What's the most important meal of the day in your business? At Chopstix, Elio Elia says there isn't one. Whether it's spicy, sweet or something no one's tried before, the rule is the same: go hard or go home.

Elio studied Spanish and Mandarin, came home with no plan and got roped into helping at the family business. That meant running the social media page, running to the cash and carry for stock, and anything else that needed doing. He went on to run supply chain, procurement and food quality as commercial director, and now leads marketing as Chopstix's marketing director.

In this episode, Daisy and Elio talk about:

• Why the first question for any new product is "does this get you excited, and would you tell your mum about it?"
• Bringing back K-Pop BBQ chicken after fans asked for it again and again
• The experiments that went too far, from Pepsi Max chicken to Cherry Kiss
• The retail journey: from a sauce range that didn't take off to ready meals in Iceland and The Food Warehouse, plus a Chopstix noodle pot
• "Freedom in a framework" and "with clarity comes purpose": how to keep the entrepreneurial spirit as you add structure
• Getting the rest of the business on board when everyone's a marketer, a chef and a buyer
• Why the North Star in a tough market is the fundamentals, not reacting to everything
• Life after the acquisition by QSRP, and taking Chopstix into France and Europe
• Owning the Asian QSR space next to McDonald's, KFC and Subway
• And, of course, his breakfast order

Links

• Get The Egg Index report when it launches: theeggindex.com
• Chopstix Noodle Bars
• Elio Elia on LinkedIn.
• Hosted by Daisy Whitehouse, Down at the Social.

The Egg Index is made by Down at the Social.

www.httpstheeggindex.co.uk/

Paolo works across eighteen food brands at once, from three-days-a-week deep on a fast-growing halal franchise to an hour here and there elsewhere. So when he says we've hit peak fried chicken, or that a lot of new sites are opened just "to open sites", it's worth leaning in. This is the operator's-eye view of hospitality: not the marketing magic, the maths underneath it.

Daisy sits down with him to get into the unglamorous truth of scaling. Why finding the right property is one of the biggest blocks in the business. Why he opened a halal brand in Dorking and what the reaction taught him. Why kiosks now beat humans at the upsell, why people stopped being forgiving the moment they started ordering from an app, and why the brands that win are usually the "boring", reliable ones who don't do anything stupid.

There's a proper honest streak in here too: the sites he got wrong, the founder he should have told "you're not ready", and the KFC turnaround he rates as a masterclass in getting the boring things right. Plus a breakfast order that is possibly the most on-brand answer the show has had yet.

The Egg Index is Down at the Social's hospitality podcast. Follow for a new guest every episode, and there's a report coming that pulls the whole series together.

Guest bio

Paolo Peretti is a hospitality operator and advisor who works hands-on with founders across roughly eighteen food and drink brands, helping them scale, get scale-ready, or turn things around. His career runs from Pret A Manger and AMT Coffee to running brands across the UK and the Far East, and today he sets up franchise systems and supports founders through the messy middle of growth.

The Egg Index is made by Down at the Social.

www.httpstheeggindex.co.uk/

Episode 1. Jim Hawker built Threepipe and ran it for twenty years. Then he crossed the table. These days he's commercial director at luxury wallpaper house Fromental, advises The Sushi Co, and coaches other agency founders, which makes him the ideal person to ask the question the whole show hangs off: what's the most important meal of the day in your business?

Jim's answer is the unglamorous stuff most brands skip. Getting the basics right before you spend a penny on paid. Backing earned and organic when, as he puts it, so much ad budget is simply wasted. And treating creativity as a substitute for paid media rather than a line item sitting next to it.

Along the way: the night he floated six glowing lottery balls the size of double-decker buses down the Thames, turning Gourmet Burger Kitchen into "Gordon Banks' Kitchen" for the World Cup, why discounting is a drug that's hard to quit, and the honest conversations he's having with founders about mental load when the real goal this year might just be not losing money.

And because it's The Egg Index, we finish on his actual breakfast order. No eggs, as it turns out. His wife makes up for it.

The Egg Index is made by Down at the Social.

The Egg Index is made by Down at the Social.

www.httpstheeggindex.co.uk/