#203 - Hospitality Meets Matthew Jones - Bread, Borough Market, and Personal Transformation

Phil [00:00:00]:
And a massive hospitality meets. Welcome to Matthew Jones.

Matthew Jones [00:00:03]:
Good morning.

Phil [00:00:04]:
How are you all?

Matthew Jones [00:00:06]:
Good, actually. Yeah, great. Lovely to be on the show.

Phil [00:00:08]:
Yeah, thank you very much for agreeing to come on. And we were actually introduced by somebody else and admittedly I had not heard of your story beforehand, but now that I've kind of done a little bit of delving into it, I've been massively excited about having you on because I think from the outside looking in certainly feels like you are a bit of a success story. But I also know that that journey has not been just one wonderful straight line upwards. So I'm sure there's a lot of color in your journey that people will take power from.

Matthew Jones [00:00:40]:
Yeah, there is. You know, and I mean, yeah, I get it from, from the outside it probably looks very different than it does from the inside. So, you know, thank you for the opportunity to sort of explain kind of where I'm at. You know, it's been a journey. I mean, it's, I suppose, you know, really all about food. My life was very much a food journey with lots of spice, let's say, thrown in there.

Phil [00:01:00]:
Yeah, very good. Well, just tell the world what it is that you currently do.

Matthew Jones [00:01:05]:
Yeah. So right now I'm the owner, the founder of a bakery called Bread Ahead Bakery. We're based in Borough Market. We have a few sites around London, six locations around London, and we really specialize in, let's call it indulgent baking. So really tasty, old school, old fashioned, proper gear, good sourdough bread, good donuts, good sausage rolls. And we also teach baking, which has become a big part of the business. So we run bakery workshops. Very immersive, hands on bakery workshops.

Matthew Jones [00:01:37]:
And we, we teach. Yeah. Thousands and thousands of people a month.

Phil [00:01:41]:
Yeah, well, I mean, so this is something that my wife and I talk about. We were probably one of those couples that in the midst of lockdown, gave baking a crack, let's put it that way, and then quickly realized that actually there are people out there who can do this way better than others. So we'll just, we'll just pay them for their bread.

Matthew Jones [00:01:59]:
Yeah, I mean, it's a, it's a craft, you know, so it's often people sort of do get a bit disheartened when the first loaf of bread or the first croissant or the first cinnamon bun they make is not a perfect, you know, polished item. And that's completely normal. You know, it's. It takes loads and loads and loads of skill and attempts and tries a bit like painting or plumbing or, you know, any of these crafts. You don't just do it once and get it. And that's been, you know, it's very important for us to help people on the journey, you know, to. To improve. It's a.

Matthew Jones [00:02:32]:
It's a life skill. And you don't just. You're not born with that, you know, it's something you need to learn.

Phil [00:02:38]:
Yeah, absolutely. Excellent. Okay, well, we'll get into more about bread ahead later and the discussion. But actually, what I really want to do is go all the way back to the beginning. And how did you kind of get involved in the hospitality scene in the first place?

Matthew Jones [00:02:53]:
Yeah, so I was a very industrious child. I grew up in Sevenoaks down in Kent, and I, you know, in the. In the 70s, I was born in 1969. So in the 70s, I was always surrounded at school and in my family with creative people. So people were always making stuff, you know, be it woodwork or DIY or painting and doing things. So my mum was always a, you know, a very good cook. Still is. So there was a lot going on in the kitchen, and it was a very, you know, unsettled time, I think, in the UK food scene.

Matthew Jones [00:03:25]:
It was kind of all over the place. We had some good stuff. You know, we had some really nice things, and we knew what nice things were. You know, we knew what a good sausage roll was, and we knew what, you know, a nice fruitcake was. But then we had these kind of these insanely disturbing things that appeared on our diet. You know, pot noodles and bachelor's cup of soup and all those frozen mini pizzas.

Phil [00:03:51]:
It was basically just describing a student diet right there.

Matthew Jones [00:03:54]:
Yeah. But the whole thing just went off piece. It's like, what happened to our food culture? It's like it just went. It took an acid trip. It was. How is this even legal? You know, it was. It was madness, really. Sort of contained madness happened in the food industry when it got industrialized.

Matthew Jones [00:04:14]:
And I guess, you know, the. Well, us lot, the general public, were the kind of, you know, we were the ones who suffered, really, from the giants who. The food giants. Especially in the uk. It was a pretty disturbing time, right?

Phil [00:04:30]:
Yeah. I mean, I suppose part of that has its roots in the way things happen. I mean, this is something that I've kind of learned about in the last maybe only four or five years in itself. But actually, world events do play their part in what happens. Right. And like, post war, there was a, you know, a big slant towards. I kind of. Everybody had been on rations for so long.

Phil [00:04:51]:
So there was this gradual, you know, going back to normal kind of way of things, I suppose, when it came to food. And then of course, as you say, when industrial mass production came to the fore in the beginning, it probably felt like, wow, this is incredible because look how easy this is to get a hold of this stuff. When on the back of that mentality. Before would have been tough to get stuff. You can kind of see why. I suppose maybe the mind went to the convenience element.

Matthew Jones [00:05:21]:
Yeah, it was kind of a knee jerk reaction and it just went too far. And I think now we're at the end of a, you know, a cycle. So we've said goodbye to that largely and now we're moving much more into an artisan world in food, you know, which is great, you know, so.

Phil [00:05:39]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So how did that all play its part in you deciding what you wanted to be or the direction that you wanted to take as a kid?

Matthew Jones [00:05:49]:
Yeah, so I sort of came to that stage in my life at 15 years old when I was terrible at school. I didn't have any O levels, I failed them all. I always knew I had this thing in me. I wanted to be a chef. Just felt really sort of cool, you know. And I had one of my friends at school, his dad was a head chef in Boodles in the. In the gents club in St. James's so I went up there, I met him and sort of saw this chef environment and I thought, oh, this is wow.

Matthew Jones [00:06:15]:
You know, I'd read Down and out in Paris, in London when I was 15, and I just really fancied that. I thought, yeah, I could. I can just fit in there really nicely. So, yeah, that was it. My mind was made up. I never looked back.

Phil [00:06:27]:
Right, okay. So literally that's actually maybe one of the simplest moves into something that we've had on the show. Because there's a lot of people at that time don't have a clue what they want to do and they kind of just slip into something and then ultimately it agrees with them and they go, right, yeah, I'll go on this trajectory. But for you, you kind of. Seems like you had a bit of a vision fairly early on.

Matthew Jones [00:06:50]:
Yeah, I did. I knew exactly. I was really fortunate. And yeah, a lot of my friends were in that place at school. They didn't really know what to do, so they went off to university and studied these sort of stuff. You know, I was really focused from day one. I. And I landed on my feet.

Matthew Jones [00:07:04]:
I found a youth training scheme Placement in a place called Thackeray's House in Tunbridge Wells, which at the time was a proper restaurant. You know, it was an amazing creative world where everything was done properly. Stocks and sauces and, you know, every fish came in whole and nothing. There wasn't. We didn't even have a freezer.

Phil [00:07:21]:
Right.

Matthew Jones [00:07:21]:
So, you know, I was kind of. Yeah, I remember I left school in what I think it was July, August of. Must have been 86 and then 87. September, October, boom. There I was in this very grown up world. It was actually just before my 16th birthday. I was in this very grown up world of chefs, of adults. You know, these grumpy men, you know, quite unpleasant, you know, I mean, they were, you know, hardcore people.

