When I opened the Hand and Flowers, the first pub in Britain to receive two Michelin stars, we scrimped, saved, maxed out our credit cards and held our breath. It was 2005, and the economic climate was very different back then. People had more money in their pockets, Britain was still a member of the EU, and a global pandemic would have seemed like a far-fetched nightmare.
Today, I still firmly believe that if you have guts and determination, Britain can be a good place to open a restaurant or start a food business. But starting something is the easy part. Trying to keep that business open is now a different story altogether.
Take the price of food, which has rocketed in recent months. A litre of olive oil costs almost a tenner, and eggs have gone up by a third. These price increases are something that every restaurant owner and hospitality business fears.
Whether it’s the sandwich shop around the corner, a cafe by the railway station, or a high-end restaurant with white tablecloths, the only way hospitality businesses make money is by charging you for the food on your plate. And when the cost of the individual components on that plate goes up, so does the price you read on the menu. The result is a crushing pincer movement, where food is getting more expensive and customers have less money to spend on eating out.
Once you factor in the soaring cost of energy bills, rising business rates and the 20% VAT that all restaurants have to charge on food and drink, it’s no surprise that so many of them are closing. In 2023, nearly 2,000 restaurants went bust in the UK, the equivalent of more than five every day. Our high streets are now pockmarked with shuttered pubs and restaurants.
At the Hand and Flowers, we often had problems with unexpected price increases on products such as beef, but we could almost always source a cheaper alternative if we needed to. Now, hospitality businesses are frequently finding that there are no alternatives. The price of almost everything – from beef to cleaning products, fuel and electricity – has gone up. There are no hiding places left.
I believe that hospitality can be a brilliant place to work. It’s often dismissed as a low-skill industry, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Being a good chef, waiter, sommelier or hotel manager requires years of experience and training. We need to put more emphasis on these skills, and pay people properly for them. We need to capture their hearts so they stay in the industry and see it as a career path.
In many European countries, the hospitality industry is given an opportunity to thrive. But in Britain, we’ve lost some of our most experienced members of staff to Brexit. Politicians have shown little interest in creating the training schemes and incentives that would encourage people to stay in the industry. And many businesses don’t have the revenue to invest in their staff, or to hire more of them.
These problems are far bigger than a single industry. The workforce is the lifeblood of any business. If your staff can’t get affordable housing, or a GP appointment when they need one, or get their children into a school where they can thrive, how are they supposed to arrive at work every day and give 100%?
It’s hard not to feel that something has fundamentally broken in Britain. Whether it’s water companies that charge us money while pouring sewage into our rivers, bus services that are expensive and patchy, or an NHS that is suffering from years of underinvestment, there’s a keen sense that nothing works properly. All of this has an impact on businesses, because it makes the people who work for them poorer, less resilient and less productive.
There are ways to change this – but I’m doubtful they will come from the Conservative party, which is why I won’t be voting for it. One resourceful solution would be slashing VAT to 10% for food sold in restaurants, cafes and so on. That would put us in line with countries such as France and Italy, and would give businesses more money to reinvest in replacing that broken fridge and hiring more staff.
If politicians continue avoiding the subject of Brexit, they should at least talk about what will replace freedom of movement. We need new apprenticeships in the hospitality industry and new training opportunities. And in the longer term, we need more investment in our public services, and in all the things that allow people to live with dignity, from health and education to transport and skills. It’s only then that Britain will be able to truly prosper and grow.
Tom Kerridge is the chef-patron of the Hand and Flowers in Marlow, Buckinghamshire
