When I was a waiter at Mullaghfin (Co Meath) in my university holidays I may have had some sort of gauche charm but I entirely lacked professionalism.
Today a restaurant owner needs to have a handle on the property market, train and retain staff, create an agreeable atmosphere and attract customers – they are not “guests”, guests don’t pay. Oh, and the food better be spot on too if you want customers to return.
I went recently to a French restaurant in walking distance that looked attractive and had a good menu. I had pâté to start. I had to ask for bread and, eventually, a small triangle of toasted rye bread appeared. There was no butter. I did not like the main course. Perhaps I am wrong but I never think complaining changes anything, so I just don’t go back. It has never been easy to make money in the restaurant trade. There are success stories but they are the exception and today headwinds are buffeting even the successful ones. Alasdair Gill (son of AA Gill) writing in The Times this week:
“I’ve now spent 15 years on and off in kitchens. As a chef, there’s a reason I’ve not been tempted to open my own place. The industry is in a state — one of the few sectors where you can have a full dining room and a waiting list at the door yet still be losing money. That isn’t hyperbole, it’s arithmetic. Restaurants operate on margins of roughly 5 per cent in a good year. Costs are fixed, ingredients perish, energy runs constantly and labour isn’t an overhead but the product.”
He does not highlight what is going up: staff costs, business rates, rent, utility bills and the price of ingredients. Actually costs are not fixed. The Devonshire provided really excellent food and service at competitive prices and it’s booked solid. How does it do it? I don’t know. The River Cafe, on the river in Hammersmith, is an institution. It is expensive and inconvenient for public transport but is always full. Food and service are both irreproachable and the ambience retains an element of the staff canteen it originally was for the architects in the same building. How does it do it?
The menu has not changed much; the prices have and in only four years. The clientele are not price sensitive and, of course, do not use public transport. Attention to detail is paramount in running a successful business of any kind. Yesterday was Thursday 26th February.
This video (sixteen years old) is the first I have posted that has been watched more than one billion times, so you probably know it.