Sitting in the busy Bankside branch of quality fast food chain Leon, co-founder Henry Dimbleby (pictured left) is watching the growing lunchtime queues at the counter while reminiscing about the day the first Leon opened.
“The first customer came in and I remember we were all standing there trying to look relaxed. She looked in and had got to that point where she had committed herself [to buy something].
“She looked around and saw a fruit bowl on the counter, so she picked up an apple – at which point John jumped out with a big camera and said: ‘Smile – you’re our first customer’. She was so startled we never saw her again!”
That memorable moment happened 10 years ago this July.
John is John Vincent (pictured above, right) – part of the team of three, that included Dimbleby and chef Allegra McEvedy, who originally started the chain which is named after Vincent’s father. McEvedy left in 2009 to concentrate on writing and television work, although she still remains a shareholder.
The stories – and Dimbleby has quite a few – give him a relaxed air. Laughing, he admits that they didn’t even realise 2014 was their 10th anniversary until late last year. But behind the laid-back demeanour it is clear that the chain’s founders were serious about their business model – and making it work through the top of the economy, the recession, and back out again.
They even spent time working in McDonald’s and Burger King to learn how the fast food giants ran their seamless business models.
“We learned a lot from McDonald’s and Burger King. They are very good on food hygiene, good on how they break up the tasks – how they organise the kitchen. Things like timers – so for everyone to clean their hands a buzzer goes off. Then there’s a whole other level of complication when you do it with fresh food.”
While Dimbleby openly admits mistakes have been made, the original Leon business plan is still very much in use – albeit tweaked.
“We looked at our original business plan the other day, and the idea has been the same since we started. We thought people increasingly [want] food on the go and there was nothing in the words ‘fast’ and ‘food’ that meant it needed to be terrible food,” says Dimbleby, launching into another story about McDonald’s, God, and heavenly angels, as you do.
“We wanted to create something that both tasted good and did you good in a lovely environment – so we talk about McDonald’s in heaven. [Imagine] if you were in heaven and you had been to an art class with Michelangelo and you wanted to grab something to eat before going off for your evening’s poetry recital with God, then you would go to the fast food place.
“But, the food would be fresh, and delicious and heavenly and colourful and you would be served by angels and the materials would be natural and it would be a wonderful, fun place.”
Since the first shop arrived in Carnaby Street in 2004, 16 more branches of Leon have opened across London and the South East. And there are big plans to increase that number – not just in the UK but internationally.
“We think there’s room for 300 Leon restaurants in the UK,” says Dimbleby. “There’s room for 150 in London but at the moment there’s no pressure to go outside of London, because we are privately owned so we don’t have to prove anything. We are not a brand where [we have to say] ‘if we go outside London we can prove we work outside London’ so why? We don’t need to do that.”
Typically Leon sites are between 1,100 and 1,500 sq ft on a ground floor with high footfall. Units preferably need a shape that allows tills and cold counter to be visible from the street, and can be A3, A1 or combination.
Internationally, Dimbleby says: “We want there to be a Leon in every major city in the world… we think that there’ll be five or six global players who do good fast food and we set out to be one of them: that is still our goal.”
These are clearly big plans for a company that took 10 years to reach just 17 units. But a sure sign of Leon’s commitment to expansion was the appointment to its board in 2012 of Brad Blum. A big hitter in the US, Blum is the former chief executive of Italian chain Olive Garden, and is credited with turning around fortunes at Burger King by reversing the company’s downward sales and doubling profits.
“[Brad] is keen to take us to the States: it’s something we are talking about. We know that it will take time to get right, so we want to start earlier as a result. We want to get [a restaurant] open earlier rather than later to feel our way,” says Dimbleby. He adds: “We are serious about international. We are serious about the States. In terms of getting the first one open – we are talking in terms of two to three years.”
There is no doubting Dimbleby’s confidence about Leon’s future. “It’s onwards and upwards and being very respectful of all the mistakes of the past and making sure we make fewer in the future.” With that in mind, it’s unlikely that the inaugural customer in any new Leon branches will be asked to smile for the camera…
Recession
Remember Lehman’s going bust in 2008? Well, the guys at Leon do: they were right underneath all the drama.
“Lehman’s was above our Canary Wharf restaurant and it was carnage across London. Sales were down 10% with everyone panicking – [it was] really, really tough,” says Leon co-founder Henry Dimbleby.
He adds: “People were suddenly bringing in packed lunches rather than going out to eat. But after about two weeks everyone thought ‘the world hasn’t ended and this is a bit hard work getting my Tupperware out every morning bringing it in to work’.”
Dimbleby says that while business bounced back from a sales perspective, the way of doing business had totally changed: “If you ask anyone in the industry, everything about doing business became just a bit more painful.
“People were more nervous about things. Bank debt obviously dried up – any deal you did, any contract you had to sign took longer than it had before.”
However, Dimbleby believes the recession changed the tenant/landlord relationship for the better. “If you think about pre-recession there was the sense that the tenant was the customer of the landlord and they were buying the space and the tenant was lucky to have it. There is now much more of a sense that you are going into partnership where it takes both of you to make it work.”
