AUGUST 16, 2008 - FINANCIAL TIMES
Can you stand the heat in the kitchen?
Of all the sideways career jumps one might contemplate, leaving a secure job in the City of London to run a restaurant must be one of the least expected. We're not talking about the wealthy, who own a chunk of a restaurant as they would invest in a racehorse. We're talking about people who run the business, who like the heat so much they've got into the kitchen.
Rohit Chugh's career was, until recently, a pretty typical City story. He'd started out at consulting firm PwC, then studied at London Business School before joining Goldman Sachs, where he was a sales trader on the European equities desk. Then, in late 2004, he left the bank to run the Cinnamon Club, one of London's most highly regarded Indian restaurants.
He says his family saw this as a retrograde career move. "When you come from an Indian family and you leave the City to run a restaurant, everyone's looking at you saying, 'Surely it should be the other way round?'"
Even if you don't have disapproving relatives, it's still a move that raises eyebrows. Why would anyone leave a well-paid, well-regarded job for one that will quite possibly be none of these things?
Chugh has no regrets at all and you only have to talk to him about food, especially the street snacks from his childhood holidays in India, to see why: "Even though, for the first six months, I left at closing time, it's what suits me - it's been a wonderful road-to-Damascus conversion."
Interestingly, he says there are some similarities between his old job and his new one: "I was on a trading floor and it's not as different as you might think. In both there are bursts of high energy and then it's quiet again - there's no time for formality and politeness." It may also have helped that the Cinnamon Club's owners are City investors.
Ayako Watanabe's story is different. She had worked as a consultant in Japan, studied at graduate business school Insead and spent six years at Accenture in London, mainly in IT. At the time she left, she was a manager in the CRM consulting group. Her time at Insead taught her to appreciate French haute cuisine but it also reminded her that her native Japanese food was far more varied than most Europeans appreciated. Even in multicultural Britain, Japanese food meant one thing: sushi of pretty variable quality.
"One idea was a marketing consultancy for Japanese food," she says. "But I quickly realised the awareness was too low. Most people don't recognise anything except sushi, so I decided to go direct, which meant opening a restaurant."
Watanabe opened Saki in London's Smithfield in 2006. Upstairs is a Japanese grocery store and downstairs a restaurant. Like Chugh, she has found the hours long and the work hands-on (she moved house to be 15 minutes' walk from her premises). She says that it is very much a "people business".
Also, like Chugh, she found her background was surprisingly useful: "I'm supposed to be back office, but I've been a pastry chef, I've taken reservations, I've been IT support and I've been a plumber. From that point of view - being able to look at any part of a business - a consultancy background is quite helpful."
Elisabeth Marx, a psychologist and partner at the executive search firm Heidrick & Struggles, believes there are certainly parallels between a City career and running a restaurant: "Firstly, you're running a team under very pressurised circumstances. And secondly, you have to look at the entire culture. If the mood of the organisation isn't good, then that impacts directly on the customers."
Alberto Gonzales has perhaps the most exotic finance-to-foodie story of the lot. He was an independent consultant specialising in small service sector companies in Buenos Aires. His job took him to New York regularly and one of the things that struck him was the relatively underdeveloped market for organic food in the US, even in its most celebrated city: "In the US, even in sophisticated cities, the food can look great but have very little taste," he says.
So Gonzales dropped everything and moved to New York where he founded Gusto Grilled Organics. "We've been open seven months," he says. "It's a completely different world - both from consultancy and in the difference between New York and Argentina." But he says business is going very well and "there are so many opportunities in organic food in the US".
These three restaurants are not the only ones in this select group. Earlier this year, in Palo Alto, California, Pampas, a Brazilian steakhouse, was opened by Tim Reynders, who had worked in mergers and acquisitions, and his wife. Meanwhile, in London's Fitzrovia, recently opened Mexican restaurant Benito's Hat is run by Ben Fordham. His new role is a far cry from his previous career as a tax lawyer with Linklaters.
What appears to unite all those who can stand the heat is a passion and a sense of mission. In Gonzales' case, it's convincing Americans to eat organic. Watanabe wants to see Brits cooking Japanese at home as they would Chinese.
That extra motivation helps. "You take a vast pay cut to do this," Chugh says. "When I spoke to the owners of the Cinnamon Club, one of their most obvious questions was 'So you want to work harder to earn less money?' It's very strange to sit there and say 'yes' ."
by
Publicated in The Financial Times Limited 2008
