Get ready to be inspired by Andy Banner-Price, the co-owner of The 25 Boutique B&B in Torquay, where meticulous standards and exceptional hospitality are the norm. Together with his husband Julian, Andy has turned their B&B into an award-winning retreat, celebrated as one of the best in the world.
Andy isn’t just a hospitality expert; he’s also a sought-after public speaker, sharing his wealth of knowledge on hospitality and customer experience. In late 2024, he was honored with the Outstanding Contribution to Tourism Award at the Devon Tourism Awards, recognising his unwavering dedication to the industry.
But that’s not all – Andy has also launched Neon Duck, a consultancy company aimed at helping other businesses elevate their customer service.
As a leading figure in the South West hospitality scene, I’m thrilled to bring you this interview with Andy, a true inspiration and a powerhouse in the industry!
What does your Monday morning routine look like?
My Monday morning routine looks exactly the same as every other day of the week. I get up really early because we do everything ourselves. I do a little bit of office prep first thing, then I move to the restaurant and the breakfast room. Julian cooks the breakfast and I serve it, so I’ll be taking orders, chatting to the guests, seeing how they’ve slept and what they’re doing that day, maybe making recommendations for where they can go. We have a buffet on the side for them to help themselves to with lots of homemade things including yoghurt, granola, and smoothies. We also have a hot menu with the usual Full English, but we’ve also got Eggs Benedict, Porridge, and Banner-Price Beans. My husband, Julian, always had baked beans with a poached egg and as a kid I had baked beans with grated cheese, so we put those together and now we have Baked Beans with a Poached Egg and Cheese! After breakfast, we move into checkouts and on to cleaning. My mornings are fairly rigid because we’ve got the guests and there’s the obvious looking after them, but my afternoons tend to be slightly different depending on what I’m doing.
If you could time travel and have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be and why?
There are so many people that would be interesting to meet! Probably someone like Alan Turing, not just because he would be a really interesting person to speak to, but I think he died in the late ‘50s and I would like to tell him how things have changed and that just a decade later homosexuality was decriminalised and in the decades to come we were given more equal rights, we’re able to get married and adopt and have the same pension rights. Things do get better and improve with the years. I think he was treated very unjustly.
What’s a hidden talent or skill that most people don’t know you possess?
Most people know that I’m pretty good at baking and I have a flair for interior design, because they keep telling me that I should go on Bake Off and Interior Design Masters. I don’t have the time to commit to filming… I suppose most people don’t know that I used to be a podium dancer!! I can dance and I still do ‘Tragedy’ if I need to…if Steps! comes on at a wedding!
Beach vacation, mountain getaway or city escape?
Not necessarily beach because I’m not really into swimming and I think the sand gets everywhere! But I do like hot countries and kind of just sitting by the pool on a sunbed, reading my book, switching off and baking in the heat. But I do also like city breaks if there are interesting tourist attractions and nice shops that I can wander around in. I quite like shopping and I try and get a Christmas decoration wherever I go, so each year when I decorate the Christmas tree I’ve got hundreds of decorations from all over the world. Lots and lots of happy memories!
Name one thing on your bucket list that you still need to do.
I did threaten I might jump out of a plane. I would quite like to, and I wouldn’t say I’m afraid of heights, but I like to feel safe. I’m quite happy with a high building as long as I know I’m not going anywhere and there’s a barrier or something, but actually trusting a parachute and looking down and having nothing underneath me… I don’t know how I’d feel then.
What’s your favourite way to unwind and de-stress?
Anything where I would put my phone down really! So when I’m watching a film and really getting into it and concentrating on the characters and the plot. Or a play or a meal out for instance. I can put my phone away and have a conversation and that is de-stressing because I’m no longer thinking about work. I also de-stress by going to the gym, but I’m quite bad as I still have my phone and check it periodically, so I’m not fully de-stressing!
Share a quote or motto that inspires you or by which you live your life.
A quote I give to other people regularly now, having had cancer, is ‘Live for today and not for tomorrow!’ A lot of people save hard for retirement and pension and stuff, which is a good thing to do, but a lot of people don’t get that far, or they retire, but don’t have the health to enjoy it. So, I’m very much in favour of ‘Live for Today’. If I see something I like and it’s maybe a bit more than I would normally spend, I’ll just buy it anyway and enjoy it! It’s like my Union Jack shoes – three years ago I wouldn’t have spent that kind of money on a pair of shoes! Both my parents have had ill health in retirement, not being able to do a lot of the things they had wanted to do and it’s always in the back of my head… What if the cancer comes back? And also with COVID, we all lost a couple of years and there’s so many things going on in the world with wars, the economy etc… You never know what the future holds, so enjoy it while you can!
What job is the favourite you’ve ever had and what made it so special?
