Recipe for Greatness
Recipe for Greatness
The Salad Project Journey: Florian de Chezelles on Building A Salad Empire
Florian de Chezelles, co-founder of The Salad Project, joins us for a conversation about his remarkable journey in the hospitality industry. From growing up in a lively family of five siblings to his transformative education at the prestigious Ecole Hôtelière de Lausanne in Switzerland, Florian shares how these experiences shaped his communication skills and passion for hospitality. We delve into his early career with luxury giants LVMH and the Waldorf Hilton, where he honed his meticulous attention to detail and discovered his love for creating memorable experiences.
Fueled by passion and a desire for fulfillment, Florian embarked on an entrepreneurial journey with co-founder James, leading to the creation of The Salad Project. Despite initial challenges like limited savings and the unforeseen COVID-19 pandemic, they crafted a menu that resonated with a wide range of dietary preferences. Listen as we recount the amusing process of naming the business and the innovative strategies behind their menu development, which relied on personal preferences and customer archetypes rather than traditional market research.
Discover how The Salad Project has thrived with seven locations across London, thanks in part to savvy investors and the power of word-of-mouth marketing. Florian also emphasises the game-changing role of digital technology in their business model, which positioned them ahead of the curve during the pandemic. Throughout this journey, the complementary partnership between Florian and James has been key, blending their skills and mutual respect to build a successful and enduring brand. Join us for a blend of inspiring stories, practical advice, and a celebration of entrepreneurial spirit in the hospitality industry.
Three, two, one, zero and liftoff, liftoff, liftoff. Hello and welcome to the Recipe for Greatness podcast. I'm your host, jay Greenwood, and in this podcast we need to find us behind some of the best food and drink brands in the UK to tease out the knowledge and skills that they've used to get to where they are. Today's guest is Florian de Cheles, the co-founder of the Salad Project, a company making the best salads in London, with seven stores so far. Prior to founding the Salad Project, florian worked at LVMH and the Waldorf Hilton. Florian, welcome to the podcast.
Florian de Chezelles:Thank you, Jay. Thanks very much for having me Very exciting.
Jay Greenwood:So I want to start about you and your young years and any experiences that you had to sort of form this view that you wanted to get into hospitality, because I think I read that sort of not as an atypical 13 year old. You sort of decided that was kind of the path you wanted to take. So I'm curious what any experiences that you had that kind of formed that process it's a very good question.
Florian de Chezelles:It's actually quite a hard one to answer, um, I, I think the reason why I wanted to get into hospitality is because I recognized that I didn't necessarily have that many hard skills, um, and where maybe I lacked in hard skills, I I felt I compensated in soft skills. And I was often, I guess I was often kind of, and I was often, I guess I was often kind of complimented by my parents. You know, I think parents always you know, I am one of five they have multiple children. I think. I think their responsibility is to, is to pick the differences between every child and make sure that they, you know, grow their confidence in complimenting, in what it is that their kids are good at. And I was getting that a lot and so I thought interesting, is there a, you know, is there an industry where that, you know, that kind of skill set is particularly valued or useful, might make me stand out? And I guess it. It sounds very obvious in the way I describe it.
Florian de Chezelles:I don't think it happened quite as clearly and as obviously as that, but I think I think that's where it all stemmed from. I just, I just, you know, I enjoyed being with people, I enjoyed serving people, I enjoyed communicating, I had, you know, lots of friends, I spoke languages, I traveled, etc. And it's just felt that I was going to be able to put all of that to use in that sector. Um, and then I, you know, I, I I went to a very niche university that specializes in hospitality, and in switzerland, and in lausanne specifically, and I think that one of the reasons why I wanted to go there was I was just influenced by people I looked up to that at you know that age who had gone there and had done some pretty cool things, and so I thought, you know, that sounds like a decent path to go down, but I don't think there was that much more thought process behind it. Really.
Jay Greenwood:I was researching the university you went to it's Ecole Hotelier de Lusana. I'll probably butcher that pronunciation, but yeah, I mean, like I say, it's a bit of a niche university. What was that experience like? What were the big learnings that you took from your time there?
