01: Nick Johnson, MBE, Founder of Market Operations - The power of independence and transformational change in towns

Welcome to Beyond the Counter, the podcast that goes behind the scenes of the UK's food haul industry. I'm your host Simon Anderson, operator consultant and someone who spent more than a decade obsessed with food, place and the people shaping both. And then today we have a very apt guest as our first ever guest, Nick Johnson, MBE, which is the founder and creative force behind altering a market, arguably the first food haul as we know them in the sort of modern understanding of the concept today. And it's also followed that up with Mackie Maye, picture dome and various other hospitality businesses. This is very much the second, maybe third, maybe fourth or fifth career of Nick's. But today we will delve into the foundation of altering a market. Nick's views are particularly around regeneration and the importance of independence. And again, finance and fascinating facts about a really interesting and a dynamic journey and to where we are today. So hi Nick. Hello Simon. How are you? I'm good, thank you. Hello little wet in London town today. It's a nice reversal from it. Please, I've brought the weather with me. Yes. Okay. So it would be impossible to start a podcast or any form of conversation with you without really exploring your unique background. So I thought if we could take a sentiment of time just to sort of delve into that story of one, your kind of history and background, particularly your sort of love and passion and for Manchester and how that's developed over the last 30, 20, 30 years. And then also how that then evolved into the creation of altering a market. And then we can go on and then talk about where you see the impacts on food all in terms of regeneration and story going forward and we can come from there. So sure. Yeah. Again, just sounds good for yourself. I mean, for you, where did this kind of journey start viewing in essence? What is the background? What do you think shaped your path? It depends really how far you want to go back. I suppose I'm 16 now. So I'm kind of cracking on a bit. And as you say, I've had a number of careers. But when it was an 18-year-old, I went with my mates to Edinburgh Festival as you do this time of year, you know, when it was, you know, a fascinating experience. And I will remember driving back from Edinburgh in my turquoise beetle and going through parts of Scotland in the outline of Edinburgh and the outline of Glasgow. I'm not quite sure which way we came back because the path back to Manchester from Edinburgh isn't via Glasgow. But there were suburbs with shops and with places that I didn't recognise. And it occurred to me, even back in those days, which will have been 1980 probably, that we were facing a term that has lived with me since that moment, which was the erosion of regional identity. And it became clear to me that what was happening was that the tapestry, the elements that define the identity of places was beginning to be taken away from us. It was more advanced in areas of Britain, I suppose, than Scotland. And sorry, the England and Scotland. And it was the fact that the High Street was becoming this kind of replica of brands, you know, way back when. And we were seeing what then, it was before I kind of identified the importance of independence. But it was, what was happening was that the independent businesses were being taken away from those places. And that was undermining the sense of place. And I say, you know, the erosion of regional identity was an idea that then developed. It was a kind of provocation. It was a thought. And it's morphed into a whole series of different things in my life. But it has remained a cornerstone of influence to the things that I subsequently did and have done. So I suppose the threads of what you see in our places go back to my 18-year-old self, which was a long, long time ago. And the other material factory is growing up in Manchester in the 80s, where, you know, a lot of people claim to have been present when the Sex Bistels played the free trade hall. I wasn't one of them because I was about 10 or 11 at the time. But the impact of punk, the impact, the cultural impact of punk on more than a generation because the effects are still being felt as people have got to high positions within the major companies now. But for me, the ripples were very close. You know, I was kind of the next generation. I was five, six, ten years behind the people that had orchestrated and delivered all of that. But that cultural movement had a profound impact on a way of thinking about things that was transformational. And it was having an impact also on Manchester, in the post-punk environment, in Manchester, the cultural scene, the emergence of the music scene, was incredibly powerful at the time. And it's one of the reasons why I post-graduating from Sheffield Poly, stayed in Manchester because there were reasons to stay there. There was a legitimacy. If you said you were from Manchester, there are two things that people think about generally. One is football and the other is music. And both are profound in terms of their parting, popular culture, definitely. And that kept me there. Tony Wilson kept me in Manchester. He gave the city a narrative that young kids could latch onto that gave them credibility by not coming from London. If you know we're talking before we went on air about Manchester, and I think that although to a visitor now it is a very active and growing city, and I was part of so-and-the-scenes as were many that are now being reaped as part of all of that. But I do think there is now it is diluted beyond recognition that the references to factory and other moments in time passed are almost