How Fallow Keeps Service Sharp, On and Off Camera

There aren't many UK restaurants where the food and the following grow at the same rate. Fallow has managed it. Since Jack Croft and Will Murray opened the doors in St James's Market in 2021, the restaurant has built a reputation for nose-to-tail cooking, excellent social media content, and recognition in the Michelin Guide.

Fallow is a fitting name. Fallow land is left to rest and regenerate before it's planted again, and their kitchen works the same way, treating every ingredient as something to use fully rather than waste, whether that's the cod's head or corn ribs made from off-cuts.

Fallow has now switched its point of sale to Toast, bringing Toast Go 3 handhelds, Toast Flex terminals and kitchen display screens into a business that runs on covers and content in roughly equal measure.

When a large share of your bookings come from people who have seen your kitchen videos, the gap between what the audience expects and what happens table-side has to stay small. Growing fast while keeping every table as happy as the last one takes real discipline, and it's clearly something Fallow has figured out.

Raised in front of the camera

Fallow has been building its online audience for over a decade now. Croft and Murray met working under Heston Blumenthal at Dinner, where they decided to show people what actually happens inside a professional kitchen. 

Videos of service from behind the pass, recipe breakdowns, even posts explaining how dishes are priced to make a margin, have built an audience that now runs into the millions across Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Fallow has also expanded into a restaurant group, with Fowl, a fried chicken concept opening in 2023, followed by Roe in Canary Wharf in 2024.

For Fallow, its audience has become part of the business model. Diners book because they have watched the cod's head go out to a table, sriracha butter and all, dozens of times before they ever order it themselves. 

It's a strategy more and more UK restaurants are catching onto, but few do it as well as Fallow. In Toast's 2025 research into UK restaurant marketing, social media comes out as the single best-performing channel operators use, ahead of email, loyalty schemes and paid search. It is cited as one of the leading ways diners discover a new restaurant, second only to word of mouth. 

What growth costs, and how to protect it

Restaurants that grow this fast can hit a wall. Systems that worked well for one site start to strain once there are multiple kitchens, multiple service styles and a much larger team to keep aligned. 

And, the more a restaurant grows, whether through new sites, a bigger following, or both, the harder it becomes to protect the thing that made it good in the first place. 

Toast's London Restaurant Industry Report 2026 suggests Fallow's priorities are squarely in line with the rest of the capital's operators. When London restaurant owners were asked what they would focus on most for the second half of the year, improving customer experience came out well ahead of everything else, chosen by 58% of respondents, more than marketing and speed or efficiency combined. 

Taking service to the terrace

One of the more visible changes at Fallow is on the terrace, a heated outdoor space that has always been part of the appeal of the St James's site. 

Outdoor service creates its own set of headaches for any restaurant. Staff move between an indoor pass and an outdoor seating area, orders travel further before they reach the kitchen, and good weather can turn a relaxed afternoon into a rush within minutes. Fallow is now running Toast Go 3 handhelds on the terrace, letting staff take orders and payments at the table rather than making repeated trips back inside.

When Fallow doubled its footprint with the terrace, the team were already anticipating covers climbing toward 1,000 a day, up from 750 just months earlier. Shaving those steps out of service matters at that scale.

How the kitchen keeps pace

Inside, Fallow runs Toast Flex terminals alongside kitchen display screens. With a menu built around quick-turn dishes, and a kitchen serving high volumes, orders need to move from the till to the pass quickly and accurately. That’s what keeps a busy service running smoothly.

Kitchen display systems are often one of the first upgrades restaurants make as they grow, largely because they remove the friction of paper tickets and manual double entry between front and back of house.

Fallow's own content gives a good sense of why that matters. Their video following senior chef de partie AJ Shehata through an entire day, from prep through service, shows just how much has to happen in sequence before a plate reaches a table.

What Fallow's move signals for London operators

Fallow occupies an unusual but top spot in the London restaurant scene, a single site that grew into a small group with the reach of a far bigger brand. Other ambitious London operators have taken note, most of them drawn in by the social output. What's easy to miss is the operational story underneath it.

Even after solving the visibility problem, restaurants still face the everyday challenge of getting food out quickly, keeping staff focused on guests instead of the till, and giving the kitchen the tools to keep up with demand. Operators that build for growth from the start, rather than adding systems site by site, are far more likely to stay consistent as they expand. 

Fallow has built something rare: a restaurant that's just as compelling to watch as it is to eat in, run by a team that clearly cares about getting both right. We're proud they're doing it with Toast, and excited to see what Fallow does next.