Florian de Chezelles:It's a pretty cool place. I mean pretty unique. It's if you think of your traditional english university setup. It couldn't be any more different. Um, you know, it's a small campus. They're only. You know, you only have 200, 300 students per intake, whilst I think in an english university it's multiple thousands. Um, so, you know, everyone that you work with, you have to be in a suit and be clean shaven every single day, uh, which is obviously quite unique. You know, whilst, again at English university, I think the majority of people either wear trackies or I don't know. Um, yeah, so it's it really kind of like, effectively, they condition you from day one to make you act as if you were in a five star hotel at all times. So, literally, if you turn up to a lecture and you're not clean shaven, I mean clean shaven, I don't mean, like you know like a fine trimmer.
Jay Greenwood:It's literally clean shaven.
Florian de Chezelles:Yeah, you get sent home and you can't attend lecture, and if you don't attend your lectures you get kicked out the school. It's quite military in that sense and uh, so that was quite interesting and I think what it teaches you is it just teaches you to, yeah, just to be incredibly presentable and and to and to just have that kind of level of service. Uh, that is really applicable to anything you do in the real world, obviously very applicable to hospitality, but definitely useful to have for anything that one might do. And then what else did it teach me? I think it really taught me to.
Florian de Chezelles:I think hospitality is one of those few industries where, no matter how connected you are, how many people you might know, how rich or not rich you might be, there is no way you can jump stages. You cannot in the ladder to get to the top in the hospitality pyramid. You have to go through the kind of bottom of the ladder jobs in order to get to the top. And it really taught you because we did that in practice the very first year of that university. All you do is work in the university restaurant, work as a pot washer in the university restaurant, clean the bedrooms of the students in the housekeeping department run the bars, do the, the banqueting, etc. Etc. So the whole kind of campus is is run by students who are the, the members of staff, who are like practicing real life hospitality.
Florian de Chezelles:Um, so that was pretty unique. I was pretty annoying as well, to be honest, that some sometimes and quite intense, but it was pretty unique and I think I think that was a. You know, you kind of come out being like I can do anything. Nothing scares me really in terms of proper operational jobs and then the remaining of your time you spend doing. It's like a business school.
Jay Greenwood:You study finance and you know strategy and hri, marketing and things like that that's one thing I always say to people about hospitality, like if you really want to learn how to be calm and work under pressure, hospitality is the best industry to teach that, because it just humbles you so quickly. So I want to talk about what made you fall in love with hospitality and you know what experiences that sort of made you understand it, because a lot of people from the outside see this and think, god, it's so incredibly intense, difficult and hard, but yet people on the inside, they absolutely love it and stay within it. So what made you sort of fall in love with it? Why do you love hospitality?
Florian de Chezelles:I think it's the, it's the instant gratification that you can get. Um, I think hospitality is is a hard industry in that it's the instance gratification that you can get. Um, I think hospitality is is a hard industry in that it's physically very demanding, but I also think it's not an industry where it's particularly hard. It's also a very rewarding industry because you, you know if, when you put your, you know whether you're delivering a great customer experience or great food or great venue or etc. You, you immediately reap the benefits of the efforts that you've put in, which isn't the case in a lot of, in a lot of different jobs.
Florian de Chezelles:And I think that what's what I particularly enjoyed about hospitality is you don't need to reinvent the wheel. You don't need to be the most creative, brilliant person in order to do well in hospitality. You just got to do simple things right and well, and so it's insanely accessible to anybody who's just got that desire, that hunger and that willpower, which I think is really quite special. So, yeah, I'd say that's my single favorite thing about it. I mean, it's tiring, and that's what's hard. What's hard isn't actually delivering good hospitality. I don't know if I'm making sense.
Jay Greenwood:Yeah, it makes complete sense, 100%. Now I want to sort of go back to some of your work experience. So you worked at two companies, LVMH and the Waldorf Hilton. What? Were some of the main things you took from those experiences, those companies, those cultures and maybe contrasting them. What were the two things that really separated them and lessons you sort of took from that?
Florian de Chezelles:I'd say from lvmh was obviously a um, a luxurious, a luxury company sorry, uh that you know group that owns tens of luxury brands. I learned attention to detail and just kind of seeking perfection in everything you do, and that was really obviously it's present in the, in the product they end up delivering, whether it's a Louis Vuitton handbag or their hotels or whatever it is. But internally, in the way that the companies run, the level of of of it's very demanding and the level of details is insane. That's what I learned from the LVMH.
