George Ford: six things I've learned about business

Telegraph

06-03-2025

I founded Kobe Coffee, an independent coffee shop, in 2019 with my older brother Joe, and now I also run an Italian restaurant, Sorella, with my wife Atdhetare. Both businesses are based in Uppermill, a lovely village in Saddleworth, near Oldham in Greater Manchester, where I grew up.
Getting good advice
Joe and I always dreamed of running our own coffee shop because we loved drinking coffee ourselves.
We would say: 'We'd love a coffee shop of our own,' so in December 2019 we opened Kobe.
My dad Mike, himself a former rugby player, has always been a massive influence on my life and career and he gave us advice on making the initial investment in Kobe and what to do with my money by investing it in different ways.
But probably the most important advice came from my wife, Addy, a few years later and we went into business together.
She was in the hospitality business and Joe and I already had the coffee shop when I met her.
I then invested in the building next door, which had a little café in it, but it didn't quite work out for the owners.
We had to find someone to come in and take the lease and it was actually Addy who brought her Italian restaurant in here. I was the landlord and she was the tenant basically.
When I got back from playing for England at the World Cup in November 2019, her restaurant came in, and she has been the driving force behind everything since then.
She's had a huge input on how we have redeveloped the building and grown it and she has been instrumental in having the vision for a coffee shop, the Italian and the Japanese restaurant within it as well.
It's gone from me just having a coffee shop with my brother to something so much bigger.
Time management
Addy is so driven and understands what she's doing because of her experience within the hospitality industry.
She is present at the businesses relentlessly – keeping on top of things and making sure everything is running smoothly.
I'll come back from training and be straight in there too to see how things are going, so it's like having two jobs.
On my days off from rugby, I'm here and if I have a game on a Saturday, then on the Sunday I will be working in the businesses.
It's full on, especially with my rugby commitments for Sale and England, so time management is everything.
We have tried to bring in people who can manage the place and take a bit of pressure off us so we don't have to be there all the time.
That's the biggest thing in the past 12 months – bringing in a manager to the restaurant and coffee shop and knowing the day-to-day running is going to be smooth.
I'd be lying if I said I wasn't here a lot, though, and sometimes it has crossed the line.
Finding the balance is difficult, especially with our young daughter, Alarnia, being born in March 2024. But it's something we're working out as we go.
Joe has a seven-year-old boy and coaches in Doncaster, which is a commute of more than an hour each way, so he has a similar challenge to balance his time between rugby, the businesses and his family.
His wife works full-time as well, so there is a fair bit of planning and communication between us all to get everything organised.
The Christmas period was especially crazy, as you can imagine, but we got through it.
Family support is vital
It's fantastic to have a strong family support network close by. I left here as a 16-year-old to move to Leicester Tigers and spent well over a decade away after my time at Bath before returning to Leicester for a second spell.
Since joining Sale in 2022, I have been living in Saddleworth full-time again and it's amazing to be back – although I never thought I would be.
My mum and dad live five minutes down the road and Joe lives five minutes the other way.
Having my parents so close is absolutely invaluable because they help us with Alarnia and with the businesses. My mum does a lot of cooking and baking for the coffee shop and my dad is always in here helping out too.
Kobe is a family business and Sorella is a family business with Addy and her family.
It's what the families do outside the businesses which allows the businesses to work. Without that family support it would be really difficult.
Employing excellent staff
As a business owner, you have to be so diligent with getting the right people to come in and work in the business.
The staff are a reflection of the owners – of us – so we want the business to reflect who we are as people, my wife and I.
We've gone through a cycle where we had a lot of staff at one point and we learned that we could have got a lot better quality work and more consistency from them.
What we have now, though, is a smaller group of people who work here but in terms of customer service, the staff are pretty incredible.
I say that because the customers who come in get a better quality of service and want to come back.
That is what it's all about as a business – people who have a great experience at the coffee shop or the Italian, want to return, and not only want to come back but bring friends or family with them as well.
The better the experience we can give the customer through the quality of product – and quality of service as well – will hopefully bring people back in.
We're in a pretty decent spot with that right now, although it's taken a while to get there, don't get me wrong.
Meeting challenges head on
Kobe opened in December 2019 and Covid struck in March 2020. We were just getting going and hadn't had long enough to build a regular clientele.
But we had to think outside the box and, when we were allowed to open for takeaways, that's what we did.
Joe and Addy and I were in here every day and do you remember when you could go for a walk and get a coffee but weren't allowed to go inside anywhere?
So we did that for six to eight weeks and the whole pandemic was obviously challenging for all businesses but we adapted and got through it.
There is always something, every day, that you have to deal with. If, say, a chef calls in sick then I will have to find someone else to do it. At first you panic, but the more experience you have, it teaches you to stay calm because there is always a solution.
Relationships
Much like in rugby, building strong relationships with people is vital. That includes staff and customers who come in to eat and drink here.
What we have learned is that the better you treat people, the more respect you get back and that's similar to rugby with your team-mates and coaches. I have taken a lot of principles from rugby into business and vice versa as well.
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