lost. And I suppose that those values, those moments, those people, the people that made that happen are fundamentally in my DNA. They were close friends, they were all part of making that happen. And so from that from that 18-year-old you went on again to be involved with Urban Splash, which was one of the pioneering development company of its time, particularly Manchester, in regenerating a lot of the industrial heritage and other sites around the town. And that led on to other roles in promotion of Manchester. So we just cover off that element and then sort of how that led on to the next sort of stages. I mean Urban Splash was a great starting point. My meeting with Tom Bloxham and Johnny Folkingham and there are discussion about what we might do. Tom was very ambitious. Hey. had been very entrepreneurial. We did things in the early 90s that you could only dream of doing now. And, you know, to the detriment of society as a whole, really, and we'll go on to talk about independence, but the barriers to entry now, 30 years on from where we started are impossible for kids in any industries. Perhaps with the exception of the one that we find ourselves in there, the podcast and real making and, you know, when you've got a phone in your pocket and the technology will facilitate it, you can do something with a very low barrier to entry, but I think going beyond that into the physical side of things, it's very difficult to do. We were very lucky that there was a tide of political support. We may go on to talk about that, but we were, you know, post, the post that generation, we were part of the new labour generation. There was an awful lot of optimism around that new government, and there were things that that labour government did that we are still, we are only now beginning to pay for in a very painful way, in that the deregulation of the financial sector and the changes that were made to the ability of one to be able to access capital were transformational. However, in many ways what is happening in the current economy is as a result of the large S that Gordon Brown and Tony Blair indulged in during the 90s. And I think that, you know, it's a tidal wave of a hangover that we are, each successive administration has had their own part in, that she was the selling off of the state assets, you know, that we're now having an impact, and it is now having an impact on everybody through energy costs and, you know, all of that deregulation that went on. The Blair Brown was the deregulation to financial sector and the fact that there was a colossal implosion, which we all lived through, if you're old enough, through 2007, 2008 in the financial services crash. So we were able to do things in the 90s that you can't now do. And I think that is desolate, really. We were lucky Tom was not only ambitious and entrepreneurial, but he had an enthusiasm, a belief. We were naive. We were buoyed by the rock and roll swagger of OASS visiting Tony Blair in Downey Street. And it was, we were buoyed by our own sense of belief and we went out there and we were rock and roll regeneration. You know, we're doing things that were design literate because we've grown up through the Neville Brody, the face, the whole kind of accessible and accessible design culture of the 80s and the 90s. So we were kind of design literate. I was a charter surveyor, which is the most boring and unexciting careers that won't possibly embark on, but I did, you know, having grown up in that and having tried to work out how I could have a role and have an impact in what I did with the education that I'd had. So Tom was a history graduate. Johnny was an architect. We came together and said we want to do some exciting projects in a way that hasn't been done before with design very much at the forefront. Incidentally, I need to put that into context. My dissertation, a 18-year-old dissertation at Sheffield Poly, a 20-year-old dissertation, was a case for the introduction of residential accommodation into Manchester City Centre. And the proposition there was that Manchester can't be a proper city until it has half a million people living there. And that was in 1988. So I've kind of, you know, I do have some, kind of. He's delivered on your dissertation school, it's reached more than 500,000 hours, isn't it? It's probably getting to that point. But so the point was that we could see, or I could see that it was vital that people lived in Manchester. It was an industrial city. And it would only work as a proper city with the proper infrastructure by way of bars and restaurants. And facilities for families and all that kind of thing, if there was sufficient number of people living there. And only then would you be able to get the rich experience that I wanted to see in my city. You know, I wanted great restaurants, not nicheless-dad restaurants, but good places to eat every day, stuff. And the means to achieving that was quite long-term slow burn, you know. You needed half a million people living there before, you can actually deliver that. You can't put the cart before the horse. So the grounds of where I am today are firmly founded in that kind of history. And that led to a whole series of unnecessary appointments as in part of the establishment that effectively led to my lost decade. So when the establishment hunted you down and tried to silence you, you were making one of them, and that led to the next lead to the next day. So where does that, when if you were taking stock of everything you'd got to that point, how did that. I mean, what you came about? We've done some amazing things urban splash. And we were riding on a high. And my swan song was New Islington, which has been corrupted beyond all recognition. But I'd begun to lose a bit of faith in 1999. We were