know, we're proud of what we do. Okay, that's cool. I'll look out for a Pizza Express beach club coming up. Yeah, never say Never. Never say never. It has been muted. Doughboles on the beach. Well, I can't remember what the tagline was. Now this is a few years ago. Okay, nice. We do doubles on the beach or. I can't, I can't remember what's called. Yeah, never say never. No, no. Especially in today's climate. You know, any, any concept can go definitely, at least for a pop up. I can imagine that working nicely. Yes, I think you're onto something there. All right, well, I'll see it in six months. Although it may be a bit hot in summer. Yeah. After. Okay, great. And you were talking about cash flow quite passionately earlier. So if there was one financial discipline that operators mastered, what would it be and what are the top three things they should know about it? Can I use cash flow? You can. So, yeah, as I touched on in, in quite a bit of detail, cash is king, as the saying goes. It really, really is. You know, you could be the most profitable business in the world, but if you don't manage cash, you won't have the money to pay your suppliers and more importantly your staff. So if I just touch back again on, on the weekly detailed cash flow that I do, that includes absolutely every expense you can think of, even to the employees that are leaving their gratuity. That all goes in any, any dirham that goes out the account you must forecast or at least, you know, have some sort of estimate. Right. We know we're going to pay payroll on this day, therefore we don't really want to pay supplies on that date because that'll be a huge chunk of cash out of the bank. So it's just about looking forward and having as much information as possible and making the right choices in terms of when do you prioritize, suppliers, people, and then notwithstanding or forgetting about the. The landlord checks. Yeah, amazing. That's really good advice. And I imagine during COVID it was quite a tricky time for forecasting. So did that change your approach at all? I think this is one of the reasons why I'm so passionate about the cash flow is because that, that's when my passion. Yeah. For cash flow really changed during COVID because we had to count every single dirham. You know, if you imagine people weren't dining out because they wasn't allowed to. So much of our trade was delivery and of course with delivery the aggregators take a commission so our margins are squeezed. We were quite fortunate is that we had some very understanding landlords so we could delay some of our rental payments. But as you quite Quite rightly touched on. Covid was, I think, a game changer, certainly in terms of penny pinching and not just spending because the money's there. Yeah, that's really interesting. Okay, nice. And I just want to touch on like a few of the lessons you've had for scaling. You've seen brand scale up, like what breaks first as restaurant brands scale and what things should be in place earlier than most people expect. They should be. Yeah. So I think in terms of scaling, there's always that chance of scaling too quickly. You know, you see people get very, very excited, like, yeah, we can open here as a market here, there's a market there. Yeah, let's just do it. And it comes back to my favorite cash flow. Right. You can't just spend tens of million dirhams, throw money at and expect it to work straight away. You know, you have to be, you have to ensure that you have a very detailed and succinct business plan. Have a, whenever we open a new restaurant, we, we do a, we do three scenarios. Okay. We have what do we expect reasonably, what to expect. Yeah. What's our best case for exceptional case? Yeah, obviously what we want to happen ideally. Yeah. And we have a worst case scenario. Now I tell the guys, make the worst case like Armageddon. Okay. So that if it does completely go wrong, we can still survive, we still the cash there, we can still pay everyone, still pay our suppliers. So my advice would to be is this three scenario forecast. Just so you know, if it does go wrong, we know that we have do have the cash there, we can still survive and we can carry on operating leveraging off of our other restaurants. Yeah, that sounds like a really helpful kind of mental model to know what you need as a base where you'd ideally like to be in like what pushing would look like they should be. Sorry to interrupt. There should be four cases, really, that's expected. Best case, worst case, and then break even case. So you know, you know what sales level you have to hit in order to, you know, not make a loss. Yeah. And at what point would you make a decision to like cut a restaurant within those four scenarios? Yes, good question. So look at, so if we talk about seasonality, you can always expect sales during Ramadan and particularly these days, summertime, when it's too hot, everyone leaves Dubai. You can reasonably expect sales to dip. So if we're looking at a restaurant that's not working, that has to be taken into account. Okay, let's see what we can do in Q4. Dubai's bustling, it's busy, the tourists are here, everyone's hopefully out spending money. And we'd look at doing a marketing campaign, you know, to push whatever we're what we just opened, whatever we're selling. Yeah. So if the marketing campaign doesn't work and it's during the busiest time of year. Yeah. I think you can then reasonably expect that. Okay, we gave it a go. It hasn't worked. Let's just cut our losses now and you know, go in a different direction. That's actually really interesting learning. So if it's not working in Q4 in Dubai, it's not going to work a really important