Matthew Jones [00:07:48]:
You know, I can remember them so well. There was Gordon Malcolm, there was Nigel Ramsbottom. Bruce was the head chef, Aiden Watts was the restaurant manager. And they were really intense people. It was just a. You know, I look back at that time in my life and it was so exciting. Every day I was discovering new things. I learned how to make puff pastry from scratch.

Matthew Jones [00:08:10]:
I learned how to peel quail's eggs, you know, and get them soft boiled inside. And there were so many little details. We made all of the canapes, all petit fours were made each day. You know, the chocolates, the. And I just absorbed it like a sponge. You know, I, I was so immersed in that restaurant for two years of my life and it really kind of grounded me and I, you know, that's still in me now. I can, yeah, I can honestly feel. I can close my eyes and I'm in that kitchen.

Matthew Jones [00:08:42]:
I can smell it, I can touch it, I can see it. I can, I could remember the herbs and the tarragon and the dill and the chervil and all these amazing foods that I've never seen before, you know, foie gras and duck and, you know, it was, yeah. Extraordinary.

Phil [00:08:59]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And what I really love about that is that you, you at the, at the beginning of that story, if you like, in terms of this, you know, this first start in your, in your career in hospitality, you, you spoke about working for, for hard, grumpy men, right? Yeah. But that's not the overriding thing that you remember. Like, it's, you still, it's, it's the sensory experience of, and all of this learning potential that you, that you had. Really interesting because, you know, I think definitely of that generation, that era, I think it's. Everybody kind of knows that kitchens were tough places to be, you know, for many different reasons.

Matthew Jones [00:09:34]:
Yeah. You had to just get on with it. You know, you had to just toughen up. I mean, there were plenty of guys who didn't make it. Plenty. I mean, I can remember just in the first week I was there, you know, people just leaving all the time, and they didn't leave nicely. It was, you know, get out of my kitchen. So.

Matthew Jones [00:09:49]:
Right, yeah, it was, you're not welcome here if you don't, you know, you either going to get on board with this, which means you're always on time, you're always ready. It's, yes, Chef. You just don't. You don't chat back. You know, this is an environment where you. The only thing you need to do is deliver.

Phil [00:10:05]:
Yeah. Learn and deliver. I suppose. In your case, was it. Was there any moments yourself where you thought, I don't need death in my life, or were you very, very focused on the learning experience and where this could take you?

Matthew Jones [00:10:17]:
There probably were moments, but to be honest, I kind of blurred them out because I just was focused on my career, and I very quickly learned the sort of the ropes of the industry. For example, you always do a minimum of a year when you work in a place, you want to build your cv, you want to get the Michelin stars on your cv. You just have to do that. So it was almost like being in a rugby match. You know, you just eye on the prize. You've got to get that ball down the pitch. It was the only thing that mattered.

Phil [00:10:48]:
Yeah, nice. I like the analogy because there's actually. It's kind of a. That environment as well. In. In that kind of kitchen environment is a good analogy for life. Right. I mean, you know, they're.

Phil [00:10:58]:
They're tough places to be. They're going to challenge you, but actually, walking away from the challenge is not necessarily going to serve you well.

Matthew Jones [00:11:07]:
It's not never going to be the answer. You've got to face it and you've got to deal with it, and you've got to just. However tough and really, you know, how tough is that? You know, I think it's. You know, we can probably touch on this later in the. In the interview, but, I mean, it's. You know, I think we're all still pretty privileged, really, you know, in me and my little Seven oaks growing up 15 years old and, you know, having so many options, really. And there's been a lot of instances in my life more recently, actually, when I've been. And I see what not having that actually looks like, you know, what the alternative can look like in different parts of the world.

Phil [00:11:42]:
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Okay, well, we'll park that. This is lesson number one. Experience number one. What happened next?

Matthew Jones [00:11:48]:
So I really stayed in the restaurant world for pretty much 15 years. So I went from Thackeray's house and then I left there and I went to work. Two years later, I went to work in a place called Gidley Park Hotel in Down in Devon.

Phil [00:12:04]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Matthew Jones [00:12:05]:
And that was an extraordinary place. It was run by the Hendersons. K and Paul Henderson, who was a really eccentric American guy. You know, he was a such a character, like an American version of Fawlty Towers. You know, the head chef was Shaun Hill, who was, or still is a real chef. You know, he's in the kitchen, he's got a very small menu. He just does six things, but he does them incredibly well. It was a institution, an extraordinary, extraordinary place to work.

Matthew Jones [00:12:38]:
And that was the first time for me. I mean, I was 18 when I went there and I lived away from home. We all lived upstairs. You know, it was. All the chefs lived in the attic. Basically worked six days a week. You just got on with it. It was, it was very basic.

Matthew Jones [00:12:54]:
The kitchen was, you know, in the pastry kitchen there, they just had a domestic oven, you know.

Phil [00:12:59]:
Wow. Wow. But churning out high caliber food.

Matthew Jones [00:13:02]:
Yeah. Michelin, you know, it's the first time I've worked in a Michelin environment. It was a brilliant place to work. Yeah.

Phil [00:13:08]:
Right. And were you, were you a pastry chef at this time or were you still kind of finding your general kitchen?

Matthew Jones [00:13:14]:
I mean, the way it worked in the smaller Michelin restaurants at the time, you had, you know, desserts and starters were sort of combined as one. So you have starters and sweets and that was how it was. And I kind of always had a leaning towards pastry. I just, I think it was just in me, I just really liked it. I like making puff pastry especially. I was fascinated by making croissants because, you know, we didn't have croissants in the UK in the 80s. Didn't know what they were. They were something we had on holiday, you know.

Matthew Jones [00:13:47]:
You know, and discovering how to make a croissant, you know, that was a, an amazing thing. You know, this combination of lamination and yeasted in the same product. You know, there's a load of variables going on there. You need to really get it right. So learning those things, you know, I was only 18, 19, and it was just wonderful. Yeah. So I stayed at Gidley park for a couple of years and then moved up to London, you know, I kind of had this thing. I just wanted to be back in London.

Matthew Jones [00:14:16]:
It just seemed like a, you know, it was just calling me, you know, and the next place I worked in was a restaurant called Babendum in, In the Michelin Building, which was at the time Simon Hopkinson. And that was a. A really different world. It was really grown up, you know, it was really proper. It was. It felt just suddenly like, wow, I've gone to university here, you know, I was at sort of high school. It felt really tough. Strictly right.

Phil [00:14:44]:
So it was, it was the discipline, you know, everything and everyone has their place and this is the thing that you do and you do it well. And that's. You'll.

Matthew Jones [00:14:51]:
That's kind of. There were no blurred edges in that kitchen at all. It was, yeah, very regimented. Your shoes had to be shiny. You get sent. Otherwise you get sent home, you had to have a shave, you get sent home. You, you know, no talking in the kitchen. Get sent home, you know.

Matthew Jones [00:15:06]:
It was. Simon was. He was. He was an extraordinary man to work for and so focused, you know, he used to just like roast a chicken and he was just like. He was so incredibly obsessive and focused about the color of the skin. You know, it had to be perfect. It was an extraordinary restaurant.

