BIG INTERVIEW: How Heartwood CEO learned from the floor up

And when it’s the CEO of a business doing so, it gains even more gravitas… and Heartwood Collection’s Richard Ferrier is that guy.

“You get to a point where you realise there’s a real ceiling on your knowledge and how far you can take it without understanding the business from the base up and I was eager to do that,” Ferrier states when recalling how former CEO of the business Mark Derry allowed him to get on the floor and learn about every role within Heartwood.

Soon after joining Heartwood in 2011, Ferrier spent six months working across the business: in the kitchen (mostly cold and pastry) at Brasserie Blanc in Covent Garden, of which he says: “It was our busiest restaurant by far at the time and one of the busiest restaurants in London.

“Then I worked as a waiter and as a manager and then our ops manager for Brasserie Blanc in London left the business and I was asked to step up and be the ops manager at the age of 27. It was quite a big ask, particularly somebody who had fairly limited knowledge in the hospitality sector but it seems it went well.”

It is clear this back-to-basics approach feeds into so much of what has followed in his career. Indeed, an event where senior staff swap roles with those running one of their circa 50 sites from the southern coast of Dorset up to Leeds is one where Ferrier shines.

“One of our values is ‘lead by example’,” he begins. “It’s about as close to the perfect as a mantra for hospitality. Being willing to do what is required to get the job done.

“A couple of times a year, we set a challenge for our teams and the head office runs a site from open to close. We take over a pub. We did one last year in the summer and we’ve got one coming up.

“We ran the Queen’s Head in Weybridge. We took about £14k. I ran a station on the bar and the learnings I took from that were kind of directly fed into our last drinks change. It included seeing some of the consumer behaviour and also saw our most recent refurb and realising some of the set-up wasn’t helpful in terms of how to deliver drinks quickly on the bar. It’s a real reminder that even something like a delayed purchase order for glassware can make somebody’s job more challenging.

“The symbolism of it is very important, leading by example. It shows everybody is the same and the fact we’re all willing to muck in to do the job is critical in hospitality, probably more so than most sectors.”

Amazing starting point

Ferrier’s CV post-university saw him work for Zolfo Cooper – which is now AlixPartners – in leisure, M&A and restructuring.

He “worked on a bunch of deals back-to-back” in the M&A sector, which included Barracuda, Orchid, Laurel and Be At One, which he describes as “an amazing starting point” with a “brilliant” team, having worked for Paul Hemming, Graeme Smith, Ian Edward and Patrick Marinnan.

He then became ops manager of what is now Heartwood Inns but, at the time, was called White Brasserie Co, leading to the position of ops director a couple of years later.

His timing couldn’t have been more fraught on becoming managing director on 1 March 2020 as Covid came into play.

He reveals: “It was shocking timing in some ways and good in others. You just had to get stuck in. There wasn’t much time to sit and think about how you were doing the job. You did what was needed that day and you didn’t need to create any grand plans.”

Raising capital from Alchemy followed as did being named CEO in January 2023.

“I’ve been very fortunate to work in lots of roles and to understand different aspects of it and I’ve moved jobs every two or three years as part of that and it’s a business that’s just given me huge amounts of time, investment and I try to do the same for others who are trying to come through now. It’s been great.

“People who don’t have a small amount of imposter syndrome are probably lying so moving into any role, if it’s uncomfortable, which it has been so often, that’s when the best learning is actually done.

“I’m not saying it’s not hard work because when you are learning new things. You’ve got to really put the time and the effort in and try to understand something before you try to change it. It’s an industry that gives you such a breadth of business knowledge if you stay in it enough time.”

Everybody would remain employed

A quick flick back to Covid shows a moment of pride for Ferrier. He remembers if the business was going to fail, everyone would fail together and this started by keeping everybody employed – even those who didn’t qualify for furlough or people that were in their probationary period.

“We still kept paying them, even though the business was very tight for cash at that time,” he says. “We, sadly, lost a very special member of our team who was a head chef and had been with us for a very long time. It rocked the whole business really because it’s such a close-knit bunch of people and you can’t really describe how painful that is.”

Heartwood launched its first pubs-with-rooms site in Dorking in February 2024 with 56 bedrooms. Ferrier says the business never had an overnight stay offer before so put a huge amount of planning into, testing “every possible scenario” possible that led to a multitude of new systems installed and people were “giddy with excitement and [we] learned a huge amount very quickly in doing something special and unique”.

Heartwood Collection has won three Publican Awards in Best Managed Pubco, Best Ops Team and Best Pub/Bar Concept across a couple of years and Ferrier states: “If you win, you’re a deserving winner. There’s a lot of hard graft in the background, lots of difficult moments and tricky times but when we get that recognition for the team, it’s a brilliant thing and you can see the joy in other people’s faces that their hard work has paid off. It’s really special.”

His view on hospitality is that it is an industry that relies on people with energy, who are willing to push, to do the difficult things sometimes in unsociable hours, having difficult conversations, managing tricky circumstances when something’s gone wrong but adds “pretty much all of those things rely on somebody really putting it in the hard yards. That could be pretty much anybody if you’re willing to do it. This is the most meritocratic industry you can possibly have”.

He continues: “We look for people that want to put [the effort] in, have fire in their belly, have the desire to go the extra mile, and so much of what has made our business successful is based on that.

“I would say to people, get as many learning experiences as you can and strive to exceed somebody’s expectations in whatever it is that you are doing.

“Mark Derry taught me very early on that hospitality is about hot burgers and cold beer. What I like about that is it, no matter how complicated the industry can try to be, it comes back to that simple thing – hot burgers and cold beer.”

One of the things Heartwood has done – which Ferrier was very keen on – is to ban non-critical emails after 8pm. “If it’s something that can wait till the morning, it’s got to be scheduled,” he explains. “It’s been a game-changer because although the business works in an intense way, there’s a point in time in every single day where it stops and then it doesn’t start again till 8am the next day.”

On improving his own leadership skills, he says one of the main things is having stuff away from work that distracts you.

“To be your best self at work, you need you need to have something that isn’t hospitality focused in your life.

“It’s very easy when you’ve got two small kids because they keep me very grounded, whether it’s getting them snacks or building Star Wars Lego. They’re a brilliant distraction. I’ve been trying to learn the guitar my wife bought me for my 40^th birthday. It’s easier said than done but that’s a message I try to pass on to people.

“Hospitality is an all-encompassing thing and people can be almost obsessive about it but finding downtime, having things away from work that can occupy you will really help you to be your best version at work.”