Today we have an audio feast for you as our guest is Karen Jones, most well-known as the co-founder of the Café Rouge chain of restaurants. Her career is a textbook story of entrepreneurship.

Karen was born in Lancashire, in northern England, and raised in Yorkshire, London, and Switzerland, before studying English and American Literature at the University of East Anglia, where she has now come full circle to serve as their Chancellor.

As the Café Rouge brand grew, Karen and her co-founder Roger Myers formed the Pelican Group, which was eventually acquired in 1996 by Whitbread for a reported £133 million. Karen couldn’t stay away from the table for too long and became the CEO of the Spirit Pub Group. She is definitely not the kind of person to sit back and put her feet up, so she also joined the board of the London Gastropub Company among many others.

We chat about:

• How the first Café Rouge came to be
• Selling Café Rouge and creating Punch Taverns
• What makes a brand a winner
• Karen’s advice to entrepreneurs

Links:

• Café Rouge

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