Hairy Biker Si King is something of an accidental businessman, so he says.
As one half of the TV chef duo, the County Durham-born presenter has built a brand spanning the globe-trotting show, cookbooks, kitchenware, live stage appearances and now his own eatery venture in Sunderland. Since the death of his friend and co-star Dave Myers, earlier this year, Mr King says he has become the custodian of the Hairy Bikers name - a responsibility he takes extremely seriously after 20 years of familiarity on TV screens.
“We always felt we were very privileged and were very grateful to the BBC for giving us the opportunity to present two acid trip hippies to the nation,” he said. “We really did have to start thinking about business. We never thought about money though. I’ve always thought - and this applies to whatever I’ve been involved in - if you pursue excellence through quality, the rest always falls into place.”
Mr King spoke at the recent Sunderland Business Festival - where he introduced his takeaway business - Propa! - which will serve North East comfort food to punters at the city’s newly opened £4m Sheepfolds Stables. While the business won’t carry the Hairy Bikers name, it will - he says - feature a subtle nod to Mr Myers.
The takeaway is his first bricks and mortar food venture, but Mr King says that early in their career, the roaming chefs were offered an “obscene” amount of money to front a chain of restaurants. They declined on the grounds that it didn’t feel right, concerned that the investors were unlikely to share their ethos for ighlighting home cooking
“Dave and I always thought we were crew and that we were just getting away with it,” he said, going on to say: “I wish I could say we had a really keen business plan and we knew what we were doing. But we really didn’t have a bloody clue, honestly.”
The pair met on the set of a Catherine Cookson drama starring Robson Green, when Mr King was an executive and his late co-star Dave Myers was a makeup artist. Mr King had finished work as a location manager on the first two Harry Potter films when he realised he was overworked and underpaid. The pair started to tout their initial idea - “motorcycles, food and the search for nirvana” - to TV producers but were told it needed to be fronted by celebrities. It took three years of convincing executives to get it off the ground.
“It became a business because it became a brand,” he explained. “And that kind of crept up on Dave and I somewhat because we were starting to sell the show onto airlines and to 78 different territories around the world, which was just mad for us.” The reality of their reach dawned on the pair as they were having a drink in a bar in Romania when they appeared on the TV, dubbed into Romanian.
In making Propa! a reality, Mr King, who tentatively describes himself as the harder business nose of the pair, says he has never worked harder. The business is a joint venture with Richard Marsden, the boss of Sheepfolds developer BDN and has already recruited staff ahead of what is hoped to be a pre-Christmas launch.
“I don’t think I’ve ever done so much maths since I left school,” he said of the preparatory work. “I was trying to work out how much it was going to cost me to cook off a load of yellow split peas because I don’t know if you’ve ever tried to cook yellow split peas to make pease pudding but if they’re not relatively fresh, it’s on the stove for about three weeks! I said, you’ve got to be kidding me - not with the cost of gas and electricity, this is a nightmare.”
The impetus behind Propa! is to deliver nostalgia. And that comes via a “grab-and-go” service offering hearty comfort food - recognisable to North Easterners - with the occasional “cheffy” embellishment (as Mr King says, a bit of parsley on top). The venue will attempt to tap into the pre-match ritual of pie and pint beloved of Sunderland fans at the next door Riverside Stadium.
"We're delivering those smells that are comforting and that you had when you came in from school, or that you had on Sundays, that you just remember home by,” said Mr King. “And home being the wider community, not just the place you lived. There's a huge cultural significance in that because it reinforces an identity.
"Look, all I'm doing is serving comfort food out of a stable door but I think the significance is that in this homogenised world which we live in, where virtually all the same, one tends to lose as a human being and the community, the identity. Because of that homogenised offering - huge corporate businesses investing in the high street - it's wonderful that local authorities are saying we need something more for our community."
It’s hoped that Propa! might expand beyond the Sheepfolds site into a chain - but Mr King is not getting ahead of himself. He explained: “We’ll get this one right first. The energy of this place is really important. If the energy isn’t there, I won’t do it. It’s as simple as that. Because I think you have to have that drive and passion to want to do it. We could open up wherever, but that’s not the point. If the timing is right, in the right location, with the right spirit and energy then I’ll do it. And if it’s not, and this is the only one, then I’m happy with that.”
“Opening a business is always a risk and particularly after the rollercoaster of recent years and western fiscal policy being all over the shop. You’ve just got to have faith. You can do all the maths and work it out, but then it just becomes an exercise in business - which is appropriate to some businesses, but not to what I’m trying to do.”
It all boils down to a love of food and its social qualities, as Mr King explained: “There is simply nothing better than cooking for your friends and the people you love. There’s an intimacy there that’s just so lovely. When you put that plate of food down in front of your loved ones, and there’s just a smile. It’s an occasion and I love it.”
