but I'm a little bit frustrated these days

and that's because I'm watching my city, London,

the city I love, the city I spent the last 20 years in

really go down the tubes

and I'm seeing the lifeblood of this incredible city,

the small and medium size enterprises, the SMEs,

that were, they really, they account for 99%

of the business that's done here,

I'm seeing them going bankrupt,

them not being supported by the government

and it's really frustrating me.

And so what I decided to do is today,

I want to go out and meet with one of them.

He's actually a guy that owns some wine bars here in London

and I want to talk about what he's experiencing

and what he thinks that

we can do to get business back on track

and get London back to work

because that's what the City needs.

It's an incredible, you know,

cultural centre, economic centre

and yet we seem to be completely fumbling the ball

on a regular basis.

And quite frankly, I'm tired of it.

You know, we've been lucky

because our business, you know,

isn't based on having traffic flow and foot flow

and people coming back to the City

but a lot of them are

and we need to find a way to get London back to work.

So I'm heading off today to meet with James Dawson

and he owns a place called The Humble Grape.

And I want to be having these conversations

and just see that we can talk to these people out there

and get some better ideas

because right now this city doesn't seem to know

what the hell to do

and I'm tired of it

and I'm tired of watching all these people.

I speak to black cab drivers every day,

I speak to shop owners,

I speak to people out there

and they're frustrated with the uncertainty.

And so that's what I want to kind of shine a light on here.

And I want to start having some conversations with people,

maybe get some people in the studio

and not just about the economics, about policies

and about what we can do to really, you know,

make the City great again

because you know,

I think it's really the best city in the world

and it's stumbled

and it's stumbled much more than other major cities have.

And yeah, I'm frustrated

and I want to do something about it.

So I'm heading off, go speak with James

and see if he can walk me through what's going on here,

jumping into this taxi

and I'm gonna probably have a conversation with him.

Just finding out what his business is like as well,

because it's all related.

So let's do this.

Hey, how you doing?

Yeah, it's Brian, thanks so much, I appreciate it.

Booyah!

Okay, thank you for your time, I appreciate it.

Okay, take care.

There he is, the backbone of London, black cabbies.

Love 'em.

All right, so we're heading up into St. Bride's Passage

where Humble Grape is.

This is the wine bar

and this is a fascinating area of London.

There's a St. Bride's Cathedral over here.

This is where Fleet Street is where all the original,

I think the paper makers were

and then all of the newspapers.

You know this wine bar used to get a lot of business

from the City of London, which is the financial district.

I think there's a lot of lawyers around here.

I think there's like investment banks right down here

but I think that's all gone down in a significant way

because people are working from home

and they're not being encouraged to come into the City,

which means people like The Humble Grape

and other people just can't do any business

'cause there's not the footfall.

I read that it was 42% of the income

from businesses in London,

come from the workers that come to London,

which is higher than most cities.

So it's not like you can wait around

for the tourists to come back,

you gotta have the workers back

or this is just never going to be an issue.

So anyways, I'm looking forward to talk to James

and just see what he has to say,

what it's been like,

what he's been struggling with

and what he thinks we can do to get London back to work.

There it is.

The Humble Grape.

- There he is. - Yo!

(James laughs) - What's up buddy, you well?

- How's it going, man?

- Good man.

- See you're looking smooth.

- Good to see you man.

Okay, it's Brian Rose

and I'm here at Humble Grape with James Dawson.

- Hi. - The proprietor, CEO, creator

of this, what, five location wine bar-

- Yeah. - in London?

- Yeah, we've got five.

We've got two neighbourhoods sites,

one in Battersea,

one in Islington

and then three city sites.

One at St. Paul's Fleet Street, one at Liverpool Street

and then we have

the one in Canary Wharf as well.

- Right, okay, so it's a different demographics,

different boroughs.

- Very different, very diverse, yeah.

- Okay, good. All right look.

