We spoke with Remi, co-founder of Smoke & Salt in Tooting, London, about running the restaurant in 2024, his digital-first approach to managing operations, and the ongoing balance between the ‘boring’ and the ‘fun’ aspects of the business.
What is Smoke & Salt today to its customers?
‘Smoke & Salt is somewhere people want to come back to; for a special occasion or just because… we have two tasting menus and as prices in London go, they are very good value and provide a good platform for our creativity as a restaurant.’ Remi says whilst dipping back and forth to the bread oven.
Smoke & Salt opened during the chaos of COVID, with stop-start offerings and chopping and changing of what a restaurant could be when dining out wasn’t the easiest thing to do. Remi says that he wants customers in the area to feel proud that something like Smoke & Salt is down the road from them.
Running operations
Remi explains: ‘Aaron and I are one of the few chef duos that rely heavily on technology to keep things running…we’ve always tried to do away with paper so, for example, if a stack of menus gets spoiled in a spillage, the front-of-house can jump on the cloud storage and super easily print a new batch, ready for service — usually just in time.’ And in an even more practical sense, Remi explained that when he leaves the restaurant for the school run, he can still respond to anything he needs to ahead of service on his phone:
‘I can even be updating menus or recipes to work through as I go and I can’t imagine not doing this.’
It therefore makes perfect sense that Remi opted to give Apron a go after a recommendation that it would really help with running payroll and paying suppliers… Remi says using Apron to run payroll as a starting point was an ‘immense saver of time’ and simply freed up time for other things. The same applies to supplier payments, which Smoke & Salt now processes in bulk. Remi notes that Apron is simply a part of a selection of tools that he feels allow the team to operate the Michelin-guide-featured restaurant with a level of ease knowing that the admin operations are as slick as they can be.
Moving forward
Remi mentions plans for a second version of Smoke & Salt at some point in the not-too-distant future — and how will that version of the restaurant work? ‘Exactly the same as this one,’ Remi says. ‘I’m going to take everything from here and copy it into the other site. We have the format right, and we love it. Apron included.’