Phil [00:15:27]:
Yeah, well, yeah, I mean, you know, probably at the front end of the culinary scene of that time in London. It would have absolutely been in the conversation.

Matthew Jones [00:15:37]:
Yeah, it was. And the. I suppose what really stands out as well at that time, it was the team in the kitchen. It was just full. So all of the guys who work in, worked at that time. It was. Would have been 1989, 1990. So there was Matthew Harris, Henry Harris, Jeremy Lee, Phil Howard, Bruce Paul, Ian Bates.

Matthew Jones [00:15:57]:
There was. So all of those guys have gone on to do their own thing now. There was David Burke, there was, you know, Cameron. I can remember again, like yesterday it seemed we were so tight, you know, as a team.

Phil [00:16:09]:
Yeah.

Matthew Jones [00:16:09]:
And it was again, you know, very similar to all of the restaurants I worked in. It was just so. It was brutal environment, so unforgiving, you know. It was, yeah, it was. There was shouting, it was, you know, there was hard. It was a hard grown up environment.

Phil [00:16:26]:
Yeah. Which I suppose, you know, at the end of the day, you know, you don't want to advocate for shouty bullying, all of that kind of stuff that has been quite widely reported down the years. But I was talking to somebody about this the other day. We need to be very careful, I suppose, about Blurring the lines between difficult and bullying and shouting and all of that doesn't mean that a difficult environment has to be any of those things. But also, like we were talking about earlier on, walking away from difficult doesn't serve you well. And actually, you know, you highlight. Everybody that worked with you in that kitchen who have gone on to do their own things are probably grateful for that experience because they persevered. They realized this was going to test them.

Phil [00:17:10]:
This. This was going to push them into places that they didn't know that they had within them, or certainly they wanted to explore that part of their. Their psyche.

Matthew Jones [00:17:19]:
Yeah, it was of the time, I suppose. And because everybody. Yeah, kind of behaved in the same way. We gave as good as we took, you know, it was. Yeah, I mean, it was probably unnecessary, you know, but it was what it was. And, you know, the world's moved on. But it was, you know, we didn't have inductions when we started in a business. Now you have a full day or week of inductions into a business explaining the culture, explaining all of these sort of, you know, the little bits and pieces that make a business ticket.

Matthew Jones [00:17:51]:
We didn't have that back in the 80s. You were just thrown in. You know, you just got with it. Here's your apron. Here's the locker. There's the changing room. Yeah.

Phil [00:17:57]:
There's the pans.

Matthew Jones [00:17:58]:
Good luck. Yeah.

Phil [00:18:00]:
I'll see you on the pass for your first dish. Yeah.

Matthew Jones [00:18:03]:
Don't be late.

Phil [00:18:06]:
And shine your shoes. Yes, brilliant. No, but, yeah, as you say, of the time. So, you know, what. What can you do, right? I mean, you just. You kind of. You either run away or you get on board and you crack on and see where it takes you.

Matthew Jones [00:18:20]:
Yeah, exactly. Those are the two options. There was kind of nothing else.

Phil [00:18:23]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. So how long were you there for?

Matthew Jones [00:18:27]:
A year and a half.

Phil [00:18:28]:
Okay.

Matthew Jones [00:18:29]:
Yeah.

Phil [00:18:29]:
And then. And what happened next?

Matthew Jones [00:18:31]:
So when. So that was the time. So in 19. Would have been 1991. 92. That. Sir Terence, who was, you know, the owner and the founder of Babendum, he started to open his London restaurant empire. So the next one he did was Le Pont de la Tour, which was in Butler's Wharf in.

Phil [00:18:51]:
Drop in some names in this. This conversation.

Matthew Jones [00:18:54]:
So I'd got to know David Burke. He was the head chef. So he was going to open there as the head chef director. And he invited me down. He said, matthew, do you want to come and be my pastry chef? I was like, yes, David, you know how it was an opportunity. I mean, What a. You know, to launch a new restaurant. So, yeah, down I went.

Matthew Jones [00:19:12]:
Started working at Le Pond de la Tour. You know, it was again, very similar kind of menu. It was, you know, good grilled, oversold, nice fillet steak. It was a good bread and butter pudding. It was, you know, the classics really just done properly in a beautiful restaurant with a beautiful view. I mean, that was a business success. The Le Pont. The.

Matthew Jones [00:19:31]:
We absolutely blew it out the water. The. The original idea was to do sort of 40 cupboards for lunch and 40 or 50 for dinner. And we were like doing 200 for lunch.

Phil [00:19:43]:
Oh, wow.

Matthew Jones [00:19:43]:
The city was killing it. You know, we had big groups. These Plateau Freedom airs on three layers with lobsters and oysters and champagne and, you know, the good times rolled. It was an epic time in London, the early 90s.

Phil [00:19:58]:
Well, that's probably the. Maybe the point where things were beginning to turn right. I mean, again, spoken to this about so many people, people over the years that maybe in that time London was still seen as a little bit of the laughing stock of Europe when it came to cuisine, maybe mainly from France in that regard. But. But actually the tide was turning at this point, big time. There was a lot more focus.

Matthew Jones [00:20:22]:
Yeah. Suddenly it was happening. They, you know, we. We were taken seriously and I think a lot of international travel from the States, you know, and there was. There was the budget as well, which obviously helped. You know, London was in the 90s was, you know, it was ripping it. It was, you know, big corporate lunches and these guys wanted to party. You know, it was.

Matthew Jones [00:20:43]:
It was still very much that culture in the 90s when the city boys would come out to the restaurants and they would go for it. Yeah. For lunch.

Phil [00:20:50]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Lazy lunches.

Matthew Jones [00:20:53]:
Can't be a lazy lunch. Long lunches and mobile phones started to emerge and, yeah, they could sort of. Yeah. Be a bit more loose how they worked.

Phil [00:21:03]:
Right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So. And I mean, that's a restaurant that stood the test of time as well. I mean, you know, it was. It's still around, isn't it?

Matthew Jones [00:21:11]:
Yeah, still there, I think. Yeah, yeah.

Phil [00:21:13]:
So, yeah, and it's. It's still doing very well.

Matthew Jones [00:21:17]:
It does, yeah. It's an amazing location. You know, it's right there on that beautiful riverfront. And. Well, Sir Terence, he was a visionary. He was. You know, how that building sat empty for so long is kind of crazy. And he just took this leap of faith and opened a restaurant and then ended up opening about six restaurants down on that waterfront by Butler's Wharf Cantina.

Matthew Jones [00:21:36]:
There was the Italian, the Chop House. They just kept doing them.

Phil [00:21:42]:
Yeah, yeah. Where would we be without visionaries, eh? We can see things that we can't see and then we just come along and take care of it.

Matthew Jones [00:21:51]:
And he took the risk. Yeah, he was a big risk taker. Risk taker. But what a character. You know, he used to come in the kitchen with his cigar and his. And he could carry that, you know, he had this, just this wonderful manner and he would, you know, he was a bon vivant, you know, and he just wanted to have a good time. Wow. He did.

Phil [00:22:12]:
Yeah, well, absolutely. And great that I suppose we are the benefactor of somebody wanting to have a good time and basically, I suppose, create the restaurants that he wants to be in.

