HOW WE HELPED FOX, HAMPTON LANE FIND THEIR HEAD CHEF
When Helen at Fox got in touch, she needed a Head Chef. What she actually needed was a recruitment partner who understood what running a small independent restaurant looks like in 2026.
Fox sits on Hampton Lane in Catherine-de-Barnes, a village just outside Solihull. It’s a neighbourhood restaurant in the truest sense: refined food without the stuffiness, natural wines, a kitchen that turns out breakfast, lunch and dinner with the same care. The menu tells you everything. Lichfield asparagus with cod’s roe emulsion. Smoked eel and horseradish velouté. A Barnsley lamb chop with butterhead lettuce and anchovy. House focaccia with whipped pork fat or hay-smoked butter. This is a kitchen doing proper, technical, ingredient-led cooking, with a confidence in its own identity that you don’t always see outside the city.
Helen is hands-on in the business every day. The team is small. The covers are intentionally low. It’s the kind of place the Good Food Guide notices, and locals quietly protect.
It’s also the kind of place feeling the squeeze hardest right now.
The numbers across hospitality in 2026 are stark. The National Living Wage rose to £12.71 in April, adding £1.4 billion in wage costs across the sector. Business rates relief has been cut from 75% to 40%. Over 3,300 hospitality businesses entered insolvency in 2025 alone. For a small independent outside the city centre, where the talent pool is shallower, and every hire is an integral one, these pressures aren’t just headlines; they’re the spreadsheet.
When Helen briefed us on the Head Chef role, the recruitment fee was a real consideration. Not because she didn’t value the search – she did – but because cash flow for small operators right now is unforgiving. So we offered something we offer more and more often: split payment terms over six months. The fee, paid in manageable instalments, rather than one lump sum, that forces a difficult choice between investing in the right hire and protecting the month’s float.
We placed Sam Cowdell as head chef at Fox. Sam has settled in beautifully – running a kitchen this technical, in a team this small, takes a particular kind of chef, and he’s the right one. Helen has the kitchen leadership she needed without having to choose between the right person and the right time.
Split fees aren’t a discount. The fee doesn’t change. What changes is the pressure of paying it. For independents who are running lean, hands-on, and brilliant at what they do, that flexibility can be the difference between making the hire and putting it off for another six months, which, in a market this tight, often means losing the candidate entirely.
“As an independent, finding the money for a head chef search in one go just isn’t realistic right now. Tonic split the fee over six months, and that’s the only reason we could do it. We’ve got the right chef, the kitchen is in good hands, and I’m not staring down a fee I couldn’t afford. For a small independent, that’s everything.” Helen Somerfield – Owner, Fox – Hampton Lane
There’s a wider point underneath this one. Independents are the businesses keeping British hospitality honest right now: cooking properly, sourcing from local growers and producers, employing local people, and anchoring the high streets and villages they sit in. They deserve recruitment partners who get that, and who structure terms accordingly.
Helen got the chef. Sam got the role. Fox keeps doing what it does best.
That, to us, is what good recruitment looks like.