doing it because we've become kind of same. We were kind of second or third album territory. We didn't have that anger or hunger or or originality that you have in your first album. And I'd kind of thought, you know, I'm beginning to lose enthusiasm about this repeat, you know, put the same old song on repeat, it's likely. And I met a guy called Will also, an architect, a wonderful architect called Will So, who completely and utterly transformed my perception about architecture, about place, about people, and about the power of those three things. And that was an epiphany for me. Meeting Will. And the people around him was profound and reinvigorated my enthusiasm for design and for architecture and for making places. And at the same time, we were. Open Splash was kind of becoming the. We were rock and roll regeneration. We were seen as the kind of cool kids who were doing crazy things. And we believed our own publicity. I mean, that was part of the problem. We believed our own ability and thought we were unassailable. So I was invited to be the. and became the chairman of marketing manager for seven years. I was a visiting professor of architecture at Yale in the States for three years. I was the. I was a cave commissioner in London. We were the commission for architecture in the built environment. It was the replacement for our final commission. You know, we presided over a judgment of public buildings that were being coming through the planning process and receiving public money. And that made me very much part of the establishment. And I realised that I was attending meetings. I was sitting around boards. There were lots of intelligent people with invigorating ideas, but nothing was happening. You know, I was used to having a invigorating idea and then go out and prosecuting it three weeks later. Because when we started urban Splash, development projects would be three weeks in the architects office. You'd go to the planners, three months later you'd have a planning permission and three months after that you'd be on site and you'd be completed within 18 months and so the gestation of these projects was really quite sure. When I left, there would be 13 people in that room, it would take three years to get to a planning application, it would take some time longer than that, it would take seven years to get on site. The whole thing was this kind of crazy train of people who felt they had some involvement in the built environment but had no knowledge and had no creative input to make to the built environment. We were just frustrating things and Will was the first architect that I'd come across who celebrated people who wanted to dress buildings around the deviance of human behaviour who would do things that were cheeky and hadn't been number four. I suppose that whole thing reinvigorated me for a period between 2000 and 2007 and 2008 and then the Blair Brown orchestrated financial collapse happened. The deregulation of the financial sector, these guys that were lending £1000 a million with a pounds worth of capital, the inverse pyramid that inevitably led to the economic collapse that's very well documented and still again is resonant in 15 years later. In 2007 and 2008 I felt that it was imposed upon us, we realised that we weren't the mass and we weren't in control of that. Things inevitably had to change. So with that journey, say for example, with ultramarine, you lived in ultramarine, is that where you were living at the time? In the twilight zone, you couldn't do anything because banks wouldn't lend to you. Self-belief was deflated. Nobody believed in what we were talking about anymore and we kind of muddled through. We got money from the home's community agency to finish off some projects that were dead in the water and we knew that if the ship hadn't rited itself by 2012 we'd have a big problem on our hands. And I suppose that during that period I was beginning to severely question what I was doing and took a decision. You need to be worried if you see me reading the financial times and I was reading the financial times avidly during that period trying to work out what the hell was going on. And in one of those articles was a piece by Luke Johnson, Peter Express, participatory Valerie Channel 4, and I just got home late one night, 11 o'clock. I opened this financial times, I had a glass of wine and he'd written a piece about, you know, he was a busy man, he did a lot of things. He looked back on his diary from the past 12 months and he realised it was wall-to-wall meetings. And he said, I realised that there were only four meetings that were of any use. So I decided not to have meetings anymore. And it kind of stuck with me now. So fast forward to 2012 there were too many people at the top table in Urban Splash to support it in whatever form it re-emerged. And I said to the guys, look, you know, provided I can exit with a in context of the economic conditions at the time, a fair package, it's not what I thought we're going to end up with. Then I'll go, don't worry about me, because I genuinely felt I needed to reinvent myself. And I left in 2011, 12 actually, not really knowing what was going to do, but I knew that I had been most potent when I was half my age. I was 50 then, in the region again, up to 50. And you actually would have done the most interesting things with my partner, Jenny, when we were 25. Now you can't do anything about halving your age, but you can start to work with people who are half your age. In 2012, I decided, or I made, I made, I had an epiphany, another epiphany, which was, and I said this to you before we went on hair, I can't remember the three, there were three things. One was a page out of Luke Johnson's book, which was never to attend another meter. And I've stuck by