I’ve had so many jobs, and I love what we do now, but at our last hotel, we also did weddings. We did everything. They’d get married at the hotel, so they’d arrive beforehand, get all the family together and then the next day have the wedding and then we’d do the reception – literally every single aspect, because we were a small team and I was making the canapés and cooking and making the wedding breakfast and Julian and a member of staff were serving the reception drinks etc. To be completely in control of such a massive part of someone’s life, being part of such great memories, it really gives you a sense of achievement! And they come back, year after year for their anniversary. It’s really nice when they check out and say; ‘It’s the best place I’ve ever stayed!’ or ‘You’ve really made my 50th birthday special’ or ‘I’ve had an amazing wedding anniversary.’ It’s really fulfilling.
The hotel was in North Wales and was our first foray into hospitality! We made a rather random decision one night, having no experience whatsoever! It was a bit of a steep learning curve, shall we say. We used to have friends over for dinner parties and they’d stay over and we’d cook breakfast the next day and we’d give them tea and cake on arrival, so we were thinking ‘how hard could it really be?’ Very hard as we found out!!
Morning person or night owl?
I much prefer to get up really early and get some work done before the phone starts ringing and the guests are up and about. Evenings I prefer to have as ‘me’ time and by then I’m tired and ready for bed!
If you were to write a book, what genre would it be?
I’ve said for a long time that I’d like to write my memoirs and I’ve been making notes for years about the funny things that happen, or the weird and strange guests we sometimes have. I don’t know whether people outside the industry would actually believe half the stories that I would put in there. I thought of doing it in a diary format – like a ‘12 months in the life of’, but with all the stories in one year! At the end of each month, having one of my recipes. We put a treat in the rooms every single day – either freshly baked biscuits or cake or fudge and I get asked for my recipes a lot. So a memoir-come-recipe book. I think it would be something a little bit different!
What’s a skill you’ve always wanted to learn but haven’t had the chance to yet?
Having done some podium dancing, I’ve always quite fancied having a go at ballroom dancing. A local hospice, Rowcroft Hospice, is doing a Strictly Come Dancing charity event in May, so I’ll actually have a chance to do that!
I’ll be dancing a slow foxtrot and a jive. The lessons are going ok and I’ve finally gotten to the end of the choreography for both, so now it’s a matter of committing it to memory then finessing it over the coming weeks. The final will be at the local Princess Theatre on 17th May in front of 1500 people! It’s much harder than I thought it would be though. The jive is really fast paced and there are 57 different bits to perform in just over two minutes! I thought I was getting the foxtrot in my head, then they added that some steps are on my toes and some are on my heels. You can sponsor me HERE.
If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?
If you had asked me two years ago, I would’ve said chocolate, because I was a complete chocoholic and I ate far more chocolate than I should have done. But since my throat/tongue cancer, I struggle because they burnt off my taste buds and my saliva glands as part of the radiotherapy treatment. Both have come back, but probably only about 85%, if that, and my sweet taste buds are the ones that were most affected. You don’t realise how much saliva you need to break down and melt chocolate in your mouth, so eating that now is like eating candle wax and the longer it’s in my mouth the worse it tastes! I don’t really enjoy food as much as I used to. Nothing tastes as full of flavour as it used to, so I’m not so bothered about food anymore – it’s just a necessity to keep me alive, so there’s nothing I can think of that I’d love to eat more of. It’s just a take it or leave it kind of thing now.
What are you currently listening to?
Lady Gaga’s new album “Mayhem” is good. I listen to that in the rooms when I’m cleaning. I also listen to The Archers podcast every morning when I’m having my breakfast. My dad used to listen to The Archers when I was a kid. I was brought up on it, so I automatically downloaded it to my phone when that became available. It’s less than 15 minutes, so easy to fit in over breakfast. It’s the only soap I’m into!
What inspires you?
I went to the International Head and Neck Cancer conference for a couple of days in Sheffield and it was really inspiring to speak to other throat cancer or head and neck cancer survivors and hear their stories. I went through absolute hell when I was going through my treatment, but then you meet people who have been through even worse! There was a girl who was only twenty-four and she’s had cancer four times in her life and there was a lady from America, whose book I’m reading at the moment. She was an opera singer at the height of her career and then she had cancer in her face and had to have most of her jaw and part of her eye socket removed. It’s a horrid cancer, both treatment-wise and how it affects your whole future, and it’s inspiring to see how other people just get on with life. To speak to other people and know there is still a future out there.
What would you do if you weren’t in the food, drink & hospitality industry?
I really like the ‘Changing Rooms’ effect. Doing up a new room, taking it from an empty shell to a finished room when it looks amazing with the decorations, the cushions, the new curtains, etc. It’s kind of the same thing with houses. I’d possibly be a property developer and buy really rundown houses and do them up and sell them on, creating something from nothing. I think you need to be a particular type of person for that. To walk into a house and see a completely different version of a room, fully finished in your head. Julian is the complete opposite. I’ll say I’m going to paint the room this colour and put this there and this over here and he’s like ‘I have no idea what that’s going to look like, but it sounds horrible’ and it’s not until I’ve put the last cushion down on the bed that he’s ‘Oh, I see what you mean now. Yeah, it looks fabulous!’
Head on over to The 25 Boutique B&B to make a booking and follow along on Facebook and Instagram or contact Andy via LinkedIn.
