Dan Nash’s Post

🚨Looking for performance focussed digital marketing manager🚨 Great role here at Various Eateries PLC for someone that lives and breathes PPC, Meta ads, CRM and getting big digital results. Experience in hospitality preferred but not essential. A priceless perk is working with me🙄 If you have relevant people in your networks would really appreciate if you can share🙏 Now I'm the one creating the task do I ask for a 20 page 12 month marketing strategy and budget? Maybe throw in an audit of each one of our channels🤔 Link to job spec in comments👇

Swapping 🍜 for 🍝 How do people with full time jobs manage LinkedIn? It’s taken me 6 weeks to update my profile. Anyhoo, very excited to share my new role is Head of Marketing for the Italian Brands of Various Eateries🥳 My main focus will be growing the Noci brand and taking them from 4 stores to 10. For those that don’t know (and by the time I’m finished let there not be a human who doesn’t) Noci is a modern pasta restaurant that every neighbourhood dreams of having. No Italian cliches, just really interesting food in a cool setting at an affordable price. Drinks are pretty good too. Best things so far are working with a team of talented and nice people plus the constant food/menu strategy chats. Now I get paid to share my unwanted opinions on food🙄 

Weekend eats🍜 Made 2 of the easiest, best tasting winners I know. Pad krapow (minced pork with Thai basil) with a fish/lime/chilli dipping sauce on the side. It’s such a simple, tasty dish but most of what passes for it in the UK is an insult. Krapow means basil in Thai yet most of the time this doesn’t even feature in a dish of big meat chunks (should be ground meat) swimming in some kind of watery/bland soy based sauce. Also without the egg on top or fish sauce on the side you're missing 50% of it. Better to make yourself. On the side, Tian Shui Mian (sweet soy sauce noodles). Sweet soy sauce is soy sauce reduced down with sugar and a bunch of aromatics like anise, fennel seeds and cinnamon. Bit of work but make a huge batch and it lasts for ages. Mix it with chili oil and sesame paste for the ultimate midnight noodles. Crap photos, good food. I find there are very few dishes you can make in 30-45 mins that go beyond the functional into something you’d be happy to serve guests but these two are firmly in that list. What are your fave easy winners?

The Thai restaurant in Leytonstone that laughs in the face of marketing (and yet is impossible to get a table at)🤣 Went to Singburi on the weekend. Known as one of the best Thai restaurants in London, it gets booked out 3 months in advance, if you can even get through to them. Apart from the thrilling food, the other thing I love about them is they laugh in the face of everything you and I would consider best practise marketing: 🍜 Impossible to get through to them on the phone, even to order a pick up. 🍜You only get a reservation by making the booking in person and even they’ll often tell you to come back in a month or two when they take bookings again. 🍜Marketing consists of posting their specials board on IG each week with all comments closed off. Pretty sure they don’t respond to DMs either. 🍜Cash only (and BYO). So no leave us a review card, pay by QR or free bread. And yet it is by far the hottest ticket anywhere in that part of London. So what did they do right? 🍜 The most authentic/interesting food in the area. Not Thai food, just food period with zero dumbing down for white people. It’s a thrilling journey that really does transport you to a humid night in BKK. 🍜 The son of the family knows a lot of the right people in the food world who have always championed him. I can’t scientifically prove this I strongly believe there is a very straight line between being on the radar of the right people and getting onto all the ‘Best xxx in London’ lists. Which Singburi firmly is now. 🍜 Variety with consistency. A specials board that changes weekly so you will always go on a journey, yet tied together by consistent quality and uncompromising flavours you won't find anywhere else. Zero gimmicks. Just old school focussing 100% on a food experience no-one else can offer, day in, day out for many years. Any other Singburi fans out there? I made a double booking so will be back there next month, already excited. In a sea of hits the nam prik dipping sauce was one of the best things I’ve eaten in recent memory.

My first Big Up Club event Went to my first dinner meet of Big Up Club - the off shoot of the Up World marketing community that’s focussed on the needs of senior people at brands on the scaling journey. I’m back in the hospitality game and as much as I love it I still find most innovation happens outside (not our fault - just no time or money⏰💰👎) So it’s important for me to keep connected with brands on the outside. When I saw the people and brands involved - a lot of the challenger/disruptive gang, along with my love of  IRL and community it was a no brainer for me to sign up. Zero regrets based on last nights vibes and great chats. Great work as always Lottie Unwin (she/her) and team Up World for constantly innovating what a community can be.

