Speaking at the MA Leaders Club meeting in Nottingham last week, Little Gems managing director Steve Wilkins told delegates how a site near London’s Leicester Square took just £700 on its first day of trading, despite research suggesting 90,000 people passed its doors daily.
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The site needed to generate around £13,000 a week to be viable, but the footfall failed to translate into sales.
Wilkins said the experience taught him to look beyond headline figures when assessing a site and consider whether passers-by were likely to become customers.
“There are two lessons. First, we got carried away with our own success. We didn’t think we were invincible, but there was probably a bit of arrogance and not enough humility,” he said.
“Second, when you’re looking at data - particularly footfall or demographic - you have to drill right down into the detail. Yes, 90,000 people walked past every day, but they weren’t necessarily our customers.”
Wilkins spoke alongside Bigger Boat director Neil Burke and Almond Family Pubs co-managing director Vicki Williams at the event, held at BOX on Thursday 22 October.
The rest of the discussion ranged from site selection and menu development to recruitment and refurbishment, with each panellist sharing lessons from decisions that had gone wrong.
Trust your gut
For Wilkins, choosing the right offer was just as important as choosing the right site. He recalled how a menu designed to bring a taste of London to a village pub outside the capital proved too ambitious for the local market in 2007.
The menu included a Caesar salad, but one customer questioned why it tasted of fish. When Wilkins explained the dressing contained anchovies, the customer asked: “What company puts fish in salad?”
The exchange saw the business adapt its offer, with Wilkins advising operators to stretch customers’ expectations without taking too many steps at once.
Williams told delegates the same principle applied across Almond Family Pubs’ Manchester and Stockport-based estate.
She said the business had found its carvery concept, which was hugely successful at some sites, did not suit every location or customer demographic.
The group faced a similar challenge with its takeaway offer, developed during the Covid pandemic. While the model had worked during lockdowns, demand after reopening coincided with pressure on kitchen capacity, making it harder to sustain.
Getting the right people in place was another recurring challenge.
Wilkins warned operators could be swayed by a positive interview and the pressure to fill a vacancy, overlooking warning signs about a candidate.
“If you think you’ve got a problem, your gut is screaming at you and you’ve got evidence, trust it,” he said. “I can think of numerous times when I was convinced we could recover a situation, and it got worse.”
Finer details
In addition, Williams said underestimating the skills required for a role could also backfire, adding paying more for the right expertise delivered greater returns.
For Burke, a key lesson learnt was to avoid simplifying a business at the expense of its people after Bigger Boat introduced a five-item menu to make the Manchester-based group easier to scale.
However, the limited offer left chefs uninspired, with a more ambitious menu eventually helping improve engagement and the team’s pride in the food.
Williams echoed the importance of giving chefs scope to use their skills and contribute ideas, adding this had helped them become more engaged in the business.
Not all costly mistakes involved strategy or staffing; some came down to the finer detail.
Wilkins recalled a refurbishment at a 13th-century thatched pub in Milton Keynes Village, where he had instructed decorators to repaint the exterior but failed to specify the colours clearly.
When he returned, he found the building painted battleship grey with cream trim, rather than cream with grey trim. Correcting the mistake took three coats of paint.
“I didn’t laugh about it at the time,” he said.
While the panellists shared plenty of examples of ideas that had failed, Wilkins also stressed taking a chance could pay off.
He said a manager’s suggestion to introduce a fruitarian menu at a pub in Brighton’s North Laine became “a phenomenal success”, despite some initial uncertainty about the concept.
- Nottingham marks the final MA Leaders Club meeting for 2026. Don’t miss out on the first conference of 2027 - join the Club here.
