The Harts Group Multi-Brand Playbook: What to Centralise, What to Protect

Harts Group CEO Sam Hart on running eight distinct hospitality brands, centralising the systems that scale, and protecting the individuality that drives the reputation.

Most multi-brand hospitality groups end up looking like a head office running several businesses that happen to share a name on a group balance sheet. Harts Group has done the opposite. Since 2003, the family-run business behind Barrafina, El Pastor, Quo Vadis, Parrillan, Bar Daskal, Drops and El Siete has scaled to 16 sites in London plus a first international opening in Dubai, while keeping each brand genuinely distinct in culinary identity, sourcing and guest experience. In this episode, Sam walks Conor through the operational architecture underneath: what gets centralised (finance, comms, HR, estates, one shared tech stack), what stays bespoke (menus, sequence of service, chef and MD leadership per side of the group), and the deliberate cultural decisions that let a group with 470 staff protect quality while absorbing a 38% minimum wage increase since 2022. Plus the two-year tech review Harts just completed, the AI task force building custom tools for restaurant ops (including an internal reservation bot), the Yum Pingo dish-level customer data that drives menu decisions, and the international expansion into Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Bangkok. A rare conversation with an operator who has held the line on individuality while genuinely scaling.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The group owns the systems, the brand owns the identity. Centralise finance, HR, estates, comms and the tech stack; protect menus, sequence of service and culinary leadership per brand
• Lived experience is the guardrail on new brands. Harts opens restaurants where founders or partners have genuinely lived the cuisine. It's the discipline that keeps the portfolio credible
• The tech stack should be best-in-class and open. Standardised across the group, single source of truth, but modular enough to swap components as the market moves
• Data at dish level changes menu decisions. Popularity alone lies. Rating-per-dish across thousands of reviews (Yum Pingo) is how Harts improved customer satisfaction while cutting labour 18%
• Being privately owned is a structural advantage. No forced timelines, board consensus over votes, and the freedom to pause when the world changes. That patience compounds into brand quality

USEFUL LINKS & RESOURCES

• Sam Hart on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sam-hart-23581851/
• Harts Group: https://www.hartsgroup.co.uk/
• Barrafina: https://www.barrafina.com/
• El Pastor: https://www.tacoselpastor.co.uk/
• Quo Vadis: https://www.quovadissoho.co.uk/
• Parrillan: https://www.parrillan.co.uk/
• Bar Daskal: https://www.bardaskal.co.uk/
• El Siete: https://www.elsiete.co.uk/
• Drops: https://www.thedropbar.co.uk/

CONNECT WITH THE SHOW

• All What's Cooking episodes: https://www.nory.ai/podcasts
• Nory: https://www.nory.ai/
• Nory blog: https://www.nory.ai/blog
• Nory on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/asknory/
• Conor Sheridan on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sheridanconor/