Mark Selby: " I would get into a cold sweat whenever I read about a new Mexican restaurant opening"

“I’ve always struggled a little bit with handing stuff over,” says Mark Selby, as he reflects on his new job title. February this year marked a significant moment for the Wahaca co-founder, as he moved from CEO of the business he’d led since its launch in 2007, to the less hands-on position of chairman.

At the same time, Gemma Glasson, who joined Wahaca in 2017 as head of projects and commercial, and has worked her way through the business in roles including head of food, chief operating officer and most recently, managing director, moved into the chief executive seat.

For Selby, who originally launched Wahaca with business partner and MasterChef winner Thomasina Miers, the timing of the move made sense: “In my mind, I will always be involved in the business, but I’m doing other things as well and I wanted to pass on the day-to-day responsibility.”

In Glasson, he believes he has the ideal successor. “In the past I’ve always worried about doing this and wanted to stay close to the final decisions. Not because I want to be in control, but because I know the business so well and feel like I have a real understanding of the nuts and bolts and the DNA.

“Gemma ticks every box. She’s gone through every element of the business. She’s a great speaker and she’s got this real uniqueness about her. Her background is in accounting, which is great for the financial side, but she also really knows how to communicate and motivate people. For the first time, I’m actually happy to hand all the different bits over to someone, and she wants to take it on, which is great.”

A ‘reimagined’ concept

It’s lunchtime on a sunny Tuesday in Wahaca’s Oxford Circus restaurant on Great Portland Street. The restaurant is buzzy with groups of office workers talking shop alongside tables of solo diners tucking into the recently-launched Wahaca for One menu – a generous selection plate featuring nachos, dips, a choice of tacos and a sweet potato and feta taquito. The offer is a response to increasing numbers preferring their own meal rather than share dishes with others.

Selby and Glasson’s movements within the senior team come ahead of a new expansion push for the 14-strong group, which prior to its restructuring in 2020 had a peak estate of close to 30 sites. In late March, Wahaca appointed property agency P-Three to support its next stage of growth. Selby says the aim is to open up to three restaurants a year going forwards and the group is currently looking at a couple of sites in the capital, as well as potential regional outposts in Birmingham, Manchester and Cambridge.

“From our point of view, we feel that we’ve got a good product that’s proven, and we know customers like. Hospitality sits across this broad spectrum, high-end to low-end. We’re somewhere in the middle, but I’d argue that quality-wise, we’re much more near the top end. We can offer a really good quality experience, proper food, for a much more affordable price point. We’re really niche in that.”

Wahaca returned to the expansion trail in 2024 with the launch of its first restaurant in six years in London’s Paddington. Around the same time the group introduced a new initiative across its 14- strong estate called ‘Wahaca reimagined’ – an evolution of the concept designed to bring the brand back closer to its Mexican inspiration.

This included a softer, more modern colour palette of earthy tones, and an overhaul of the menu. Selby points to saturation in the UK’s casual dining market as a driver behind the new brand template.

“It was hard, when looking at the quality of our kitchens where you have 250 fresh ingredients cooked each day and great investment in labour and quality, we weren’t getting the credit that the environment for our offer infers. And so, we looked at elevating it.”

Much of the new look and feel was inspired directly from Wahaca’s namesake, Oaxaca, which Selby, Glasson and the Wahaca team visit regularly.

“The city itself has changed a lot. It’s so contemporary now, a completely different place Thomasina and I fell in love with and were inspired by. Now it’s full of arts, ceramics and incredible, high-end restaurants. Gemma encouraged us to lean into this, translating the modern Oaxaca into our restaurants.”

(Re)engaging the consumer

While some elements didn’t quite connect with diners – the introduction of larger taco sharing boards ‘didn’t marry with the street food ethos and idea customers had of the brand’ - the implementation of ‘Wahaca reimagined’, underpinned by the opening of the Paddington restaurant, has proved to be a success.

Initial evidence of this can be seen in the group’s most recent financial results covering the 53 weeks to 30 June 2024, where profit before tax rose from of a loss of £700,000 to a profit of the same amount. Turnover for the year was £40.5m, up from £39.7m in 2023, while operating profit after exceptional items rose to £1.4m from a loss of £46,000.

