Show Notes
In Episode 15 of The Business of Restaurants Podcast, I chat with Lorraine Heskin who is the founder and owner of The Gourmet Food Parlour Restaurant Group. There are 6 restaurants across Ireland at present and there are also a whole range of other parts of the business under the one GFP umbrella, including a very successful catering side to the business where Lorraine has a 5000sq ft unit in Dublin catering for everything from Weddings to birthday partys. We hear from Lorraine about her early career walking the streets of Manhattan as a sales rep selling Irish food and drinks, the difficult decision to leave the States, coming home and becoming an export sales and marketing manager for a large Irish food company, the journey of creating her own business and why she wanted to create a brand, learning from customer feedback, low points along the way, creating a national restaurant group plus much much more! Click the Subscribe button above or follow us on Spotify or most other podcast platforms to be the first to see new episodes out every Wednesday!
More from The Business of Restaurants
In Episode 21 of The Business of Restaurants Podcast, I chat with legendary chef Michael Bonacini.
In Episode 20 of The Business of Restaurants Podcast, I chat with the co-owner of the well known Vancouver hotspot Jam Cafe. Mike has a long and successful career in the restaurant industry and before Jam cafe, was the director of operations of the Aburi restaurant group in Canada where he oversaw 4 restaurants, 400 staff and a yearly revenue of 20 million.
In Episode 19 of The Business of Restaurants Podcast, I chat with the well known Irish business owner Brody Sweeney.
In Episode 18 of The Business of Restaurants Podcast, I chat with legendary UK chef Phil Howard. Phil is a co-proprietor for the Michelin-starred Kitchen W8, The Ledbury (now closed), Church Road in Barnes and Union in La Plagne Montalbert, a ski resort and village in France. He also has interests in the London restaurants Lorne and Perilla, and is an investor in The Wild Room, which supplies foraged ingredients, mushrooms and truffles to the restaurant trade. In 2011, he picked up a Catey Award for Restaurateur of the Year (and rightly so!).
In Episode 17 of The Business of Restaurants Podcast, I chat with Will Beckett who is the founder and owner of The Hawksmoor Restaurant Group. There are 6 Hawksmoor restaurants in London, a location each in Edinburgh and Manchester and most recently the group opened a Hawksmoor in the heart of Gramercy in New York City. I chat with Will about his many 'failures' in the restaurant industry before the success of opening Hawksmoor, the challenges in the early days of Hawksmoor, the London restaurant scene, the dream of opening a Hawksmoor in New York, the main key to running a successful restaurant group, opening Hawksmoor Dublin and much much more!