E5 S1 - Flipping Burgers to Flipping Profits: How Cawsburger Cashed in during Covid with Co-Founder Charlie Jones

In episode 5, I sit down with Charlie Jones the Co-founder, of Cawsburger in Hitchin, which took the town by storm during covid. Charlie talks about his career change and gives some great nuggets of wisdom!

ladies and gentlemen. Welcome back to the Traveling Chef podcast

for episode number five.

Today I'm sitting down with the co founder

of Korsberger and Hitchen, charlie

Jones. He's been talking

through how he managed to set up the business during COVID the challenges he

faced, and just give some really interesting

outlook on what he's achieved. And it's a super interesting Pod episode and I really hope you enjoy it. You'll hear me speak a little bit more, just speaking with Charlie and just explaining my journey a little bit

as we kind of catch up, as well as talk about his success. And

I really hope anyone listening who's thought about setting up their own business that there's a bit of inspiration in it. It's a really awesome episode. Also, thank you so much for the

amazing feedback I've had so far. Close to 200 downloads in 26 countries,

52 cities.

It's been really awesome. And yeah,

thank you all so much for listening. Please don't forget to

subscribe to like and to share and yeah,

thank you so much. Enjoy the episode.

Like hello.

So, Charlie, first thing is tell us a little bit about yourself. 1.7s

Hello. Let's where do we how far back we go in? 1.3s

Firstly, what are your name?

Charlie. Charlie. Charlie. I'm Charlie. I am one of the co founders of Cause Burger. We're a premium, premium fast food outlet in Hitch in Hartfordshire. So, yeah, that's where I am now. But I guess maybe we should say how we know each other as well. Yeah, 1.9s well,

firstly, me and Charlie went to university together and played for the same rugby team. And one of the reasons big ones I brought Charlie on is because we both kind of ended up doing something very similar where we did our career, that we're kind of out of university. But even at university, me and Charlie used to talk about food all the time. 2.7s We're telling the housemates how to cut onions. People thought we were just some. Yeah, don't want to use the bad 5.1s doing all

gourmet food at university. And people would come and say, what have you got there? Covered trial our food, and we'd

have all that nice ingredients

and Charlie, mate,

someone stole my really expensive mayonnaise or something.

One of my first my first memories of university was on the first day moving into halls and everyone's parents were there. One, one load of parents came in. I was with my stepmom, she she loves blowing my trumpet. She's like, Australia loud Australian woman loves blowing trumpet. And she's like, Charlie's a great cook. Charlie's a great cook. And one of the other mums came and was, oh, yeah, my daughter's a really good cook as well. And she was raving about how good she was at cooking. And all this girl cooked was tuna pasta bakes for the whole of university. So, yeah, that was one of the memories. Oh, and someone putting ketchup on my fish pie. I made it uni. 2.9s Yeah. Uni food. Compared to what we're doing now, it's a different level. It's kind of funny how it all changes. Yeah. Essentially, 1.1s me and Charlie went to university together and sort of stayed in touch a little bit through instagram and sort of see each other, what each other were doing. And when Charlie went to set up Korsberger, which is kind of what I want to hear, we want to hear about, I was sort of in the process of deciding, move away from teaching. And part of that journey is, I think, a really interesting thing for people to share with people, because I think a lot of people sort of our age or maybe have been in a career, it's not necessarily what they're passionate about, but then make that jump and take the risk. And I think it's always a good thing

to share how people make those journeys and how they take those risks. 1.2s

Yeah, absolutely. My journey is a weird one. I've always had a passion for food, as you know, if you could, but finished university, did a sports coaching degree, left university and was a PE teacher in primary school, was in a self employed personal trainer. The irony. So 1.2s was making people skinny, now making them fat. So, yeah, and then I wanted to try to start my own personal training business and I didn't really have the business knowledge to do anything as such, so that lasted about six months, opened my own little gym personal training center. So I wanted to get some serious business experience. So I went into sales selling engineering software. I was doing that for a couple of years and then my passion for food kind of overtook me and took a pay cut and went into food sales. So I was selling coffee for Nevada, so selling to restaurants, hotels in London, which is really good. It was a tough slog, but it was nice to work in an industry you're passionate about. And then I made the jump to Frobishers, which is a soft drink company, like Fruit Juices. So I was selling to pubs, independents, restaurant groups. But I think the point that I'd like to make was I got made redundant three times in three years from all those sales jobs. So, yeah, if you're being made redundant, it's not necessarily the worst thing. Yeah. Free redundancies in three years, mainly because of COVID but here I am. And that last redundancy was the one that made me make the jump and go full bang with Korsberger. Yeah, it's nice to have a little push in that direction.

Yeah. So when obviously you became redundant, at what point did you sort of. Was like korsberger or 1.3s the idea of doing some sort of food business kind of come into your mind.