Florian de Chezelles:What I learned from the Waldorf Hilton is that you, if you don't love what you do, then you shouldn't do it a lot. And I't think, and I don't think I didn't. You know, the world of Hilton was that kind of first job out of university, uh, where you just kind of like pick something because you want to get a move on and it's just the inevitable, I mean, unless you're very lucky. But so many of my friends did the first job, stay there 10 months, a year, year and a half, and then eventually they move on to do something they really want to do, which is totally my case. So I'm very thankful to the Waldorf in that I was doing. No disrespect to the hotel, it's more. What I was doing just was really not filling my cup and and was exactly what I needed to just take that step to do what it is I'm doing now today, which I obviously absolutely love.
Jay Greenwood:So, yeah, and so do you think then, reflecting back, that's kind of where the entrepreneurship spark came from, or was it sort of maybe something underlying, because I heard sort of you and James used to speak and talk about ideas together and stuff. Was it sort of always a burning passion to get into entrepreneurship, or was it more sort of that hate of kind of where the current position was and wanting to do something that was more fulfilling?
Florian de Chezelles:it was both, I think james and I have joked and had many ideas before the salad project that never actually saw the light of day, some terrible ones. And obviously, I think we always I always knew I didn't necessarily know it was always gonna be with James, but always knew that at some point I would want to do something. And I, I was just always that. I always was a little bit that guy who just kind of like I'm a bit of a risk taker, like I enjoy it. And the beautiful thing about the timing of the Salah project is the single most important thing to launching a business in my ability is is how able are you to dive in 100 percent right and and the less you have to lose the better.
Florian de Chezelles:And I just I was freshly graduated, I'd been in this job for 12 months. I didn't really like it. It wasn't life. I wasn't married and have children. It wasn't life-defining. It was incredibly easy to go. I'm gonna do this now. I'm gonna go for it. So, yeah, I mean I guess I was lucky. I have so many friends now who I'm a little bit older now and I have a lot of friends who have been working for, you know, maybe 10 years now and they have great jobs that pay very well, but they don't really tick all the boxes and just making that step is just so much harder now. Um so yeah, it was always there, but I was lucky to be in a setting where it it was. It made it easy to make them to do the switch, you know, to take the jump and you mentioned, there's some ideas and some apparently not so good as others.
Jay Greenwood:So why did the salad idea stay? What was it about, when you're having conversations with other ideas, that when the salad sort of came up, that one just resonated more?
Florian de Chezelles:yeah, I mean, the honest truth is that I neither me nor j James were particular foodies to be. To be totally honest, I don't think, but you know you have in in restaurants. I think you have two types of entrepreneurs. You have the ones who are just totally passionate about a product. You know fine dining, Chinese food, sushis, whatever it is Right. And then you have the guys who are totally obsessed with hospitality, and that's what James and I were like.
Florian de Chezelles:We, I can't tell you it would be, I'd be lying if I told you that since the age of 10, I've been wanting of an edge in terms of creating amazing hospitality experiences. It was just about finding what the concepts would be. And so, I mean, we didn't sit there for years scratching our heads, being like what should it be? What should it be? It just kind of clicked. We just saw it one day and thought this is it?
Florian de Chezelles:Salads, salads. You know, I think we obviously recognize that the more time passes, the more people are eating healthily. That's just a, that's just a fact. You know, covid not covid, etc. That is just a switch that is just happening, especially in this country, um, probably faster than it is elsewhere, or at least they're catching up in this country. Therefore, it's kind of booming right now, probably more than it is elsewhere. We realised that salads, you know it wasn't. We didn't need to reinvent the wheel with it, we just needed to do it. Well, we saw what was being done in London, thought it wasn't being done very well. We saw what was being done elsewhere, thought it was done much better. And kind of put two and two together and said this is it. And kind of put two and two together and said this is it. You know salads is where we're going to put, we're going to. You know salads is going to be the instrument to try and deliver what we're passionate about, which is creating amazing hospitality experiences.
Jay Greenwood:And when you look to the opportunity, how did you analyse the competition and see a gap in the market? Because essentially there are salad options in London you could say, have a Pretz salad or you could go to Tost where they kind of have various salads. How do you guys analyse that market and think, right, we can really create, there's an opportunity here and we can create something.
