Established independent town centre hospitality business Starling took the decision to switch to Wild & Co Chartered Accountants for timely visibility of its numbers and a more collaborative relationship with its advisor.

Owner Simon Midgley set up the thriving bar and restaurant business in a historic building on Harrogate’s Oxford Street in 2016. His vision was to create a relaxed space where people could enjoy craft beer and specialist coffee as well as great food throughout the day and into the evening.

The result is a venue where people love to meet for coffee, lunch, after work drinks and evening meals. Starling also has a fantastic event space for corporate entertaining and private functions/parties.

Just over a year ago Starling underwent a major expansion project which has created a spacious and vibrant ground floor café bar in addition to its upstairs rooms. Simon and his team are delighted that the business is thriving, with a loyal clientele and new people discovering it daily.

Wild and Co moved Simon from a paper-based system, which gave him very little clarity, to fully digitised accounting. We set everything up quickly and ensured a smooth transition so that we could work alongside Simon to extract reports, analyse the data and use real-time information for forecasting, decision making and tax efficiency.

We have been with Simon throughout the development project, which saw the business expand into neighbouring premises to more than triple the ground floor customer space.

Simon is an astute businessperson who knows his sector and customer inside out. We have been able to bring the clarity and openness he needed to push ahead with his expansion plans with confidence and make informed day-to-day decisions based on accurate data.

We are delighted to see how well his business is doing and are excited to watch it evolve.

"Wild & Co made it really easy for us to transition from our old accountant. They took control of everything for us, speaking to our previous firm and making sure the move was completely seamless. It felt like an immediate weight had been lifted, with all the previous problems of a paper-based system and inconsistent management accounts disappearing.

They have introduced the discipline of producing results within a month of quarter end. It means I always have meaningful numbers to look at and I know where I am, whatever time of year it is. If there’s an issue, it’s identified at once and the tanker can be turned quickly, which is priceless for me. It gives me the information I need to confidently make decisions."

Simon Midgley