So 1s we'd already started up cause Burger before I got it, so so basically my friend owns a cafe in Kitchen, like a brunch spot in Kitchen and they do like Saturday night pop ups, they did their own ones and I know the owner and he was our goal because I had my food Instagram page, Food Locker. So I was doing food blogging in London for like three years just taking photos. The main thing I was taking photos of was burgers because they really take a good photograph off, gets lots of likes. I was eating a lot of burgers in London and thinking, god, there's nothing like this around. So the likes of like Bleak A Burger Burger and Beyond Black Bear Burger and the guy that owns a coffee shop was like, oh, you want to do some pop ups? And I was like, oh, actually I've been thinking about doing some burger stuff and I'd also been chatting to my now business partner Matt. He wanted to open up a brunch restaurant in a town down the road and I said, oh, I've been thinking about doing some burgers because there's a big gap in the market in Hitchin. And he was like, okay, that's cool. So me and him were like, right, let's do this pop up together. And we played around with a few names. The initial of the names was Bundirection, 1.4s but Matt and I both families are Welsh so cause well it should be pronounced Cows. Kausberger. So it translates to cheeseburger. Everybody says Cause Burger so we're like I like to say we're like the the burger Nike. Because everyone says Nike wrong, don't they? They all say Nike. And this pop up was arranged. And then a day before, we were doing some testing with some local food bloggers and the day of that testing with the local food bloggers, lockdown hit. 1.1s So we literally like that's fire lockdown here, I got put on furlough. And yeah, the idea kind of just went on the back burner. And then from there, me and Matt were chatting over Lockdown, my business partner. And we were like, Actually, let's play around with this. And we started going to some illegal burger parties, we like to call it. So we were going to our local butcher, who now supplies our beef, trying different cuts, different fat blends, different ratios. And I was driving over to Matt's house and he was cooking them in his garden and he was coming out the front because we weren't allowed in each of his houses. And we were taking photos out the front, trying all these blends. Three months into Lockdown, we were like, right, we've got a good burger here, let's go for this. So we got in touch with the coffee shop again and basically everybody was doing these timed pickups for Takeaways. So we did that because you were allowed to do takeaways during COVID weren't you? So takeaways allowed to function. So we just did some slot bookings. We'd kind of hyped it up on Instagram already because I was taking good photos and hyping it up before we'd even served one burger. I think we already had 4000 followers on Instagram before we'd even served a burger. And the first I think we're doing four slots every 54 slots every 15 minutes for 2 hours, us. And the first lot sold two nights, sold out in ten minutes through the website. 1.2s And then it went nuts from there. And we were doing that all throughout Lockdown. And here we are now.

That's awesome. I remember seeing on Instagram actually, because as soon as I were doing it, I followed the page. I remember seeing like, you're selling out so quickly. So it was obviously during that time in COVID was a really good. Obviously, for some people, it was a really terrible time, and there was absolutely no really, but it was also for some people, it was an opportunity to try and do something positive and do something that they really wanted to. In some ways, it forced people's hands. There were many ways of dealing with it. And I think one thing I like to talk about is some of the positive sides of it. And when I saw your story and I remember, man, I'm really glad Charlie's, like, following his passion, because it just it just seemed to just take off, like even like your content got better. Everything just was just improving while you were while your business was growing. And I think that's a really sort of maybe not a lesson, but just something people can take from when there's bad times. You can turn things a positive and really trying to push forward with something.

Yeah, absolutely. I think COVID gave a lot of people a lot of time to think about what they wanted to do, sit back, have a think about where they want to go of their life. I mean, for me, as I said, burgers, I mean, I was doing the burger blogging in London because they looked good, but I wouldn't even say burgers are my top ten favorite food. I think this is a thing for me, and this is a big message. A lot of people, when they open up a food business, they go for their favorite food, which is great, that can be done, and it can work. But my favorite food is like Japanese food or Mexican Indian food, 1.2s but there was a gap in the market. That's the reason we did it. So although it's not our favorite food, 1.4s there was a big gap in the market, and that's why we went for it. And we knew burgers are for everybody. No matter where you're from, how old you are, how much money you've got, where you're from, everybody eats burgers. So it's food for people. So that's where we went for it. But yeah, and then 2s I think it's in the second lockdown I was made. Well, redundancies became up for offer, and I was already doing this with Cause Burger, so I felt I kind of would have felt bad if any of my other colleagues got made redundant when I had this on the back burner, ready to go. So I kind just put my hand up and said, yeah, I'll take the redundancy. And that's when we went full bang with it, and we started looking for restaurants. And what was the process of going from pop up to rest to restaurant to finding? Was that something you kind of.