Matthew Jones [00:22:21]:
It was exactly that. Yeah, he created a world. He created his world and he projected that and people were allowed to come into his world with his design. His, you know, all the little characteristics that just made it so fabulous. You know, the quality of the build, even down to the detail, the toilets, you know, everything was just so thought through. It was a beautiful environment.

Phil [00:22:42]:
Yeah, no doubt, no doubt. So you're now, I suppose, fully fledged pastry chef at this point.

Matthew Jones [00:22:48]:
Pastry chef. But still, I mean, I used to still dabble in the kitchen, know, I'd always give a hand. I used to just enjoy it. But yeah, I was right on in the pastry, you know, doing English puddings. Really. That was the, in the, in the 90s, that was very much a thing you used to do a, you know, good homemade ice creams. It was spotted dick, it was jam roly poly, but just really done properly. Yeah, classic stuff.

Matthew Jones [00:23:10]:
Leave it alone. And that's been sort of pretty much the career path I stayed on all along.

Phil [00:23:15]:
Yeah. So where did you head next?

Matthew Jones [00:23:18]:
So while I was working at Le Pont le Tour again, I got to know the guy. A couple of guys there was Mark and Max Rensland, who were a couple of chef restaurateurs and they were opening a new restaurant in Hampton Wick called Le Petit Max, which was a phenomenon in its day. It was essentially a little cafe during the day and they did a pop up restaurant by night. It was down in Hampton Wick, so just outside Kingston. Got to know them, said, why don't you come down and be our chef? And I was like, wow. I mean, that's a big opportunity. I was, I was a pastry chef and I wanted to go back into the kitchen. I thought just seemed mad.

Matthew Jones [00:23:55]:
They paid me very well so often made me a good offer. So I went down there and again, it was one of those places. It just went bonkers. We. We opened for about a month and then Faymashler came down and gave us this phenomenal review. We got three stars from Faye Mashler. And my. My creme brulee got mentioned in the Evening Standard.

Matthew Jones [00:24:15]:
Matthew's creme brulee. And that I can remember it, that it gave me goosebumps, you know, it was the first time I've been recognized as a. As a person my named, you know, and that it meant so much, you know, because Faye was a. And is a, you know, a legend. You know, if Faye comes into your restaurant, she can make or break here. And she made it. I mean, the phone did not stop ringing for literally three months.

Phil [00:24:42]:
Wow.

Matthew Jones [00:24:42]:
You could not get in the restaurant. We were doing double bookings. So we did a 7:00 and a 9:00, six days a week, closed on Mondays and Sunday lunch. It was unbelievable. We had one solid top stove. We had a little char grill. We had a couple of fridges out the back in the garage. It was byo so people just talk Rambooz.

Matthew Jones [00:25:04]:
And again, it was just an amazing thing to be involved with. Mark and Max were just. They were French. They were French cooks, really. That was their thing of just classic French bistro cooking, Lyonnais cooking, really classic. Nice foie graterine, little plateau, frit de mer, very simple sausage on lyonnaise with lentils. It was really simple. It was a mad place.

Matthew Jones [00:25:28]:
Sadly, Mark is no longer with us. He died a few years ago. But Max is still around. He's still a very good friend, actually. So it was a crazy time how we managed to serve like 60 or 70 covers a night from a restaurant that was about the size of a sort of domestic kitchen. And these little tables all cramped together sometimes. We used to double book tables. I remember once say a table of four came down and we didn't have space.

Matthew Jones [00:25:55]:
So they sat outside and ate their meal in their car. Literally on their laps in the car. I mean, and they loved it, you know, they were like, we just want to have this food, you know? And there was such a buzz around that restaurant. Really, it was just extraordinary.

Phil [00:26:14]:
Yeah, I mean, I suppose it also highlights, like if you. If you do something really, really well, people will always come. They will always find what you're doing.

Matthew Jones [00:26:24]:
Totally. You know, simple menu, simple good ingredients, and stick to it and just honor that and leave it alone and just keep doing it. And that was the mantra and it just worked. Yeah.

Phil [00:26:36]:
Yeah, I definitely don't think we've had anybody eat their dinner from their car on this show before. That's definitely a new one.

Matthew Jones [00:26:44]:
Yeah, yeah. It was this sort of drive through experience of crazy.

Phil [00:26:50]:
Yeah, yeah. Bistro, bistro, drive through. Why didn't it take off?

Matthew Jones [00:26:57]:
So then I.

Phil [00:26:58]:
Wrong, Betty.

Matthew Jones [00:26:59]:
Max. I did a year there, a year and a half. And again, I just wanted to get on the move. So I went to work for Phil Howard at the Square. That was the old Square. So before. I mean, the Square restaurant isn't there at all anymore, but it was when the square was in St. James's so the old one.

Matthew Jones [00:27:15]:
So I went there, worked as a pastry chef. I wasn't there long. I worked there for about six months. That was a crazy time.

Phil [00:27:23]:
Yeah. Well, Phil's been on the show and actually spoke about how intense it all was back then. Yeah.

Matthew Jones [00:27:33]:
And that was probably the most intense, that the juncture when the Square moved from being in St. James's up to Berkeley Square. I was there at the St. James's part of the journey. And it's. Well, probably better for the listener that you listen to Phil's version because it was again, it was just madness. There were no uniforms. We just.

Matthew Jones [00:27:52]:
It was really. It was almost anarchy in the kitchen. But somehow. Well, Phil, he's an incredibly gifted chef and he was able to always just put the food on the plate. He could do it. He delivered. He delivered every time. And it was just one of those extraordinary sort of moments really, in cooking sort of history, you know?

Phil [00:28:16]:
Yeah, yeah. I remember him talking about. It blew my mind that I think he was something like 23 years old or something like that when he. He took that on or started it or. So he was like super young, like way younger than I could ever contemplate doing anything like. Like that. And I suppose the. The key thing.

Phil [00:28:34]:
How old would you have been around that time?

Matthew Jones [00:28:36]:
22, 23.

Phil [00:28:37]:
Sorry. So similar. I suppose the key thing at that time is, is that, you know, the young body, the young mind can just, I suppose, go. Right. I mean, it's just. It's all action, all intense. But there is a. There is a point where that you end up blowing a gasket if you just are on all the time.

Matthew Jones [00:28:55]:
Yeah. Something's going to give eventually. And it was just work hard, play hard. I mean, all of those restaurants at the time, they just seemed to exist on that lifestyle. If the chefs just wanted to party after work, and we did big time, there was always just a reason to just go out after work, it didn't matter if it was 2 in the morning. We'd find somewhere, you know, for those.

Phil [00:29:19]:
Reason, it's, it's Tuesday. Let's, let's go out on a Tuesday. That'll do.

Matthew Jones [00:29:23]:
And get wrecked, you know. And there were always the lunch breaks because we were always working split shifts. So there was always, you know, that took two hours in the afternoon to go down the local pub. And it was very much the thing just to sort of see how much you could drink in that, in that two hour window. You know, how many pints can you get in? Could we do six? You know, and it was. And then back to the kitchen.

Phil [00:29:43]:
Oh, God, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, there's no, no dangers in the kitchen if you're a little bit sozzled. No knives or anything that could chop your hands off and somehow make it.

Matthew Jones [00:29:53]:
Through the service, you know, and it all, it really felt like it was just surviving service to service, you know, there was no real plan. But out of that, you know, madness, there came a lot of creativity. You know, it was, you know, I think, you know, look back at it, there were some amazing creative chefs who had a very similar path in the, you know, the 80s and 90s kind of scene in London. And that was, that was how we rolled. Yeah, that was, that was the way.