Florian de Chezelles:I think with Pretz salads. Pretz is not a salad operator, pretz is a sandwich place. They have evolved and done salads, but it was quite apparent when picking up a Pret salad off the shelf that it wasn't given and it was a strategy from Pret, and I guess I'm not really criticizing it. I'm just pointing out how different it is to what we wanted to do. The Pret salad is not a meal. It's too cheap and too small for it to really be the only thing that you have at lunch or dinner. You have to have a small sandwich with a pack of crisps or you will be hungry later. That's just a fact, right? And I guess that's the positioning that Pratt took no warm ingredients, no mixed in salads, small portion, not particularly creative, just a kind of a cheap option off the shelf, right. And we thought, okay, well, that's obviously a positioning.
Florian de Chezelles:Let's look at it completely differently. Let's think what if you were to only have a salad for lunch, right? How would that salad need to be for you to be happy and not hungry until 7pm? So it needed to be copious, very important. It needed to have a good variety of ingredients. It needed to have warm ingredients incredibly important. It needed to be copious, very important.
Florian de Chezelles:It needed to have a good variety of ingredients. It needed to have warm ingredients incredibly important it needed to be, you know, you needed to be able to be happy to have it eaten, not just take away at your desk, and therefore that determined the type of restaurant we'd go for, et cetera. And to be fair, tost somewhat did that. We just thought that Tost was a good attempt at it, but we thought there was room for improvement on lots of different things and thought let's see if we can do what Tost have tried to do, but a little bit better. Now I'm sure if the founders of Tost listened to this they would think that they're probably better than us. It's all quite subjective, but that was.
Jay Greenwood:That's what we thought we could do at least and so you have this idea, concept, you're working on it. You're you and james both working at the same time. How much time you spend basically in your spare time working on this concept while you're busy in your jobs, until you decided right, that's really you know, double down, execute on this.
Florian de Chezelles:We really want to make this happen about three months, I think james james had quit his job already and was free and so and I would meet him at kind of like 7 pm for about three months and then I quit my job. But I mean, I mean that was really key and and I really recommend to anybody, no matter what you're doing, you've got it. You've got to go a million percent, you've got to quit your job because if but I mean that was really key and I really recommend to anybody, no matter what you're doing, you've got to go a million percent, you've got to quit your job, because if you don't, it's kind of like you've got a handbrake on all the time. So we very, very quickly quit our jobs.
Florian de Chezelles:It wasn't easy because I was 25 at the time. I didn't have. I probably had six grand's worth of savings. You know I didn't have, I hadn't accumulated enough savings to be able to kind of have a long run right. And then we got hit with COVID. So I quit in 2019. Covid came straight afterwards and so for two years I wasn't furloughed, I had nothing and I was. That was quite tough, I guess in hindsight, but but yeah, we really got down to business pretty quickly. But it's also because James hated the job. I didn't like mine. We really had nothing to lose. We just thought let's go.
Jay Greenwood:One thing I loved about reading about the brand is well, I guess well some concepts get when they're being developed, you know they start thinking about other things that are kind of off topic. So I guess maybe you could tell us about Project S and the questions you asked yourself to create the Salad Project.
Florian de Chezelles:Project S was a terrible name. Finding a name of the business was one of the hardest things it took us. I think it's just one of the business was one of the hardest things it took us. I think it's just one of the moments you're either lucky or you're and you get it immediately, and it takes ages and it's a result of a serious grinding process, which was the case for us. I'm really happy where we ended up, but, holy hell, that was a. That was a journey. Um, yeah, project s and the.
Florian de Chezelles:The ultimate sign that told us that that wasn't the right name was. I remember very distinctly when James and I were sat in a pub and we were meeting a friend who came and we had just debated for three hours. We were a little bit drunk and we'd been talking for three hours about what name we should have and we'd locked in Project S. We're like that's, it's it, that's our name. And I remember very distinctly this friend arrived. Actually, she actually works for us now. It's hilarious anyways. She arrived and she said what have you? You know? And we were like that's it, we've chosen our name. She's like okay, let's hear it. And neither me nor james wanted to say it and we were like okay, well, that's if that's probably not the right sign, if neither him, me or him you know.
