Company's bread and butter is booking you a good table

Age: 61

What is your business called? ResDiary

Where is it based?

Glasgow

What does it produce, what services does it offer?

ResDiary is an online restaurant reservation system for restaurant managers with customer relationship management, email marketing and short message service texting built-in. It combines an online booking system so that users can see, quite easily, the pattern of a restaurant's reservations together with table and yield management functions. These ensure that occupancy and profitability is maximised without putting too much stress on kitchen production and floor staff at peak times.

To whom does it sell?

ResDiary is supplied to more than 4000 restaurants globally, chains as well as individually owned establishments. Our customers include Di Maggio's, G1, Buzzworks, the Montpelier Group, the Houses of Parliament, the Atlantis in Dubai, the Yas Hotel in Abu Dhabi and www.dimmi.com.au in Australia. We act on our own account in the UK and alongside partners and licensees overseas. We have recently signed contracts with licensees in the Philippines and Kazakhstan with negotiations ongoing for licences in Brazil, Singapore, Shanghai and Hong Kong.

What is its turnover?

We edged into seven figure territory a few months ago.

How many employees? 15

When was it formed? 2006

Why did you take the plunge?

After working in hospitality for over 25 years, I saw there was a market to develop a reservation system, which could be controlled internally by the operator whilst still allowing bookings from channels via the internet according to specific yield management measures. We first trialled the system in Citrus, a restaurant at 75 Bothwell Street Glasgow (now Viva) and actually sold into our first two accounts after demonstrating at the end of the bar at Citrus.

I am happy to say they are still customers and have expanded over time to five units.

What were you doing before you took the plunge?

I built and operated many Glasgow restaurants, whilst raising a family. Lautrec's Wine Bar, D'Arcy's, 78 St Vincent, Leonardo & Company and Metropolitan were all in the portfolio and built from scratch.

I had qualified as a chartered accountant some years before but had always wanted to work for myself. In the early days, when our first restaurant, Lautrec's, was making lots of money, my then business partner and I decided one night, after several drinks in the now-defunct Glasgow nightclub, Henry AfriKa's, that we would buy the then-derelict Seaman's Mission in York Street. We went onto buy up a further two sites on nearby Robertson Street in the Broomielaw, which all these years later has become Glasgow's premier financial district and is home to major businesses like BT and Scottish Power. We bought the three sites but were obliged by the bank, Barclays, to sell out, though for twice as much as we paid, as a result of getting their support for a hotel business we had acquired. Five years ago the site we owned was worth many times more at around £12 million, but that's business.

How did you raise the start-up funding?

A chain of restaurants I had shares in, Leonardo & Company, ran into financial difficulties after the outbreak of foot and mouth disease and the 9/11 attacks in 2001. We had made some stupid decisions regarding site acquisitions and run over budget on what is now Metropolitan in the Merchant City. The landlord of the Bothwell Street restaurant, who is also a friend and now chairman of ResDiary, Colin Whitelaw, asked me what I was going to do. Whilst I was still a 50 per cent owner of 78 St Vincent, I said I had become increasingly interested in putting together the world's best web-based bookings system for restaurants and he asked me how much money I needed to do that. I told him and he was good enough to help fund our early development.

What was your biggest break?

In our early stages of development our system was built and maintained by contractors in Russia - they had good written English but what seemed like poor spoken English. The system was "creaking at the edges" and with only 23 customers at the time I swiftly realised we did not have a scalable solution to the restaurant world's reservation problems! By good chance, one of my fellow directors knew of a very bright software developer working for one of the major US banks in London but whose parents lived in Lanark. On a weekend visit home, he analysed our problems and set us on the path to recovery and helped develop a solid system architecture. To this day, he is a shareholder and director and has my eternal thanks. Not long after ResDiary was founded, we expanded into Australia and we now supply over 2500 restaurants via www.dimmi.com.au.

Groupon acquired a 50% stake in ResDiary in January 2011 but has no directors on our board.

What was your worst moment?

Travelling south on an eight-hour round trip to see a prospective customer in England, only to discover the prospect had no internet connection.

What do you most enjoy about running the business?

I really enjoy working with, and developing the skills of, the people in my team as well as meeting new customers. There is also the usual sense of pleasure that comes from building a viable, then successful, business from no more than a good idea.

What could the Westminster and/or Scottish governments do that would help?

So far, we have had great support from the Scottish Council for Development and Industry, Scottish Development International, Scottish Enterprise and the Scottish Government. We have recently been on sponsored trade missions to Germany, India, Brazil, the US, Canada, China and Hong Kong, and after meeting great contacts the future looks promising. So we have no complaints. We hope this continues to be the case should Scotland gain independence.

What are your top priorities?

International expansion: we are in a very competitive sector where there are two dominant players, one US-based. We need always to be quicker and smarter to compete successfully and so far that has worked. We spend a lot of time and energy in developing our systems to make them as simple, but as effective, as possible. Equally, because we are in a global market we need to continually improve the user-friendliness of our website. The restaurant business is becoming increasingly sophisticated and our proposition can be adopted successfully by any restaurant, anywhere in the world, so we need to make sure we have a global footprint as quickly as possible. So far, we believe, we are getting there.

What was the most valuable lesson that you learned?

There are two: always stay focused on what your goals and core products are, and never be scared of your competitors!

How do you relax?

Over a nice glass of red wine with my wife Nicola.