You knew was coming and you started looking at it, how did you kind of go about

that process? Yeah, it was on the cards for a long time because all our customers were egging it and they were saying, you need to open up the restaurant. It was nice to invest in something and well, we borrowed a lot of money for it, but knowing something was going to work, we kind of had no doubts it was going to work. So, yeah, it made us go, right, okay, if we're going to do this, we may as well fully go for it. We were viewing sites for a while, had a few ups and downs of that. Like, we had a site to start with and just before but we spent a couple of grand on planning and just before, about to get the go ahead, the landlords pulled out last minute and just went, no, we don't want to do this. And then turned it into a children's bookshop because it was easier for them to do that. Bookshop don't get that. Bookshelf still going now, but yeah. And then we finally found another site. 2.2s It'd been, ironically, right in the town center of Hitchin, just for background for people. Hitching is like a food mad town. It's like we call it the food capital of Hartfordshire. If you open up a restaurant, you want to open one up in Hitchin because a lot of money. It's a great market town and it's just everybody wants to go out, eat and drink. So it's a really good town to be in. So 1s it was a burger place before, which lasted a couple of years. It kind of didn't really have the go for it. And then it turned into a Greek restaurant for six months. And then after that, they were trying to sell it, so we had to buy them out of their leasehold, which took. 1.4s About a year, almost from starting talks with them. It took about a year because there were two business partners that were only talking through their solicitor that had fallen out, so every single simple conversation 1.1s took about a week or so. So it was a long process. And, yeah, we finally got the site, got the work underway and we opened up in end of June last year.

Okay, you were talking about, obviously, some of the challenges that you faced with getting the contracts done. Apart from that, were there any other challenges you faced opening it? 3s

Me and Matt, we reflect on this quite a lot. We've been open for eleven months, 1011 months now, and considering me and him, we've never worked in the industry Matt worked in when he was a teenager, he worked in a McDonald's and golf club kitchen. I had never worked in a kitchen in my life. Just had a passion for food. And considering if we gave our CVS to an operations manager of a restaurant or a head chef of a restaurant, we'd get laughed out the window. But we did it and we completely winged it. We've been doing the pop up, so we had some understanding of how to run it, but not a full fed restaurant. But from day opening, everything kind of just worked. And we're still shocked today. The only thing we've changed since we opened was originally people were going to come and collect their food on trays. Now we just take the food to them. That's the one thing we changed since we opened. But, yeah, we laugh at it now that we just winged it from the start and everything just worked. 1.9s I guess the only challenge is for me, and this is probably the one thing I didn't think about, is just managing people. That has been the number one challenge that I never thought 1.1s would be as much of a challenge. But, yeah, 1.6s that's the real challenge, is getting the dynamic right of everybody and keep on all your staff happy. 1.2s

I think you really raised an important point there. Managing people in any business is super important. It's interesting when you said that's been your biggest challenge, because a lot of people probably think are raising money or finding the site, all the different challenges with a face, but, yeah, it's really interesting that you said that the biggest challenge is people. Yeah, I think it's probably for people to hear that. Maybe like, for someone, myself, it definitely makes me more inspired to pursue my goal of opening my own restaurant. 1.1s But. Despite the other challenges I might face, I think people being good with people is a really good quality to have. And I feel like I'm good with people, so hopefully when I go into that business, I

can yeah. 3.5s The biggest thing for us, and we said this from the start, is we wanted because me and Matt have never been in hospitality ourselves, we kind of come in with a fresh, fresh set of eyes and we're not doing typically what the industry has done. So we wanted to pay people well. We thought, right, if we make enough money, sell enough burgers, we can pay people well. We're not open on Sundays because we think we like the fact that people can still work in hospitality but spend a Sunday of their family. And that we do that because we make enough money, we can shut on Sundays. And obviously, we can attract more talent because chefs that chefs and staff that want to work in hospitality, they get Sundays off. That's a bonus for them. 1.6s And that has been our probably biggest success because we've kept all our staff. 1.3s We had no one leave apart from one head chef. There was a disagreement in terms otherwise, all our other line chefs and front of house staff have stayed. So our consistency has just gone from here to here. And I think that's the huge thing in the industry that it misses out, is just that high turnover of staff. Obviously, a lot of places don't have the beauty of paying staff better because I'm sure every restaurant would love to pay their staff more, but that's a conversation for another day, talking about restaurant V 80. But yeah, but that has allowed us our consistency has gone through the roof and we get nothing but five star reviews coming through now. And I can just see the products getting better and better because we've hold on to those staff and they've been in there and they're really understanding the product more. Speaking

of staff, 1.1s when you're employing someone where, say, you're interviewing them or you're looking at CVS, what are some of the key components of a CV that are important to you as a business owner? 1.5s

So, I mean, the the beauty of of being a burger restaurant is you don't necessarily need a trained chef, like, I mean, someone like yourself. 1.3s So we kind of it was a funny one where we were interviewing for people. We didn't really have much to choose from. And we already had one guy, Rory, who's one of our kitchen supervisors now. He was with us during the pop up. He had bit of experience working in pot wash and being a prep chef in certain restaurants, and he stayed with us now. But the biggest thing we did was hire off personality 1.1s and we were like, is this the type of person where, 1.2s like, I was brought up, I wasn't allowed to miss football training on a Saturday? If I were to say to my mum on a Saturday, oh, Mum, I don't want to go to football training, she'd like, no, you're going to football training. And just reliable, just people we felt were very reliable. And we just got a vibe from people that they didn't want to let us down or their teammates down, and yeah, I mean, for example, we've been open like, eleven months. I think we've had people four sick days in eleven months. And that reflects on how we hired people. The biggest thing for us was just that we kind of hired off personalities, reliability. 1.4s We barely looked at CVS apart from our new head chef, obviously. That's when you look at a CV, but it seemed, as I said, bit of winging it from Matt and I and it's gone our way.

