Before you blame location for the repeated failure of a restaurant site, think again. Some sites tick all the boxes as far as views, visibility, access or footfall go, but they just don't pull in the business.
One site that's been something of a poisoned chalice is the second floor of
the Oxo Tower, on London's busy South Bank. Despite million-dollar views along
the Thames, this modern space has seen off a number of restaurants including:
River Walk, headed by executive chef Richard Sawyer; Richard Neat's eponymous
restaurant; and Bistrot 2 Riverside, owned by Simpson's of
Cornhill.
Which makes restaurateur and consultant Dominic Ford either
foolhardy or damned clever, because he and business partner Pat McDonald have
just opened their new restaurant, the 120-seat Tamesa, there.
Ford
believes that it's not the site that's the problem, but rather the type of
operation that has previously been put into it. He reckons his predecessors made
the mistake of trying too hard to compete with Harvey Nichols's highly
successful Oxo Brasserie on the eighth floor. He should know, of course, because
he used to be Harvey Nichols's restaurant and food retail
director.
"They'd see Oxo doing £13.5m a year and think OK, if they can
do that we can take £8m. So, they'd spend £1m on a refurb and employ hundreds of
people on the basis that they would be doing thousands of covers a day," Ford
explains.
The reality was that they made their menus too expensive -
critics joked about taking out a second mortgage to eat at Neat London - so they
became destination restaurants. Diners would then weigh up the prices and decide
they might as well go for the panoramic view on the eighth floor.
Armed
with this knowledge, Ford and McDonald have spent only £100,000 to open the
restaurant, bought the bar furniture off E-bay and are targeting local custom by
making it fun and affordable at £20 for lunch including wine, versus £35
upstairs at Oxo. Some 75% of the wine list is under £25.
Also, unlike
their predecessors, they have opened the restaurant in partnership with the
landlord, Coin Street Community Builders, which means the overheads are unlikely
to be as high as for the other operators.
"We are moulding the offer to
the site and listening to the people who own the building," Ford says. "It is a
targeted approach to get customers who live and work in the area. Oxo is a
destination; Tamesa is informal and relaxed."
The theory that it's the
food and pricing that matter as much as the location is borne out through
example. Increasingly, operators are seeing the benefit of taking on unpopular
sites. Restaurant chains such as Prezzo, for example, manage to pick up premises
with lower rents at the wrong end of the high street and still make them
work.
Brand loyalty
"It's a good test of a
brand's equity and loyalty if it can open up off prime pitch and still drive
traffic," says Peter Antenen, principal at management and marketing practice
Antenen Consulting. "Also, this is a good site-type for stronger brands to pick
up as often they come at cheaper rents if there's been a history of restaurant
closures."
David Abramson, agency director at Davis Coffer Lyons, cites
Wagamama founder Alan Yau as a restaurateur who has always had the faith in his
concepts to take non-prime sites.
"We handled his first-ever deal for
Wagamama in Streatham Street in an obscure location off New Oxford Street - a
basement with only a minimal impact entrance. The rest is history," Abramson
says.
But Yau has not always had success with this strategy. It took a
newcomer to turn around the fortunes of a site in Baker Street that had seen
several restaurants fail, including Yau's short-lived Anda. That newcomer is
Galvin Bistrot de Luxe, which has enjoyed critical acclaim and a burgeoning
reservations book since its launch back in September. It was the affordable rent
resulting from a bad track record that initially attracted co-owners Chris and
Jeff Galvin, as they couldn't pay prime rents for their first solo venture.
Besides the food, one of the secrets of their success is that they drew up a
tight, conservative business plan and prepared themselves for a slow burn -
although ironically it meant they initially struggled to cope with the
unexpected volume of bookings.
Outside London, Simon Wright, a consultant
on the TV show Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares, reckons that the location factor,
such as whether a restaurant is on the first floor, in a basement, or out on a
limb matters less. "It's still important but less so because outside the capital
it is so hard to find anywhere decent to eat," he says.