that since 2012, or certainly never attended another meeting with more than three people in, because it's pointless. The second was never to sit on another board. And again, I've resolutely stuck to that. I will not sit on any talking shop, any board, because I did a lot of talking, said a lot of things and nothing ever happened. The only way you can make things happen, particularly an independent enterprise, is on the shop floor, is being involved in your business at the co-face and making those calls on a day-to-day basis that have an impact on your business and the impact on the people that surround you. And of course, independence is a beautiful word, a sound like Donald Trump, beautiful word. Independence is a great word, because it can end ENTS, or it can end ENCE, and both of them are very potent. When I grown up in Manchester in the 80s, and there were all those bands emerging, they were all independent labels. And they weren't signed to big corporations, they weren't EMI or Warner Brothers. They were signed to cool independent labels, and the bandage of independence was a really cool one, and really important. And then suddenly it came to me that independence is the most potent, most important thing that you can possibly have, actually, as a business person. And it offends me, and I've had roles in Westminster and in government, as an advisor on select committees into regeneration. I've done my time and understanding enough about the operation of, and been close enough to it, the operation of government to know that there is a failure at the heart of government to understand and value the importance of independence. It's miss the independent business sector, and that's food, or it's other sectors, as the small and medium enterprise sector. It's irrelevant. And it's not, you know, I listened to Martha Lane Foxy the other day on Radio 4, she said, and I don't know whether the statistics are right, but 80% of the GDP of the UK economy comes from the independent sector. And yet we're not represented. The independent sector is not represented. The government pays no attention. In fact, quite the opposite. This, this administration has actually done more damage to enterprise than any generation, than any government in the last 30 years. Particularly hospitality sector. Yeah, particularly the hospitality sector. They have failed the culture of this country by its ignorance in relation to the value and the importance of the hospitality sector. What's interesting, though, is with the your, in my understanding of how Ultraman came about, for example, was you working with the Council or was approached by the Council to actually, because you've looked at, altering at the time was a, was a, was a tan, it's not the tan that it is now, it was, no, it was face into elements of decline. Well, it was, it was the, it was the town that had the, the highest vacancy rate on the high street in the country, always one of the 10. Yeah, it had failed palpably. And I'd made the decision to renounce my positions of perceived authority, perceived authority. Yeah, because they were for the reasons I've described. And my world was getting smaller. I have four daughters, the youngest of which is severely disabled. So she's in a wheelchair and has a very complex disorder. And my world had to get smaller because I was spending a lot of time in London, I was spending a lot of time in the States. And I realized that I'd spent two decades really trying to change places that weren't my own. own place wasn't fit for purpose. So I thought, well, and regeneration itself had become the stodgy word, the stodgy industry involving people who had no knowledge of why they were there, what they were doing. It was just a buzzword. And the point of altering a market was really to demonstrate that this is a different approach to regeneration. It was an attempt to reinvent regeneration. And part of that was because of the background that I've told you about. And part of that was the realization having spent 20, 25 years preaching the importance of good design and working with great architects, I realized that if I was to reinvent myself that I would go completely against that and say design is unimportant. It's people that matter. And the soul in buildings comes from the people who occupy them and how they use it. And how they use it. And I realized that it's people and the curation of people that is the really profound thing that you can do to effect transformational change. I've stopped using the word regeneration because it's been corrupted. So I saw myself in the role of delivering transformational change in the town that in which I lived, town being significant because cities I'd been involved in trying to get the ball rolling in cities since the 1980s. It was rolling and towns were being ignored. They're still being ignored, in fact, it's one of the biggest challenges. Again, that doesn't have a voice inside this administration. And what's been done to our towns is nothing short of disgraceful. And this was an attempt to, through a conversation with the then leader of the council, Matt College, who was a bright guy, he's not a taller politician. And that's why I didn't carry on in that role. But he knew what I'd been involved in the past. He overrode his then chief executive because she wanted to choose the likes of Cadexu to run altering the market. So, you know, we'd had the conversation. Matt had had the conversation with me in the January of 2012 to say, you know, will he join the board of altering and forward? I said, I'm not doing boards. Sorry. I'm not attending meetings. I'm not doing boards. I said, I'll write you a story. I'll paint you a picture in words of what I think this town should be. But I'm not doing anything. I'm not