Phil [00:30:19]:
Yeah. No, indeed. I mean, and as you said, again, very much of its time, I mean, that was, you know, that was probably kitchen to kitchen. You'd probably get much the same stories in terms of you, you're on it and you work hard and then when you're done, you go and get battered and then rinse and repeat.

Matthew Jones [00:30:33]:
Yeah, totally. I mean, I remember the, like the blue posts in, just in St. James's there, you know, you'd get all the chefs from the. There'd be the guys from the Ritz, there'd be the guys from Quaggy Nose, there'd be the guys from the Square. There was all the local chefs all just in the bar, just lunchtime every day.

Phil [00:30:50]:
Yeah, Well, I suppose it's networking.

Matthew Jones [00:30:52]:
Yeah. Yeah, we did. Packet of crisps. Six pints. Yeah, lovely. Thank you very much.

Phil [00:30:57]:
Back to work. Yeah. Oh, God. Right, yeah. So you were there for six months?

Matthew Jones [00:31:04]:
Yeah.

Phil [00:31:05]:
Where did you head after that?

Matthew Jones [00:31:06]:
Quaglino. So there was the new opening of Quaglino's massive restaurant in St. James's and I just wanted to be a part of that. It was Sir Terence Conran again. It was his biggest thing ever and it was just epic. It was the Most glamorous, the most fabulously flamboyant restaurant, you know, certainly in Europe at the time. It was a 300 cover glamorous brasserie, you know, with. With Friedemaire, with, you know, all of the.

Matthew Jones [00:31:36]:
All of the good stuff. Caviar, champagne. It was phenomenal. So I went there as the head pastry chef and ran the pastry kitchen, which was a separate kitchen. So I had my own kitchen at this stage.

Phil [00:31:47]:
Luxury.

Matthew Jones [00:31:48]:
Yeah. My own cold room, you know, things like that. It felt like an honor to have my own cold room to be responsible for. And that was two years I worked there in Quaglino's. It was brilliant. We used to do a thousand covers a day. Probably one of the busiest restaurants at the time, certainly in Europe, if not the world. It was a.

Matthew Jones [00:32:07]:
It was just unbelievable. We had. And it was always full of stars. You had Kate Moss and you had, you know, the Rolling Stones, and everybody just came in and it was just, you know, and it was just so normal. Who's in tonight? You know, there was always celebrities in there. It was the hotspot of London for a few years, really. It had that. The bars.

Matthew Jones [00:32:25]:
And again, you know, Sir Terence, he had this. He added these little details. He had the cigarette girls, he had the. You know, which is. We couldn't even have that now, could we? I mean, imagine everybody smoked in the restaurant. You know, you had these leggy girls that went around with cigarettes in a tray. And it was, you know, and it was just so flamboyant and so fabulous, and it was. The customers just lapped it up.

Phil [00:32:47]:
Yeah. I mean, that is a phenomenal amount of covers to be doing. Yeah, it's relentless.

Matthew Jones [00:32:52]:
Yeah, it really was. And there was just no break. Even Sunday night, we used to do 400, 500 covers. It was. It was a military operation.

Phil [00:33:00]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. And. And how long were you there for?

Matthew Jones [00:33:04]:
Two years. Yeah, I loved it, actually. It was. I love working at Quaglinos. It was going, you know, there's Martin Webb, there was John T. There was Paul Wilson. Tough boys in the kitchen. Real tough kitchen.

Matthew Jones [00:33:16]:
But somehow I just loved it.

Phil [00:33:19]:
Yeah. And I suppose your first official role as head pastry chef with your own space, were you getting creative license at this point?

Matthew Jones [00:33:27]:
Yeah, I went to the menu. I could create my own stuff. I used to do. Yeah, I wrote the menu. Yeah. Created daily specials, Made all the ice creams for every service. Made. Yeah, all of it.

Matthew Jones [00:33:37]:
Ran the whole thing.

Phil [00:33:39]:
Right. And what do you think it is about the pastry section? That sounds like a band doesn't it? The pastry section? Yeah. What do you think it is about pastry that really resonated with you?

Matthew Jones [00:33:53]:
It's hard to say. Just found satisfaction in it, you know, just. I just found it. Just enjoyed the process. I enjoyed the touch, the feel, the smells, the way we. It's really difficult to say, but I just. Somehow I just connected with it.

Phil [00:34:08]:
Right. I always feel like there because actually, in my own domestic kitchen, of which I am a God, of course, but when it comes to pastry stuff, I leave that to the wife. She finds it quite meditative, if that's the word. Do you think there's some merit in that? I mean, there is. It's like you can be in a meditative state to, you know, create something amazing.

Matthew Jones [00:34:32]:
Yeah, I mean, I can. Once you've learned the job, you can kind of zone out a little bit, you know, And I can. If I'm now rolling croissants, I can roll 13 croissants in a minute. And I can do that while I'm thinking about something completely different, you know, and it's a really nice thing to do. But, like, if you're rowing or if you're, you know, you can just. You just kind of drift away, you know, and you've got your pace set, you can obviously cycling or doing any sort of training in the gym, cardio base, you can. You get into your zone and then you can just, you know, you can let your mind drift a little bit, and I really enjoy that. But you've got to master it first.

Matthew Jones [00:35:03]:
You've got to get really good at it before you can do that.

Phil [00:35:06]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Thirteen croissants in a minute.

Matthew Jones [00:35:08]:
Yeah.

Phil [00:35:09]:
I mean. Yeah. You talk about craft, craftsmanship. I mean that you. You don't just arrive there on day one, do you?

Matthew Jones [00:35:15]:
No, it's a few years to. Yeah, to learn that.

Phil [00:35:18]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. Great. Well, Quaglinos, what happened next, then?

Matthew Jones [00:35:25]:
It was actually my last job was working at Mezzo, so I left Quaglinos. It was again, it was another Conrad establishment. Mezzo opened in 1997. John was a head chef there, and I really liked John. He was a. Just a great guy to work for, big time. He was a Marmite character in the kitchen, you know, either loved him or hated him. I loved him.

Matthew Jones [00:35:45]:
He ran a great kitchen. He was a leader, you know, he was. He was a powerhouse. Saturday night on the pass, John Sirod was there, just like, yes, Chef. You just deliver. You know, he hyped it up. You know, he just got Everybody on their toes, everybody was on their. On their tiptoes, you know, waiting for John's order.

Matthew Jones [00:36:04]:
And we just, yeah, everybody delivered, you know, very exciting to work in that environment. So when Matso opened, they had a separate bakery, so on Mordau Street. So they had a bakery, a separate building. Separate. Part of it was a bakery and I went to run that and that was the first time I'd actually run a proper bakery where making sourdough bread, making croissants, making everything from scratch with their little cafe on the side. And God, I love that. That was a really invaluable learning, you know, for me to work there for a couple of years. So from 1997 to 1999, yeah, I was on Bordeaux street making croissants and sourdough bread.

Phil [00:36:43]:
Right. Well, that didn't take you anywhere, did it?

Matthew Jones [00:36:47]:
Used to get the night bus work. Did night shifts, started at 11 at night, finished 8, 9 in the morning. Yeah. Hard work, you know, but loved it.

