Business Shapers: Luke Johnson
Luke Johnson
Chairman of Risk Capital Partners
Business Shapers from Mishcon de Reya
In association with Jazz FM’s Jazz Shapers
It started at University while I was an undergraduate at Oxford studying and I was having parties with a friend who subsequently became my business partner for many years and we were threatened with being thrown out because our parties were too boisterous so we decided to approach a local nightclub and we took over the premises on a Monday evening and we then came up with the idea of charging on the door. So our parties feed into a business. And it was a seminal moment for me on the first night when at twenty to eight, twenty minutes before we were due to open, there was already a queue of customers there and I suddenly thought this is so much more exciting and it is so much more of the sort of thing I want to spend my career doing.
The truth was then when we invested in Pizza Express it was already a great formula so the model didn’t need to be altered, what needed to happen was a proper capital structure, the end of a recession which obviously was nothing to do with us but happened to happen at that time so that was a great piece of luck.
In business I think actually the greatest thrill one gets, for me anyhow, is opening new restaurants. For example, we are opening very soon a new draft house which is a small chain of gastropubs I am involved with in Dulwich and I love that. To see a battered old premises transformed into something buzzing and dynamic with lots of happy customers, that’s what you know gives me a kick and I am probably going to be involved in something like 45 new openings this year and that gives me as much satisfaction as anything to be honest.
I think it’s about persistence, it’s about self-discipline, it’s about hard work, it’s about having a good team of people, it’s about having a sort of stable home life if you like, it’s about having enough cash to keep you going through the lean times and I suppose it’s also about an appreciation that actually relatively speaking, doing business in a country like Britain, we are actually quite fortunate.
Business Shapers from Mishcon de Reya
In association with Jazz FM’s Jazz Shapers