sitting around the table with boring people at seven o'clock at night when I want to be at home with my family. He said, okay. So, I wrote a piece about altering it. And altering was a market town. It held its market charge since 1290. I'd always been long fascinated with markets. So, wherever, whichever city I'd been in, wherever I found myself, whether it was London or New York, wherever it was in a rural town, the markets were always really interesting because there were independent businesses who were doing things there that were unfiltered, that were unbranded, that were interesting products of their culture, their region, their identity. So, they're all the kind of things that have some of you been unpicked. And altering them was one of the original market towns. It held its charge since 1290. And I wrote this story and said, it was a love letter to Matt really saying, this town needs to become a modern market town. In fact, it needs to become the modern market town. Let's have ambition. Let's put the in front of it. So, I've seen the images of altering a market when it was the traditional market and it was very much set up in the traditional format with retail, led stores, little stores that would come up and come down and some fixed stores around the side. What was that light bulb moment that you realised that food and drink could be the engine that could drive that change? You retain market elements with the outdoor traditional market, but what created that catalyst and that mindset for you? I think, you know, there were some great examples of barren market. It was a prime example, you know, and some will say, well, it's been gentrified. Well, of course it has, you know, I can't shy away from what I've been involved in for my whole career has been about changing places. You can call it gentrification if you like, but for transformational change. There were Broadway market. It was another example here of a place where you got an acceptable and rewarding experience that wasn't manipulated or manufactured. And that attracted me. And I wanted to take that experience to my hometown. And there was a market that was popular failing. People were trading there not because they were adding any cultural or economic value, but just because they were in their 60s and just went for a conversation. It was a bit of a social, you know, and, you know, there were a nice enough people, but they weren't really having any profound impact on the place. And I saw the opportunity because awareness was present about markets no longer being pilot high, select cheap, which is where altering them was really succeeded in the 60s. You know, that was what it, well, through the 30s, 40s, 50s, 60s, it was pilot high, select cheap. There was a shift and it was about provenance and it was about makers and it was about growers and, you know, all the buzzwords that people use these days about Iran. And there was my town with this beautiful Victorian market and right with opportunity for me to really not run a market. I didn't know that point. I hadn't thought about running it. All I wanted to do was affect transformational change and say curation is the way in which you can affect regeneration in the most cost effective way. You don't need buildings built by architects. You don't need banks and the investment of hundreds of millions of pounds worth of money. You can actually get Simon who's making some great food and invite him to come to trade here and we'll create something that's really special for 35 quid is the cost of your table and you've got a bit of a set up and it's all very authentic and rewarding and very honest. Yep. And that was the opportunity really. And then Matt said to me in the summer of 2012, we went out for a pint and he said to me, "Why don't you do it?" And I went back to Jen that night at home and said, Matt said, "Why don't we do it?" And she said to me, "Why don't we do it?" And that was it. So Jen was a chef. No, Jen's a designer, so she did fashion at Manchester, Polly. She had become a cook. I would never call her a chef. She'd become a cook in Atlas. We opened Atlas Delhi as well, which was an ambition pre-internet. So we were selling some pretty, we were listed as a supplier in the River Café Green cookbook, which is still back in the day and didn't work. It was hopelessly ahead of its time. In fact, that's an interesting thing. Tony Wilson gave me a couple of lasting quotes, one of which was from, I think he believed he got it from David Bowie because he was always attributed his quotes. There's no point in being more than ten minutes ahead of your time. And I think that's profound. The other one, in the context of the discussion that you're having through this series of podcasts, was if you can see a bandwagon, you've missed it. So those were two, those were two, those are from Tony Wilson and those were kind of delivered with me again. So on the point in being more than ten minutes ahead of your time, that's kind of stuck with me. And the Delhi that we did was way ahead of its time. So the question was founded, you decided that was a good decision. So you went ahead and decided to run Ojgumarki yourself. And if it had been down to Matt and I, we'd have been opening the September of that year, but his chief executive came in and said to absolutely not, this has to go through European protocol. So it had to go through an OJ process. And so we were appointed as the operator for this down at Hill Market, not having done it before, but that was part of the thrill. That was part of the excitement. That was part of the fear. I think fear and naivety are two underrated business assets. And we were, we negotiated at least, luckily I was well versed in the processes of local authorities and real estate from with