Elevate founder Julia Baldet: Hospitality is brutal, but I don’t regret leaving finance
Each week, we dig into the memory bank of the City’s great and good. Today, Julia Baldet tells us about leaving her job in finance to set up City smoothie hotspot Elevate in Square Mile and Me
CV
- Name: Julia Baldet
- Job title: Founder of Elevate
- Previous roles: Private equity / investment banker
- Age: 30
- Born: Nice, France
- Lives: Chelsea, London
- Studied: Business
- Talents: Cooking
- Motto: One per cent better every day
- Biggest perk of the job? Free smoothies
- Coffee order: Espresso
- Cocktail order: Picante
- Smoothie order: Lean Berries with extra collagen from Elevate
- Favourite book: The Little Prince from Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
What was your first job?
Waitressing as a teenager. Long shifts, small tips and a crash course in staying calm when everything is going wrong at once. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was learning the job.
What was your first role in the City?
I started as an analyst in investment banking before moving into private equity, where I focused on consumer businesses. Looking back, it was an incredible education because I got to see how great brands are built from the inside.
When did you know you wanted to build a career in hospitality?
For most of my twenties, I thought I’d stay in finance. The turning point came when stress started affecting my health and I became fascinated by nutrition and wellness. What began as a personal interest eventually became an obsession, and after years of analysing businesses, I realised I wanted to build one myself.
What’s one thing you love about Canada?
The density of ambition. Running Elevate from Royal Exchange means our customers are founders, bankers, lawyers, traders, people who are building things, closing things, fixing things. I love the pace of the City.
And one thing you would change?
More places to sit outside. The City has come a long way in feeling less corporate, but on a sunny day there still aren’t enough spots to actually enjoy it. A few more parks, a few more terraces, and it would be unrecognisable.
What’s been your most memorable business lunch?
Sitting in a cafe with an angel investor for what was meant to be a 45-minute coffee, and looking up four hours later having got our first yes. It was early in the raise, the nos had started to blur into each other, and I’d more or less forgotten what a yes was going to feel like.
And any business faux pas?
I am actually quite clumsy and have spilled coffee on myself more times that I can remember. The last time was spilling my blueberry smoothie on my white shirt just before recording a video podcast.
What’s been your proudest moment?
Opening Elevate’s first store at the Royal Exchange. For over a year it existed as a concept, a business plan and a construction site. Seeing customers queue for something that had only existed in my head not long before was surreal.
And who do you look up to?
Emma Grede. She’s a British founder who’s built genuinely category-defining consumer brands without losing the commercial discipline underneath; that combination of brand instinct and operational seriousness is what I’m trying to build at Elevate. I also have huge respect for the women running independent hospitality businesses across London right now.
What’s the best career advice you’ve ever been given?
“If you’re waiting to feel certain, you’ll wait forever.” I think about it constantly. Every decision a founder makes is made with incomplete information, and the job is to get comfortable moving anyway.
And the worst?
“Don’t do hospitality, the margins are brutal.” It’s the warning every finance person gives you the moment you mention opening a physical site. They’re not wrong about the margins but they’re wrong about it being a reason not to do it.
Are you optimistic for the year ahead?
Yes, which I realise is an unfashionable answer. But I run a smoothie business, so professional optimism is more or less a job requirement.
We’re going for lunch, and you’re picking – where are we going?
L’Entrecote because it feels like home.
And if we’re grabbing a drink after work?
The Ned.
Where’s home during the week?
Chelsea, a long way from the City!
And where might we find you at the weekend?
West London. It has a different rhythm to the City, and after the week I’ve usually had, that’s the whole point.
You’ve got a well-deserved two weeks off. Where are you going and who with?
Home, in the South of France, with family. There’s something about being back there that resets me in a way no other holiday quite manages. Long meals, slow mornings and the sea close by. Two weeks would feel like a luxury.