Top 100: Stephen and Juliette Wall, Pho
Overall ranking: 95 (new entry)
Restaurateur ranking: 28 (new entry)
Snapshot
Stephen and Juliette Wall are the founders of high-street restaurant group Pho. Just over a decade into their careers in the hospitality industry, and the pair have built one of the casual-dining sector's most established and popular brands, despite neither having any prior experience in hospitality. Now boasting 25 sites across 10 cities, the company's latest published turnover figure was £14.1m for the year to 2015 and was on track to exceed £20m for 2016. Pho's popularity has been built around its good-value bowls of Vietnamese noodle soup, and the company has attracted serious investment to continue UK-wide expansion.
What we think
These days, the street-food scene might give every globe-trotting cook a low-risk means to launch their own food concept, but when the Walls returned from their travels and opened Pho, it was all or nothing.
After both were made redundant from sports marketing jobs in 2003, the couple decided to travel around Asia, quickly becoming hooked on bowls of Vietnamese pho. They couldn't stop wondering: why hadn't Vietnamese food made a splash in the UK? After remortgaging their house and scraping together £100k in start-up fees, they launched the first Pho, a 30-cover restaurant in London's Clerkenwell in 2005, waiting tables themselves and working all hours. A loyal fan base soon followed, including Tom and Ed Martin of the ETM Group. The gastropub duo approached them about expanding, and helped provide the funds, contacts and experience for the Walls to slowly add new sites.
Turnover leapt from £260k in its first year to £3.5m in 2009, and in 2012, with six sites open and the award for Best Emerging Concept at the Retailers' Retailer of the Year awards, the group secured £5.2m in funding from Isis Equity Partners, a move that brought with it former Wagamama boss Steve Hill as chairman.
Following a new round of investment totalling £8m from NatWest bank in 2015, the group's expansion has continued unabated: the number of sites doubled to 25 in just two years, and the aim is to reach 30 within the near future. The group's expansion across the UK includes a 200-cover restaurant in Manchester's Corn Exchange and a site in Birmingham's newly opened Grand Central station. The Walls told The Caterer in 2014 that recent years had seen their traditional demographic (ABC young professionals in their twenties and thirties) expand into new customer bases.
Despite the rapid growth, the Walls have been cautious not to expand too quickly. Meanwhile, with both of them having backgrounds in marketing, they are well placed to maintain the future strength and appeal of the Pho brand.
Further information
Don't hide from delivery, embrace it, says Pho boss >>
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