MOVERS & SHAKERS
have to peel ten cloves of garlic, make a paste, chop and roast them for an hour – it’s a lot more labour intensive. Some people go, ‘Oh, £10’s a lot for a vegan burger’, and I’m like: ‘I’m not laughing to the bank here: I wish I were!’ I pay all my staff the living wage and above – I’ll show them the numbers!” And it’s not just healthy food that DoppleGanger’s serving up: Alfy’s aim is for the business environment to be as clean-living as the dishes it serves. “Having a business coach sounds all waffy and American, but it’s about healthy organisations,” he explains. “In your office, there might be a guy sat next to you who you just hate – hate’s a bit strong, but you know what I mean,” he laughs, “and the business coach’s idea is that if you bring all this stuff out into the open, just say it and deal with it, you create an environment where people want to be. Vulnerability’s at the heart of it. When we started out, we did this exercise where we said, as a kid, what our most harrowing experience was. It opens everyone up and it levels the playing field. If you’re all vulnerable, everyone can mess up, everyone can make mistakes – there’s no longer this thing of having to be good. I’ve managed to create quite a calm working environment, and I think the customers
pick up on that – a few of the reviews have mentioned that it’s calm and we look like we know what we’re doing. Whether we actually know what we’re doing, of course...” he smiles. Alfy’s approach to management seems to be working, with the vast majority of the (mainly vegan) staff sticking around and relishing the challenge of opening diners’ eyes. “I tell the chefs: your cooking now is your chance to impress someone with a plant-based diet. The diner could think, ‘Oh, this is bad, and so this whole diet is bad’, but my chefs care so much that they don’t mess it up. A lot of my team are very hardcore – some of them would only date other vegans. A cult, not a business – ‘cult classic, not bestseller’,” he laughs, then explains The Streets lyric that went sailing over my head. “Did you get that reference? It was in the early business plan as well. I don’t think they got it, either…” It seems as though Alfy’s always had an entrepreneurial streak: at university he sold lamps he’d designed himself, and began a breakfast subscription business. However, it’s only with starting this latest business that home truths have come to light. “My lamps were fairly average,” he admits, “but with DoppleGanger, the product’s really good – people come for
You've got to disconnect yourself from the thing you're working on. A lot of your heart goes into cooking, but if you take all the critiques personally, you're not going to be very good at your job. You need to look at the thing as a product of what you made, and take critique on it"
the week, and it’s been a good week,” Alfy explains. He’s quick to correct anyone who thinks that opting for vegetables instead of animal proteins has a positive effect on the business’s bottom line. “That’s a misconception,” he jumps in. “Some people assume my costs are really low, but the chefs I’ve got in now – in a normal kitchen they could get in at 9am and prep for lunch, but our staff costs are higher, because you have to do a lot more to a vegetable to get it to taste decent. Time is the cost. Say that mushroom – say that was a bit of lamb: you’d just have to bone it out and it’s a bit of lamb. With the mushroom, you
IMAGES DoppleGanger serves tasty vegan food, such as the cherry bakewell ch*esecake and the Beet It burger
ISSUE 02 40
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