Yeah, I say with terms of, like that was obviously my question about looking for staff. In my head I was thinking, yeah, it's a good question, but actually for obviously a burger joint like yourself, it's not like obviously looking for qualified people. But I do think there's a really important point there for people to think about when they're applying for jobs in any situation is your character and the way you are. You're reliable, the kind of person who you are. In some ways is a lot more important than the qualifications or the skills you have, because

we've all worked

with people who are incredibly talented, but the attitude is terrible and they're not much use, and then they end up being actually more trouble than they're worth.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, as I said, we probably had one hire that went wrong who had the best CV we had so far. And his attendance are tenants in the first couple of couple of weeks wasn't the best, and he was the person we hired with the best CV. So it just shows CV. And I've always been when I was applying for jobs, I remember I went into a it was like a graduate level sales role, selling coffee 1.9s to offices, just selling bags of kilo bags of coffee to offices. So it didn't need a rocket scientist to do this kind of thing. And I'd come number one in this recruitment day. It was like 50 people, and I scored top in this sales recruitment day. Just off, they kind of just assess you and how you interact with other people. And I went into this interview and this girl was interviewing me, and straight away she went. Your A levels aren't very good. 2.5s I went to university and got a degree and she's like, oh, your degree is not very good either. You got two too. And I was like, I know, but I've gone into this recruitment day and I've top scored, so surely my A levels are relevant. And I didn't get the job because my A levels, because my degree. So she was hiring me off paper. So I think a lot of people make mistake.

Yeah, that's definitely something that I look at now and go like, luckily, it hasn't had an impact on me. But your A level results and your GCSE results sometimes when they're used in interviews. I can imagine that being quite frustrating. But my next question is basically, in terms of your ingredients, 1.2s how do you go about acquiring, like, high quality ingredients? What kind of supplies do you look for? What do you look for with suppliers? And how does it work in terms of the actual ingredients across the joint? So, obviously, being a burger restaurant, our number one ingredient is our beef. We had a bit of again, as I said, all a bit of a coincidence and it kind of just happened. So we've got a butchery and baldock called Chapman's. There are really high end family butchers. Now, a lot of these kind of family butchers, they don't necessarily supply wholesale to restaurants and stuff like that, but we built a relationship with him and he liked what we were doing and he really wanted to get on board of us and supply us. So 1.3s he's a big barbecuer himself, the guy that owns it. So he kind of was, like, playing around with blends for us, chucking extra bits of bits of this in there, a bit of aged beef in there. 2.6s He's stuck with us now since day one. And this kind of beef you don't get from a wholesaler. If you were trying to get this quality beef from a wholesaler, you probably wouldn't. So we're getting our beef is Aberdeen Angus, but it's from small independent farms in Scotland. 1.5s It's dry aged beef and it's mainly chuck with loads of extra aged beef fat in there. And what he also does is any aged rib cap he's got left at the end of the week gets chucked in as well. So every single batch is slightly different, with a little bit of dry aged rib cap in there, just to give it a nice little extra punch. 1.1s And yeah, so that's our main ingredient and and then everything else around that is. I mean, our buns are like handbaked buns in Watford, so they're just down the road, so it's all local as well. And then all our sauces are made in house. Obviously, to be in a burger restaurant, you kind of. You've got to weigh it up, whether you go crazy on ingredients or you kind of got to find a balance of it's going in a burger. So it doesn't necessarily need to be like, we still use classic American cheese. Now, some people might frown, and they go, oh, you're using plastic cheese. But that is the cheese for a burger. There's a reason it tastes good,

and it's more of a texture thing. It gives that nice little creaminess into into a burger. And so, yeah, we still use classic American cheese. So a lot of our stuff and then, like, our sauces are a pines mayo base, and we flavor the sauces and go from there, because I think we make we do about 1.6s 150 liters of mayo a week. 1.3s Making mayo like that by hand would be a bit of a chance.

Yes, exactly. You've got some unreal sauces. What's your favorite one? I remember seeing some of them online.

So this is probably my greatest invention. This one 2.5s it's Gerken Caramel Burger Sauce. Or we call it Cause Mac Sauce. So it's our take on a Big Mac sauce. We were doing it as a special once during our pop up, and we were making a burger sauce, and we were doing ketchup, mustards, mayonnaise, s, onion powder, smoked paprika. And we were like we turned to each other, went, Something's missing. So I said, oh, do you eat Big Macs? And Matt went, no, I don't. And I was like, well, we should probably try one. So I jumped in my car, went to Macas, bought a Big Mac, and we edit. And I was like, oh, it's really sweet. We're like, right? How can we get some sweetness through this? And I was like. So we just put some sugar in. I was like, still missing something. And I turned and there was all the pickle juice still left in the pot from our gerkins. And I was like, oh, why don't we just reduce that down with some sugar and try and make, like, a gerkin caramel? So we reduced that down really thick, and then we blitzed that through the burger sauce. And it's like our customers are like, bottle it up, bottle it up. Everybody. All our staff get a chip all the time. There doing lines of coarse mac sauce in the kitchen. So it's this really sweet gerkiny burger sauce. And yeah, we're hopefully looking to eventually bought it up and sell it as well. So that's probably number one. 1.3s Yeah,

