Q&A: Christopher Moore, The Clink
The Clink has built a scalable and impactful business around its goal of reducing re-offending rates among ex-offenders — all through the power of hospitality
The idea is simple: build fine-dining restaurants in prisons and use them to train prisoners as high-end chefs and waiters. Customers pay to eat amazing food in a unique environment, prisoners’ lives are transformed and, eventually, the short-staffed food and hospitality sector gets access to much-needed talent.
Now with four restaurants across the UK, The Clink is an outstanding example of how scalable commercial solutions can make a difference to even the thorniest social problems.
Purpose went behind bars to meet with CEO Christopher Moore at The Clink’s restaurant in HMP High Down, on the outskirts of London. It’s a surreal experience: after handing over passports, walking through metal detectors and passing into the prison’s outer yard, you step through a door and into a hushed, luxurious fine dining room that wouldn’t look out of place in Mayfair.
Over coffee and homemade oatmeal biscuits, Christopher told us all about The Clink’s success to date and its plans for the future.
Q. What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?
Simple: 100,000 prisoners are released every year, and 45% come back. It’s because there is not adequate support and accommodation for them when they leave prison.
Q. What’s your business model at The Clink?
Ultimately, we’re not doing anything revolutionary. We teach people to cook, and to deal with customers. But that means we are repairing people, families and society — there are so many positive knock-on effects.
We’re a lot of things: a restaurant, a catering college, a contract caterer, a horticulture project, a charity and a resettlement institution.
At the moment, about half of our operating income comes from our trading operations, a quarter from a skills funding agency and a quarter from the Prison Service. They fund us because we’re looking after 160 of their prisoners every day, and thus saving them resource.
Q. Clink trainees are 41% less likely to re-offend than other ex-prisoners. Why do you think The Clink works?
We replicate a real working environment, which makes it easier for potential employers to see the value. And that helps the prisoners: it doesn’t look or feel like a prison, so they don’t behave like they’re in a prison.
It’s a 40-hour week with everyone sitting down and eating together. It socialises them and creates a sense of family, which is very powerful for people who have maybe lacked family in their lives.
They receive qualifications — for some, the first qualification they’ve ever had. But the soft skills they gain are almost more critical in terms of developing confidence and motivation. Having an opportunity to interact with the public in a hospitality setting can be transformative.
And crucially, we look after our people when they leave. We have five full-time support workers, two of whom have come from a probation background. We make sure our guys are all set up before they are released, and if they have a wobble on the outside, they can pick up the phone 24/7. We’re always there to sort out a night in a B&B or a week’s groceries.
Q. What are your commercial goals for the business? How much can this model really scale up?
We aim to have 20 training facilities open by 2020, training more than 1000 prisoners each year. There are 105 prison kitchens in the UK, and we believe that our model can scale with minimal capital costs. Change is badly needed in prisons, and we are a credible solution.
Our goal for 2018 is to make The Clink self-funding. We are already operationally self-funding, but depend on grants and donations to actually build new restaurants. We can’t go back to the funders indefinitely, they are getting sick of my face!
The main challenge is to encourage the government to see the value of taking an integrated approach to prisoner rehabilitation: stop silo funding into education, health, etc., stop trying to recreate the school system in prisons, just focus on providing opportunities for “purposeful activity”.
Q. Is it difficult to convince prisoners to join the programme?
Far from it, it’s vastly oversubscribed. We actually had someone from an open prison applying to come work with us, here in a closed, higher-security prison, which is a rare thing! He eventually ended up training at [leading drama school] RADA on his release; he is a stage actor now.
This is more than just a bog-standard qualification, the trainees know that they will be learning top-level culinary skills. We have many ambassadors who quietly support us — people like Albert Roux Jr. The hospitality industry is like a family, and a lot of chefs have been up against it, whether that’s in the army, in prison… there’s often this sense of “it could have been me”. We all work unsociable hours. It’s rewarding to give back.
Top people come in and teach our guys, so they really do come out highly trained. Our guys are like sponges — they’ve been pushed from pillar to post, they just need a bit of encouragement. And top chefs can spot top talent.
Q. What about customers — is it a challenge to bring people so far out of their comfort zone?
Not at all. We could fill it twice over, but it would put too much strain on the training environment.
We do very well on Tripadvisor, and I think the public are buying into our approach. I wanted to prove that you can do it a different way.
Q. What kind of jobs are out there for trainees at the end?
We’ve placed guys with Hilton, St. Pancras Renaissance, Roast Restaurant. Two of our hospitality trainees from Clink Events ended up at the Royal Lancaster Hotel. I know the industry, and I know that there are jobs out there for these guys.
Sometimes it takes leadership from other parts of the industry. I remember a contract caterer who took 90 of his top clients to dinner at a Clink restaurant. At the end of the meal he stood up and said, “if your HR policies don’t allow me to recruit these people, please consider updating them”.
Remember, there is a major skills shortage on the horizon for service and hospitality staff, especially with Brexit. How are we going to fix this? The choice is basically training more school leavers, which has proved impossible lately, attracting more women into hospitality, which has maybe worked a little bit, or training more prisoners.
Q. How did you find yourself running The Clink?
I originally trained as chef and then progressed to hospitality management, working for Holiday Inn in New York, Hilton Hotels in Holland and the UK, and for Harrods and Fenwick department store groups. About ten years ago I found myself with six months off, following a heart bypass. I was already a trustee of another prison-based charity, so I had some familiarity with the challenges ex-prisoners face. I joined the Clink as a volunteer, and within a year I ended up being employed as CEO.
To be honest, I was allergic to charities before this. However, the Clink has a heavyweight board. We have no volunteers as such but we do rely on industry professionals and celebrity chefs to come and lead masterclasses. Our Clink training staff are very skilled and are from the catering and hospitality industry. They are paid commercial wages, and they deliver. It’s a private sector work mentality.
It’s incredibly fulfilling work. People tell me not to work too hard, but I really can’t tell when I’m working!
To book a life-changing meal at The Clink, visit theclinkcharity.org. To read more about how purpose-driven businesses are finding commercial advantage in solving the world’s biggest promises, read more of Purpose magazine or get in touch with steve@thehouse.co.uk.