Phil [00:36:56]:
Yeah, yeah. Well, this is the thing. I think I remember when I worked on ships, my. My cabin was directly under the bakery. And so obviously a lot of the activity in the bakery happens through the night in terms of. But I sleep so heavily that I was the only person that could sleep in that cabin. Wow. Because of the noise that was happening.

Phil [00:37:18]:
Used to condemn it for other people, but I'm just one of the lucky ones, I guess. I am a heavy, heavy sleeper.

Matthew Jones [00:37:23]:
Wow, nice. I'd be awake all night.

Phil [00:37:30]:
So you're, I suppose, describe to me, if you would, that process of. Because, you know, you've at that point, no experience of opening a bakery before. I can't imagine that it's just as clean cut as going. Well, that's what we'll create and that's how many will sell. And there's the business plan and away we go.

Matthew Jones [00:37:48]:
No, but, you know, you quickly work it out. I mean, it's, you know, sales are, you know, pretty regular throughout the week. You quickly find a trend to. A pattern to it. And it was, you know, 1997, I suppose, was, you know, what an amazing time in London at the time, you know, we started to have some bakeries. You had Sally Clark's, you had Maison Blanc, you had Baker Spice was opening up on Morton street. So there was Sourdough was entering the uk, you know, it was, wow, sourdough bread, you know.

Phil [00:38:17]:
Yeah.

Matthew Jones [00:38:17]:
And you had companies like Neil's Yard Dairy, like Monmouth Coffee, who started to sell sourdough bread in their cheese shop. And you Know, so they had the right customer base, people who wanted decent cheese and decent coffee and decent stuff, you know, proper food, you know. And it was while I was at mezzo that I started to get to know about Borough Market. So there was this thing called the Food Lovers fair, opened in 1998, run by Henrietta Green down at Borough Market. And it was essentially a collective of artisans. You had ginger pig, Brindisa Monmouth, Neil's Yard dairy, turnips, and they just set up once a month down at Borough. Actually it was once a quarter when it started, once a quarter down at Borough Market to create really the, the beginnings of what we know as Borough Market today. So, and I, I got, I was invited down, I didn't knew the guys at Neil's Yard area and they said, well, why don't you just do a stall outside our shop to start with? So I did.

Matthew Jones [00:39:18]:
I had literally a trestle table and 100 loaves of bread and they were like, just bring down as much as you can. I'm like, well, what does that look like? You know, no idea what to expect. But it was just phenomenal. We come, nothing went. Nothing happened in the morning and then sort of come 11 o'clock. Suddenly out of nowhere came all these people just buying anything you had on the table. You know, walnut bread and raisin bread and rye sourdough and all of these things that in, in my world were very new and very quirky. In London at the time, they were just absolutely what they wanted.

Matthew Jones [00:39:52]:
You know, they wanted that dark crusty loaf with a real good scorch on it. Absolutely.

Phil [00:39:57]:
Yeah. Well, I suppose with that as well, this is kind of really uncharted territory for everyone, yourself included, at this point. You don't know what's going to work. You don't know. Well, as you say, I'd imagine there was a couple of sweaty moments in the morning when nobody's turning up. We're thinking, what, what have we done? We've just like created all this products that nobody's interested in.

Matthew Jones [00:40:18]:
Yeah, yeah. I mean, but it does seem to sell, you know, it seems to be very regular. I mean, even now, funnily enough, I mean, you know, even now, all these years later, I do occasionally go down to Borough Market. I'm there on, say, Saturday morning, we're setting up the store and I just think, are we going to sell all of this? It just seems unbelievable and we do and it just seems to keep going. Yeah, yeah.

Phil [00:40:41]:
Well, that's the thing, as I say, what Borough Market has now become Is this just, you know, wonderful food hub for London, really?

Matthew Jones [00:40:49]:
Yeah, well, I mean, there's quite. Yeah. So there's this sort of big bit, really, when. Well, I left. So just to sort of recap on that, I left Mezzo. Then I opened a bakery called Flower power city in 1999, and that was very much about Borough Market. The bakery itself was in Hoxton street and I had there for four years in Hoxton, the street. And we.

Matthew Jones [00:41:11]:
Borough Market was a big part of our business. We were doing all of the London farmers markets at the time as well, which were exploding every Sunday. You know, there's one in Islington and one in Notting Hill Gate. And then Saturdays opened and I started doing some wholesale supplying restaurants. And then I moved the business. We outgrew it. I took a big industrial place. So I ended up having flower power for 12 years until 2000.

Phil [00:41:33]:
Wow. Right.

Matthew Jones [00:41:34]:
So 12 years of my life. And then at the end of that journey. So towards the year, sort of 10, 11, I took on an investor. It seemed like a great idea.

Phil [00:41:47]:
There's a story here. There's definitely.

Matthew Jones [00:41:49]:
Yeah, it was. I mean, you know, I was a very. I was a younger guy and I was very chaotic. I was drinking, actually a lot at the time. Way too much. And I got to know Luke Johnson and Luke was like, oh, I love your business. You know, I want to invest in it. And it seemed like a really good idea.

Matthew Jones [00:42:08]:
And looking back on it, I mean, you know, it was like the worst thing I could have done because, one, I was just. I was immature. I mean, I just didn't know, you know, he was a proper corporate guy, you know, I mean, he did everything properly and, you know, he was a real. You know, Luke's not a baker. He's a businessman, hardcore, you know, full on. And there's me as this sort of, yeah, playful baker guy, you know. No, it was chalk and cheeks and, you know, so eventually he bought me out of the business. And I walked away with my tail between my legs having taken a serious kicking from this, you know, this, you know, business guy that was just like, you know, ten layers above me.

Matthew Jones [00:42:49]:
And I. I was just completely out of my depth, you know, and I walked away and it was. It was a nightmare. And I walked away from that after 12 years with nothing, less than nothing. And I actually ended up staying on a friend's farm in Jan McCourt. So he's a good friend of mine. He runs Northfield Farm, which actually has a stall at Borough Market. And Jan said to me I can remember when I went up there and he said, matthew, you're not well, you know, you're really not well, mate.

Matthew Jones [00:43:18]:
And I was like, what do you mean? And he said, matthew, you're yellow, you're green, you're like, you need to stop drinking. I mean, for Christ. And he was the only person, I think, ever that really sort of sat me down as an adult and explained to me, you can't carry on like this, you know. And it was a really, a seminal moment in my life. I met at the time, it was a bit of a very fortunate thing really. There was Clarissa Dixon Wright staying with Jan and she was a good friend and she took me along to a meeting, to Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. And I, and I thought, oh, this is, this is good. So I started going to meetings and I stopped and I stopped drinking and like, really, I mean, everything else fell into place.

Matthew Jones [00:44:00]:
I just, I kind of had this moment of clarity. I just sort of thought, God, you know, what have I been doing with my life? And being on that farm, sat at that kitchen table. And Jan's a proper grown up guy, he's an adult, he was a lawyer, he's proper guy, you know, he's not some, you know, kid. Brilliant guy, you know, very responsible man. And I was able to just have a bit of sort of silence really, in my life and just sort of think, well, I've just got to sort this out. So I just took a pad of paper and I started drawing, thinking about names for new business. I didn't know how I was going to do it because I was in debt. I've just got sorted out, I've just got two.