I think that's the one I saw on Instagram that looked amazing. 2s You have some really good names for your burgers. Where do you get who creates those? They're very catchy. I

really like them. That's probably the funniest part of the job. Yeah, that's the funniest part of the job. So all of us, everybody comes up. I've come up with the most. I've always loved a pun. I love a dad joke. I love a pun. So that's probably the favorite part is sitting there, and I just sit there and go, what rhymes of this? What rhymes of this? Like 1.1s Cores burger. And we've got our Core boy, it's a cowboy. So it's cawboy. And that's barbecue sauce. Crispy onion chipotle mayo. We got halumi burger with chili jam. That's the halumi you're looking for. 3.4s Every day we're truffling. What's the best one? What's my favorite one? We've done the best name. We did a butter chicken burger in two weeks time. And I've been sat there trying to think about I'm going to cut finger and call it Punjabi Geezer, but geezer spelled G-H-E-E giza. So that's, yes, the best part of the job. Sometimes we put it out to our followers as well. So 1.5s we got a Tritzo jam burger with panchetta bacon in it, and it's called the ham jam. Yeah, ham jam. Thank you, ma'am. Yeah, it's really good. The Tritzo jam is something special

that looks incredible. Yeah. So, yes, me and Ollie, as a friend of a friend of ours from Uni, 1.3s we were going to think about coming down to visit you and have a burger because we saw the Church burger, which looks insane. 1.1s I feel like burgers are one of those things like, as you say, pictures. You see a picture of a burger, it can just make you crave a burger, anything. It's crazy, that picture burgers. And that's probably that goes that's probably a good point. And just to say that we wouldn't be anywhere we are today without Instagram. 1.4s And as a free marketing tool, we wouldn't be a business if it wasn't for it. Putting up good pictures of burgers just drew in the followers, and it's how we communicate a majority of our followers still these days. So, yes, if you use Instagram right, it's probably the most powerful tool out there. Yeah, that's definitely what I've seen, is you look at brands that have done well, food brands particularly. If you see them super busy, there's some sort of social media or review or something that's linking them to that success online. So whether it's Instagram or whether it's they're like the top search on London's best sushi restaurant or wherever, there is some sort of online presence which enables them to have that success. So would you say that's really anyone looking to start a business, let's say a small scale business, getting your social media right is a real key part of that.

Oh, massively. Yeah, massively. Learn to take a good photo and get some good lighting, because that took me years to learn how to take a good photo. As long as you've got some good natural light and the light shining on the product, and you can get a good photo and you can't take a bad photo these day of iPhones or Google Pixels,

you'd be surprised what you see on Instagram. Charlie

yeah, true that's. Usually someone's fry up, though, but use videos these days, taking a really good photo can be challenging. But videos are so huge on Instagram now, it's really easy just to take a video of a dish in good lighting. And that can get just as much, way less effort, no editing involved, and it can get just as much. 1.4s Well traction on instagram. 1.3s And also, I think, for us, we made it fun. I know you can do that of a burger restaurant because it's fun food. 2s If you're trying to find dining restaurant, you can't necessarily be as tongue in cheek with it. But we made it fun and nostalgic and we played on. I think nostalgia is a huge thing. Like when I talk about our Cause burger, which is just ketchup, mustard, gerkins 1.1s when I bite into it, still, it still takes me back to being in my parents car at Bedford Interchange Park, having a double cheeseburger in the back. And we kind of try and play on that and play on nostalgia and go, right, we got Kiev fries, which is basically deconstructed chicken Kiev on fries, because every two times a week, my mum would get Chicken Kiev out the freezer with chips. And so we're like, Right, how can we deconstruct this? So we've got a garlic and parsley mayonnaise. Parmesan and chicken dust, which is like bread crumbs and chicken seasoning mixed fruit. And we just sprinkle that on top of the chips and it literally tastes like a deconstructed. 1.2s Yeah. So make food fun. Make it fun, make it nostalgic. Try and try and play on what people used to love love as a kid. 1.4s I don't know if you heard. Is it norman's cafe in London. Have you seen that? No,

I haven't seen that. These two

hipsters have taken over a calf and they just serve up sausage, beans and chips, or gammon egg and chips, but they do it really well and it's good produce, but they're just serving up nostalgic dishes like fish butties. Their instagram is quite if you want to have a look at it, it's Norman's calf, it's in North London. But, yeah, you should look at it, it's amazing. So, yeah, food can be fun.

