Meet the GlowgetterFarm Girl's Rose Mann

If you’ve ever visited London’s most Instagrammed café you may have wondered who is the Farm Girl? We went to meet the face behind Farm Girl, Rose Mann, 28 and to hear the story behind the healthy eatery sensation.

Where did you get the idea for Farm Girl?

I discovered café culture and cool places to eat when I was 24 travelling with my boyfriend Anthony Hood for two months. We started in the Caribbean and then did a West Coast USA road trip from Albuquerque to San Francisco.

We saw the whole vibe of West Coast, the colourful food and cool interiors which I felt London was missing. I got so much inspiration while staying at The Parker hotel in Palm Springs.

I remember sitting in Norma’s, their breakfast bar, and I ordered granola and a fruit bowl. The presentation was so beautiful.

I kept talking about food and analysed every restaurant. Every time we visited a new café I ordered the chicken salad and compared them as we travelled. My favourite was in Petit Ermitage in LA.

Talking about creating a healthy café became my passion. Then I met a woman on holiday who owned a string of London cafés. She was so kind and mentored me advising me to look at the business side of running a café- everything from weekly profit forecasts to the percentage of staff retained.

How did your background influence Farm Girl?

My childhood was spent  on a dairy farm. I was one of five children in Terang in the Western District of Victoria not too far from Melbourne. Every day after school I had a checklist with my Dad feeding the puppies, cats, ferrets, horses and my sister’s pet fox.

It gave me a great understanding of farm to fork as well as a love of animals.

We ate fresh produce every day and my mum’s vegetable garden was amazing. My father always encouraged us to eat meat from the land, eggs from the chickens and the supermarkets in Australia also sold amazing produce – never wrapped in plastic. It was like being surrounded by Wholefoods in the middle of nowhere.

My mother is English and my father is polo-player turned farmer. Every summer we came to England to stay with my grand-parents. At 20, I moved to London first studying art history at Christie’s and then working for Horiyoshi the Third, a Japanese luxury brand in Connaught Street. I did the marketing, PR and ran the shop for four years. I fell in love with the city.

We opened on June 15th, 2015.

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How did you create the Farm Girl style?

I knew what I wanted. Anthony got involved as my business partner in January 2015 taking care of the financial side. We hired David and Victoria Beckham’s private chef, Benoit Marmoiton to be across the menus and food.

We wanted to create somewhere where we would go every day.

Beata Heuman did the interior which is pretty intense. And we approached a Dorset potter, where Anthony is from, called David Archer to design and create our crockery. People now pinch it all the time so we’ve had ‘Property of Farmgirl’ stamped on the bottom.

As soon as we opened some articles came out all in the Evening Standard and Tatler listing us amongst the top 5 Instagrammable cafés in London. That’s when I realised something special was going on.