hospitalitytoday.com | 15
Mark Fox – CEO of Bill’s
An “accidental career in food” described at Arena’s Summer Event
Mark Fox, CEO of Bill’s Restaurants, took the podium at Arena’s
Summer Event at Jumeirah Carlton Tower. Fox gave a brief overview of
his career so far. His career began at university when he combined his
love of cars and pizza to become a delivery driver to help pay his rent.
It wasn’t long before he was managing his own multi-unit franchise.
After a career hiatus in the computer
industry he returned to food as a district
manager at KFC in 1996 in Northern
England, with eight restaurant managers
reporting to him. He resigned after twelve
months, finding the company culture
lacking.
His career with Yum! took him to Europe,
where he worked in operations and
franchising and learned an awful
lot about business.
Back in the UK, some six years later,
Fox was briefly courted by Restaurant
Associates before being enticed back to
Yum! as MD of Pizza Hut Delivery, where
he successfully returned the business to
growth and managed the sale of the dine-
in restaurants to Rutland Partners.
Starbucks, a business that Fox admired,
then came knocking, with the opportunity
to run Starbucks UK. Fox had nine
interviews in 23 hours, including one
with founder Howard Shultz.
As MD of Starbucks UK, he took the
business from being in loss to a profit
of £35million in the first year. Fox said
Starbucks were constantly innovating
– lots of ideas were put into practice, to
see which ones worked – even odd ones
like no signs to the toilets, which meant
asking the staff: an “opportunity
to engage”.
With the UK business ‘fixed’, Starbucks
wanted to incorporate it into one of its
four regions. Not wanting to go overseas
again, Mark looked for his next move and
discovered Bill’s Restaurants.