Yeah, I think that. 1.3s Is a really crucial point, because there's lots of people trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to restaurants, when it comes to food. And I feel at the moment, people just want what they know, but really, really good. So if you want to go for a good fry up, I want to fry up, but with the best quality ingredients and really well done, instead of trying to do lots of random, crazy things that people aren't familiar with. It goes in circles because in, what, 510 years, it's going to be people want to try fusion stuff or something different. I feel like everything goes around a circle with the restaurant industry, with the food industry, but there are classics, like an English breakfast, a burger, a pizza. People still want an Indian, people still want the same their go to on a weekend, whatever that is.

Yeah, I think 1s with money being tight as well, people want value for money. So casual dining is flying at the moment, as opposed to your gastro, pubs, et cetera. Because if people have got 50 pounds a week to spend on a treat, 1.2s if they can get two meals for them and their partner for 50 pounds and get good food like a Mexican restaurant, a fried chicken restaurant, a burger restaurant, you can get that indulgent, like that dopamine release of your favorite food for 50 quid. Or if you're eating for one person for 20 pounds. And people want value for money and they want to eat good food. I think it's since the start of street food, 2s people know they can get good food for ten to 15 pounds now, and that's kind of where their bars set. Why would they go and eat a fine dining place and spend 60 pounds per person when they know they can go to this Indian street food place and get some of the best chicken tiger they've ever had, or something like that? Yeah, street food is really taking off. Well, I guess it's been taking off for a long time, but just coming back, moving back to the UK, the markets in London, and the quality of produce is incredible. And some of the different markets where you get food from all over the world. And I saw Urian little tent and they were serving like the stew that I'd never seen before, which tasted amazing. And I think. There's a real I think that idea of simple food, but just really delicious is a really good

I'd say if anyone looking to start a restaurant, anyone looking to start something, even something small, just start with something that's easy for people to understand, that tastes delicious and that you can market is a really good first step. If you try and do something too crazy first. When you first start, I think you're setting yourself a lot

of hurdles and it feels like your idea of, like, even said, like, burgers are not your favorite, but you saw the opportunity, you saw a market and you went into it. And I think people need to realize that London is amazing, but to get set up in London is a real challenge.

So you do have to be looking to other places and keep your eyes open for different opportunities that come

up massively. 1.6s Now our brand's grown. I mean, we've got 25,000 followers on Instagram and still growing quite rapidly. We would potentially consider London now as like a flagship site, but originally it was never on our cards at all, because to make noise in London is a challenge. We became the biggest thing in Hitching in a space of a year. If we tried to do that in London, it just never would have happened. And if you do it in your local town, you know that town well and you know the market, it's achievable. But what you've got now is what's really interesting is street food has obviously been massive for like, six years now. You've got this wave of all the amazing street food trenders traders who are around five years ago now, moving into restaurants. Now they've grown, gone into restaurants, and now you're finding the consumer going back into casual dining restaurants, because all their favorite traders now have restaurants. And then there'll be another wave of all these street food traders who then the successful ones will go into restaurants. So you've got, for example, for us, a restaurant where you can eat 15 pounds, not just a street food vendor, you can sit down and eat it and that's where people want to eat.

Yeah, I think when you look at it like that, it's a very. 2.4s Appealing model for people starting. I think if you're looking at something small, getting some traction on social media and some local support and then seeing where that leads is maybe a good start for people looking to get into the business.

Yeah, I think the biggest thing I tell people is be known for something. 1.2s Don't try and have too many tricks. Have one really good trick and be become famous for that. So, for example, the guys who had our shop before us, before we'd even consider open causeburger it was a Greek restaurant and they were doing your typical Cypriot Greek food. And I said, oh, I showed them. Have you heard of the Athenian, the Giros place? The amazing Giros is filled with chess. So good, so instagrammable. And I said, oh, look at this guys. If you did these, these people from Hitchhin would travel all around and you'll be rammed. And they were like, oh yeah, we do do that. We do a chicken schwarma, which is just like a wrapped in foil. But yeah, try and just be known for something. Do something different and rave about it. Don't try and make your menu too big. We started off when we were doing our pop ups. It was two burgers. We still now as a restaurant, we only have four beef burgers on the menu and four chicken burgers and a special. And we do a bi weekly special similar like Honest Burger do, because it just helps with repeat customs. And it's the fun part coming out of new creations. And then we promo we don't necessarily promo our main menu that much. It's just because everybody knows our main menu, they know it's a Cause burger. So we do two weeks. Every two weeks we do a new burger or a new chicken burger and we just heavily promo that to get that repeat custom. So all those people that came two weeks, go and add that burger. When they do it, they message us. They're like, oh, damn it. Bastards. They're like, I wasn't going to come for another month, but you've seen that now and I've got to come back. And they come back every two weeks. 3.7s And we do that because it's fun for us. Not because it was all a bit of a coincidence. We just did the weekly specials because it was fun. It was nice to come out of good ideas and promo it. But it turns out it's work for huge repeat business. So sometimes if you just let the fun route and just go with it, it can actually work out what's best.

