The Budget wiped £1m off Caravan's bottom line overnight. Laura Harper-Hinton calls it the hardest moment in 16 years of running a hospitality business - and explains why optimistic leadership is the only way through it.

Laura Harper-Hinton is co-founder and CEO of Caravan Restaurants and Caravan Coffee Roasters, and MCA Leader of the Year. She founded the business in 2010 with fellow New Zealanders Chris Ammermann and Miles Kirby, opening a 50-cover neighbourhood restaurant on Exmouth Market with the coffee roaster on display in the basement. Caravan is now nine restaurants, two brew bars and a coffee roastery employing around 500 people, with its first site outside London in Manchester and another opening further north within the year. The founders completed a management buyback in 2025.

She explains:
◼️ Why the Budget took £1m off the bottom line overnight - and what "survival mode" actually looks like
◼️ How "All Welcome" became the founding value that still defines every site
◼️ Why the jump from 50-cover Exmouth Market to the King's Cross "beast" forced a total reset
◼️ The 80/20 internal promotions target - and why they're deliberately sitting at 68% this year
◼️ Why "rock stars" matter as much as "rising stars", and how you keep the ones who don't want promotion motivated
◼️ What "Just Brew It" is, and why they stripped every step of service back to how they did it in 2010
◼️ Why she tracks diversity metrics to design out unconscious bias in hiring and promotion
◼️ What running £5m events taught her about leading a team when you get one night to get it right

Laura also explains why Caravan is relaunching its LMS and internal comms on All Gravy - reshooting every step of service, building one source of truth their teams can actually search, and delivering training and development in a way that works for people who aren't strictly academic.

Follow Laura:
LinkedIn - https://uk.linkedin.com/in/laura-harper-hinton-9b54a5a8

It's All Gravy is a hospitality podcast where we dig out the best stories from industry leaders - about comms, learning, AI, and Gen Z.