Mark Moriarty

And what happens is the food and the actual creativity becomes literally the last thing you have to think about because the whole structure of the business has to fit around it.

Now, there's a lot of negative talk on the restaurant industry at the moment and the model and the structure.

you can still be successful.

We do it very well here in Ireland, particularly during the summer on the West Coast and then Dublin throughout the year because we are still a big European capital city.

But what I'm finding is if you're going to do it, you either go very, very high end for a small amount of people or you go mass volume doing potentially one product and you open a load of venues.

And I think it's people who try to do something in the middle and it's the neighbourhood restaurants trying to offer good quality product at good value is where the real squeeze is.

So I've decided essentially in the last 10 years, well, do you know what?

I'm going to go down the sort of media route.

So we have everything from the TV shows.

The new season starts on Monday.

We have cookbooks.

We have podcasts.

We have Irish Times columns at the weekends.

I work with a number of large scale brands, not just as a brand ambassador, but actually behind the scenes and how food is presented.

I worked with a large drinks company for five years while I also worked in the greenhouse restaurant as a sous chef in Dublin.

And I've no problem doing the hours, but I enjoy the fact that I'm my own boss.

OK, and you're tired all the time.

I think it's a great energy to do all of that.

Yeah, but there are deadlines for a podcast, deadlines for the TV show.

It's got to be done and finished, done and dusted.