Florian de Chezelles:So we just kind of it was wrong and project s standard for sustainability, uh, sourcing and seasonality, as well as salads, which I could see why you would think there's an element of it being clever, although project s sounds very kind of project x, e and and secondly, we were just. We just realized, and I've spoken about this before, is that, fundamentally, sustainability and seasonality, although they are fundamental and actually present in everything that we do, that was not going to be the reason why people would have come and enjoyed our salads. People would have come and had our salads if they thought the salads were delicious, copious, good value and sold in a nice environment. That was going to be the determined fact, determining factor. If, on top of it all, they were sustainable and seasonal and locally sourced, brilliant. But that was never going to be the usp, if you like, and so, thankfully, we moved away from that and, after a painful process, gave birth to Project Salad that 10 minutes later turned into the Salad Project and that was it.
Jay Greenwood:Crafting the menu. How did you guys approach that? Because one option could be deciding what you guys like and you know there's a market for one. So that's kind of how you'd approach it. Or were there other methods you took? And I'm reading you had custom archetypes that you kind of went down to uh target for different menu selections yeah.
Florian de Chezelles:So I think, when we chose the menu, what was really key and I think is is, you know, has contributed to some of the successes that we've enjoyed up until this point is that james and I really wanted the salads that we offered to be products that me and him would like, which obviously sounds a bit. This isn't necessarily the way you would go about it, you know. I think a lot of people would say, oh, I'm going to do really extensive market research, et cetera. We were just kind of like, is this the type of thing we would like? And it was important.
Florian de Chezelles:We felt it was important that we would like it because, as I said, we were not particular foodies and we wanted the salad project to appeal to a lot of people, and so we were clear that it needed to be approachable, and it need. We needed to be able to not find ourselves, but go down a too niche a path, uh, in terms of the offering that we had. Now, having said that it, it was insanely important to bring on a chef on the journey because, whilst we were clear where we wanted it to go, there's a real skill there. There's a hard skill creating recipes, creating dressings, et cetera.
Florian de Chezelles:So, many people said why are you looking for a chef? You're just doing salads, and that's probably why so many salad concepts haven't been that popular in the past, and you cannot underestimate how complicated this is. And so we very quickly hired Clementine, who's still with us today. She's wonderful. She's our culinary director. She has given birth to our menu. She has helped, you know, bring James and ideas, james and i's ideas into into real concrete, um many options.
Florian de Chezelles:So that was really important is to be to appeal to everyone. You know at the saddle project. If you're, if you're a calorie calorie counter, if you're a protein loader, if you're mr indulgent who just needs to clear his conscience on a Monday, or if you are on a strict regime or on a strict diet, et cetera, you'll find something there for you, and that's what's really special. Yeah, we created customer profiles to answer your question. We did To be fair. We don't use them that much anymore, but at the start they helped us guide things. We had Captain Planet and that was trying to cater to those people who decided they came to the salad projects because we offered a product that was respectful of the environment. We had captain feel good, which james, and that was james and i's category, which is, you know, the guy who wants to avoid a burger, wants a nice, indulgent, healthy, hearty meal, which actually we find in all the customers, our customers are.
Florian de Chezelles:And then we had Captain, healthy, of course, which is those guys who, just, you know, are very conscious about what they put in their body. And yeah, I mean that kind of those three principles still, we still very much use today when we think about menu development and it's, it's, yeah, I mean, the beauty of our menu is that it's so you have an infinite amount of combinations you can, because you can build your own, you can do whatever you like I want to talk now about the day one of the first opening.
Jay Greenwood:Now it was delayed because of covid. It was delayed a lot longer. So what was it like when you opened the doors for the first time? Was it queues outside? What was the experience like you opened the doors for the first time? Was it queues outside? What was the experience like? How does it go?
Florian de Chezelles:No, definitely not queues outside, and I think we sold that day I can remember, I think something like 60 salads, 50 of which were family, but this was COVID. We were wearing masks. Uh, you know, we, yeah, for the first kind of four, five months of our existence, all our team members were wearing masks, which is weird when you think about it now.
Florian de Chezelles:um no, it was great because we we honestly, even though we had experience in hospitality, we went to university, blah, blah we really didn't know what we were doing and if we had the kind of cues that we have now, back then it would have been a total nightmare, it would be chaos. And so, you know, we just eased into it. It slowly, very slowly, got busy and busy over a period of maybe six to eight months until eventually it really took off, and that was great. We were able to, you know, we were able to slowly uh, build our processes and slowly just kind of get ready for, for, for bigger queues, um, but it was a pretty surreal moment and we, when I look at it, we felt very young and very naive and very clueless back then. Um, but yeah, I mean, it was only three and a half years ago in a way, so not that far away. But you do learn a lot in that period of time.