Love that. Absolutely love it. I think that's a great little just nugget of wisdom for people in terms of. 1.1s Seeing some examples of what's successful. Obviously there's lots of people who don't make it and that it's not going to be easy. But I feel like I've been saying to a few friends, if you don't try, you don't sort of make that first step, you're always going to be saying, I could have, could have, would have, like until you've actually stepped in and gone, right, I'm going to try this. Then it's very easy to kind of sit back and watching me like, I've stumbled up my podcast, right? I start this podcast not because I have particularly have much to add a value myself, but I want to learn from other people. And what I realized is if you can bring on interesting people, you can grow an audience and then from that you just build and learn. I learn myself, but also educate other people and it's a win win situation. If no one listens to my podcast, it doesn't matter because I'm still learning.

Yeah, exactly. And you're having fun as well, you're enjoying

doing exactly. And I think obviously financial, when you're opening a business, in terms of restaurant, there are financial implications and stuff you have to put up. But I think if you can sort yourself a bit of a safety net and get yourself where you can at least make like one little step forward, make one step at a time, I say. I think that without realizing soon, once you're on, you kind of don't stop. And that's how I find myself with the things I really apply myself to. You'd be surprised like once you start it how many things fall into place if you have the right attitude, the right people supporting you. I look at what you're doing and I'm like, we both did similar degrees and we're both doing something that's nothing to do with what we wanted, but that's both because we were put on a path which kind of. 1.1s We kind of almost pushed a little bit into what we did. And now because we're along there, we're not really

yeah, it's an itch probably and you've got it. I've always had that. Itch of doing something in food we discussed before we started recording. I never wanted to be a chef because I'd never wanted to work in a kitchen like that, but I wanted to do something in food. 1.6s And I always say to people, people say, how was how to cause burger star? And I said, it was a complete coincidence. Everything just fell into place. There was no plan, everything just fell into place and worked. I think

following your passion is a real 1.8s thing for a lot of people, that if you can monetize your passion, it's incredible. Some passions you can't monetize. But I still think 1.4s following a journey or following something along a path, like for me, my journey at the moment is I do want to open my own restaurant. And 1.1s the path to getting there is kind of like a bit windy, but I know my goal at the end and I've known it for quite a while, but I didn't think I'd go along this route. And I think for some people, maybe listening to your stories that people understand, sometimes these things just happen, like coincidences or opportunities come, but you have to put yourself in a position where you're open to things or where things can happen. If you close doors and you don't really open yourself up, you're never really going to find what's out there. So I think even if it's just on the side, taking one little decision each day or one little act to get you closer to reaching your goals or reaching your vision of whatever it is. I think listening to you, I think that's without you realizing probably, maybe that's how these opportunities came up. Because you started going. You said you did the coffee thing, you went into food through your other career, and then now you're full time. I think there was something there about taking steps towards reaching your passion or your goal.

Yeah. And I think you made a good point as being open. And you said about not being able to monetize your passion. But if you willing to compromise with your passion, like, for example, 1.6s burgers aren't in my top ten. Favorite foods. But I wanted to open up this kind of restaurant or an Asian restaurant. But I compromised and went, oh, burgers is a good option for me. But then we could have done a really fancy burger restaurant where everything's all plated up, table bookings, but we went, right, will we make enough money? Will we get enough turnover if we do it that way? So we went for fast food. So we compromised because we wanted to be the best burger, we wanted to try and be the best burger in the UK. But now we do fast food. It's all served on it's, like, five guys and macas. It's on trays, but it's premium in takeaway packaging, so it's not what we initially sought out to be of a nice, really fancy burger restaurant, but we probably sell twice as many burgers as we did. It's been a challenge keeping the quality up, but if we compromised on that so. Think if you are willing to compromise on your passion, then 1.6s be open to other ideas. You can go a little bit further with it rather than being right, I want to open up a 1.3s Japanese Bow restaurant and that is what I'm doing. It's going to be this way, this way, this way, nothing else is changing. Yeah, just be open to new ideas and just kind of go with it.

Definitely. That's one thing people should probably take from this is that even without, say, culinary training, without that sort of experience, even without business experience, really, you can still make things happen if you have the right attitude. And a big part of what I want from the podcast to sort of people to hear about is stories. Learn from experts who have everything, like every qualification you think of, to talk about the topic to people that have kind of fallen into things in food and drink or whatever the topic is related to food and yet still have amazing stories and still come up with amazing products. And I think that the biggest thing, I'll say again, I think the biggest thing is you have to be open to what's out there and push yourself a little bit and to get outside your comfort zone. Because if you don't get comfort zone, you're just going to stay in that sort of middle lane where maybe you're not really doing what you really want to

do and don't be afraid to fail. That's the biggest like, I've failed a lot. I failed a lot throughout my life. I remember when I opened a personal training center, it was open for six months. I shut it after six months. I went into software sales and 1.2s I had a goal because it was all about money in sales. I had a goal of earning 100K by the time I was 30. Never did that. Failed in quite a lot of the sales jobs got made redundant and yeah, just don't be afraid to just take a jump and just try something new and fail because you learn so much from my dad always says it. He said, yeah, but just think of that one time you opened up that personal training center and you shut out six months. How much? You probably learned more from that than you did. If it went well and it stayed open for a few years, 1.4s don't be afraid to fail.

