Overall ranking: 36 (38)
Restaurateurs ranking: 10 (8)
Ian Neill - Snapshot
Ian Neill is the executive chairman of the hugely successful and fast-growing Japanese-style noodle bar chain Wagamama.
Ian Neill - Career guide
Ian Neill’s 30-plus years in the hospitality trade started at Berni Inns, followed by stints working for Esso Motor Hotels (now Scandic Hotels), Granada’s motorway service areas and retailer J Sainsbury.
In 1978, Neill joined PizzaExpress to set up its franchising operations under the man he considers his mentor, company founder Peter Boizot. He rose to become director and general manager at PizzaExpress before leaving to become managing director of branded restaurants at Rank Organisation between 1989 and 1993.
In 1995 he was hired as a consultant to drive Wagamama’s expansion plans and in 1996 led the sale of 33 franchised restaurants (of which he owned three) back to PizzaExpress. He became chief executive of Wagamama in 1997 and executive chairman in March 2006, when finance director Steve Hill took on his old role.
Ian Neill - What we think
Short-sightedness may have thwarted Yorkshire-born Neill’s earliest ambition to become a navigation officer in the merchant navy, but he has retained a clear view of his journey through the hospitality trade.
He has steered Wagamama’s heady rise from just two London restaurants in 1998 to a hugely successful chain with 65 branches, including 43 company-owned sites in the UK and 22 franchised venues overseas in Ireland, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Turkey, Dubai, Australia, and New Zealand.
Wagamama’s innovative blend of healthy, Oriental cuisine served in a minimalist and high-tech setting was praised as “an extremely attractive, sexy thing” and “classless and accessible” by the judges of the 2001 Cateys, who voted Neill Group Restaurateur of the Year. Four years later, the group won its second Catey – Best Group Marketing Campaign – for the campaign promoting its new cookbook.
Ian Neill brought in the venture capitalists who bought out Wagamama founder Alan Yau in 1997 to kick-start the group’s methodical yet meteoric growth. In 2005, private equity firm Lion Capital acquired a majority stake in the group for £102.5m.
“You’ve got to get your foundations, margins and starting levels right so you can get a great service and not spend so much money, then you’ve got to start replicating it and deliver on all those things that you know, again and again,” Neill says of his approach.
Neill credits his first employer, Berni Inns, for teaching him the importance of good systems and value for money. And, almost from the start, he has applied the franchising expertise he built up at PizzaExpress to take Wagamama into eight overseas countries by mid 2006.
Neill – who believes noodles can become as popular as pasta – aims to have 60 UK branches by 2007, and up to 150 in the long-term. The 16 new venues planned for this year will make 2006 the group’s busiest opening year to date.
His faith was vindicated by the readers of the Zagat London restaurant guide who voted Wagamama their favourite haunt in 2005, ending Nobu’s three-year reign.
Wagamama’s overseas drive is also gathering pace – the group is close to signing new franchisees in Norway, Sweden and the Middle East.
Crucially, its long-desired move into the US market came to fruition in August 2006 when the group signed up the first two of six planned company-owned sites in Boston which will open next year. If successful, the group will expand into another East Coast city. Longer term, Neill sees the potential of the US market as “absolutely huge”.
Neill is also a director of Paramount Restaurants and Deliverance (which delivers bespoke meals direct to London homeowners), an investor in the Leon chain, and a partner in PizzaExpress founder Peter Boizot’s Soho Pizzeria.
Ian Neill – Further information
Wagamama profile on CatererSearch
Wagamama official website
Wagamama profile on Wikipedia
Wagamama cookbooks, CDs and DVDs on Amazon
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