Jay Greenwood:Now I want to talk on to. You mentioned there sort of building that customer base up. You know, on the first one where it started off, 60 salads an hour, you know queues out the door what point did you sort of decide that you needed to be working in the business versus on the business? Because you know, I imagine at the start you were very involved in the operations. But how do you then start to sort of take a step out and then sort of think about the growth plans of Salad Project to sort of get it to sort of where it is now and in the future?
Florian de Chezelles:yeah, it's a good question. James and I were very involved operationally and we it took us probably about eight, nine months before one of us got out. We were literally 7am to 11pm every single day, me and him, and that was great. We learned so much. It was a really fun time, very hard for sure, but it was absolutely key.
Florian de Chezelles:I think one day we had a moment, I remember we sat on the tube and we were like, ok, well, we need to kind of go after that location too now. And we realized that in order to do that, one of us would have to kind of step out. And you know, we told ourselves where do we want to take this? You know what's our ambition with the salad project? And we were quite clear that we would rather it, if it was going to die, we would rather it died quickly and we'd given it absolutely everything than we made it kind of survive for six, seven years without really it going anywhere, and that very much. Well, actually, actually we probably look at that a bit differently now. But, and so we were kind of like, okay, well, in order for it to you know, in order for it to really get to where we want it to go. We're going to have to take a certain amount of risk here. We're going to have to get out the operations, raise some money, go off to start punching, try to to punch above our way, which I think is what we've done up until now.
Florian de Chezelles:So yeah, nine months in, I actually stepped out. I went in a little co-working space just down the road alone and I worked on finding the next location, doing some marketing, raising some funds, et cetera, whilst James was in the stores holding the fort. And actually that division of responsibility is still the same today. Now, obviously, james is you will not see him make salads on a daily basis at all, but he looks after the operations and I look after the rest, and that's just worked really naturally and really well and when you were at the first restaurant, was there any particular signal or sign that you just thought this is really connecting now and we really do need to open up second place?
Jay Greenwood:was it just as simple as just?
Florian de Chezelles:the queues just kept getting bigger and bigger yeah, I think the queue was was eventually what we realized. I mean, look, we, we always went into this we knew or believed very strongly sorry, not, we didn't know we believed very strongly that there could be 20, 30 thousand projects in london. Um, but there's one thing believing it is another proof demonstrating it. And the moment that queue consistently hit the door and I'm talking about our spitalfield store, which means hitting the door that means you've got a queue of probably about 30, 40 people. Once we kind of got to that threshold, where that was being hit every single day at lunch, we were like, okay, I think that's the sign we need.
Florian de Chezelles:And we were far from and we're still not a complete business at all, but we were far from being, you know, our margins were not that good, we weren't very efficient, we were spending too much money, blah, blah, blah blah, but the demand was there and that's the sign we needed. And, yeah, that's it. And also, what really kind of encouraged us is we knew full well that we had queues at the door in a really really tough time. That was particularly encouraging. We knew hang on a minute this is a three-day week. Everyone's working from home on a Monday. Everyone's working from home on a Friday. It's only going to get better. This is record inflation. This is staffing crisis. This is COVID we're like. If this is the demand that we have in possibly one of the worst times in the industry, then there's good reason to believe that it's only going to get better and we should get a move on.
Jay Greenwood:You touched on funding, and I think I read somewhere that some of the funding came from the most loyal customers. So how did you manage this? Was it just customers coming in mentioning the ambition, or was it outreach? How did you actually get these customers to then actually invest in? You know, the growth of the company.
Florian de Chezelles:And look, some of these people that invested in us. We were very fortunate in that, yes, they were regular customers, but we didn't just go to any customer who was regular to ask them for money. You know, we have a lot of very regular customers that we've never discussed investing in the salad project. We just happen to have a couple of customers who are business angels, uh, who have a lot of experience in in the industry, and we thought we were lucky and the planets just aligned. We're like this is great. These are their normal, organic customers of ours and they could be so useful. I mean, they've got. Not only have they have they got money that they may be able to invest, but also they're going to be have so much experience to bring to us. So we actively went after them, rather than anyone who was a regular customer.