quarter. I would, I would put my neck on the line and say that, you know, that's amazing because for us Q4 is certainly our busiest. Yeah. And I can imagine it's the same for other, other F and B operators, particularly those that operate at events. Yeah. Because you know, it's perfect weather, you've got all of these concerts and shows and everyone's coming to Dubai during Q4. So we tend to do and a large number of pop ups and we've become really, really good in the market at doing that. You know, operationally our sales are Good. So yeah, Q4 is, Q4 is king. Yeah, that's really cool. Yeah. And then that takes us into the, the January slowdown. So where people tend to be a bit more tight with their money in January after Christmas and New Year, they tend to be a bit more healthier. So for a pizza restaurant is not always great for us. And then obviously this year we've now entered Ramadan. So we have to be really, really careful on our forecasting and cash flow levels. Yeah, I can imagine. That's really cool. Okay, great. And I know you have some pretty strong opinions in finance that you've learned through being in the business. So what is a widely accepted kind of best practice or accounting finance view that you kind of disagree with best practice? Wow, that is a very, very good question. So I'm going to go a bit AWOL this answer and say average spend per head. Now how do I eloquently explain this? So a lot of our managers are told, right, we have to hit this X amount average spend per customer that comes in now for me, I just really, really want to drive customers into our restaurants because I see the restaurant really as a sunk cost. Whether the customer's there or not. The restaurant's there, the staff's there, everything's in place. Let's just get bums on seat so whether you can make a customer spend 30 dirham or 300 if the restaurant's not full, we just want bums on seats and we're quite fortunate that pizza's a very healthy markup. So, yes, by all means, absolutely. Upsell, get the highest average spend per head you possibly can. But I wouldn't spend, you know, too much time worrying about it. I, I want to be getting customers bums on seats into the restaurant. Yeah. And once they're in, we could then start thinking about average spends, kind of a secondary metric. That's interesting. So I'll probably get in a lot of trouble for saying that, but, you know, it's out there. It's not controversial. No, it's good. It comes from real experience and I think probably suits your restaurant type as well. They're nice places to be. They're not normally cramped or small, you know, and you, you want that to feel full and that probably adds to the customer experience as well. Yeah. And if you don't, you know, if you don't force the upsell and just give them the experience they want, they're going to come back. Yeah. Or you'd like to think so. So that's another sort of argument against my, my, all my points. No, that's really cool. And are there any. I guess maybe it's the same answer I was going to ask. Are there any metrics that you think restaurant operators overly obsess on and they should kind of just chill a bit? I wouldn't say overly obsessed, but discounting, that's a very, very big one. Yeah. So if we go into a little bit of detail on discounting in terms of delivery, if we look at Talibat, that is typically where most FMB operators will give their highest discount because the users of Talibat typically spend the least amount of money. Yeah. Compare that to Deliveroo or Kareem these days, who are becoming massive. They tend. The users there tend to have a lot more spending power. So, you know, slightly away from the question, but again, it's looking at the dynamics of, of each aggregator of. Okay. We know that Talabat, typical customer isn't going to spend as much, so we can look at discounting more. There's okay. Whereas Deliveroo, we know that they got a bit more spending power so we don't have to discount as much there. Yeah. Interesting how behavior is different on different aggregators. Yeah. And I think when you're selling someone for convenience, which all of the aggregators are, it's not that convenient to go on all four and check. So it's probably a behavior that, you know, it doesn't matter that you could compare and could save money. No, I don't think a lot of people do. I mean, I typically use Kareem and Delivery and it's just my personal preference. I wouldn't go check in Talabat or there are other aggregators available. Yes, especially some new ones in the market. I know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And are you at Pizza Express? Is your strategy put yourselves on all the aggregators? Yeah, and I, I don't think there's, there's any harm in that. I think visibility is key. Yeah. If you're not on one aggregate, I don't see why you would only be on one. Unless of course you get some unbelievable exclusivity deal where you're paying stupidly low commission, then you might have a business case, a financial case to say, yeah, we're only, we're only going to be exclusive on this one aggregator. But no, I think it's a good point because I think there's only two scenarios in which you do it. One is if you're very limited on capacity, maybe you're testing a new concept and you can only handle a certain order volume. And I think, think the other one is if you are such an in demand viral hit that like everyone is looking for you and you don't have many competitors. Obviously Pizza Express has an amazing brand but you do have competitors. Whereas I think Fix Chocolate is possibly a good example. You know, they were just deliveroo. Now they are just on careem and like people