Dispatch From London: Caravan Founder and Chief Director Miles Kirby on the Importance of Sharing a Meal, and Sharing Success
Words by Jessica-belle Greer · Published on 27 Apr 2023
When Miles Kirby was growing up in Wellington, his mother Judy had a pantry full of exciting ingredients for him to explore.
From a young age, he would cook for his family and the guests who gathered around the table. “Our family was always full of people coming and going, so mealtimes were a hectic thing,” he says. “But we all came together and I loved it. That was where it all started.”
Today, Kirby is the chief director of Caravan, a well-known group of seven restaurants and three brew bars across London.
When it opened in 2010, Caravan was at the forefront of London’s all-day casual eating movement – and it’s still a key player.
Kirby is sitting in a small glass office on the mezzanine floor of the Caravan Roastery HQ in Lambworks, a renovated Victorian warehouse in Islington. A large Loring Smart Roaster keeps up the buzz below, as he recounts how he came to be here.
Despite a successful career as a chef and restaurateur, Kirby never thought he would be either of those things: “I didn’t ever consider it was an option.” Originally enrolled in a Bachelor of Arts and teaching diploma in Wellington, he stumbled upon hospitality by washing dishes at his sister’s work during the university holidays – City Bistro in the Civic Centre (now Nikau Cafe).
By the end of the summer, he was asking head chef Al Brown if he could help more in the bustling kitchen. “I loved the environment,” he says. “I thought, ‘This feels really familiar’.”
Kirby decided not to go back to university and made his way around the kitchen, before working for several other Wellington establishments. After a stint in Auckland, he returned to Wellington to complete a polytechnic cooking qualification, which he had dropped out of a few years earlier.
With that piece of paper and his visa, Kirby took off in 2000 for an overseas experience that has never really ended. He arrived in London in 2001, when Peter Gordon and Anna Hansen were opening their hugely influential restaurant The Providores. There, Kirby worked his way from sous chef to head chef until 2009, when he left to start Caravan with fellow New Zealanders Chris Ammermann and Laura Harper-Hinton.
The three business partners had worked together at Mondo Cucina in Wellington and had the idea of opening their own restaurant one day. “I was in the kitchen, Laura was at the door, and Chris was at the bar,” says Kirby. “We were just great mates, and it was an amazing thing for a restaurant to have that connection.”
They briefly worked together at The Providores before Ammermann and Harper-Hinton went to Urban Events. “The dream was still there, and we still used to drink a lot of tequila and talk about it,” says Kirby. “But we’re really glad that we didn’t do it straight away. London is a big place and I don’t think you can just dive in and expect to know how it all works.”
Eventually, they found the perfect site for an all-day restaurant in a bright and airy building in Exmouth Market. The effects of the Global Financial Crisis were sorely felt in London, but a hospitality connection helped them get a meeting with a bank for lending.
Inspired by the great coffee of their homeland – which had been garnering buzz in London since Soho cafe Flat White opened a couple of years earlier – the Caravan founders put a coffee roaster in the basement. This, in hindsight, wasn’t the best idea as the coffee sacks had to be lugged up and down. But the roasted aromas led to a booming breakfast and brunch trade, and the business grew from there.
Caravan offers a well-travelled menu that takes inspiration from around the globe, with casual yet high-quality service. Diners can order dishes like fried jalapeno cornbread at breakfast, a hot-smoked salmon bowl for lunch and a Dingley Dell pork schnitzel and fried egg for dinner – or the same choices, in reverse.
Early positive reviews helped establish Caravan – with one of the reviewers, Nicholas Lander at the Financial Times , becoming a mentor. He introduced the business partners to their King’s Cross site, which opened in 2012, with a coffee roaster at the back and 180 seats in the front. “It was a massive new challenge,” says Kirby.
At first, the team was “shocked” by their success, but it didn’t stop them for long. “Being a New Zealander, I think you’ve got a confidence around not knowing how to do something and a confidence about knowing that you’ll work it out,” says Kirby. “Then you’ll stick at it until you do it better than anyone else.”
In 2016, the partners talked to a private equity group and sold 30 per cent of the business. In quick succession, they opened Caravan Bankside, Caravan City and Caravan Fitzrovia. Shortly after came Vardo in Chelsea and Caravan Canary Wharf.
All the while, the craft coffee business was warming up, with brew bars opening at the Lambworks HQ, The Savoy Hotel, and TOG (The Office Group) Euston.
Each week, Caravan roasts an average of more than five tonnes of green coffee and supplies around 400 sites. The growing Caravan Coffee Roasters team is currently launching a compostable pod range for hotels, homes and anywhere in between.
Kirby’s focus is still the restaurants, and a big part of that is looking after its people. “It’s not just about when you walk into a restaurant, I think that hospitality should be everywhere in a person that works in this industry.”
Thinking of his early career, he says: “We’ve got young people coming through our kitchens and we’ve got to provide as much training as possible so that when they leave here, they’ve got as much knowledge as they possibly can to be able to do it themselves.”
A sense of responsibility motivates Kirby to continue to grow the business, and to grow the opportunities of his team. This became especially clear during the pandemic, when Caravan didn’t let go of any of its 500 workers. “It was so hard … but I’m still motivated by the feeling that I had then,” he says. “I’m motivated by the opportunity to pass a love of hospitality onto everyone else.”
This summer, Kirby and his family were back in New Zealand for the first time in five years (and his first Christmas at home in 20 years) where many great meals were shared.
“To this day, I get so much joy from it,” says Kirby. “To sit opposite someone and talk and eat and drink, I think, is one of the most wonderful things in the world.”
