"Let them eat steak"

My experience at Whitbread, culminating in the creation of Bar + Block in 2016, serves as a perfect showcase for my career, bringing all my skills & experiences together into one piece of work.??Creating a restaurant business from scratch drew on all the brand building, product and marketing skills developed in my earlier career, blended with the operational, people management and P&L experience acquired in more recent years.??That blend enabled me to develop a business that worked from the outside in, and from the inside out.

I’d enjoyed success re-inventing existing brands in the Whitbread portfolio such as Beefeater to make them grow again in their own right, while also growing RevPAR in the Premier Inn hotels we operated next door.??That success led our Board to invest in creating restaurants in high street locations and outside the Premier Inn model.??This was achieved in part through M&A, acquiring a 49% stake in the healthy food brand Pure. But we also wanted to leverage in-house skills to create our own brands for growth, a venture I led with a small but perfectly formed team for one of the most fulfilling phases of my career.

When we looked at the UK high street, we saw a big untapped opportunity around steak.??For many people, steak was their go-to treat when they were indulging, they didn’t back themselves to prepare it well at home and when we looked at the competitive field we noticed steak restaurants were typically too ‘pub like’, too dark, too formal, and often far too expensive.??There was a gap in the market for a more relaxed, accessible, affordable steak experience.??People were also looking for a safe place to explore steak.??Most customers had a default they typically reverted to – often ill advised, such a "rump, well done" (get ready to chew) – and would value some expertise to find the perfect steak for them, without being made to feel like an idiot.

Having spent time in the US looking at restaurants over there, we realised the bar was also an essential component of any good urban restaurant experience.??A great source of additional revenue, sure.??But a good bar also provided a low-risk way to test a venue before you sat down for a meal, created buzz to draw people in and offered a space where solo diners could enjoy a bite to eat either at the bar or in a cosy corner close by.??Where steak was concerned, the bar was also the source of perfect partners for the food being served, be that a glass of red to match the flavour of your steak or perhaps an ice cold beer to refresh your palette as you munched on a stack of crisp, salted fries accompanying your meal.

With these insights fresh in our mind, we went about creating our new restaurant, and we called it Bar + Block.??The Bar bit???Well, we had one! It was prominent, offered the appropriate range of drinks including craft beers and freshly prepared cocktails & mocktails, and created the buzz we were looking for.??And the Block???That was our butchers block, the place where our steaks, all sourced from the Pampas in South America, were cut fresh to order, with any off-cuts going into the house-made steak burgers we also sold – a smart way of creating added menu appeal while maximising yield & margin.

All the prime cuts were available on our menu, including some variations people particularly enjoyed like the spiral cut fillet, all prepared to your preferred size & specification.??But we also offered a range of rotating steak specials from our butchers block; a family of less familiar cuts & serving suggestions including a hanger, flat iron, NY strip, flank, brisket or porterhouse to share.??These cuts came to us in smaller quantities, so when they were gone, they were gone.??They showcased our steak expertise and gave us new news to share with customers to drive footfall and spend.

The menu broadened to cover a range of occasions and dayparts.??Time to Rise + Shine? We served breakfast & brunch, including steak & eggs, naturally.??Prefer to Munch + Nibble while at the bar? Our sharing options were the perfect companion for a drink or few, the ploughman’s block becoming a particular favourite for the fresh-made, warm scotch eggs they included.??Or if you longed for something Sweet + Satisfying, how about a chocolate & toffee fondue for two.??We also served our best every seventh day; a Sunday roast sharer with sliced sirloin and all the trimmings, served its own roasting tin - nothing else like it on the high street.

While we ensured the menu was sufficiently broad to meet different customer needs, this was not achieved at the expense of operational simplicity.??I’d learned a lot about that in my previous years in the business.??Big menus can lead to big problems with quality, consistency and speed. Our menu was designed to maximise speed of service, with high utilisation of common ingredients and smart use of technology, including a kitchen management system (KMS) and Kopa oven to ensure we got the balance of speed, quality and service spot on.

Cracking lunch was a particular challenge.??Perceived as slow and better suited to evening appetites, steak did not always project the speed or lightness required for middle-of-the-day dining.??We needed something swift, confident and eye catching.??Enter our Express Menu, designed for people who were Hurried + Hungry.??Every dish was served fresh in under 10 minutes for under??￡10 (including a drink), guaranteed.??And for a bit of theatre, when you ordered from this menu we popped a 10-minute sand timer on your table, an assurance to our guests and helpful operational nod to check progress if the timer was running low.??It was a roaring success, with two thirds of our lunch business running through that menu at a c.70% margin.

As with other experiences in my career, I was reminded that simple touches often generate the greatest impact.??Having observed the ‘nesting’ routine people go through when they’re first seated, we introduced two elements to give people space to settle into their visit. Steak flavoured popcorn and still/sparkling water, all free of charge.??The popcorn was a brand cue, tasted surprisingly good and gave people something to share & munch on as they browsed the menu.??The water quenched their thirst and got them ready for a real drink.??Both were generosity cues, and they worked remarkably well.??Our TripAdvisor reviews were full of positive comments about both gestures, and our drink sales were better in Bar + Block than any brand in our portfolio.??That’s right: free drink = sell more drink.??Logic wouldn’t get you to such breakthrough’s, but a leap will.??And both gestures cost us peanuts, even if one of them was popcorn.

The environment we created to house the whole experience was designed to be informal, flexible and demonstrate our steak?expertise.?The bar was set as the hub around which the spokes of the restaurant spread, with relaxed casual dining on?one side, high-table dining and drinks on the other, and critically no guest ever too far away from the action.??In the bar area, the high tables were adorned with planter boxes on wheels that slid up and down to personalise your space.??A simple way to make an open area feel more personal, intimate and separated from other diners, something we could all learn from in Covid times. Less murder tape, more thoughtful and sympathetic design, please.??Philip Harrison and his team did a fabulous job.

Beautiful spaces and appetising menus are all well and good, but they only come to life when you inject people into them.??Our people were our main ingredient and we worked tirelessly to ensure every Bar + Block colleague made the cut.??They needed to be passionate about steak and knowledgeable about everything we prepared.??Every member of the team went through comprehensive menu training, learning about our cattle, cuts, ageing process, butchering, storing, portioning, the lot.??They also needed a strong vocation for service and looking after people.??We recruited for attitude, personality and a passion for food & service over any prior sector knowledge (that bit can be trained), and often found qualified actors in our herd looking to supplement their wages.??Making the experience memorable was key. We were in the memory making business after all.

Furnished with all the ingredients we’d prepared, we were Primed + Ready for action.??We opened our first Bar + Block in Birmingham in February 2016, a second in the flourishing food scene of Kings Cross in November that year and several others in the months that followed.??Every site was a success, as a collective the restaurants delivering +90% likelihood to recommend, 4.5/5 on TripAdvisor, strong double-digit LFL sales growth and a +20% ROCE making them an attractive investment option for Whitbread.??Beyond their commercial success, they marked a high-point in my career.??Bar + Block is one of my proudest creations and the people who were on the journey with me remain fond friends to this day.??Inventive + Inspiring.??Enriching + Rewarding.??Bar + Block.