At time of print Andrew Foulkes was the general manager of Gidleigh Park Hotel which currently holds two stars in the Michelin Guide UK. Andrew is now the general manager of Abbey Hotel in Bath.

Andrew Foulkes was a chef before he swapped the whites for a suit and moved into management. He studied for a BA in Hospitality Management at Bournemouth University, and followed this with work at Heston Blumenthal’s The Fat Duck. After a year and a half he had risen to demi chef de partie. Next he worked at as a sous chef at The Castle in Taunton under the guidance of Richard Guest and Kit Chapman MBE before moving to Le Manoir Aux Quat’ Saisons and working with Raymond Blanc. He spent seven years here, moving from Kitchen Manager to Employee Development Manager. By 2009 he’d risen to Operations Manager and oversaw all departments at Le Manoir. He joined Gidleigh Park late in late 2011 as General Manager.  

Andrew Foulkes, general manager Gidleigh Park Hotel thank you very much for inviting me in. Give us an overview of your role as the GM of Gidleigh Park Hotel.

I'm here basically as the conduit for the hotel. I look after Gidleigh Park for Mr & Mrs Brownsword who are the owners, I’m here to give the guests the best experience possible and I do that by running an efficient hotel with my team. Many of my activities have been putting the structures and systems in place behind the scenes and ensuring that we get a great financial return for the business.

You started your career as a chef, you went to Bournemouth university? So you started in whites and now we’re sat in Gidleigh Park and your general manager what’s been your transition? How have you gone about that process and at what point did you realise that maybe a life on the other side of the hotplate?

I don't think there's necessarily a key moment or one of those light bulb moments it took quite a few years, as Gary Jones ( from Le Manoir aux Quat' Saison) used to say to me, “You’re always at that proverbial crossroads which way are you going to go? What are you going to choose?” I love the kitchen, I have  a passion for food, I have a passion for the industry but I do enjoy the sense of business output and creating business plans for different businesses and at each sort of crossroads I've always thought, ‘What’s the next best thing I can  do? How am I going to get there? What am I going to need to get there?’ At the age of 18 I gave myself ten years to become a head chef and as I progressed through the different kitchens, whether it be the Fat Duck or the Castle in Taunton you meet different people, people who inspire you or mentor you and I was very lucky to have a mentor in each place who look after me. As I grew through the kitchen you learn the different management skills and I realised probably as I hit Le Manoir, and this was very evident when I was trying to run sections that I wasn't a natural creative chef, I wasn't Agnar Sverrisson,  Carl Newbury,chef Gary Jones, or Raymond Blanc, I wasn't that person but I knew I could run a kitchen and that's a different skill in itself. I understood food management, I understood people and that's where I think my skills lie with the people and the teams. After a couple of years, I spoke to Gary and to Raymond it was evident that maybe I should look at how I could be a manager and that's why I then became kitchen manager. And after two years I passed on that baton to Tom Hannah which gave me the opportunity to be apart of the team in the front of house. I was very fortunate, that Raymond and the general manager at the time, Tom Lewis, and subsequently Philip Newman-Hall gave me that opportunity to try and I always knew that I could fall back on going back into the kitchen. So for me it was a bit of a no-brainer if it didn’t work out.

Do you think if you were in another operation those opportunities would have come up? The Manoir is very forward thinking, but it’s also a brave move for Gary (Jones) to let somebody go, there are in honesty people, chefs, who could be very selfish and say, “No I'm not letting you go.”

Yes I think I was writing a business plan at the time for my own business and it was 2008 and the recession hit and the investors were the ones that really told me…I wanted to be front of house in my business and they said, “We’re not going to invest in you because you’re the chef and why would you then go and pay 30 – 35 grand for a head chef when that should be your role, come back to us when you've got some experience.” And that's when the ball started to roll. That was the catalyst. Gary (Jones) knew he'd had everything out of me that I could possibly give to the kitchen and I think I probably would have left the Manoir at that point, albeit sadly had I not gone to the front. I was just very fortunate that I probably showed enough willing and commitment that I was still good enough.

But it takes someone like Gary to see a bigger picture and understand that there's more value in you staying in the property than in a department.

Absolutely. And the Le Manoir is full of people with that bigger vision and when the general manager Philip came back, he changed my role again because at the time I was manager of employee development, I was looking at training and inductions which is what I love, I still do have a fond passion for that, then Philip came in and identified my operational skills, “Well you’re operational based as well so why are you not more operational? Why are you not more hands on, actually being in there and using your skills?” and so I worked within the restaurant and kitchen and FOH teams to get that global perspective, I cant thank Philip enough for this crucial development stage.