Florian de Chezelles:Um, and I think you know they. You know that's the great thing when you target entrepreneurs. Entrepreneurs are great people to target because they can see past the imperfections of a, of a bootstrapped concept. You know they've got that. They've, firstly, they've got an appetite for risk and they're never, ever satisfied, so they're always looking for the next thing to the next risky thing to go into. And secondly, they can totally see beyond the imperfections of a very young business at least, and they see potential. Uh, they recognize potential when they see it. So that was really great. They're still with us today and have been immensely useful.
Jay Greenwood:Now the Salad Project has grown and you're going to say seven sites and they're all busy. How have you grown awareness about the brand? Has it just been organic word of mouth or have you found any successful marketing or strategies that has been the most successful for sort of driving the awareness for the brand and increasing business?
Florian de Chezelles:business if, firstly and that's another great thing about hospitality is that you unlike unlike a tech business or an e-commerce business word of mouth is your best, is your best possible, the best possible marketing strategy. And it's great because if you're hoping, if your marketing is based around word of mouth, it means that you need to invest in your products and and therefore you're hoping this. Your marketing is based around word of mouth, it means that you need to invest in your products and and therefore you're kind of killing two birds with one stone you're you're by investing your product, you're making progress as a company and and and you're doing great things for your business, but also you're investing in marketing. It's a really good, uh kind of virtuous cycle, if you like. So word of mouth is always incredibly important for us, but what we've particularly done I think, more than most hospitality businesses of this type have and I mean quick service restaurants is we've put a huge amount of effort into our partnerships.
Florian de Chezelles:Uh, so we whether it's restaurants, individuals, artists, we we've always tried to partner up with people who were fundamentally bigger and cooler than us, uh, and we were quite relentless with it and it's paid off and it's one of those things you know, you catch one small fish that then allows you to catch the next, slightly bigger fish and eventually you find yourself on. We've partnered with amazing people. We've partnered with phenomenal restaurants like uh bubala bow, um. We've partnered with the great channels, like mob. We've partnered with amazing influencers like Max Lamana, deliciously, ella, business People, grace Beverly you know all these and they obviously have huge following, not only in the number of, literally, instagram followers, they also have a real kind of street cred and cult following, um, and so, yeah, that's probably been our single single most impactful and we've put all of our focus.
Jay Greenwood:It's just and we'll continue to continue to do that rather than spending lots of money on, you know, paid social, all that kind of stuff, it's more organic now I want to talk about sort of the delivery side of um, the salad project, and by delivery side so I mean how people were sort of experiencing it, and mansion house, I'm right thinking, is a digital only collection, only experience. So how has that gone and are you noticing any underlying trends with sort of sort of this more digital experience versus in person?
Florian de Chezelles:it's gone really well. I mean what it's done is. It's not only has it and it's a serious gamble what we did, because no one was doing this really, um, we built it around. It's not like we have our own tech and therefore we've been able to completely customize or build the experience. We've built the store physically, built a store around tech that isn't even ours, right and so like there's a real element of risk there and we didn't have, we had no proof whatsoever that it would even work, as I don't mean work as in be popular. I mean like, is it actually going to? Is the tech going to hold up? Is it actually going to work? Like, is the experience actually going to function? And so it really paid off. It's successful.
Florian de Chezelles:It's people from a branding perspective, it's super cool. People really like it. It's highly convenient and for those people who see, we knew exactly who we were targeting with it, we're not targeting the weekender. He enjoys seeing the food displayed in front of him and will spend long seconds, minutes, staring at it and deciding what he wants. We're targeting the super high, efficient customer who just wants speed, doesn't want to talk to anybody, has already been sold by the salad portioning experience, knows the quality and just wants it fast, and so it's worked well. In the sense that it's working, it's profitable, brilliant, but also just from a visibility and branding perspective, we've won design awards with it. We've won technology awards with it. There's been lots and lots of PR and press about it. So, yeah, I mean it's green lights all around.
Jay Greenwood:To be honest, and did COVID sort of shape? Or maybe it was just always the plan from the beginning of how the spaces that you crafted, how they looked, because they seem very intentionally in mind that digital experience you know we have sort of pickup stations, delivery places and then also to order. Was that always the intention or has it sort of evolved? As you've seen, trends change.
Florian de Chezelles:No, it was. I think we were lucky. I mean, covid was great on so many levels. One of them was because we always wanted to do, we always wanted to bring technology in the center of what we did at Saloproject, and we always wanted to be the best you know. As as for online ordering experience whether it's on delivery or on the app or on click and collect to be as smooth and as quality as possible. Right, and I was always. We always thought that was going to be a good differentiating factor for us. But what covid enabled is it actually forced those customers? We always knew we were going to struggle to educate the customer to be online so much, but covid just forced people to.
