His inability to stick to one particular interest when growing up, led Paul Charlton’s dad to label him a “jack of all trades and master of none”. He started chopping veg at a local pizza shop aged 14, before training as a chef at the Tontine restaurant in Northallerton at 16. But he then decided to do teacher training and worked his way up to deputy head at a primary school. It wasn’t until 2017, after passing his NPQH qualification to prepare him for headship, that Paul realised that teaching wasn’t for him anymore. In need of a new challenge, he saw a vacancy in a local paper to take on the café at the Captain Cook Birthplace Museum in Marton, Middlesbrough. “The café was a mess, it had been closed for eight months,” says Paul. But being a DIY enthusiast, he held out hope. “I’ve built two houses in my life so I looked beyond the mess at the potential.” He then had to put in a bid and four weeks later he got the call from Middlesbrough council to say he’d won it. “I had to create a business model, a menu, a logo, and redesign the café ready to open in five weeks!” He worked 18-hour days to make it happen and lived and breathed the café for a year. “I went from a £58,000 salary to nothing,” he says. “It was a scary thing to do to go from money and holidays to none.” But his background in teaching held him in good stead. “As a teacher you’re constantly reflecting on your own practice, and I transferred that to catering. It grew and grew, and we became more and more popular. I started working five days a week, then it got to the point where I didn’t need to be in there any more, my staff were fantastic.” During the pandemic, he found a closed café in a good location and contacted the owners, Tees Active, to tell them he was interested. He ended up taking on three cafés from the firm, staggering the openings within four months of each other and running each successfully as a limited company. Then, late last year, he purchased a café-cum-bar in Ingleby Barwick, which he opened as Gin & Scone in April. “The lady before me ran it as a café and tried to run it at night, but it didn’t work,” he says. But Paul felt that, with the right approach, he could pull it off. “The concept was good-quality ingredients from Makro, good customer service, and reasonable pricing,” he says.

His DIY skills were soon put into practice, converting a stockroom into an extra two toilet cubicles. “I’m a nightmare! Where I can, I’ll do the work myself,” he explains. “If I don’t have to pay someone else, I won’t.” He also installed a new kitchen. “I like planning and building things,” he says. “It’s not particularly challenging stuff to do, but you get satisfaction from it and I enjoy the design side of things.” His usual menu also required some adaptations. “Gin & Scone fits into the model of my other businesses by day, but in the evening, it becomes a bar, so it’s a bit more upmarket and branded differently,” says Paul. The day-time menu is similar to his other cafés, but with a few more premium options including Eggs Benedict, and Avocado, Eggs & Chilli Flakes on Toast. Then at night, when the venue hosts live music, bingo and cocktails, the food offer switches to Smash Burgers and Parmos. For the uninitiated, the latter is a much beloved Middlesbrough dish featuring deep fried chicken breast in bechamel sauce with cheese on top. He finesses his dishes with the help of family. “My son is a good taste tester,” he grins. “All our burgers are 100% minced beef that we smash down into burgers. We do The Cheesy One, The Mexican One, The Halloumi One, and The Classic One. We use good-quality meats for the burger, and then different sauces, for example, the Chef’s Larder Burger and BBQ sauce, and play around with different flavours. The biggest thing is making sure you can get hold of the product on a regular basis. The Chef’s Larder is always going to be there.” The restaurant also offers sharing plates with loaded skins, loaded fries, mozzarella sticks, cod goujons, sliders and more. Paul credits Booker not only with supplying much of his food, but also offering expert advice on what to stock. “A lot of things I’ve developed with Helen Butterfield, my account manager at Booker,” he says. “She’s been instrumental in developing my menus and she really helps me, walking around the store, looking at new products, she makes really good suggestions.”

He gets a minimum of two deliveries a week at each site, ordering on a Thursday and Monday, and carries out regular top-up shops at Makro Teeside. “With five sites, having the delivery service is invaluable because I could not physically collect what I get delivered,” he says. “We spend £60,000 a quarter.” He waxes lyrical about the depot team. “Every single member of staff in the building is like family,” he says. “I’m made to feel so welcome – from people to stacking shelves to Steve [O’Toole] the manager – everyone takes the time to say ‘Hello, how are you doing?’ It’s a lovely environment and a lovely place to shop, that’s why I keep spending with them.” The Booker app has also made life easier. “I have iPads in each site and staff put their orders on and I’ll jump on the system and have a check through,” says Paul. “It means I don’t have to physically go round each site and do the order myself. I just click send.” The latest additions to the bistro’s offer are roast dinners and homely puds. “Recently, we’ve introduced Sunday lunches. The brisket we use from Booker is phenomenal, the quality is brilliant.” Customers clearly approve. “We’ve doubled turnover on a Sunday by adding the lunches,” he says. “We charge £10.95 for one course, or two courses for £15 and three for £20. It gets the volume through, and people tend to order three courses because of the value.” Another income stream comes from hiring out the back room for functions. “Last weekend we had a baby shower there,” he says. “We adapt and try and do a bit of everything to make as much money as we can. Eventually, we’ll knock through the wall in the side and create a bigger open space, as during the day sometimes people are fighting for seats.” Trade at Gin & Scone has exceeded expectations so far. “I’m really pleased, it’s achieving more than I expected and it’s still got room for growth,” says Paul. “It’s probably only 50% capacity at the moment, there’s a lot of room for development.” It’s been seven years since Paul left his teaching days behind him, but he’s still getting top marks, with Scores on the Doors food hygiene ratings of five at each of his venues. “That shows it’s working and it’s right,” he beams. “I’m proud of the whole thing. I did this from nothing." Paul might be a jack of all trades, but he’s definitely mastered this one.