Step #1 in telling a story that doesn’t 😴😴😴 like everyone else The first step in my 5 step stand out story framework that helps you stand out immediately to customers is… share your journey🚀 Share all the key events and influences that led to you creating your business (or the business you work for). What are the key principles the business was founded on? No-one can copy your journey. Even if you have 2 businesses that look the same on the outside, you can still have 2 completely different types of customers that will connect with you. But only if you share who the humans are behind it. And where are you going, what’s the dream vision? One of the best ways to create drama and tension is to share a vision that’s bloody hard to achieve. Then share a transparent journey on how you get there - the highs and the lows😭 This is how your customers will connect with you and keep following to hear more. Most people are still too scared to share a transparent journey even though your customers are gagging to hear it. So for those bold enough to do it, it's all for the taking. Really enjoyed sharing this part of the framework with Liam Jones on his hospitality playbook podcast. I go into more detail and give actionable tips on sharing your journey. Link in comments below👇

My biggest regret from my job hunting odyssey My job hunt in stats: 😀7 months 😀22 interviews (not inc the multiple stages) 😀7 tasks (a conservative £6k of free work)  😀3 offers It was particularly challenging as ‘hardest market in recent times yada yada…’ and ‘why are you moving from freelance to employed?’ meant I was often starting on the back foot. But even putting that aside the system as a whole feels broken, beyond a few fixable tweaks. 👎So much time  👎So much free work  👎Often it's still not enough to make a decision between candidates so it comes down to a glorified coin toss. For anyone still in the job hunt I’d recommend Loren (Executive Career Strategist) Greiff podcast full of helpful advice on landing a dream career. She’s an ex recruiter who got tired of the broken system so created her own one. Her #1 rule - don’t fight a broken system, use your network. I’m not sure if I would have got my recent role without my network and it’s the one thing I wished I’d made more effort with earlier. I didn’t for the same reasons as everyone else - it’s hard and uncomfortable. But as you only learn in time, it's nowhere near as hard as doing your 7th free marketing strategy😭 So for anyone else in the job hunt fuming at being exploited over another task, start hitting up your contacts instead. Your future self will thank you. Pic of my new world that I will be sharing soon🍝🤌

Living my best 🍜🍜🍜 life After some dramatic final twists my job hunt has finally come to an end🥳 More on that soon. I’ve been celebrating with some back to back noodle soups. 🍜Beef noodle soup at Niu Taiwanese Beef noodles (Covent Garden) - decent but not best in town 🍜Boat noodles at Slurp noodles (Soho) - excellent with some hard to find noodle soups on the menu. If you think things like Yen Ta fo and Sukothai noodles are exciting you’ll love this place. And if you don’t you should go anyway and find out what life beyond Tom Yum looks like (cheers Natalie Poole🙌) 🍜Chicken hor fun at 7th floor (Holborn) - a tiny hole in the wall doing some seriously legit Malaysian noodle soups. Apparently the best assam laksa in town though sadly Assam is a bit too honking for me. Both Slurp and 7th Floor really make you feel like you're in the motherland which not many places can do here. Anyone else had some good eats to share?

Really enjoyed chatting with Karen Blanchette about how I got into doing what I do and more importantly some great food chat. Including 🍜 Why I had to go to the doctors when I was a kid for my McDonalds addiction 🍜 What my mum carrying salt in her handbag has to do with my love of Asian food 🍜 Why you shouldn't go on a dinner date with me

There is such a thing as too much pizza 🍕🍕 Imaging working in a pizza restaurant and you could eat as much pizza as you wanted. What would you do - show some level of restraint or just go full🐷? As part of my zig zagging life journey last year I did a few months working in one of the best pizza restaurants in Margate (Casa) when work was drying up. Proper Neapolitan pizza. Marco the founder was Neapolitan and did an excellent job of keeping me well fed and lubricated during shifts. Because no-one does hospitality like the Italians - very hard to replicate! I still have no off switch when it comes to food. I was averaging at least 3-4 pizzas a week🤢 Burrata and and lasagne doesn't count. Terrified to think what I would have turned out like if I’d stayed there longer. Could you show restraint? PS - their pesto and gorgonzola white pizza is the only white pizza I've been able to get behind.