Really appreciate the sort of nuggets of wisdom that we've spoken about and that definitely

it's not much wisdom. It's more like, yeah, just don't win it. Obviously, if you got an idea, just go to the bank, borrow loads of money and just completely wing it. And you might if you just sling enough shit a wall, some of it can just add in that this is not a financial advising

podcast. So please, 4.3s

yeah, don't take that advice. Make sure 1.2s a good place. On a serious note, if you don't want to take the street food. I never wanted to do street food. I used to go to street food places in November and I'd see these traders shivering their tits off and they looked fucking miserable. There's no one there. And I was like, I'm never going to do that. But we had the idea of and again, it was a bit of a coincidence, if you really. Want to try a business first. Find a coffee shop that they're not using their kitchen on a Friday or Saturday night. Go to them and say, look, I've got this idea of starting up this little thing. Your kitchen shut on a Friday night. Saturday night, if I rent your kitchen, that's extra cash for you and it gives you a base to work from. Rather than risk it investing money in street food. Just approach a coffee shop or somewhere that's not using their kitchen on a Friday and Saturday night or even midweek, and try it from there. And that's why we were so successful, because it was really low risk to start with. Again, it's a coincidence we were renting a kitchen that we could have just turned around the next week and gone, right, call, we don't want to do this anymore. 1s And we built up the business. And as I said, by the time before we'd even opened the restaurant, we had 17,000 followers before we'd open up the door. So we had a business model that was ready to go rather than completely risking it. So when we borrowed that money, we had the confidence it was going to work. 1.3s It's another option. Rather than street foods in your local town, approach a coffee shop that's not using their kitchen on Friday, Saturday night. It worked really well for us.

Awesome. I think that's a great little tip for people that might be thinking about have a good idea and want to necessarily want to take the financial risk. I set up a delivery service that I was cooking food from home and delivering it around, which kind of was that? And doing private chefs on the side. Those sort of things were my first step to kind of taking my path into becoming a chef. So I think that's the thing. Looking for options, looking for ideas, 1.5s you'll be surprised what comes from it if you sort of take that step. So my last question for you, Charlie, is what is next for Korsberger? 2.1s

We're nearly been open a year now and 1.6s I'm speechless at how well we've done. I'll just say in our first year open, we're going to hit a million revenue. So it's just like beyond and above. When I looked at the figures before we'd opened, I never thought it would happen. So we're looking at site two now. So looking at we kind of want to be take over the home county. So we're looking at the really good commuter towns and iron up options, but also looking at potentially opening up an industrial kitchen where that's our production kitchen, and then all our sources get shipped off to each site. So it's just weighing up what's next. But the plan is, yeah, I mean, we originally said, let's open up five restaurants and sell it, but we've got goals to push it even further now and just see where it goes. So, yeah, watch this.

That's incredible, mate. I'm immensely happy for you and super. Thanks very much. Have you following your passion? There's something very liberating about it. And I would never forget our conversations at Uni, where we just talk about food and we'd be like, why are we going into PE teaching?

Personal training. Yeah, personal. Personal

training, right? Yeah. And then was it

trying to practice what you preach while you're being a personal trainer? Then you get athlete Mexican food.

Eleven years later, we're both sort of on our own journeys into success with food. But, mate, honestly, it's been an absolute pleasure.

So proud of what you catch.

Yeah. Before you finish, actually, where can people find I know you've got your food locker. Do you want us to give a shout out to your social medias?

Yeah. So our page is Korsberger. It's just at Korsberger. C-A-W-S kaus burger. For all the Welsh people listening that will get on my back and say, It's Cows. It's Cows. Because that's what my granddad did. So, yes, we call it Korsberger. People call it Cows burger on TikTok, on Instagram is probably our main forum. But, yeah, give us a little follow. And we are in Hitch in Hartfordshire bang in the town center. So it's 30 minutes train journey from St. Pancras. And it's a great little day out. We've got some other great restaurants. There some Mexican food. We got Chicken George there, award winning street chicken wings. So, yes, a good little foodie day out. So feel free to come along in the

summer. Amazing. And you got food locker as well, which is your

food locker as well. Yeah, kind of taken a bat. That was my food page. Yeah. But I struggled to keep up with that at the moment with Korsberger. But, yeah, that was my food blogging. But again, a really important part on this journey, because if I didn't spend two years doing that and learning to make a social media page and see what gets the likes, then again, Korsberger, it was another piece of the puzzle. Of course. Burger working

amazing. Thank you so much, Charlie. Have a good one, mate, and cheers. I'll be in touch soon, pal.

All right. Thanks, David. Cheers. Bye. 1.4s Thank. That used to be.

The Traveling Chef Podcast

E5 S1 - Flipping Burgers to Flipping Profits: How Cawsburger Cashed in during Covid with Co-Founder Charlie Jones

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