How did you find the front of house accepted you? Did you have to change what you did to be accepted?

Absolutely I mean there's a lot of resistance when changes happen, who do you think you are, type of comments, maybe not necessarily directed at me but you hear about them. You make huge mistakes because you don’t have that direct skill set so it was a harsh learning curve but the experience I gained in the kitchen, which was about attention to detail, about commitment, about drive, about understanding your product and service, was translated  into a front of house area. You can adapt your skills. Obviously you've got to enjoy people if you’re in the front, so that's one thing. If you’re not the type of chef who doesn’t like mixing with people forget about it.

Which is why a lot of chefs are chefs aren’t they?

Yes, I think so, they prefer to be behind the scenes.

Have you done anything out of work to adapt your skills, have you put yourself through any extra courses, tuition or have you just learnt things on the job?

Well I was lucky at the Manoir we were going through this process called MAP at the time, managerial assessment and proficiency and again that was down to Gary Jones putting me through it. That definitely helped. I started to read a lot because out of the kitchen your hours are slightly less, I wouldn’t necessarily say that today, in my current position, but generally speaking the hours did reduce. So you have a little bit more free time which was also a strange thing to have. So I started taking up running and I started training for marathons and that gave me the freedom to start thinking about things when I ran and sort out a few issues, your problems and clear your thought processes. I also started to enter into different scholarships and I was lucky enough to win the Master Innholders scholarship and that gave me a huge boost,

What’s been your single biggest challenge of taking your whites off and putting a suit on??

Confidence that it was going to work.

Fair enough. So what did you do to give yourself confidence or how did you overcome that challenge?

Building strategies into your mind or into your mind set that every time you do something wrong that you then learn from that.

But you must also need good people around you and support?

Absolutely I've had wonderful mentors in the kitchen and now FOH, What I miss about the kitchen is the camaraderie and the brigade and the joking but also the professionalism that comes with it and the intensity. In the front it’s very different. You've got more people to deal with but they’re not so close to you. The biggest challenge, apart from the confidence actually is the loneliness now of being senior manager. In the kitchen you've got all your marshals, your troops around you, out in the front it’s a different arena and that's a challenge but it’s continually telling yourself that you’re doing the right thing and if you put as much effort into being a chef as you do out the front you'll succeed and it’ll show.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing if you knew now what you knew…if you turn back the clock to being 18 would you still be a chef and then go the route you've done or would you go naturally front of house?

I don’t think I would have made it this far had I not been in the kitchen. The kitchen taught me so many skills. It taught me about teamwork, it teaches you how to graft, to commit. It teaches you passion for what you do. It gets you through those hard, dark moments. You don’t get so many in the front of house I can assure you, as I’ve said, I’ve had some great mentors and those are the people that help you and it’s knowing when to go to them but also when to have a bit of confidence in your ability and Gary Jones used to always say to me, “I have more confidence in you than you have in yourself.” And that's taken years for me to understand and it is about having that confidence in what you do and then you need to just do it.

Last question for you then, general manager two Michelin star, Gidleigh Park, world renowned, iconic property, phenomenal success, where are you going to be in five years? What’s the career goal? I'm not looking for a scoop here. I'm not looking for you to say, “I'm going to leave,” or whatever, what’s the career goal?

Obviously I want to cement myself here at Gidleigh and I've given myself quite a hard challenge of changing some of the core business elements around here in the next two or three years and I’d definitely like to do at least a minimum of two to three financial years here to establish the business. Then from there who knows? I would very much love to be a managing director of a company and then on to a CEO. I feel that that's my ambition. Y

ou mentioned your own business earlier is that still a burning ambition?

Yes absolutely, yes, what it’s going to be in I've got no idea that changes as much as I've changed my mind in my career. I'm always thinking of new business concepts and ideas and that's just the way I am and I think, I want to give something back to the industry and my heart still goes back to the whole teaching, training and nurturing and although I still do that as a general manager on a daily basis. However I want to take that to a greater level and whether that's in my own business or whether it’s a part of another, I really feel that that's where I'm going to go in my career, I really want to give something back because of what I've received from the industry and past mentors.

Well look thank you very much for your time.

Thank you.

On a personal note it’s been great to watch your career from the Castle all the way through to here and I wish you every success for the future.

Thank you.

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