The big bet: Starting a pasta restaurant chain with no experience

Five-location restaurant brand Emilia’s Crafted Pasta has expanded across London and the brand now boasts a retail offering and a festival.

But it didn’t start like that. Founder Andrew Macleod began his business journey while studying and spent years developing the concept for Emilia’s.

Starting a poker events company in university

Andrew started his first company in university.

“My business journey started when I was 17 at college. I used to play a bit of poker with a fake ID and write poker articles.”

This was during the late-00s poker boom and Andrew saw an opportunity. His company ran educational, team building and high-stakes poker events.

“It paid for my university. I ended up meeting a huge amount of really interesting people.”

That network included an “invaluable” mentor who ended up investing in Andrew’s first restaurant.

The experience offered business lessons too. In one case, he extended a credit line to a corporate customer that went bust, leaving the business thousands of pounds out of pocket.

“It just put reality into frame. It was a very small business and that was a huge hit. It put cash flow into perspective straight away.”

Learning the craft of pasta making

Andrew spent several years travelling through Italy, including visiting the Emilia Romagna region that inspired the restaurant’s name, to learn the craft of pasta making.

The whole thing was done on a shoestring and Andrew couch surfed to save money.

“It was such a good way to learn about the culture. About how Italians of all different ages and walks of life see pasta and what role it plays in their culture and day-to-day lives.

“I spent a lot of time getting under the skin of the culture. Working with chefs, visiting potential suppliers, talking to general managers, head chefs – anybody who would talk to me.”

Selling street food also allowed Andrew to better understand the business model and develop the concept for Emilia’s.

“It's almost like a soft testing, right? So, before you invest a bit more, first see if you can make it work on a smaller scale. What can you do to kind of prove that this works without losing or investing too much?

Opening the first location

Andrew opened the first Emilia’s restaurant with £125,000 – a shoestring budget for central London – in St. Katharine Docks aged just 25.

That included the rest of Andrew’s savings and a £100,000 investment.

They turned down 20-30 sites before finding one that would work, then got creative to save money:

“Everything to launch that restaurant was done through friends and friends of friends and myself.”

They sourced and negotiated the property, rather than use an agent, for example. And the architects were Andrew's friends from university who did the work as a freelance project.

Product-led marketing

Emilia’s first restaurant had just Andrew, a friend and two other people working there when it opened.

That meant Andrew was doing everything from being head chef and a waiter to accounting and marketing.

“We got everything wrong except for the food and the product. We had to slowly redesign and relayout the restaurant to make it work. The point was that despite all of that we had a great product and great service.”

Building a restaurant chain

Emilia’s popularity continued to grow and a review in Metro about six months after it launched was a big boost. That led Andrew to consider opening an additional site.

“We always knew that the only way we would ever open another restaurant was if this one works so well.

“So my mission became tweaking everything in the restaurant to make it as best as it could be. And so I spent the first year and a half just meticulously working through everything in the concept.”

It got to the point where they were turning away “probably over 100 people a day”, according to Andrew.

Then a space opened up within walking distance. That allowed them to capture the “spill over” trade and open their second site with minimal capital expenditure.

Launching a retail offering

Today, nearly a decade since the first restaurant opened, they have five locations.

Emilia’s also launched a retail brand in January, which is now listed in over 100 stores. Andrew also started a pasta festival, which is in its third year.

Andrew stresses the importance of staying true to your roots as you grow.

“We've always been very meticulous and careful in what we do. We've never wanted to grow super fast. We've always focused on product and service quality; we want to be the best pasta brand in the UK, but we're not necessarily going to be the biggest one.”