As well as overhauling the concept, a key focus for the business in recent years has been building back up its 25–35-year-old consumer base, which Selby admits had begun to fall away. This involved a significant reengagement project that has seen Wahaca reach out to diners across that age bracket who are unfamiliar with the brand and invite them in with a group of friends for a free meal.

“It’s about getting real feedback from that demographic, which used to be our core audience, but also getting them in to experience the restaurants, build that network and hopefully get them to come back again and again.”

Alongside this, Wahaca has begun broadening its connection with diners through brand partnerships. In the past year this has included a collaboration with Atis that saw a limited edition Wahaca Mexicana bowl, created by Miers, added to the London-based salad specialist’s menu; and another whereby Wahaca added a special Birria Torta sandwich to its menu featuring bread from renowned London-based bakery group The Dusty Knuckle.

Most recently, Wahaca partnered with Tony’s Chocolonely for a limited-edition dessert menu featuring a variety of sweet taco options, as well as churros. Naturally, given the environment, part of the strategy has also involved growing the brand’s social media reach, which has been achieved through a focus on improving the quality of content produced and published across the group’s channels.

And while this has involved some work with influencers coming in and trying dishes for free in return for content, Selby notes that the group is more interested in getting diners in through its broader reengagement project.

“We’re not really in the market to do the big paid for influencer thing. Socials only attract a certain type of people that are only interested in the new, whereas what we want is diners who want to come regularly. We’re not just here for a year or two, we’re trying to build a long term, sustainable business.

“Our thesis is if we can get them in to try a nice breadth of food then they will come back. It’s about changing people’s mindset in when and how they come. We’ve just got to get it in their psyche.”

The time of the taco

Wahaca’s new expansion drive comes amid a period of broader growth in the UK’s Mexican restaurant space. While much of this remains concentrated in the QSR segment, led by the likes of Tortilla, Zambrero, Taco Bell and Chipotle, this has also spilled into fast-casual and full-service dining.

New names include US brands such as Velvet Taco, which made its London debut in Broadgate Circle earlier this year; Trejo’s Tacos, which is targeting a franchise-led national rollout following the success of its first UK restaurant in Notting Hill; and Coyo Taco, which will launch in London this summer with plans to open more than 50 sites across the UK and Ireland in the long term.

Closer to home, Harts Group is looking to expand its own London-based Mexican taqueria concept El Pastor with plans announced to open a debut regional location in Manchester. Selby admits to once being terrified of new entrants in the market, but with nearly two decades of trading now under Wahaca’s belt he is no longer fearful.

“For the first seven or eight years I would get into a cold sweat whenever I read about a new Mexican restaurant opening, and I would be the first customer in to see what it was like.

“Now we’ve seen so many come and go, and we’ve managed to hold on to a quality and value proposition that no one’s matched. As long as we carry on doing that, with the energy and enthusiasm, we’ll be fine.” More concerning are the challenges in the wider restaurant market, not least when it comes to growing the estate.

“As a growing business, trying to find sites where the rent makes sense and building costs aren’t sky high is tough. Getting the economic model to work is hard.”

To that end, Selby and Glasson are in the process of developing a more informal, smaller-scale concept that will offer scope to expand beyond city centre locations into the suburbs. Dubbed ‘Wahacito’, it will retain the same to-dine elements of the bigger restaurants, but feature a smaller menu focused on tacos and margaritas.

“It’s us asking: ‘how do we go into a slightly smaller unit that focuses on the tacos, quesadillas, burritos and bowls, and not have the whole menu complexity’.” Sites would have ‘a bit more of a buzz around movements’, he continues, with dwell times pitched at around the 45-minute mark.

“If we can bring in a bit more informality but retain the same to-dine elements and emphasis on value and quality, it gives us more opportunity in suburbs and those sorts of locations. It could be quite interesting for us.”

Ongoing macroeconomic challenges around inflation and labour costs, he adds, are also having an impact, but despite this current trading across the group remains strong. “We’re positive like-forlike, we have been for a year, and our covers are good. And in this market, that’s a really strong position.”

This article first appeared in Restaurant’s sister title MCA.