Matthew Jones [00:44:40]:
So I came up with this name, Bread. I wrote down the word bread on a bit of paper and then I drew a little arrow in front of it, you know, a little chevron arrow and ahead. And I just wrote his name down. Well, that's the name. I had a friend in London at the time who had a bakery, Olivier, he used to work for me and he'd set up his own business and so I started to bake some, moved back down to London. I slept on the floor of his bakery to start with, like four or five nights a week and baked some stuff, took it to Borough market, got myself a stool there in2010, 2011, that would have been end of 2011, just got a market stall back at Borough. They were like, yeah, welcome back, Matthew. What are you going to call it? And I did them a little presentation.

Matthew Jones [00:45:23]:
And so I started off selling Bread three, three days a week, Thursday, Friday, Saturday. And I rebuilt the business really. I mean, it took me a year and a half to pay off debt. And I just kept doing it and kept doing it and kept doing it. And then I took a premises down at Borough, which is where Bread Ahead is now. I leased a place, I had a little oven, a broken knackered old thing and a mixer and I built the inside myself with a couple of mates. I had a very, very limited budget and live around the corner, got a flat and I pieced it back together again and then literally sort of month by month added things, added to it. We just got, you know, I've got another mixer, upgraded that.

Matthew Jones [00:46:07]:
But what I had was, you know, really significant. I had revenue coming in, I had the market stall at Borough. We opened six days a week and then we opened our school. So in 2014, I'd always had this thing about teaching and doing courses for people. And we opened the Bakery school. So we did an introduction to Sourdough Baking, like a three hour course. And it just worked from day one, Phil. It was unbelievable.

Matthew Jones [00:46:32]:
We, we just, literally as soon as we started teaching, more people wanted to learn and there was so many. We got emails, we had to build the website, we had to do a lot of learning about how to run, you know, online bookings and gosh, all of that. And then before long we were doing groups for local schools, education, we were doing corporate bookings. So we had like Facebook got in touch. We wanted to do a corporate booking.

Phil [00:46:57]:
Nice.

Matthew Jones [00:46:57]:
And it was just great. And so we had, we had money coming in and I could rebuild the business. And I'd really changed, you know, I mean, I think, you know, in a way I look back at my flower power and my journey and meeting Luke and that whole process and it was, it was incredibly painful at the time. I mean, I went through the mill, you know, it was horrible. But I wouldn't be the person I'm now without that.

Phil [00:47:22]:
Yeah.

Matthew Jones [00:47:22]:
So I'm really grateful for that experience. I mean, however, you know, I mean, ask me at the time, I would have. But now I look back on it, I mean, you know, so, I mean, in a nutshell, we've opened many London locations, all off cash flow. I don't have investors. I met my wife very early. I married again. I met my wife very early in the business, the business. Only two years old actually.

Matthew Jones [00:47:43]:
We had a son, you know, and I mean, so much has happened in my life and I reflect on it now. It was 15 years, you know, Since I had that fateful day, really with flower power and that my life collapsed, really, you know, it really collapsed. I was, you know, without, you know. Well, anybody who's brushed with alcoholism knows it's never going to be a pretty ending. You know, you just, it's always going to be a horror story. But I, I don't like to dwell on it because there's just so much opportunity, you know. Recently we've started an international part of the business with franchise partners. We are open in the Middle east, so we've got eight locations in the Middle East.

Matthew Jones [00:48:28]:
We've signed a partner for Asia. We are close to sealing a site, doing a deal which is going to be life changing in New York, which is a very, very significant location. I can't say it, but you will know it.

Phil [00:48:40]:
Yep.

Matthew Jones [00:48:41]:
So I think within the next five years we could become a really big business. Still doing the same thing, which is what I like. You know, I still, yeah, I know my staff go around every day. I'm still involved. I do the baking, I get involved in it. Not so much. I mean, probably two, three hours a day. I love it.

Matthew Jones [00:48:58]:
I still look forward to going to work every day. There's never a single day when I don't walk down the street thinking, right, what am I going to do today? What's my first job? You know, and it really takes me right back to that journey as a 15 year old kid left, left school. I just said I was on a mission. I love what I do, you know, and it's been, you know, so important through. I mean there's been loads of ups and downs in my life, you know, like everybody really isn't there. But the common thread I've had in my life that kind of kept me sane really was doing my job.

Phil [00:49:32]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was detecting that in this whole story. And actually I made a note here around a couple of things around that part of your journey is that it sounds to me like that, that breakdown of your business and kind of, I suppose your life really. And as you knew, it almost had to happen in order for you to evolve and become what you are now.

Matthew Jones [00:49:57]:
Yeah, I've been. Otherwise what was my choice? I mean, I could have stayed being a pastry chef in a hotel somewhere and just being a guy who just gets drunk every day and you know, gets away with it and, you know, I'm worth more than that. You know, I realized, you know, I sort of look at myself now and I'm proud of what I am and what I've Done, you know, and I love showing people around the business. I love it. I love bringing them in and showing them what I've created and do. Something happened recently that was really a really nice thing. And somebody said to me ages ago, you know, when you've got a successful business because your staff, they start. Their children start coming work for you.

Matthew Jones [00:50:33]:
And that starts to happen now because we've been, like, around for 10 years now, so a lot of the guys who were working for me five, 10 years ago, their children are now 18, 19. They're starting to come to work for us on Saturdays. They're starting to do jobs for us, they're starting to get involved in the business. And that is generational. And it kind of happened without me realizing it's happening. And I look at that as a value to a business is so big because these children understand what their parents are doing as a job, as a career, and it's so much more than just a Saturday job. The difference in the work, their commitment is a totally different thing.

Phil [00:51:12]:
Yeah, no doubt. I think that's a wonderful thing that. I don't think I've had that come up, maybe on one other conversation, not on this podcast, away from that, whereby I think it was the MD of the belfry spoke about the importance of family to his business, because he's got, you know, three generations of family that have worked there at one point, at one point or another. And. And there's a different. It's a different mindset, I think, when there's that understanding of what's come before and what it is now and where it's going next and all of that. And the. The community and the family in which you hold within your business are a massive part of that.

Matthew Jones [00:51:52]:
Yeah, it's. It's kind of everything, you know, it's. You know, what else do we have? You know, it's. Yeah, it's been an amazing journey. I mean, there's a few. You know, often I think about how as well in my life, I came from a world that was digital, that was. Sorry, it was analog. You know, we didn't have Internet, we didn't have mobile phones.

Matthew Jones [00:52:10]:
And we've emerged into that work that can only happen once, that transition. And us sort of guys in our 50s, we experience that. And it's a very, very unique thing, because I think what's critical is we're not dependent on technology. We still know how to sort stuff out. Without it, I can fix stuff. And it's a different way of thinking. And I'm I'm incredibly grateful to have that. I'm good at fixing problems, and it's, you know, been so, so valuable to have that as my, you know, in my toolbox, really, to.

Phil [00:52:44]:
Yeah.

Matthew Jones [00:52:45]:
And I think, you know, as well, there's, you know, I'm incredibly grateful that I. With my. My alcoholism and addiction. It was. I was so fortunate that I. I dealt with that when I was 40, you know, and I. There's never the right time, but I was incredibly grateful now because I had enough of my life left. I could do it again, because heaven forbid.

Matthew Jones [00:53:08]:
Look, I'm so far away from that now, and it's. I wouldn't want to spend one day in the place I was not.

