How Spoke & Stringer started, and what it taught us.

Welsh Back

The first site was on Welsh Back, at the harbour. We took it on with more enthusiasm than experience and spent the first six months working out which of the things we thought we knew were actually true. A few were. Most were not.

The first EHO inspection arrived two months in. I made coffee with shaking hands. We got a 4-star. By the second inspection we were a 5-star and stayed there. The thing that changed was not knowing more rules. It was writing down what we were already doing.

Harbourside

The second site came a few years later. Bigger kitchen, more covers, more staff. The compliance overhead roughly tripled and the systems we had designed for one site started creaking. Two laminated checklists in two buildings, paper temperature logs in two fridges, two sets of allergen matrices that drifted out of sync within a month. That was the moment we started building things in spreadsheets, and then in Notion, and then, eventually, in something proper.

What we got right

Hiring well. Staying close to suppliers. Writing the recipes down in a way someone covering a shift could actually follow. Booking the EHO inspection back-of-house in advance so we were never surprised, even when we should have been.

What we got wrong

Underpricing for too long. Trying to be everything to everyone at the bigger site. Putting compliance off until the last week of the month, every month, for three years. The last one is what eventually became Paddl.