All systems Yo!
For Simon Woodroffe, the founder of Yo! Sushi, life really did begin at 40. Interview by Rosalind Mullen.
It's a crisp morning but Simon Woodroffe hasn't dodged his regular swim in the Serpentine. He arrives at his Yo! Land headquarters in London's Clerkenwell wearing his trademark yellow shoes and seemingly ready for anything. But then there's nothing unusual about that - he's the sort who at weekends is either mountaineering, riding, playing polo or sailing. Tease him about being a bit of an action man, however, and Woodroffe is taken off guard.
That's possibly because he sees himself not so much as an action man as a man of action. Almost 10 years ago at the age of 40, with a chequered past in the rock world, no vocational training, a painful divorce under way and a crushing sense of having not succeeded at anything, Woodroffe made a conscious decision to turn his life around. Today, he runs Yo! Sushi, a 12-strong £12m sushi restaurant business, where customers choose dishes off a conveyor belt and get their drinks from a robot.
Yo! is a story Woodroffe never tires of telling (see below). The most he'd hoped for his first restaurant, which opened in 1997 in London's Poland Street, was "to create an income to survive". It soon mushroomed into other restaurants and other brands - three Yo! Below bars offering karaoke and self-serve beer; Yo! Events events catering; Yo! you Kids baby products; Yo! to Wear clothing and some time this year, the long-awaited hotel, Yotel!.
It's a world away from his conventional, homely upbringing. Woodroffe's father was an army officer, his mother the daughter of an archdeacon and, while they weren't poor, he jokes that his parents had to give up drinking gin to send him to Marlborough public school. Being the maverick he is, however, he left at 16 and struck out on his own, changing career several times and on occasion finding himself penniless.
"Yes, it's a sort of rags-to-riches story," he says. "Several times I've had the fear that I'd have to drive a truck or go back to living with my mum. Sometimes I've thought my parents were right, I should have been a lawyer."
Certainly, Woodroffe didn't set out to be a restaurateur. While his peers in the industry were honing their skills as waiters, pot-washers or hospitality students, Woodroffe was working as a theatre stage manager. By the 1970s, he had been seduced by the growth of rock and roll and the next decade was spent designing stage sets for rock groups. Characteristically, this was despite having no training, and by 1985 he was out of a job until a contact in the rock business offered him a position selling rock music programmes to TV stations. The money was good, but it wasn't where Woodroffe imagined he would be.
"I've always wanted to be rich and famous," he admits. "I wanted to be a millionaire by the time I was 20, and then it was 30. The year before my 40th birthday I felt under pressure that if I didn't do something now I would become the unhappy embittered man that I dreaded becoming. What drove me was the fear of the pain if I didn't do it. I was in a lot of pain back then."
Woodroffe frequently mentions the pain he has had in his life - "really a lot of pain," he emphasises. It's also what drove him to be a successful restaurateur because arguably it was the stress of divorce that proved the catalyst for change and his coping methods are very much a part of how he runs his business.
For two years he was in group therapy. Work petered out and despite assets of £150,000 he found himself with no income and an alimony bill. His initial money-making ideas included opening a rock-climbing centre, but as he watched the retail business he saw concepts such as Prˆt … Manger grow "and figured they were getting rich".
Woodroffe's change of direction surprised even himself: "To be honest, I thought the restaurant business was what you did when you really couldn't think of anything else. I thought it was for losers," he says.
Better late than never, though. In fact, Woodroffe reckons his late entry into the industry means he can see things from the customer's perspective. "I aspire to be a creative businessman who can come up with ideas. But I'm not a nitty-gritty, everyday, running-a-business businessman," he says.
That's why he has passed the responsibility of running his company to former operations director Robin Rowland. Having previously kept all the numbers in his head, he admits it felt scary to let go, but now he has the freedom to move the business on - and be himself.
"Two years ago I ran the business but I didn't do it particularly well - I was always having a mini personal crisis. I was an inspiration and a disaster at the same time," admits Woodroffe. "Why I am good is that I work on the business, not in the business, and Rowland does the opposite."
As the flamboyant ideas man, his strengths are marketing, design, menu changes and finding sites. To this end he carries a notebook around, partly so he can jot down feelings, but also so he can record ideas. One exercise he has set himself in the past is to map out what he would really want to do if it was bound to succeed.
Top of his list, unsurprisingly, is to be radical and get noticed - and he doesn't see conveyor belts and robots as radical enough. At the moment, besides looking for other sushi-bar sites and getting a delivery service under way, he is working with supermarkets to develop a grocery range and is planning a Japanese health spa concept, Body Yo!. Next will be the long-awaited Yotel!, which from the drawings he briefly unrolls on his desk, looks likely to have hi-tech capsule-style rooms.
Woodroffe's other long-standing ambition - to take Yo! global - has been a slow-starter but a deal has now been signed in Kuwait. The effects of 11 September aside, he reckons there's scope for 300-500 Yo!s in the USA, where sushi is already popular.
While Woodroffe worries about life in general, the possibility that sushi's popularity might wane is not one of them - unlike, in his view, Tex-Mex food and sandwich wraps. Even so, he is opening up his market by launching a hot-food menu this month, "so people will know we don't just do sushi".