Florian de Chezelles:So we arrived right on the back of the pandemic with a concept that was imagined, with online ordering at the forefront of what we did, and so we were suddenly fighting against concepts that existed before the pandemic, that didn't have that at the forefront of their mind and who were therefore playing catch up whilst we were literally just like building our concept around it. So that was great. I mean, I think a lot of businesses have caught up to that now, to be honest, but we suddenly it enabled us to really stand out. I think I'll give you a really small example. But we knew that the delivery we wanted to delivery and delivery to take a really large part in our sales and therefore we also knew how unpleasant it is, when you are not a regular customer, to have an astronaut looking delivery driver come in into the store. And so we we designed all our stores with a really kind of dedicated delivery area out of the way.
Florian de Chezelles:Now that doesn't sound that clever or revolutionary at all right now, but back then, a lot of you know, delivery wasn't before the pandemic, delivery really wasn't that big right, and so all of our stores were built like that. Well, a lot of existing stores just don't have that factor in, and trying to retrospectively fit that in is complicated. Um, and you know now delivery, online sales represents more than half of our revenue overall, so it's you know, it's a really big part of what we do that's a great part.
Jay Greenwood:Now I'll just finish up on one final question. I want to reflect on sort of your journey building salad project but then also having james as a co-founder, and how helpful you have found that experience doing it with a co-founder versus maybe you know, you saw you mentioned at the beginning that you know, you know you wanted to entrepreneurship. You wasn't sure, definitely who it was going to be with, but you having James, how has that been and made your journey entrepreneurship?
Florian de Chezelles:It's been. It's been amazing on so many levels. So, firstly, james and I are very, very good friends, so it's really nice to spend a day to day with you. Know, rather than a crap colleague that you don't like and haven't chosen, we've chosen to work together, so that's nice. We get to spend a lot of time together. First win. Second win is that entrepreneurship alone would be very hard. I would, I am sure of it. I think you know. I don't think I think it'd be particularly stressful. I think you'd make a lot of wrong choices. I think it's really good to have checks and balances and to be able to just bounce ideas. So that's been great. I think.
Florian de Chezelles:On a very, very personal level, james and i's friendship has solidified throughout this journey rather than weakened. I mean, so many people said oh my god, you're getting into business with your best friend, you've got everything to lose, etc. It's a and it's a very, very valid argument. It just hasn't happened to us and I think the reason why it hasn't happened is because we're very complementary. We're very similar people outside of work. At work, we're very different. I think James knows exactly how to get out of my way and vice versa, and I think that's quite lucky.
Florian de Chezelles:Uh, you know I can't. I didn't going into business with James, wasn't? I didn't calculate these things, I wasn't like I know it's going to work because actually we're very complimentary at work and we have working styles that are not going to be confrontational, and I didn't know that. So it was luck, it just happened to play out that way. I didn't, I hadn't had that much working experience with jim, had lots of friendship experience but not working, and so we were. That was really quite lucky. Um, and yeah, it's just more fun I anyone you start a business trying to find a path to do it with. It's just it's so much more fun, um, and just much more enjoyable I completely agree.
Jay Greenwood:Well, that's a perfect place to wrap up the interview and I want to just say, uh, thank you for creating such an amazing concept. I think it's brilliant and it's just well underneath, just what I needed to kind of what you were talking about, sort of wanting the more conscious but fulfilling food. So, yeah, thank you for anyone out there definitely give it a try, because it's well worth it. So, yeah, thanks so much for time for coming on thank you, jay.
Florian de Chezelles:Honestly, I always I could speak about the salad project till the end of time, so always so happy to to be given that opportunity. Um, and for those of you who are listening, we have seven locations in and around london. If you want something that's either healthy or even a little bit naughty, there's something for you at the salad projects as always.
Jay Greenwood:Guys, thank you so much for listening, really appreciate the support and if you guys like it and you're enjoying what you're listening to, please like and subscribe and write a review. We really appreciate it again. We'll be back doing this weekly and, yeah, if you want to know more about starting a food business, head to wwwjgreenwoodcom. But, guys, as always, thank you and be great.