4 Ways HONEST Burger Keep The Magic Alive as They Scale

4 Ways HONEST Burger Keep The Magic as They Scale

My Knees felt like Morrissey being force fed a Steak-Bake smothered in Fois Gras and crass. Malevolently-miffed. Sordidly-sinister. Less, Charming Man. More, Helpless man.

I was on a run around Battersea Park. I fucking hate running.

Petrified. Plodding. Plodding, Petrified.

Knees Battered, surrounded by a Sea of Ice-Bath Dunkers, Hybrid-Hetties and Hydrox-Henry’s and whoop-Wallys and Solpistic-STRAVA-Simons and Sarah’s.

Plodding, petrified. Petrified, plodding.

”Pleeeaseeeee, don’t tell me about your 5K time and where you like to order post-run-Pan Au Chocolat’s and Flat-Whites in Balham”

Congratulations and Celebrations. You “Got. It. Done”. I salute you, staunchly.

“LEAVE. ME. ALONE”

Plodding, petrified. Petrified, plodding.

The Promised Land, nigh.
The Promised Land, oh yes, she beckoned.

HONEST Burger, Tooting.

Toot-Toot-Tooting my Trumpet with utter status - seeking - sanctimonious - “Theo mate, Yaahhhhh, MATE, just GOT-IT-THA-FUCK-DONE…

“Half-Marry, Next-Sundy? …. “Hundy P mate, Hundy P”

The Promised Land. Burger Bulwark of Bloody-Good-Times. Cathedrals of Carby Cuddles. Chips dunked in bacon gravy is a warm-brown fatty-swamp of c’mon-baby-less-have-a-GRAND OLD TIME. Glass-shatteringly crispy chips doused blowing breezes of rosemary salt. Felt like a Picasso plonking my chips into a pallet of pleasure -inducing sauces.

HONEST Burger. Me, Pig in troff-scoff-scoff-scoff. Yum, Yum in Tum, Tum.

Was incredibly fortunate to chat to the founders of HONEST, Tom Barton and Phil Eeles. Poddy going live VERY SOON.

How to Keep The Magic as You Scale

I badger on about it ALL the time. But one undeniable hardship for scaling brands.

Scale Kills Magic.
Scale Kills Magic.
Scale Kills Magic.

Bigger becomes boring.
Bigger dilutes magic.
Bigger loses the twinkle in your eye.
Bigger means a focus on bigger profits, cutting corners to profit.

Tom and Phil from HONEST Burgers are Masters of Keeping the Magic as You Scale. Here’s three face.

1. The 90/10 Rule - Systems vs. Magic

Scale leads to more people, more people, leads to more processes and systems. More processes and systems leads to less magic.

So how ON EARTH do you Keep The Magic as you scale

The HONEST 90/10 Rule.

90% consistency + systems + process.
10% allow wild card things, that could go wrong, but could create moments of joy.

90% consistency + systems + process.

Yes, absolutely, have all the processes and systems in place to keep consistency.

HONEST have an almost 10% rule, allow their teams to inject moments of magic.

• Maybe plop a bottle of tequila on the table and having an extra shot with the customers.

• Maybe give a guest EXTRA chips - because why the fuck not?

• Maybe Encouraging staff to tell jokes that could go wrong

90% systems for consistency.
10% for moments of magic.

Never lose the twinkle in your eye as you scale.

Similarly, Julian Metcalfe allowed Pret a Manger staff members to give out free pastries and doughnuts to coffees.

Yes, this doesn’t make sense on the P&L. But, then again, you can’t put magic in CELL E8.

2. Gratuitous Perversity a la Rory Sutherland

Some of the best restaurants keep the magic alive by doing things that don’t make sense at all. Doing things that on paper actually piss off the customer.

Rory Sutherland calls this Gratuitous Perversity

Gratuitous: ”done without good reason; uncalled for”

Perversity: “a deliberate desire to behave in an unreasonable or unacceptable way; contrariness”

Psychologically this perversity fosters magic.

HONEST refuse to give their customers forks.

When HONEST opened their Chiswick site customers yapped-clapped, waved and wangled. Pugnacious Pink Faced, Boozed-soaked Insurance Broker Thomas’s “Insisting they need a bloody fork, as they didn’t bloody want their bloody burger meat going all over their bloody new cravat from Thomas Pink”

No Forks Allowed.
No Forks Allowed.

“Food connects to the soul when you eat it with your hands” - Phil Eeels

Gratuitous Perversity is CRISP Pizza purposefully running out of dough.
Gratuitous Perversity is wagamama writing on your menu and bringing out the food early.
Gratuitous Perversity is Pockets Falafel Pitas in Hackney only open for three hours.
Gratuitous Perversity is staff in East London hipster restaurants being curt and rude.

Gratuitous Perversity doesn’t make sense. Magic doesn’t make sense.

Don’t be afraid to piss some customers off. You’ll build a deeper connection and tether to your die-hard fans soul.

quickly…. HUGE ANNOUNCEMENT coming next Wednesday… something I’ve been secretly working on (very limited spaces)

Keep your eyes on your emails next Wednesday morning. You’ll be receiving an email from me. I’ve spoken to tonnes of founders and created something incredibly exclusive to take your sales and brand building to the next level.

First come. First serve. Be ready Wednesday morning at 9am with a coffee in hand.

3. Do Things That Don’t Scale a la Paul Graham

Paul Graham, founder of Y Combinator - basically the God of Start ups - an incubator: responsible for brands like Air B n B, Dropbox and many many more.

Paul talks about Doing Things That Don’t Scale.

Doing Things That Don’t Scale = Keeping The Magic Alive.

Every single HONEST Burger site from Manchester to Tooting to Birmingham to Brighton all has a Local Special.

1. Creates a sense of locality

2. Creates of uniqueness and connection to each individual site

This is an accountant’s nightmare

1. Ordering small quantities of cheese from Lancashire, Hot sauce from Tooting

2. Chasing £30 pound invoices - nightmare

3. Creating a new burger every site that’s open - nightmare. When you could just Pizza Expressify it and have the same menu across the board.

Do Things That Don’t Scale = Keep Magic Alive.

4. Simple is Not Easy

Everyone says: “Look, it’s so simple, it’s literally so simple, it’s easy!!”

SIMPLE does not mean EASY. Simple is hard. Simple is work. Doing Less is hard.

Doing the right thing is hard.

Julian Metcalfe says, “Complexity is Easy, Simplicity is Hard”.

HONEST keep things incredibly simple. Their menu is small. By doing so they allow moments of magic to flourish.

Thanks so much for reading!!!

Have a bloody wonderful weekend

Popey xxx

Still Hungry? Course you are…

Please feel free to gorge on the most downloaded podcast episodes of all time (these are CERTY: BANGERS)

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3. Spencer Matthews: How Spencer Matthews Built Unshakeable Resilience and Raised + £10m to Launch Clean Co. in Sainsbury's, Tesco and the U.S.A. 

4. How Grenade Exited to Mondelez for £200 Million and Lessons in Unapologetic Authenticity- Juliett Baratt

5. Tyrells Tycoon: How William Chase built and sold Tyrells for £50 million and sold Chase Distillery to DIAGEO 

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