Proof of the pudding is in the eating for Handley Amos’s Creams Cafe

Having played a key role in helping Nando's earn its place in Britons' hearts, Handley Amos is making good on his plan to bring British gelato brand Creams Cafe to the world

Proof of the pudding is in the eating for Handley Amos’s Creams Cafe

Adapting a brand to a new market can be a tricky proposition for any businessperson but fortunately Handley Amos isn’t your average entrepreneur. Having helped translate foreign food brands Nando’s and Rossopomodoro to the British market and significantly scale their offerings, he has made a specialism of helping companies capture international markets. And now he has turned his sights on Creams Cafe, making it his mission as the dessert franchise’s new CEO to bring its gelato to the globe.

Thanks to his globetrotting parents, Amos is no stranger to the benefits that adapting to other cultures can bring. “My parents were obsessed with taking my brother and I travelling to see as much of the world as possible,” he says. “That was fantastic: it helps you understand very quickly that the world’s a relatively small place and there are so many opportunities out there.” Being of an entrepreneurial bent, his parents also had plenty of experiences building businesses and it was expected that he would join the family business when he finished his studies at the Northallerton Grammar School in North Yorkshire. However, having had a taste of the wider world, Amos had other plans. “Once I’d seen what was out there, I really wanted to get out and do something of my own,” he says. “I didn’t really want to stay in North Yorkshire: I loved the idea of living in London or abroad to widen my horizons.”

And having worked part-time as a waiter to make ends meet during his studies, Amos had already cooked up the perfect plan for his future career. “Everybody looked at restaurants like they were something you do while you were studying rather than taking it as a career,” he says. “But I didn’t see it that way: I saw it as a huge opportunity.” Moving to London, Amos quickly worked his way up from waiter through bartender to manager before relocating after two years to Cape Town in South Africa to help some friends manage a restaurant and bar they’d set up. Over the next five years the friends added four more brands to their portfolio, something that gave Amos invaluable experience in nurturing talent and scaling businesses. “It was after the end of apartheid and we were trying to educate a new part of the workforce and encourage them to come into catering,” he says. “And I absolutely loved it: I had an amazing time there.”

After five years, Amos was forced to return to London after he found himself unable to renew his visa. Fortunately, on his return to the British high street, he was greeted by a familiar sight from South Africa: Nando’s. “When I came back to London and was looking for my next challenge, Nando’s name came up,” he says. At the time, the grilled-chicken chain had just 12 stores throughout the UK and was looking to rapidly scale: after meeting with Amos, then UK managing director Robby Enthoven and HR director Julia Rosamond decided he was the perfect person to help Nando’s rule the roost. And their confidence in him proved well-founded: he rapidly helped to systematise the restaurant and adapt its model to the peculiarities of the UK market. “How we perceive things here is very different to South Africa,” Amos says. “In South Africa, they’re quite happy to wait nearly 20 minutes for a meal; in the UK, we think that’s outrageous.” Soon consumers were flocking to Nando’s and over the following 12 years the chain grew to 240 outlets.

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<p>But having gained an appetite for helping overseas brands beef up their British operations, when Amos was headhunted by Rossopomodoro, an Italian restaurant chain looking for someone to help grow its offering on these shores, he took to the opportunity with relish. “This one really appealed to me,” he says. “It was the largest chain of Italian restaurants in Italy, which is quite unusual in a market built on mama and papa operations.” At the point he came on board, Rossopomodoro had done little to adapt to the British market: unlike many restaurants he’d come across in his career, it didn’t yet use single-line kitchens – in which all utensils and work areas are laid out against a single wall – and to British eyes the length of its menu would suggest a focus on quantity over quality. “So we made the menu a lot more concise and put single-line kitchens in,” he says. “Not only did it grow from three to 12 in the UK but they replicated it in the Italian market and that was also very successful.”</p>
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<p>Having gained a rep for helping restaurants reshape their offering for British palates, Amos decided to share his expertise with as many businesses as possible. “I had virtually built a specialism: helping foreign companies understand and adapt their models to the UK market,” he says. “So I set up a consultancy called the Light Hospitality.” However, the timing of the new company’s launch was unfortunate: within weeks of its launch in June 2016, Britain voted to leave the European Union, meaning there was a downturn in the number of brands looking to translate their offering for the UK. While Amos doubts this is anything more than a temporary blip, it did leave him looking for another project to get his teeth into while the market rallied. And this is when Creams Cafe came a-calling. “I hadn’t heard of it until then,” he says. “But the more I learnt about the brand, the more excited I got about what it could become and how it could develop.”</p>
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<p>Creams began life when co-founders Adam Mani and Balal Aqil spotted a gap in the market for high-end gelato on the high street. After a couple of years of research and development and several trips to Italy to source an authentic product, in 2010 the first Creams opened and thanks to the entrepreneurs’ hard work it proved to be a smash. “The success of that was instant,” says Amos. “The second one did even better than the first, so did the third one and it just snowballed.” But the ice-cream innovators weren’t content with just serving up scoops of someone else’s product: before too long they invested in their own manufacturing facility and began importing high-quality ingredients so they could start generating gelato of their own. “Ever since, Creams has doubled in size every single year,” Amos says.</p>
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<p>And there’s a good reason that the pudding parlour proved so popular: its artisanal approach to its menu. “Adam is really passionate about the brand and its food,” says Amos. “Really it all started from his creativity.” From its coconut gelato, mango sorbet and pineapple chunk sundae to its crumbled apple pie, custard and cinnamon waffle, Creams approaches consumers’ palates like an artist, blending all manner of flavours to produce icy artworks. And it has only grown bolder as time has gone by: recognising that hot desserts formed about 70% of its sales, it has created seasonal menus that concentrate more on cakes and crepes than cones. “We’ve also made sure that the menu has evolved: we change it three times a year now,” Amos says. “Bubble pop waffles is something we added six weeks ago and that’s given us a platform to really create interest.”</p>
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Josh Russell
Josh Russell
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