How to succeed as a restaurateur by Hugo Warner

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Hugo Warner, 40, is co-founder of the Benugo restaurant business started by himself and his brother, Ben, 45, in 1998. Their first outlet was a small café in Clerkenwell, which was made popular by locals within two weeks of opening.
Since then, the brothers have moved into providing cafés and restaurants to the UK's cultural spaces. They now have 1,100 staff and more than 30 sites — including the café at the V&A and the Serpentine Bar & Kitchen in Hyde Park — five of which have opened within the past 12 months. Warner lives in east London with his wife and two children. Here are his rules for success:

PITCH YOURSELF WELL
"We treat our sites absolutely as if they might be something on the high street: compete with that and not with other museum catering offers. We want people to come to a museum as much to eat as to visit."

DON'T DO IT FOR THE MONEY
"If I was money-orientated I'd have been better off in the City — a far less risky business. Give 150 per cent of absolute passion and belief in what you do and the money will come."

GIVE EVERY SITE A PURPOSE
"A café or restaurant must have a central idea that homogenises everything within it. It should have an identity in its own right, which is not necessarily the same as a museum's identity."

BE TENACIOUS
"It can get you into trouble but be absolutely single-minded about what you want to achieve. In a public space, everyone has an opinion but you have to focus on what you believe in. It's too easy to start selling things just for the sake of it."

THINK ABOUT PEOPLE
"The right people are your best asset, the wrong people aren't. In business, recruit people with the same values. We can teach someone how to do the job but if they don't share those values, you can't train them."

ATTENTION TO DETAIL
"Retail is detail' is awful but useful. When you walk into a place, the little details are the ones people remember, however small. Think knives and pepperpots."