my background. So I knew more way through that field. And we started without an idea of what Markethouse would become. We knew we wanted to run a market. And kind of we, it was generally, We'd been to a trickle market, I think, in Mackelsfield, which is very successful month of the market in Mackelsfield, and we're trailing around four kids, a dog, one kid in a wheelchair, but getting some really good street food, and it was chucking it down with rain, and it was a squalid environment to eat this great food, and all Jenset was well, why don't we make market house into the place where you can sit and eat your food? Yeah, but really, that was a starting point. There was no precedent, there was no kind of, "Oh, we're going to do one of them." It was simply born out of a need to make an experience more satisfactory than we had experienced elsewhere. The same experience was happening in Broadway market, or wherever, you know, there was nowhere really to sit, and it devalued actually the food that was unoffer. Yeah, and it was just simply the idea of taking that element and providing a comfortable environment for people to see, and of course you went full-tony Wilson as well, so you don't have any contracts with your traders, so that's great. You didn't have to sign anything in blood or anything, there's none of those. That would be a lovely story if they did, or in pig's blood, or in some shoe from their shoes, from their menu. So how did you go about, so then, I mean, you're fiercely independent in the traders, you went through a curation phase, you chose a lot of your talent. Yeah, it was curation, and I suppose also we have holidays and family in the beautiful Southern Italian town of Amalfi for the best part of 30 years now. And again, Epiphany sat in the square in Amalfi, and everything is happening in that square, because people live in the top part of the town. It's no different from a lot of European cities, but there's this compression of human activity, of all sorts, people wandering between the swimming trunks, there was a clown that was clearly part of the cultural scene of the coast of Italy. Restaurants, there was the Duomo, there were concerts happening there, there were cars driving through the whole thing. And if there's any kind of precedent, it's the square in Amalfi that we wanted to capture that sense of something happening in a town, in a place, that defined its identity, that was open to everybody. And it could have been a square, it could have been the town square, but actually in the UK that weather isn't on our side in the same way as in Southern Italy. So we had to do it in a space that was at Rufon, basically. So gradually we realized that the market side, which is the covered market, next to market, market has a brick-built market from 1870s, the covered market next to it is a greenhouse. Effectively, it was just offered cover to the traders, excuse me. And we realized that actually the covered market was a test bed for people to come and trade their food, particularly because food is a big, so important culturally and so undervalued that the point was to say to, so that Rich Carver, honest crust, one of the godfathers of pizza in the UK now through his own pizza and piffinine in San Francisco with sourdough, came to trade at altering a market and he had a queue for, you know, people queue an hour for these pizzas and Jen, Jen was my A&R person, so she would go out there and she'd clock these people who'd come to trade. And by and large, the people who were brilliant at creating a good plate of food were the worst at communicating themselves. Yeah, what they did. It's a different skill set, isn't it? Yeah, you can't put the two skills together. And generally, the people who came with a great brand and a great pitch were the worst at doing that because they got this great idea and they got a great name, but they didn't know how the hell they were going to cook it and what they were going to do. So it was the people with a passion for what they did and Rich had a passion for pizza. And he'd started off, he started off as a trolley dolly, he'd then gone to catering college in altering him, he's from way north of Manchester. He then started trading by selling scotch eggs on the markets in Manchester and had this pizza piffinine switched. He was a stay-at-home dad, he'd got four kids and he started meddling with, and I have to say Rich Carver is probably the best cook I've ever come across. He demures and he's very shy and very, but if I wanted my last meal I'd have it cooked by Rich Carver because he's just a naturally gifted at making a great plate of food out of anything. And he made great pizza, he knew the subtleties that went to making sourdough pizza. So he experimented at home, he went out, what would five pizza ovens? We snatched him at Ulte and then I sourdoughed up to him and said, you know, you thought I'm making this a business rich, you know, you're a stay-at-home dad but you can't carry on with that. And we've got a space in there and you know, we could make you. So when we opened, Rich was the first person to be invited. So this is the curation. These people came along, they impressed us and we had space to make that step from it being a hobby or a side hustle into being a business. And we invited Rich and he was the first person that came inside from the outside. We wanted somebody who was great at selling or knew their beer. We wanted somebody who knew their wine. So Rich introduced us to Blackjack Brewery, John Hartley and Rich Fowl and others and he said, well, I take the pizza oven to the brewery tap and they know what they're doing. They're only on kids, but the brewing beer in Salford. So we invited them in. Kate Goodman was the food and drink. So there's a wine