London tapas brand Camino set to grow The backing from the Business Growth Fund (BGF), the growth capital firm owned by some of Britain's biggest banks, is designed to help the company to open seven new restaurants by 2015. However, wary of the company losing its identity, Bigg insists slow and steady is his maxim these days. We regard ourselves as a group rather than a chain. When what you're rolling out becomes a cookie cutter, you've got a chain. The staff start to feel like they're working for a big faceless company. Tapas bars are 10-a-penny on the high street these days, but Bigg, who hails from the Home Counties, insists that his restaurants are more labour of love than cold-hearted concept. He traces a fascination with Spain back to a short road trip across the country in his early twenties after he "got fed up" with a role as a junior commodities trader in the City. I was in a Mini with a girlfriend I'd just broken up with. In between the grief and the arguments, I looked up and saw this amazing country. It was so extreme compared with what I was used to in England. He's been going back and forth ever since and still makes regular sorties, both with staff (most of whom are Spanish) and on his own, to find new suppliers or just to pick up items that will work as decor in the restaurants. Spain is not a complicated thing to sell to people. It's not Ukrainian rustic country food or something. Yes, a lot of [Britons] still go to the Costas, but there is a lot more awareness of the interior of Spain now and the quality of the food and drink. Twenty years ago, a lot of the wine wasn't very good. With modern wine-making techniques, brilliant wine is being made across the country. And the food is on the map now - Spain consistently has four restaurants in the top 10 [of the world's best restaurants]. We're not doing Michelin-starred food, but that filters down. After returning from his travels, an experience at a large UK catering group in his early twenties almost put Bigg off the industry for life. The way staff were treated was barbaric. They were paid virtually nothing at all and when someone went on holiday, someone else was left doing a double shift with no extra pay," he says. He left that job and spent the next few years as a motorcycle dispatch rider, classic cars salesman and, in an indulgence that used up his inheritance from his grandmother, as a Formula Ford driver. It was expensive, vicious and involved a lot of crashes but it was a great experience. But I ran out of money so couldn't continue. Eventually, he was persuaded back into catering at 28 after "running out of ideas." A contact got him work as a restaurant manager, and after one of his many brushes with death - this time in a convertible sports car that landed upside down in a ditch - he decided to start his own bar. I felt I was meant to stick around and relish life and do the best I can. I had to open something of my own - but only after I'd done a course on how to run a bar and restaurant and realised I knew most of it already. That first bar, Cantaloupe, in Shoreditch, east London, was opened by Bigg and business partner Nigel Foster in 1995 "before the area was cool." Bigg put his house up as collateral for the start-up. My then wife said, what if it fails? I said, we get a caravan. I realised something was wrong with the relationship when she didn't want me to do it. I thought, I've had this idea longer than I've known you so I'm doing it anyway. That marriage didn't work out. Bigg and Foster opened Camino in 2007 based on almost two decades" worth of experience in operating and selling bars, as well as the scars that came with running The Big Chill music festival. The main thing we took into this is how not to do it. The group, which is projecting sales of £10m this year, consists of three sites, all in London, with another due to open in the capital in May. Bigg is all too aware that consumers often associate more outlets with less quality. As such, he's trying to give each one its own identity. A site in King's Cross has a partner - a sherry haven called Bar Pepito ("we're reviving the world's most unfashionable drink"), while the restaurant opening in May, in Blackfriars, features the city's first dedicated cava bar. Bigg says he and Foster didn't even consider asking for bank debt to fund their cautious Camino expansion plan. You'd be wasting your time at the moment. While backing from the BGF came at a cost of 25pc of the £6m turnover business, Bigg is hoping equity investment will help to professionalise the operation. They're experts in crunching the numbers, making us more efficient without damaging the spirit of the place. It is support in IT, HR that makes it more of a success," he says. Camino is profitable, but the BGF is looking at ways to improve its margins. Bigg is determined that shouldn't mean aggressive cost-cutting. We don't want to start cutting corners with the sourcing of food. There's a balancing act. You have to be really careful - every change has a knock-on effect. There are certain things you have to keep. Most places I have worked in treated staff really badly and just cracked the whip the whole time. I swore I would do the opposite. Instead of three managers, we have four. And, unlike in most restaurants, our staff keep all of the service charge. It's quite simple really - I don't want people working stupid hours, resenting me and being moody with customers.