Yesterday, IdeasTap towers took some time out to talk bread.

Bread in both its wheat and money form, for this was the first of our IdeasTap Spa career stories with the intrepid entrepreneur and founder of Pret a Manger, Sinclair Beecham.

After ditching his workaday life in a bank, Beecham, aged just 23, borrowed £17,000 from his dangerously generous bank manager, found some premises, ordered a load of sheet metal and the Pret revolution was born.

Sinclair took questions from the audience, as well as interviewer Tim Wilson, on the nature of entrepreneurship, how to manage debt and business planning. Here are some choice extracts from the talk...

On doubts along the way: “Having no other way out can be quite compelling. It’s like driving a car at a wall – you have to find out where the brakes are pretty damn quick. And so you do. When you have no exit plan you just have to make it work.”

On the 1980s food revolution: “We basically decided that food didn’t have to be disgusting. American service was great and food in France was delicious. We just needed to combine the two.”

On the early days: “On the day of the royal wedding, between Fergie and Prince Andrew, we took bread baskets full of our unsold sandwiches down to Parliament Square and sold them for 50p each.”

On the key to a successful business: “Ideas are 10 a penny. You’ve got to work out how to operationally manage a business. Your business has got to have something special. You’ve got to do what you do better than other people.”

On being demanding: “You’ve got to be unreasonable to achieve high standards. George Bernard Shaw once wrote, 'The reasonable man adapts himself to the conditions that surround him... The unreasonable man adapts surrounding conditions to himself... All progress depends on the unreasonable man.'”

On debt: “People have a very lax attitude to debt, but I would tell young people to be very wary. It takes a very, very long time to pay it off and in a business you need a certain amount of cash flow.”

Nell