critic on them. We see two food and drink programme. She had us shopping, did spray, but she knew her stuff and she was very approachable with her wine selection. It's good, but it's well priced, mid range. So we had a few people and we needed coffee as well. And we invited one guy who didn't work out into what was really the second big kitchen and within three weeks we realised that we'd made a big mistake and we had to deal with that. So we started and people still to this day, well, maybe not now, because the concept is well versed now. People have experienced it, but way back in 2012, 13, people weren't used to sitting at communal tables. People weren't used to what we'd created there and people said this is a great concept. And it was far from conceptual. And they're still, Borker, it being called a concept because actually sitting down around a table with a great table of food isn't conceptual. It's just part of life. It's an integral and enriching part of people's lives and remains undervalued for the reasons that we've been talked about. And he's an art form trying to get a cease at Oldinghamark, isn't it? So it is like, you've just got to be assertive and patient. And we don't pull rank. I mean, in any of our places, we don't get special preference. We've got to go in there and we've got to elbow our way into getting the table. And of course, the amazing thing about the journey is, there's lots of press, there's lots of stories about it and you're pretty better place to talk about it. It really was a catalyst for transformation or change within our gym itself, so much so that it was the times voted it, the best place to live in the country along that way. And it has seen. We've got the Observer Food Magazine Market of the Year award, which was a profound game changer. And as you say, that was part of that old. And I don't like the word journey either, but that was part of that old evolution of what we were. And I think that that was significant in terms of the impact. And you know, suddenly we were running a market, we were running a kind of this really busy place. And that wasn't what I'd intended. That wasn't what I saw myself doing, but it was a necessary part of affecting that transformational change. You know, I still see the places that we operate equally in terms of regeneration by all. So it was the whole thing working with independence. working with these independent businesses, facilitating the expansion or establishment of their own business, or being participants in it. So that if Matt at Tendekau had a problem with his electric, it wasn't just Matt's problem, it was my problem because we were part we are part of the waterfall of revenue from all of our places and that's vital because you know being from having the background of real estate, landlords traditionally distance themselves, you're a restaurant, all their interest is the rent you're paying. I'm not interested in the rent you're paying, I'm interested in how busy you are and I'm interested in you becoming busier than you are and we're all heading in the same direction and that, you say we haven't got contracts and I don't, I'm not religious, I don't, I hate lawyers, neither as much as I hate charters of ours but if you align your interests, if you get people pointing in the same direction, you really don't need the interference, the unnecessary interference of middlemen and that's really what a lot of these, that's a lot of problem with society at the moment and the service sector itself. And so, and you took that independence on and so, so you went from Orange again to opening Mackey Mayor and in, certainly in the North and quarter of Manchester and also pictured I'm in Maccus fields. Was that a natural progression or was it just an opportunity or what? I'm a great believer in serendipity, so I don't try to control things or, or I've learnt enough now in my 40 years of being in business that you're not really in control and you've just got to seize opportunities as they present themselves, I think rather than engineer them and opportunities presented themselves and we took them as they presented themselves. Mackey Mayor was muse ringing me up saying we've got this problem building in Manchester, I'd know Mackey Mayor, in fact, I'd know Mackey Mayor from 2000 when I had Tony Wilson independent record boss in conversation with Martin Bell, the independent MP for Trafford on the Fourth of July independence day. So, we'd had a celebration of independence in Manchester and we had the after party at Mackey Mayor. It was owned by the City Council and we got the building. It was half derelict and elbow played because they were in between recording contracts and a few of the Manchester bands and we had a party there and so I'd know Mackey Mayor since then. And there was this guy saying we've got a problem building, don't know what to do with it and we'll have a look at it and I walked around, I've got pictures of me and piece of savelin, hard hats on the scaffolding, wandering around the outside of the building and it just seemed, it seemed too good an opportunity to pass by and again, even in this period, that was 2016, that was 16, so that's four years after we'd opened allty. So 2016, even then, we were able to do that with very little capital and I think in 2025 now the ability for us to do that would be impossible which is a real sadness, frankly. It's the guy that writes your menus and should because what will you do if he ever hinges himself or has an accident with his arm and you need to rewrite a menu. I mean Zach is a really important person to me. He and I met about 10 days before we opened and he had won, in fact the guy you recommended me died very recently, sadly. He was his tutor at Stockport College and much to