Gavin Adair, CEO of Rosa’s Thai admitted that, “before coming into the industry, I would never have considered a career in hospitality for my kids.” This attitude, he said, highlights the need to try and shift perceptions around working in hospitality.

“As a young manager or assistant manager running one of our sites it is incredible what you are learning, he said at the Lunch Show. “It is a fantastic learning experience. You are helping to run sites that are taking in £20,000 to £25,000 a week.”

Adair said that people were currently the chain’s biggest challenge, made worse recently by staff being offered 20% more per hour to work elsewhere. “We are trying to think longer term, we have a phased academy approach. It’s about training teams.”

He described the Rosa’s Thai concept as being “Very casual, mid-market and simple. We don’t go too much in way of bling… We keep things simple and try and maintain that independent feel while looking to harness the best ideas that come from staff”

Adair said that the restaurant chain had become “relatively successful partly by accident.” The brand now consists of 26 restaurants and three cloud kitchens, having opened six new restaurants since March 2020. A typical Rosa’s Thai restaurant has a footprint ranging from 1,400 to 2,000 square feet.

He added that he was not necessarily seeing a glut of available property. Across the market the emphasis, currently, was on growth, resulting in “a lot of competition for good sites. Getting property right is one of the biggest success factors in building a business”.

Cloud kitchens had been “really interesting and helpful in the short-term.” Being able to trade via delivery during lockdown was “very valuable” and resulted in a “reasonably healthy topline.”

While cloud kitchens do not represent a large part of the business, it is likely to focus more on the opportunity of delivery, potentially moving fulfilment from some of its London restaurants to a cloud kitchen hub.

“We are very happy with how we are performing,” he said. “We haven’t taken price in the last 18 months. But we will be taking some price because it is not sustainable for us. But we will try and do it in more interesting ways than just adding a percentage on top of current prices.”

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