Phil [00:53:16]:
Yeah.

Matthew Jones [00:53:17]:
You know, it was. It was awful. And it was. I normalized it. I. I kind of just got used to sort of this self abuse. It was crazy. And I.

Matthew Jones [00:53:26]:
It is what it is, you know. But what I do know now is that I would not replace my life now for anything.

Phil [00:53:34]:
Yeah, well. And what price on that? Right? I mean, that. That is. There is a dream.

Matthew Jones [00:53:39]:
There is no price.

Phil [00:53:40]:
No, indeed. Absolutely. I made a note, and this might be reading way too much into this, but a note of. When you talked about how the name came about. I'm always fascinated as to how entrepreneurs come up with names of businesses, because I actually think it's one of the most difficult things of any business is to come up with the name, but actually the word ahead. Do you think there was part of your psyche that was just that word came in? Because it's now about what comes next.

Matthew Jones [00:54:11]:
Totally.

Phil [00:54:12]:
Or am I right? Okay. So I haven't just filled in my own blanks.

Matthew Jones [00:54:15]:
I had to change something in my life and what's next. And I did. And it was because there was nothing left of the old person or of the old business or of the old. It was ground zero, you know, And I had to make something new, and I had the skills to do it. I had the determination, I had the focus, I had the, you know, had to work with it. I didn't have the funding. I mean, I don't know how I did that. I look back at it.

Phil [00:54:41]:
Small detail.

Matthew Jones [00:54:42]:
Yeah, whatever you get. It's funny, you know, when you're that resident and that focused on something, you really can move mountains. And I did.

Phil [00:54:50]:
Absolutely. Final question, I suppose, before. I can't believe the time, to be honest, that's. That's flown by funny stories, because we spoke, we focused a lot about the learnings here, but have you got anything like across any of your times, whereby apart from, I suppose, maybe people eating food off their laps in cars. Any other funny stories where you think that was just. That was just a wonderful, wonderful moment.

Matthew Jones [00:55:12]:
There was a time when I was working in Bibendum and there was a waiter who used to always steal creme brulees from my fridge, from my pastry fridge in the kitchen.

Phil [00:55:21]:
Well, this is the world famous creme brulee.

Matthew Jones [00:55:24]:
So what I did, I took a ramekin and I filled it with. I made a mixture of parsnip puree and Tabasco and put it into a ramekin, pureed it, put it into a ramekin and then burnt the top, put some sugar on top and burnt it so it looked just like a creme brulee and lift it in the fridge for him because he always used to come and nick them. Anyway, I ended up going out to a customer.

Phil [00:55:42]:
Oh, God, I didn't see that coming. I thought, this is the lesson for him.

Matthew Jones [00:55:48]:
But I went to the loo, I popped out to go to the loo. I wasn't there to. So one of them. And it went out into the restaurant. Can you imagine? I was taken to the office for chat. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was pretty embarrassing.

Phil [00:56:03]:
My God. Yeah.

Matthew Jones [00:56:06]:
But somehow, you know, I remember Simon Hopkins at the time. Yeah. Somehow got away with it. I mean, I was like. I think he saw the funny side of it.

Phil [00:56:16]:
Yeah. I think if you. If you're. If you're good at what you do, I think people will always give you a little bit of rope. Yeah, that's definitely my experience. If you consistently do that sort of thing, then I'm guessing that becomes a big problem. But, you know, I suppose you. You learned a lesson in that moment as well.

Phil [00:56:32]:
No doubt.

Matthew Jones [00:56:32]:
Yeah. You can't sort of. Don't assume anything, you know.

Phil [00:56:36]:
Yeah, yeah, brilliant. Well, look, Matthew, thank you so much. I mean, geez, what a. What a journey. I mean, it feels like it's an. It's an all action journey. You should definitely write a book if you've. If you've not written one already.

Matthew Jones [00:56:51]:
Well, I'm actually. I'm halfway through it, actually, so I do. I mean, I'm working on two books at the moment. One is my sort of memoirs, How Baking Saved My Life. And another one, which is really different, is actually a. It's a children's Christmas book. So it's called the Magical Mince Pie and it's essentially a bedtime story about this lovely mince pie and then a cookbook it's the recipe at the end of the book. So it's really to inspire and nurture, you know, creative young minds into the world of baking.

Matthew Jones [00:57:21]:
Because I, you know, I grew up in that world of cookbooks and children's bedtime stories like the Hungry Caterpillar, the Giant Jam Sandwich, and those kind of books. And I'd love to add one, you know, because I think, you know, and really about the Britishness and the good mince pie, you know, because it's such a wonderful thing and making things at home, you know, making your own mince pies at home, it's so important. And I think, you know, for me, it sort of marks the. You know, you stir up sundae and you make a mincemeat and you put it in little jars and you really enjoy the process. It's more than just making a mince pie. It's the occasion, it's the process. Just thinking about the ingredients of which spices to use, of how much nutmeg, and really just taking. Yeah, taking a moment to enjoy that.

Matthew Jones [00:58:08]:
So that's a couple of books I've got I'm working on right now, so. Yeah.

Phil [00:58:12]:
Nice, nice. Do you have a timeline for completion or is it the Christmas one Will.

Matthew Jones [00:58:17]:
Be out for this Christmas, so.

Phil [00:58:18]:
Oh, right. Nice. That's not far away.

Matthew Jones [00:58:20]:
Yeah, The Magical mince Pie. You watch this space and my memoirs, I've got the. Well, I've got the first 20,000 words done, and it's great. And it's been really for me to read that now. I did it with the ghostwriter Matthew, another Matthew, and he's. You know, when I read through it, there's bits of it that really shock me, actually, and I need to sort of absorb it and digest it and then add to it. And so it needs to grow. And I'll do it, though, because I think it's, you know, it's a really healing process.

Matthew Jones [00:58:52]:
And I think there's a lot of people who kind of experienced life in the 80s and the 90s and the music scene and all of that, you know, which I loved. I mean, you know, the Sex Pistols and the. You know, all of it, you know, from. That's what I grew up in, you know, and the rough and tumble of that Michelin world in the 80s and 90s and where we are now. And it's an amazing time in the sort of humanity, really. Right now is a fabulous, fabulous time. And we've still got. There's so much to do and so much to learn and so much good stuff in the world.

Phil [00:59:28]:
Yeah. That sounds like a wonderful way to wrap it up. Matthew, thank you so much for your time. I'm kind of in awe, to be honest, that your journey is amazing, and it sounds like you guys are on a wonderful footing forward in terms of the stuff that you've got going on. So I wish you all the very best with the next phase of bread ahead and your life.

Matthew Jones [00:59:51]:
Thanks, Phil. I'm doing my best.

Phil [00:59:56]:
That in itself should be something that goes on everybody's T shirt right in the end. All you can really do.

Matthew Jones [01:00:04]:
Yeah. And just keep going.

Phil [01:00:07]:
Keep going.

Matthew Jones [01:00:08]:
It's going to be okay.

Phil [01:00:10]:
Yeah.

Matthew Jones [01:00:10]:
Great.

Phil [01:00:10]:
Good man.

Matthew Jones [01:00:11]:
Thanks all.

Phil [01:00:11]:
Thanks so much. Cheers.

Matthew Jones [01:00:13]:
Bye.