Bobby Hashemi

May 18

Bobby Hashemi co-founded Coffee Republic with his sister Sahar Hashemi.

He is a best-selling author and the founder of Union Ventures which invests in the hospitality sector, as well as being the founder of Pizza Union, a small but growing chain of six pizza bars across East London.

Please tell us what your role in the business is?

At Union Ventures I source and manage investments, and at Pizza Union I am the MD running and growing the business.

Where do you do most of your work?

My office is effectively my backpack (curated to within an inch of its life), and I spend my typical days across London visiting different restaurants / businesses, meeting with founders, and also looking for new site locations.

How many people do you work with closely on a day-to-day basis?

Only a handful and often not the same people, depending on the project; entrepreneurship can be a lonely existence!

What is the biggest challenge that you face at work every day?

Quite often it’s the people side of the business that I find most challenging; it’s always tough to balance staying close to the detail with delegating and developing people.

So, I try to give my teams space to grow and also to feel confident in pushing the boat out and that it’s okay to make mistakes if we learn and grow from them.

Talk us through lunch. A sandwich at your desk or a full hour in the park?

I try my best to have a light lunch at either one of our venues, or indeed competitors or interesting concepts, as often as possible.

I get energy from seeing new and exciting concepts and from connecting with contacts over a quick bite and learning about what’s new or happening across the sector.

What is the biggest lesson that you’ve learned that you wish you’d known when you started your career?

Gosh, where do I even start?

On the personal side I would say it’s about focusing on the present, staying humble and open-minded, and trying to improve incrementally every day; I really think that compounding knowledge is a super-power over the long term.

On the business side, I have hopefully learnt from my own zillion mistakes, most importantly about genuinely taking care of your teams and their well-being, and that business growth has to come organically and slowly, whereas many founders seem too keen to grow their businesses at any cost, and generally end up sacrificing quality for quantity.

Email. Friend or foe?

Definitely a friend, but treated with caution, as nothing replaces the connection of a face-to-face conversation.

I am quite strict about my zero inbox by the end of each day, and I feel that email forces us to have to think through stuff properly in order to express our thoughts clearly in writing.

Do you use a digital or paper To Do List? And how effective are you at getting everything done?

I am 100% paperless; I don’t deal with any paper at all. I am also a To Do List fanatic, as it helps me to prioritise things, and if it is not on my list that day, it does not get done. I cannot recommend the Todoist app highly enough.

Do you leave work at a set time each day?

Absolutely not. I have no fixed schedule re starting or finishing my day, or even which days of the week I work. I treasure my freedom as one of my biggest luxuries.

How do you relax? Do you look after yourself properly?

I love very early morning long park walks with my girlfriend and her 2 dogs; it wakes me up, reconnects me with nature, and energises me for the day ahead.

In the evenings if I am staying home, I unwind by reading an interesting biography, most recently about various contemporary artists.

How confident are you about the future of your business?

The pandemic obviously was a big setback for all of us across the hospitality sector. But I fundamentally believe that people are social animals and that they enjoy connecting over a drink or a meal, and it’s just a matter of time before restaurants and coffee shops to come roaring back, as people are thirsty for the “great human reconnection”.