Lee Cash, 34, is one of the lucky ones. "I knew what I wanted to do from day one," says the car mechanic's son, and founder of the £10m-a-year Peach Pub Company. "At 13 I was peeling carrots and washing plates for £2.50 an hour, and I absolutely loved it."
A keen cook, at 16 he left home in Kingsbridge, Devon, for catering college. He spent the next few years cleaning tables, changing sheets and taking orders in hotels and restaurants up and down Britain, before landing a job at the Bath Spa Hotel in his early 20s. With "a good grounding" in the hospitality business, Cash was already working on business plans for his own restaurant. On his days off, he would "catch the train into London and get the plat du jour" in one of the capital's vibrant brasserie bars. "I would take photos and nick menus," he says, putting his own food combinations together for imaginary restaurants when he got back home.
He rose to become an assistant manager with Raymond Blanc's burgeoning brasserie business, before finally striking out alone in 2002. The move came after he met Hamish Stoddart, who'd just sold his food wholesale business. Stoddart was looking for someone to back in their own restaurant business. So, with £40,000 raised from his own savings and an inheritance, Cash joined Stoddart and went on the lookout for gastropubs in the Midlands. "There's never been a moment in my life where I've wanted a Michelin Star." Instead, Cash wanted to sell "fishcakes, steak and chips and new potatoes. Food you want to eat every day. And the M1-M40 is a strong white-collar area, with fairly high average incomes and lots of good market towns". It seemed like a perfect starting point.
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But as Cash puts it, you have to "kiss a lot of frogs before you find just the right one". They looked at around 60 pubs before hitting on the Rose & Crown in the middle of Warwick town centre. At the time, it was a "really down-at-heel pub", known as a squalid drinking den. But location-wise, it was perfect. "We wanted 'x' number of people within walking distance and 'x' number of people within a £5 cab ride. It had it."
Investing £150,000, they gutted and redecorated the pub and from a standing start were soon turning over £25,000 a week. "Ninety-five percent of marketing in the restaurant trade is done inside. If you do it right, you'll turn people into promoters. If the first week you do 5,000 and make 98% of those people happy, the next week you'll have 7,000." Within a year they had found new sites in Stratford-upon-Avon and Whitney.
Buying one or two pubs a year, they hit £1m turnover in 2003. This year they've hit £10m with eight pubs. "We're one of only three pub groups outside London averaging over £1m a site." Cash admits it's a bloodbath in the pub trade just now "I can't pretend I'm not anxious, because I am" but he thinks the focus on simple food should see them through. "I'm only interested in everyday dining. If you want to do multi-site and have a recession-proof business, that's what you have to do."