You know, I've been a little frustrated watching

the city I love, London,

just I've been watching it kind of disintegrate

the last four or five months, you know.

I see empty shops, I see businesses struggling,

including you and a lot of people out there.

And I don't feel like our politicians

are doing the right things.

There's a lack of leadership.

There's a lack of anybody that understands business.

So I just wanted to come here

and talk to you today

and just get your thoughts on

some of the big struggles you're having as a business

and what you think that we could do to change that,

to get London back to work, you know,

to get people here, spending

and get this incredible cultural metropolis,

you know, back on its feet.

So yeah, maybe just get your thoughts

on the past few months,

some struggles and challenges

and then your thoughts on what we can do different.

- Yeah, so it's been, it's been a huge challenge

in end of March, we had to close all our businesses

and send all our people home.

Unprecedented, you know

and if you think you've got all these high fixed costs,

with rent and rates and energy bills and everything,

and then you just have to shut down all your revenue

from a 100% down to zero

and then try and manage that.

There've been some great incentives to help us

to kind of get through stuff over the last few months.

But the big problem we are having is that

we've got, we've got like a lot of fear

and people are like worried about coming into London.

People are concerned about going back to work

and that's creating issues

for all these businesses that support the big corporates

that are in Central London.

Some of the neighbourhoods are kind of okay

because people are there

and they're still there but the City,

especially Central London at St. Paul's

and you know, the tourist areas of Soho

and Covent Garden have been really badly hit.

- Right, 'cause the fear campaign,

it almost went too far, got people so scared

and we thought in the beginning it was the right thing to do

because we didn't know what this disease

was going to be like

but now it's almost like people are still scared

to come back in the City, to go out,

to frequent these retail establishments.

It's almost like you need another campaign

or new leadership to get people back

but it's not that simple

'cause you've got to speak

with the corporations as well, right.

- Yeah.

So I think the campaign of fear was very successful

and everyone's, like, nervous about coming back to work

and not everyone but a lot of people are

and we need to have a campaign the other way

that's based on facts and real data,

like what is the real infection rate?

What is the real death rate per infection rate?

Which is much, much lower than they originally expected.

And we need to let people, you know,

operate in a safe environment

but also make their own choices, you know.

Decide whether they're comfortable

or they feel safe to go out

and they're comfortable with the risks.

A lot of people, for example,

that would cycle to work in Central London,

you'd probably find if you ran the numbers

and looked the data,

you're 10 times more likely to die, cycling to work and back

then you are from COVID.

So we just need to kind of reset that a little bit

and let people kind of, you know, protect the elderly,

protect people who are vulnerable

but let other people who are not as impacted that

and especially the rest of London,

just get back to work

and get back into the previous frame of mind.

- Yeah.

Well we're here at St. Bride's Passage,

which is kind of Fleet Street area,

which has a lot of city firms around here, law firms,

investment banks.

One of your locations is Canary Wharf, same kind of thing.

And there's very few people around here, very few workers

but we need to get these essential people back to work.

Right? Same even in The West End.

- Yeah.

- And so, cause without them, all of these businesses

are going to go.

- Yeah. - Right.

- Yeah, so if you walk up and down Fleet Street now

you'll see, I was there this morning at 9:30

and there's hardly a coffee shop.

Fleet Street used to be booming and bustling.

There's very few places open, a couple of pubs.

There's very, very little footfall,

which is very different from what it was before.

And it's kind of,

it's kind of scary to see that.

We really need to work very hard to get people feeling safe,

back into the office

and back into supporting all of these little businesses

they've been looking after.

The sandwich shops, you know, the bars, the restaurants,

you know, the dry cleaners, you know,

the guys who are clean their shoes,

like all that kind of stuff.

Everyone's kind of hurting, right

and it's kind of unnecessary.

- Yeah, I mean, I think the stat that I saw was

42% of the income in London

comes from the workers of London

and a lot of them aren't here

and these businesses are dying