Smashed special: An interview with restaurateur James Robson, the man behind London sensations Fallow, Roe and Fowl
The UKs restaurant scene digested
A short item in this week’s Code Hospitality newsletter jumped out at me. ‘Julia Gilbert, former Ivy Asia operations director, has joined Fallow restaurant group as managing director.’ Great for Gilbert and Fallow of course but not exactly pulse-quickening news you might think. It was the next sentence however that really made me sit up and take notice: ‘Gilbert comes in having turned the Ivy Asia brand from a single site to an eight-strong group in five years’.
That expansion might be on the cards for Fallow doesn’t come as a complete surprise. Chairman James Robson and his chef business partners Will Murray and Jack Croft have launched three London restaurants in four years (founded as a company in 2019, they opened Fallow in 2021, Fowl in 2023 and Roe in 2024 and have grown from 5 to 300 employees along the way). However, the announcement of Gilbert’s appointment is set against the background of numerous news stories about restaurant groups with expansion plans and appears to follow a trend of increasing confidence in the sector.
The Financial Times recently reported that 'Bill’s is set to restart opening new locations in the latest sign of confidence in the UK casual dining sector after the spate of closures induced by the pandemic’ and would open ‘“multiple locations across the UK” over the next two years’. Earlier this month, The Caterer reported that ‘The Restaurant Group (TRG) is aiming to open up to 60 new Wagamama restaurants in the UK as part of a long-term plan for the business’. Since July, Restaurant magazine have published a steady stream of stories about expansion plans for the likes of Pasta Evangelists, Kricket, Honest Burger, Rick Stein and Lina Stores. It’s quite the turn around. In 2020, I wrote an article for the Telegraph about the possibility of chain restaurants disappearing from our high streets altogether. So does that mean the hard times are finally over for the hospitality industry?
‘The truth is it’s never been harder,’ says Robson, who has 30 years of experience in Hospitality and who opened his first restaurant Mews of Mayfair in 2005. ‘The names you’ve mentioned are all private equity, they have to expand. Their fundamental job is to create shareholder wealth, get returns and get to a point where they could sell within five years.
That said, if you are a good operator, it's a very good time to be doing deals. I think with the amount of consideration and placemaking that happens now, it's a good time to negotiate. There seems to be a lot of retail being transferred to F&B at the moment as retail shrinks a little bit. But personally, I don't want it to get to a point where it's a completely oversaturated market which is where we seemed to have got to just pre-Covid. Then you were lucky if you could get the worst site on the high street.’
If you’re thinking that Gilbert’s appointment means you can look forward to a Fallow restaurant opening near you soon think again. ‘I'll be honest, I've not got a lot of appetite to go outside the London. I could see two, three more restaurants in London before we reach any form of saturation. We're in talks with everyone from Selfridges to another site possibly in Chelsea. That being said, if New York came calling or something like that it would certainly be interesting, but that’s a pipe dream at the moment.’
Gilbert’s appointment follows on from Paul Robinson-Webster joining the group a year ago as Operations Director and Projects Director. Robinson-Webster previously spent five years with Corbin and King Restaurants including a stint as General Manager of The Wolseley. ‘Will and Jack are at the top of their game. They're young, they're dynamic, they’re seriously talented and I'm trying to pair them with as much industry experience and wisdom as I can.’
Fallow is arguably the archetypal modern, successful and sustainable restaurant group. Earlier this year, it achieved B Corp status, a designation that they are ‘are leaders in the global movement for an inclusive, equitable, and regenerative economy’. The restaurants’ menus focus on sustainable British ingredients like ex-dairy cow, cod’s heads, cuttlefish and homegrown mushrooms. Every last scrap is put to use from dukkah made with carrot skin to excess banana pulp baked into banana bread and served with bacon for breakfast. ‘There's a lot of things that we do that other restaurants don't. We run on a higher staffing model. We do a lot of root-to-stem and whole-animal cooking. We don't go by all the usual rules.’
Fallow have also understood, arguably better than any of their peers, the crucial role social media can play in marketing a restaurant group. ‘The current reach is about 20 million views a month. We’ve got two million followers across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube,’ says Robson. ‘We have a whole department mainly led by Will. They film religiously every Monday. They're putting up between five and ten pieces of content a week. The digital reach is clearly international. We know that a lot of people book us when they book London for holidays - that’s fantastic.’
The restaurant’s online content is extraordinarily transparent about all aspects of its business, from detailed recipes of current menu items to how dishes are priced up to make a profit and the risks of opening the 500-cover Roe in Canary Wharf. Fallow’s series of videos that give a chef’s POV of a busy service from behind the pass quickly went viral and are now much copied. Near the knuckle self-deprecating and piss-taking humour often plays a part with the ‘Day in the Life of a Chef’ short being a recent highlight (click here to watch). ‘I've got to be honest, even I drew breath when I saw that one. I was just like, whoa. But I think there's something about someone that can take the mick out of themselves.’
With revenues up 40 per cent for the first six months of 2024, Fallow’s owners can perhaps afford to take the mick out of themselves. The group is unquestionably one of this decade’s most notable hospitality success stories so far with Fallow restaurant alone serving up to 800 people a day. So what does the next chapter hold? Although Robson recently posted on Linkedin, ‘on the look out for new sites. #landlords we are looking for signature sites 6,000 to 15,000 sq ft and a smaller QSR high footfall site for our Fowl concept’ he claims nothing has been written in stone yet.
‘It's been an intensive period, getting Roe open, doing Fowl. We want to settle and embed those in really, really well and then see where it leads. Is there any pressure to expand? No. Have we got any shareholders or private equity? No. Of course, we've got a strategy to expand over time. Do I expect to do something again in the next two to three years? A hundred per cent. Do I know whether that's going to be a concession in a department store or a rollout of Fowl in QSR* or another big restaurant in London? Or we might do a digital platform because we've got a great team that does all that. We are keeping all our options open at this stage. I'm kind of excited to see where it goes.’
*Quick Service Restaurant
Never been so looked at the menu and £65 for roasted duck breast seemed steep. Grouse is never cheap but I had roasted grouse at Bouchon Racine last November for around£48. Great read as always.
Great article!