Caravan Restaurants: The Budget Took £1m Off Our Bottom Line Overnight! - Laura Harper-Hinton

What do you do when the Budget wipes a million pounds off your bottom line overnight? You find the optimism anyway. We sit down with Laura Harper-Hinton, CEO and co-founder of Caravan Restaurants and MCA Leader of the Year, on what she calls the hardest moment in 16 years of hospitality, and why optimistic leadership is the only way through it.Laura takes us right back to the beginning: running coffees at a roastery at 14, training as a photographer in Europe, and learning the art of teamwork running million-pound events where you get one night to get it right. From a small, intimate first site on Exmouth Market to the 'beast' at King's Cross and an old tin factory in London Bridge, she explains how three New Zealanders built an all-day dining and coffee group on one founding value, All Welcome, and a home-away-from-home feel that still defines every site.We dig into the people side: why she celebrates the wins first, how she delivers training and development that actually means something, and why not everyone wants to be the next GM, so you have to keep your quiet superstars inspired too. Laura is candid about leading through survival mode, the real cost of rising wages and business rates, re-questioning every step of service, and tracking diversity to design out unconscious bias, plus how better comms tools like All Gravy help scale a culture that still feels human.If you care about hospitality, leadership, or building a values-led business that performs under pressure, this one is a masterclass in finding the joy when it has never been harder. Subscribe, share it with a fellow operator, and leave a review telling us which idea you will try first.Topics: Caravan Restaurants, Laura Harper-Hinton, hospitality leadership, restaurant operations, multi-site hospitality, coffee roasting, employee retention, team culture, rising costs, minimum wage, All GravyIt's All Gravy is a hospitality podcast where we dig out the best stories from industry leaders - about comms, learning, AI, and Gen Z.