Surviving or Thriving: The Numbers That Decide Your Future
Tuesday 28 July 2026, 6:00pm · Coin Laundry, 70 Exmouth Market, London, EC1R 4QP
While the vital fight for a VAT cut continues, we know that no single policy change can do the work of a healthy business on its own. This panel is all about the practical, hands-on groundwork operators can actually control starting today: tackling overheads, GPs and labour without hollowing out the team culture.
As the campaign to cut VAT for hospitality struggles on, we prepare for the fact that no single policy change, however crucial, can do the work of a healthy business on its own. The operators putting themselves in the strongest position right now and for the future are the ones getting on with the unglamorous work closer to home: making their operations sustainable, which is to say profitable, on their own terms.
This panel is about that groundwork - the things that businesses can control, starting today. We frame the conversation around the three levers every operator can pull: fixed costs (rent, utilities, software, the overheads that quietly compound), cost of sales (food and drink GP, menu engineering, supplier deals, portion control) and labour (now the single biggest cost in most restaurants, and the hardest to manage without damaging the team and the culture which makes it worth surviving).
Our expert panel will share how they actually make it work and where the challenges lie: the meaningful savings and profit avenues, the received wisdom they've abandoned, and the genuine, sometimes difficult tensions involved in tightening a business without hollowing it out.
Your ticket includes a welcome drink.
Chair
- Adam Coghlan
Panelists
- Cynthia Shanmugalingam – Rambutan
- Dan Mortgenthau – Woodhead Restaurants
- Hussein Ahmad - Viewpoint Partners
- Daisy Terry – Dusty Knuckle
Event timings:
- 6pm arrival and welcome drinks
- 6.30pm-7.15pm panel talk discussion
- 7.15pm-7.30pm audience Q&A
- 7.30pm-8.30pm mingling and drinks