In praise of lunch

In my first career in book publishing, the institution of lunch was the cornerstone of my business life. Lunch took up at least a third of the day, was the focus of all business deals and the only serious activity ambitious editors had to get right. Lunch was king. But then republican bean counters and efficiency monitors deposed Lunch and we all got used to dribbling bits of sandwiches over our keyboards. Deals were done in stuffy, anodyne meeting rooms and occasionally over a skinny latte in Starbucks. Lunch, like eating, was so yesterday.
So it was something of a surprise when, trying to catch up with Karen Hanton, queen of the starry Web 2.0 company toptable (an institution in its own right), she suggested we have Lunch. Last time I went to the offices of toptable, they were housed in an incongruous part of private medicine-land west of Harley Street. Now they are comfortably settled in the heart of Clerkenwell, and we walked past another threatened institution, the gaudy, municipal high-Victorian architecture of Smithfield, to a local Italian restaurant in Cowcross Street. The restaurant, like Lunch, was reassuringly passé. At one time there were hundreds of family-run pasta joints like this one: now they are hard to find. Over my linguine and her fettuncine, Karen and I caught up. Because we were having Lunch, conversation ranged, like a revolutionary, across the borders of private and business life. There were no agendas, PowerPoint presentations or meeting notes. We were able, in the course of a modest, relaxed hour or so to talk a good deal about business, but almost without noticing.
Toptable has put immense care and effort into building a best-of-breed platform in its space. It hasn't had an easy time of it but its numbers are now not just robust, but spectacular. It leads its peers in the analysis of its customer base and their behaviours; its expertise in search engine optimisation leaves so-called seo companies standing; it is as sharp a consumer-focused, market-leading web company as you will find. And having poured talent and money and energy into its platform, it is now scaling out at a rate that is eye-watering, delivering something as old-fashioned as Lunch: bottom line, cash profits.
The first time I interviewed Karen I learned of her roots as the daughter of crofters whose daily graft sucked every ounce of colour and blood from both parents and the young family too. Those roots have built an extraordinary entrepreneur whose clear-sighted, absolutely focused vision is now delivering extraordinary results. And she can still stroll round the corner to a local Italian gaff and chat over pasta. Long live Lunch.