Polly, much to Uni and he came to me and he opened his portfolio and within about a minute I said you want the job because it was clear that he was the man for me, you know, we kind of got on and we've gone on to be both friends and he's become an integral part of it. Now he didn't have great handwriting skills when we first arrived. In fact, I started doing the boards, I've got a reasonable level of skill with handwriting and I said you know, there's no more greater immediately than a chalkboard, which is why we don't have anything electronic on our cancers. That's amazing. And you know, he just gets into the zone and it comes out with this kind of unconscious expression and you know, he's a vital component to the identity that we haven't engineered but it just happened again. It's one of those things that has happened that people think you must have engineered, you must have considered that and we haven't. It's just, it's happened, we've seen it, we've seized the opportunity and we've cemented it to make it alright. And it is one of those elements that sort of is part of the brand without being a brand so it's recognisable as you and again with many things that you've done much copied but it kind of does set a tone and an idea of what food halls are about. Yeah, it does. And just to round it, so what's them, you know, always asking people about the future and where they see things going. I think it's always a difficult question to sort of end with and there's elements. But what from everything you've learnt as markets and food halls and I know you're not a huge fan of the term food halls. I don't like the term food halls. It needs to be eviscerated from English language. Yeah, but what would you, how would you like to see that legacy in terms of their ability to correct transformational change going forward and which bits do you see are important to if they are replicating or they are looking to do things they should take the heart and are important? I think it's really difficult. I think that I said to you before, if you can see a bandwagon you've missed it. I think that we're very much in that territory now. I think that people are misinterpreting the, look, I'm very happy for somebody to come into any of our places and have a completely rewarding superficial experience, a good plate of food, a good experience with the mates and leave. They don't have to delve into the depths that underpin what we've done. I'm fine with that. I do have more of a problem when people start to try and interpret and do for themselves what we have done without any acknowledgement or understanding of the depth of why things are the way they are. So a lot of the people who have walked into our places and thought we're going to do one of these, they've simply thought, well, they've got a lot of street food traders and they're all operating in the same space. It's easy. We're going to do that. I think that misses the point by a country mile, frankly. I think that they are the people that come in and do that kind of thinking. What's interesting about what we're doing? We're 14 years now at this and we're busier than we've ever been. There aren't many businesses in our sector in the hospitality sector that continue to maintain, not only maintain their attraction but to continue to grow over that period of time. That's very important to me. That's sustainability aspects of it. That fact, that's a whole other discussion about responsibility for the environment. We're working with existing buildings. We re-work existing materials. We buy second-hand material from reclaimed yards for all of our places and we deliver on a number of different agendas, if you like. My worry is that now local authorities have looked at altering them and thought it's the local authority that delivered that. I'm frankly the local authority. Other than Matt College, you've had no more involvement in the delivery of that than they have had in cutting my hair. The reality is that it has happened because we've had the freedom and I've known how to allow, create the freedom, not only for ourselves to operate, but the people that operate within our umbrella. We've created freedom for them to get on, for Simon to go on and do. I want you to do your thing to the best of your ability and not worry about all the other shit that gets thrown your way. That and the curatorial aspect of it, it doesn't have the same soul, it doesn't have the same honesty, it doesn't have the same integrity and it doesn't have the same impact and I think that that's the slight worry for me. This is a very complex series of very complex reasons as to why it has happened in our case the way it's happened and why it continues to happen. That honesty, that soul and the value that comes from the hospitality sector is not to be underestimated, and frankly in all of my 40 years of working the last decade has been the most exciting, the most invigorating, the most rewarding experience because it's been working with people doing some, doing projects that have worked on very many different levels to deliver a wide range of outcomes, and I think that that's what's been great about it. And I just hope that someone eventually within government will begin to recognise that the guys, the independent hospitality sector entrepreneurs should be lauded and encouraged and put where they deserve to be, which is at the forefront of the culture of our country. Perfect, I think that is a perfect point to start. Thank you for joining us today, and yeah, thank you very much. You're welcome. With 44 seconds to go. There we go. Not enough time to ask another question, but yeah. Thank you for that. Well thank you for recognising it, because that's the problem is, you know, there aren't many people like you get it. Yeah.