Viewpoint event: How restaurants can thrive in 2026

5 days ago
1 min read

A panel event in partnership with Countertalk featuring Rambutan’s Cynthia Shanmugalingam, Woodhead Restaurants’ Dan Mortgenthau, Daisy Terry of Dusty Knuckle and Viewpoint’s own Hussein Ahmad.

While the fight for a VAT cut continues, we know that no single policy change can do the work of a healthy business on its own. This panel is all about the practical, hands-on groundwork operators can actually control: tackling overheads, GPs and labour without hollowing out team culture.

The operators putting themselves in the strongest position right now and for the future are the ones getting on with the unglamorous work closer to home: making their operations sustainable, which is to say profitable, on their own terms.

We frame the conversation around the three levers every operator can pull: fixed costs (rent, utilities, software, the overheads that quietly compound), cost of sales (food and drink GP, menu engineering, supplier deals, portion control) and labour (now the single biggest cost in most restaurants, and the hardest to manage without damaging the team and the culture which makes it worth surviving).

Our panel will share how they actually make it work and where the challenges lie: the meaningful savings and profit avenues, the received wisdom they've abandoned, and the genuine, sometimes difficult tensions involved in tightening a business without losing its culture.

Your ticket includes a welcome drink.

Chair