The success of Yo! coupled with the fact that Woodroffe hasn't worked his way up the ranks seems not to have irritated the industry. He's as surprised as any by the welcome he's had, being described as "refreshing" when his peers voted him Group Restaurateur of the Year in the 2000 Cateys. He, in turn, admires many, singling out Ian Neill for what he did with Wagamama.
Success has apparently given Woodroffe the freedom to express himself in flamboyant clothes and projects, but while he admits he enjoys his wealth, his early experiences have made him insecure about money. "I would not spend £100 on dinner. Maybe it's something to do with the starving millions," he says. On the other hand, there's no middle way for Woodroffe, and come the holidays he's either camping or in a five-star hotel.
So what if he lost it all tomorrow? Realistically, Woodroffe reckons he would be approached for non-executive roles. No stranger to self-help groups and "unfinished" self-help books, however, he adds that he could make a living from giving motivational seminars. He already receives an income from giving about 50 talks a year on his personal struggles and how he started Yo!, and he plans to build on this in the next two years.
"On one of my shoulders is a driven, determined person and on the other shoulder, with equal weight, is someone who doesn't give a damn," he says. "I am a great believer in giggling. I know the Yo! thing is not that important in the great scheme of things, and if things get too serious they all go wrong."
Few businessmen, let alone restaurateurs, are so disarmingly honest about their spiritual quest or their material success and it's hard to begrudge Woodroffe his exuberance. Today, Woodroffe describes himself as happily divorced. He even has a home in the same Rutland village as his ex-wife so they can share care of their 12-year-old daughter.
"I sit under the stars in my Jacuzzi and think how lucky I am. I would have succeeded eventually, but I'm lucky to get it first time. I am inherently lazy but will work 14-15 hours a day, seven days a week if I am doing something I am mad about."
Yo! Land
95 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3BT
Tel: 020 7841 0701
www.yosushi.com
Chairman: Simon Woodroffe
Managing director: Robin Rowland
Yo! Sushi turnover: £12m a year; aim is to hit £20m by 2003
Yo! Sushi: London - (County Hall; Farringdon; Poland Street; Selfridges; Trocadero; Whiteleys; Paddington; Myhotel; Harvey Nichols; Finchley Road); Bluewater, Kent; and Edinburgh
Plate prices: £1.50 to £3.50 each
Yo! Below: Farringdon and Poland Street, London; Edinburgh
Other brands: Yo! Events; Yo! to Go: Yo! you Kids; Yo! to Wear
Planned brands: Body Yo!; Yotel!
Further information:The Book of Yo!, by Simon Woodroffe, £6, Capstone Publishing
Woodroffe the entrepreneur
Divorced, out of work and in therapy, by the time Woodroffe was 40 he needed inspiration. Yo! was famously conceived when a friend suggested he should open a conveyor-belt sushi bar.
But the Internet was in its formative stage and Woodroffe had second thoughts about running up a huge bill by making calls to Japan to research it. He did make those calls, of course, and unbelievably among the information that came through the post was a brochure called How to Open Your Own Conveyor-Belt Sushi Bar, complete with contacts and numbers. "A voice was saying: ‘If it was a good idea, Simon, someone would have done it before you'," he says.
But research couldn't fault it. Woodroffe subsequently discovered 2,500 conveyor-belt sushi bars had been trading in Japan since the 1960s. He decided to reinvent what he saw as "the great Japanese sushi ploy" whereby "the dish is expensive because it should be", by making his sushi affordable and accessible to the Brits.
Three months later he had drawn up a business plan and another voice was telling him: "You are going to be really successful."
To raise cash he first released his £150,000 of assets - "a quantum leap" - and "signed personal guarantees way beyond my worth". A bank approved him for £100,000 from the government loan guarantee scheme and he raised £30,000 from two friends in exchange for a 10% share in the company.
But he was still well short of the £700,000 needed for the project and the equity investors he'd hoped to seduce wouldn't commit. For two years his cash was trickling away, but still Woodroffe didn't lose faith. He decided to go ahead without all the funds, gambling that investors would come on board when they saw Yo! Sushi's success.
In addition, he created a sense of false confidence by naming Sony, All Nippon Airways and Honda as sponsors. All they had given was perhaps an upgrade on a flight or the loan of sound equipment - but it sent the right message to the doubting investors.
In 1997 The first Yo! Sushi opened in London's Poland Street, taking £35,000 a week. The clout of the "sponsors" and the popularity of the restaurant pacified the builder, to whom he still owed £250,000, and the investors came on board.
Woodroffe claims he does things by inspiration. While companies often have to work within limits he, as an entrepreneur, can play with the situation. Although he sees himself as a good guy, he's not afraid to make tough decisions. "I'll make a decision based on long-term good rather than protect one individual," he admits.
Woodroffe off the cuff
Any regrets? "I was glad to get out of the Millennium Dome. But like everyone else I have signed a secrecy agreement."
What do you feel strongly about? "Traditional lease structures leave a lot to be desired by the operator. Landlords and the way rent reviews work have too much control over my destiny. The new generation of Yo! Sushi restaurants can be installed in a building shell in 72 hours and be removed in 24 hours. This gives us a better negotiating position over rent reviews and counters the problem of investing huge amounts of capital in fit-outs. We go in and set our own terms."
Do you have any answers to the skills shortage? "The facetious answer is that I use robots. But if you run an exciting business such as Gordon Ramsay's people will work for you."
