Polpo, the Venetian-style concept, founded by Russell Norman and Richard Beatty, has appointed Scott Macdonald, formerly of Bill’s, as its new managing director.
Macdonald, who will take up his new role at the 12-strong group later this month, stepped down as managing director of the Richard Caring-backed Bill’s last year after four years with the company.
He was previously F&B director at Selfridges and only last month joined Revolution Bars Group as its director of food under contract
He replaces Luke Bishop, who has been managing director of Polpo for the last two years.
Bishop is understood to have left the business, which he originally joined in October 2011.
As joint managing director of Bill’s alongside Roberto Moretti, MacDonald oversaw the growth of the business with the opening of over 60 sites in four years.
Beatty said: “Scott will bring a wealth of experience and knowledge to the team and we’re pleased to be working with him to drive the company forward - starting with the opening of POLPO in Oxford later this year.”
Moretti, who was promoted from joint managing director to chief operating officer at Bill’s in November 2015, left the Richard Caring-backed group last year and was replaced by chief executive Mark Fox.
Earlier this week, MCA revealed that Moretti had joined the Azzurri Group in an interim role to oversee its Coco di Mama brand, after the departure of founders Daniel Land and Jeremy Sanders.
Earlier this year, Polpo opened the ninth site under its eponymous brand in Exeter. It will open a further Polpo at the Westgate scheme in Oxford before the end of the year.
It also recently opened a second site under its Spuntino format in Bristol, at the Cargo 2 development. It currently operates a site under the format in Soho’s Rupert Street.
The group also operates the Polpetto site in Soho’s Berwick Street.
Comment by MCA editor Mark Wingett
In the current revolving door period of changes at the top of many of the UK’s leading eating and drinking-out companies, it has been a good week for the two former joint managing directors of Bill’s.
Earlier this week, we revealed that Roberto Moretti was to oversee the Azzurri Group-owned Coco di Mama brand, whilst a permanent replacement for founders Daniel Land and Jeremy Sanders is found. Three days later, and his former colleague at Bill’s, Scott Macdonald finds himself poised to lead the next stage of Polpo’s development, after a blink-and-you’d-miss-it stint overseeing food development at Revolution Bars Group.
He joins the Richard Beatty and Russell Norman-founded group at a key point in its development, tasked I am sure in the medium-term (next 18 months) in getting the business in a position to secure the private-equity funding that has proved elusive over the last year.
Hugh Osmond, the current backer of Strada and Coppa Club, enquired about investing in the company in early 2015, and it is thought that Primary Capital, a former backer of YO! Sushi, is had a long-running conversation with the business, which started last year but believed to have ended, for now, earlier in this one.
It very much looks like out-going managing director Luke Bishop, who had been part of the group’s DNA since 2010, stepping up to lead the day-to-day running near the end of 2014, was given the first crack of providing that figurehead that private equity is so fond of when looking to invest.
In 2015, the group secured a £2m loan from RBS that it hoped, combined with cash flow, would allow it to add up to six to eight sites under the Polpo brand over the next two years.
“We try extremely hard to have sub £500k fit-out costs and to not pay premiums for that reason,” said Bishop in November of that year. “In the last nine sites we have paid three premiums, so we have done alright. This next 12 months is a big learning year for us. Part of the RBS deal is that we need to open six to eight restaurants over the next couple of years and we to push the brand. We want to test it, flex it and prove it will work in Brighton. We’d be confident then it will open in say Bristol, Guildford and Exeter.”
Since the opening in Brighton in 2015, it has opened and closed a site in the Harvey Nichols in Leeds, and launched in Bristol and Exeter. A further regional site will open at Oxford’s Westgate scheme later this year.
Along with many operators looking to expand, especially coming from outside central London into the regions, it is understood that Polpo has found it hard initially translate the success it found in the capital outside the confines of the M25. It has had to adapt, with its most recent opening in Exeter including for the first time a comprehensive breakfast and coffee menu, to eat in or take-away.
Now Macdonald will be tasked with building on the foundations Bishop helped put in place and overseeing further evolution and growth. Coupled with the hiring of Stephanie Trigwell, formerly of Cath Kidson and Mothercare, as its new finance director, last year, Macdonald’s appointment strikes me as Polpo putting in place a more experienced team to get their desired goal.
Both Moretti and Macdonald both left Bill’s under a cloud, with an expected sales process for the Richard Caring-backed group not materialising under their stewardship, and Mark Fox being brought in as chief executive to steady the ship after c60 openings in three years.
As Fox told me earlier this year: “The owners realised that the business needed a different type of leadership, which is not to say the previous team did a bad job, because they didn’t, it is a £110m business now and when they joined it was a £15m one. All the shareholders understood that the pace of growth was part of the challenge.
“For anyone to do 45 new openings in two years is a challenge, especially to keep evolving the format at the same time. The challenge was that the group was still structured like a small business, not a £110m one. The shareholders spotted that and the guys who had taken it to that level didn’t quite realise or understand what was now required because it was very different to what they were doing even two years previously.”
Macdonald will now get the chance to put the lessons learnt at Bill’s and his 25 years of experience in the restaurant industry into action at Polpo.
