Ambition, certainly. Capital. Great sites. Great concepts. But after spending time with CEO Ed Devenport and the Incipio team at the new Olympia, we came away thinking the more interesting answers are about leadership, organisational capacity, operational discipline — and an extraordinary tolerance for uncertainty.

Olympia is being transformed into a £1.3bn mixed-use cultural and commercial district, led by Yoo Capital and Deutsche Finance International, bringing together exhibitions, offices, hotels, live entertainment, restaurants, bars and public space.

Hospitality isn't simply an amenity within that vision; it is fundamental to making the place work.

One opportunity. A business doubled in scale.

Incipio has taken around 39,000 sq ft of f&b space at Olympia. A tour of the Incipio operation with operations director Cormac Rawson and brand & marketing director Rory Graham, took in five new propositions: food hall Arbour, Japanese restaurant and bar Wolves of Tokyo, the Mexican-inspired rooftop Bar Arriba and English garden-influenced Lillie's. A sixth addition, Juno, an all-day Italian restaurant opening soon.

The ambition is for each to feel distinct: different identities, audiences and occasions. And it’s also meant the learning of new operational skills, especially around food-to-go in Arbour. Behind them, however, sits shared infrastructure, kitchens, people, training and systems.

Differentiation at the front. Leverage at the back.

At maturity, Olympia is expected to roughly double Incipio's turnover to around £50m. Ed's stated ambition is around 20 venues, £100m turnover and more than £20m of site EBITDA by 2030. Over lunch in the sunshine at Lillie’s with Ed, Cormac and Rory, it’s clear how Olympia is a staging post in building a hospitality company of genuine scale.

Scale creates opportunity — and risk

Boards talk constantly about growth. But opening sites is the easy part to put on the PowerPoint. The harder question is: can the organisation absorb the growth?

Olympia has required Incipio to recruit and train at scale, create six propositions simultaneously, strengthen its leadership team and build an operating model capable of flexing around a highly variable demand curve.

An exhibition can suddenly deliver thousands of people. A major live event changes the evening. A hot London afternoon can transform rooftop demand. An ordinary Tuesday in January may look entirely different. Luckily the team is already seeing the development of a local clientele to back-up the event hotspots, but they talk realistically about a 6–18 month build rather than judging the opportunity by its first few weeks.

Then there is development risk. Opening dates moved. Teams were recruited, trained and redeployed while pre-opening costs continued and revenues were delayed. That is one of the realities of major regeneration projects: the bigger the opportunity, the more of your destiny you may be placing in someone else's hands.

Leadership when the plan keeps changing

What stood out was the lack of drama from the leadership that has clearly faced a demanding period. Ed has a distinct “we've got this” confidence — backed by greater management depth around him, including Cormac operationally, Rory across brand and marketing and Josie Adams leading people development.

It underlines a fundamental point about scaling: you don't simply need more people, you need more leadership. A £25m company cannot necessarily become a £50m company with the same structures, decision-making and founder dependency. A £50m company aspiring to £100m has to evolve again.

Hospitality as placemaking

Olympia is also a reminder of hospitality's growing role in placemaking. Developers can create beautiful buildings. Hospitality creates reasons to arrive early, stay afterwards, hold the meeting there — or visit without an exhibition or concert ticket at all.

Done well, restaurants and bars create footfall, dwell time, spend, community and cultural capital. Major exhibitions and live events bring not just consumers, but global brands, technology businesses and corporate marketing budgets - creating potential for private hire, launches, hospitality and brand activations alongside everyday consumer trade.

Britain needs more operators willing to think big

On our Atlantic Club trips in the US, we regularly meet hospitality businesses with the confidence and organisational infrastructure to think at considerable scale.

Scale isn't an end in itself. But it creates management depth, technology investment, purchasing power, stronger talent pathways and the capacity to make bigger bets. UK hospitality needs more well-capitalised, well-led and operationally disciplined growth.

Years ago, Ed operated a rooftop bar above the car park at Olympia. He built the relationship and stayed close to the opportunity. Today, you can see the result.

Christine and Peter Martin are co-founders of Peach 20/20 and Atlantic Club