are going looking for them wherever they are and I think for the rest of the time. Yeah, spreading yourself is, is probably the best strategy. I bet you're absolutely right. I was going to use that. The Fix Chocolate example. Yeah, they've, you know, jumping from delivery to Kareem. That's. No, that's big news. Big, big news. Yeah, big, big news. So yeah, I'll make you write about the point of if something does go viral, you know, aggregators are fighting over you to only use their platform. I can only imagine they got some fantastic commission. Yeah, we'll have to ask them. Okay, great. Well, it's been really, really interesting speaking to you. I've just got one more round because I genuinely want to know your answers on these. So I've got some quick fire questions. Yeah, about five. Okay, we'll go in. Yeah, let's go, let's get straight in. So what is the best pizza in the uae? That is not Pizza Express. Oh, I don't know if we ask this, so I'm gonna say two, if that's all right, because they're both for different reasons. So the first one is Papa John's. Papa John's. We heard that. Papa John's. Yeah, Very good. The reason being I'm a massive fan of stuffed crust, and they really do do it best. Yeah. Pizza Express don't serve stuffed crust. So I'm kind of allowed to say you couldn't get it. Yeah. And then the second one's Pitfire. So I know they have a very good restaurant, licensed restaurant in Dubai Hills. Their pizza is good. Yeah, their pizza's good. I have nothing. You've always got to look at the competition, see how. Absolutely. And I think, you know, if competition is doing well, it raises the bar, so it's not necessarily a bad thing. That's good. Okay, cool. And your favorite place to get coffee in Dubai. So I'm a big connoisseur of caribou coffee. I have their loyalty up on my phone. I get it most days. I'm served by the same lady every morning. Nice. I have the same drink every morning. I think it's that. That case of familiarity, but also no personality. It's the same person, the same, you know, what you get. And I'm very much a creature of habit. So I'm going to go caribou. Great choice. Okay. Best burger in the UAE according to Dan Jarvis. I'm going to go a roll this one. Okay. We spoke about this before. Yeah. I'm going to say the KFC Zinger burger. Okay. I haven't heard that one before. I know it's not a burger, really, because it's fried chicken, but because the KFC gravy is unbelievable. So you just get a big fat burger and dip it into the gravy. Love it. You heard it here first. Yeah, There we go. Very good. Nice. I'll have to give that one a go. Give it a go. Okay. Gravy's sensational. Yeah, gravy is good. And actually, I think, yeah, it's as. As Brits, you know, gravy has a sacred place in it does. Yeah. Especially with northerners. Yeah, exactly. Okay, cool. Your favorite bar. A lot of people that know me will know what I'm gonna say. So again, I can. I can choose two of us. All right. Because it's slightly changed very recently. So the. The first one is the coterie. Now they're based in Imbatuta. It's a bit of a hidden Gem. Yeah, they're a sports bar. Screens everywhere and in my opinion, they do the best Sunday roast in Dubai. Phenomenal. You would have seen it all over social media. I think at one point it was top of the Yorkshire pudding rating. Okay. Pudding is. Yeah. It's a guy that goes around Dubai every Sunday. He'll try a different venue and give an honest rating. So they were top of that. And they also have a bar looking over a football pitch where a UAE Division Division 2 team play. Oh, cool. So the whole setup for me, of someone who loves football, you know, the staff are fantastic. It's a, it's an absolute gem. That's cool. Now, I've recently started sort of being betraying Cottery a little bit and going to Bloom Sports Lounge. Okay. So that is a brand new sports bar in Marina and I can literally see it from my balcony. It's within a. A two second walk. Okay. And for me it's like the coterie but in Marina, which the ease of getting there. Yeah. Location wise is absolutely phenomenal. Again, they show all sorts of. All sorts of sports. Yeah. Staff, fantastic. Do a fantastic happy hour. So, yeah, shout out Coterie and Bloom. Yeah, great. Shouts. I, I hadn't heard of either of them, so I'm sure some other people. Yeah. Well, you're in Marina, aren't you? Show you to Bloom. Yeah. Please do take me there now. Sure. Straight after this. Yeah, exactly. Should have gone before. Yeah, yeah, it should have gone full. It could have been even funnier. So I guess one more question, a bit more operationally or financially focused. Okay. Which restaurant do you think is exceptionally, exceptionally well run in Dubai? Wow. Well, I mean, you've got the, the world famous Cheesecake Factory. Yeah. That just. It's like clockwork. Yeah. But I also want to give a shout out to the, the independent sort of Lebanese restaurants dotted around Marina. So I go to these quite a bit and you know, they're serving shisha, they bring out the bread basket and hummus. It's all. Every time I go try out these places, I'm very, very impressed with how everything just works. So, yeah, shout out Cheesecake Factory and. And the independent Lebanese traders in Marina. Yeah, definitely. Hospitality at its finest. Absolutely. And you know, with 13, 000 to choose from in the UAE, you can't go wrong. Very well. They do very, very well. Excellent. All right, great. Thanks for sharing your opinions, Dan, it's been great to have you on the podcast and yeah, I'm sure everyone will enjoy this conversation. Thank you for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. Yeah, pleasure. Thank you, mate. Bye. Cheers.