Even in London,
food and quality of service are paramount, as shown by the fact people will
travel to a one-off destination restaurant - the likes of Hakkasan, the Ivy,
Amaya and Zuma - in non-mainstream London streets. However, as Abramson at Davis
Coffer Lyons says, the surrounding area must have a certain level of affluence
for a good-quality restaurant to work, otherwise the right clientele can be
deterred even from real destination restaurants.
"Hakkasan, for example,
is not on a prime site itself, but is nonetheless in the heart of the West End,"
explains Abramson. "Similarly, Hush is in Lancashire Court, tucked away at the
back of Bond Street, yet it continues to draw great crowds there."
Just jinxed?
While some sites fail because of
bad menus or poor locations, others just seem inexplicably jinxed. Take
Pharmacy, which replaced another restaurant on a prominent site in London's
fashionable Notting Hill, but closed after six years, having made huge losses
for owner the Hartford Group. This is despite the fact it had been designed by
artist Damien Hirst, was well funded and, as food critic Matthew Fort says, was
"a well-received concept that was not wildly over-priced".
It was
subsequently re-let by the landlord to retailer Marks & Spencer. So why did
it fail as a restaurant site?
"Maybe there's something about the feng
shui of a place," Fort says. "If someone opens a brilliant restaurant with great
food, you'd think it would thrive."
It's an idea he examined in a recent
Guardian review of Jan Woroniecki's Chez Kristof restaurant in Hammersmith
Grove.
He wrote: "It's run by a talented restaurateur, in a spot
surrounded by moneyed professionals desperate for a swanky local restaurant...
on paper Chez Kristof looks a goldmine. And yet... as suggested by the dearth of
punters the night we went, something about it isn't quite right."
Fort
admits, as a fan of Woroniecki's Baltic restaurant, to being disappointed with
the cooking at Chez Kristof. But he also wonders if the fact it is on a
troublesome site - it replaced Sam and Sam Clark's failed Maquis - might be part
of the problem.
"You want it to work, but the room is too big and grand
for a local place and the food wasn't quite good enough. Maybe it's also got the
veneer of disuse," he says.
Just because a site has failed previously as
a restaurant, however, it doesn't mean that it will fail again - Galvin being a
case in point. Fundamentally, it is the offering that is the most important
element. So how should an incoming restaurateur of a "troublesome site" handle
the publicity?
"For restaurants opening on sites with a past where there
is no named chef or established group behind it, we would recommend that the
owners undertake a really good marketing campaign before embarking on PR," says
Gaby Riley of PR company JRPR.
"In this way, the local residents and
businesses, which are the bread and butter for the restaurant, are notified of
the changes and encouraged to adopt the restaurant - and it gives the owners an
opportunity to check that their product is right."
Riley adds that PR
can be useful later on to cement the restaurant's standing and help promote it
as a destination venue. This means the press come in and review the food in a
bustling atmosphere, so they are less likely to concentrate on the bad
reputation of a predecessor.
Needless to say, then, reputation is
crucial. Outside London people often have to make a journey to find good food,
so a bad review of food, service and ambience can mean that journey is never
made.
Poor reviews
The story in London is pretty
similar. Pengelley's - backed by the hugely successful Gordon Ramsay Holdings -
opened on the site of Jamie Oliver's Montes in Sloane Street. But it had a run
of poor reviews and it closed within 10 months of opening. Besides the menu, one
of the problems cited by observers is that he didn't do enough to bring local
residents on board.
But life goes on. The chef, Ian Pengelley, is about
to open a new restaurant in Camden called Gilgamesh, while Gordon Ramsay
Holdings is bringing ex-Greenhouse chef Bjorn van der Horst into the vacated
Sloane Street site with a fine-dining venture called La Noisette. Watch this
space.
Checkpoints
Difficult sites
Survivors
One to watch...
Alan Yau's transformation of Shumi,
formerly Che, into a Japanese restaurant. Previous owner Steamroller Restaurants
was forced to close its controversial Italian-Japanese concept on St James'
Street restaurant after 18 months.
Source: Peter Antenen, principal,
Antenen Consulting; David Abramson, agency director, Davis Coffer
Lyons
Why restaurants keep failing
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