Life andsole

Life & Sole Restaurants

Selsfield House, Selsfield Common, Grinstead, East Sussex RH19 4LN

Tel: 01342 717664

Staff: about 500

Turnover: £10m (bars are part of the restaurant complexes)

I'm one of life's early risers. I wake at about 5.30am and get up at six. I've got three teenagers, twin girls doing A levels and a boy of 14, whom I have to get off to school and college quite early, so the morning tends to be fairly hectic.

I usually sit and have breakfast with my son. If I'm away, however, I find myself eating at one of our five restaurants, which do full English breakfasts. I claim it's to test food quality, but actually I love it.

I drive my son to school, unless I've got an early meeting. The journey back is a great time to sort out the priorities of the day in my head.

My day varies enormously, depending on whether I'm in the office or on site. Up until about 18 months ago we had the administrative office in Sussex and the operational team in Sheffield. Now everyone has moved to Sheffield where the bulk of our operation is. I remained in Sussex and converted part of my home into an office, where I work with my PA Jenny.

On Monday I'm usually in my office. It's an important day because by mid-morning all our financial information for the previous week will start to come through, including sales, gross profit, labour costs, average spend and transactions. We see if there are any costs or sales which look unusual - if sales are lower, say, or the spend has fallen. We have the information with which to review each restaurant's performance every week. We then use that as the basis for our weekly operational meetings. These are attended by the senior management team. Topical issues get discussed and actions taken.

Because everybody is focused on the same agenda they can take that forward to the unit management team, so that we're all singing from the same song sheet. Communication is very clear and at every level everyone is clear about what's expected of them and how to achieve the objectives set.

Lunch, if I'm home, is at one o'clock. I try to be a bit sensible and have just fruit at my desk. When I'm in the unit I always take the opportunity to do food and service quality monitors, where we have a chart which tracks seven or eight different aspects of food (and service) quality for each product. I cram in as many of those as I can on each business trip. In Sheffield we have 17 of those operations, so one trip to Sheffield over two or three days would include about half-a-dozen food and service quality monitors.

I will have tasted at least six products in each unit every quarter. We've got about 13 concepts, including Italian, Greek, American, French, chocolate and English.

I do a lot of driving, mainly midweek and mostly to Sheffield, 200 miles from where I live. The M25 is a bit like my back garden. I try to make those journeys at off-peak times. When I come back from Sheffield, for example, I won't leave until 7pm, because from seven till 10 I get a great run-through. I have to make my time very, very efficient.

I'm away most weeks, sometimes for three or four days at a time, so I try to pack as many meetings as possible into my time away. The meetings often don't end till 7.30pm, then we'll go into one of our bars for a drink. If I'm away it's always a working dinner, about 8pm, but generally I try to finish so that I eat with my children.

Balancing being a mother and running a business can be difficult. It's like with the business: there'll be different priorities at different times.

The most challenging part of my work has been getting the structures in place to enable the business to grow with a solid infrastructure behind it. My biggest task is training people. Everything I do is helping them to do their jobs, to move toward full responsibility and accountability. The whole company is driven by people: their commitment, enthusiasm, motivation. It's one big family and there's a lot of loyalty and feeling of achievement.

The ideas are what drives me. The creative side fascinates me as well as the financial management of the business.

I am very energetic. I tend to flag by late in the evening. If I have a document to write, I will get up at 5am to do it because my brain is much more active then. I go to bed around 11pm but if we've had a company party, I can be in bed at 4am and up again at 5.30am. n