FOOD & DRINK
Creativity remains central though. Wilkinson points to something as simple as the kitchen’ s changing soups as an example of the experimentation he wants to encourage; taking a basic dish and asking what more can be done with it.
Initially created with chef Niall Keating, it was built around an eight-course tasting menu costing £ 125 a head. The ambition was considerable, but the economics did not work for a restaurant of its size and the restaurant has evolved over the years, becoming more accessible for everyday diners.
‘’ Within a few months of opening, geopolitical events began driving up food & energy costs and then rapid increases in employment costs, business rates, VAT returning to 20 % created simply unstable trading conditions to deliver what we had initially started with in a restaurant of our size, each year the costs increased and the economics simply could not work,’ he said.“ The choice was to close or to reinvent Lunar.”
And reinvent it he did. Keating subsequently left for a role at Stock Exchange Hotel in Manchester, and Wilkinson set out to make Lunar more accessible. Over the past 18 months, it has moved from opening Thursday to Sunday to operating seven days a week. The tasting-menu-only model has been replaced by a broader offer. Guests can still choose something refined, but they can also call in for coffee, soup and breakfast alongside the fine dining.
That transformation- retaining the quality and story while opening the doors to a much wider audience- helped Lunar take silver in the Restaurant of the Year category at the Staffordshire
Tourism Awards. It also forms part of the entrepreneurial record that recently earned Wilkinson the Entrepreneur of the Year title at the University of Staffordshire Business Awards.
The award recognised a portfolio which includes Lunar; Albert’ s Café in Stafford’ s Victoria Park; Funicular Productions, the company behind The Murder Express; global event staffing business Coalition; and workforce-management technology venture iZERO.
Different though those businesses are, Wilkinson sees a common thread running through them … experience.
His career began far from a conventional hospitality route. Growing up in Dudley, he developed a love of film through his grandfather’ s carefully catalogued VHS collection. An internship at a film festival on Marco Island in Florida led to years of work around festivals and events, including a decade at Sundance, before he moved into brand experiences and created his own businesses.
Even his relationship with Wedgwood has an unlikely prehistory. While helping a French chef clear a storeroom at a restaurant on Marco Island, Wilkinson discovered stacks of Wedgwood plates destined for a skip. He kept one dating from 1904.
Years later, during the pandemic, that distant connection would resurface in Barlaston.
A pandemic idea
When Covid stopped the events industry and closed The Murder Express, Wilkinson responded by establishing the Great
British Drive-in. He was subsequently invited to look at bringing the concept to World of Wedgwood.
The site was not right for a drive-in cinema. But an old staff dining room caught his imagination.
“ The kitchen was in, and I had a bit of money,” he says.“ I thought-‘ I don’ t know if events are coming back; I don’ t know if The Murder Express is coming back’.”
He began reading more about Josiah Wedgwood and the Lunar Society, the group of 18th-century Midlands thinkers, scientists and industrialists whose members included Wedgwood, Matthew Boulton, James Watt, Erasmus Darwin and Joseph Priestley.
The luminaries met over dinner around the time of the full moon, exchanging ideas which have helped shape the face of modern science, industry and society at large. For Wilkinson, it provided both a name and a narrative for the restaurant.
“ There are all these amazing stories,” he says.“ I thought‘ I’ ve got to create Lunar. I’ ve got to tell that story, and I’ m going to tell it through a venue and through what Lunar is today’.”
The past is present throughout the restaurant, but not as an exercise in nostalgia. Wilkinson talks about celebrating history, working in the present and keeping a“ mindful eye” on the future.
That means displaying work by local artists and using local suppliers and craftspeople. It means preloved furniture and shutters made from recycled plastic. It also means acknowledging that ceramics did not end with the dinner plate. The industry’ s advanced materials are now found in technologies such as computer chips.
“ The ceramics industry has declined, but there is something really interesting going on,” he says.“ It’ s celebrating heritage and asking how we can use it in an accessible way in 2026.”
Food sourcing presents a more difficult balancing act. Lunar works with Staffordshire butcher Dave Jackson, whose family has farmed in the county for more than a century, and remains committed to British, grass-fed beef. Wilkinson would like to source at an even more local level, but says the price differential can sometimes make it difficult.
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