The devil is in the detail

It’s the small things that can make or break a restaurant, says Hugo Arnold, like the difference between spinach and Swiss chard …

THE PROPOSAL was to substitute Swiss chard for spinach on the list of side dishes.  Great idea I thought; it makes a change and is a really delicious vegetable.  So I asked a waiter when the chef had left me to order lunch what this Swiss chard was.  "Oh that," he said, "it’s a bit like spinach but not nearly as nice.  It’s got white bits in it and it’s a bit slimy.

No one ever orders it."  I did and so did two tables beside me, and it was a delight.  The restaurant business is renowned for its complexity.  Get one area fixed and, sure enough, something else goes wrong.

So how do you ensure success? The devil truly is in the detail.  A chef can go to great trouble with a dish only to find it hijacked on the floor; you can spend a fortune on bottled water only to find nobody notices; you can buy posh cutlery and all it does is walk out the door.

There is no secret formula to getting the detail in running a restaurant right.  The rise of gastropubs, particularly in London has shown that literally any old furniture will do.  People used to joke that the groundbreaking Eagle on Farringdon road put in uncomfortable chairs on purpose, but owner Mike Belben is quick to point out this was far from the case.

He was setting up on a budget, it was what he could afford and fitted in quite well with the surroundings.  The furniture also fitted with the prices he was charging and the menu; informal and relaxed.

Some recent gastropubs are not nearly so tuned in and are charging quite high prices, similar to restaurants of equal standard but giving their guests paper napkins and making them sit on old school chairs.

When Paul Flynn set up The Tannery in the southeast of Ireland he and his wife, Marie, "went out and spent a fortune on furniture because that’s what we thought you did," he told me recently.

"We regretted it for the next few years as every cent we earned went to pay for them."  There is no way he says he would do that again.  "It’s important the chairs are comfortable, but you can get much better value examples which would have significantly lowered our set-up costs."

More importantly, however, was the degree to which customers genuinely did not notice. If you stick a Rembrandt on the wall there are only some who would recognise it, for most it’s just another picture.

Terminus, one of the restaurants in the Great Eastern Hotel in London has polished MDF table tops. Inexpensive, easy to keep clean, functional and warm, they fit in well with the surroundings and mood of the restaurant, which is easy and casual.

What so many seem to forget is that cash-flow rules the restaurant business and most people are so anxious to get it so right they lose sight of what is really at stake.  Most customers want to have a good time, they look for confidence, consistency and a little flare.

How do you deliver that all the time? Half the battle is in convincing operators that they are engaged in delivering a process, not something finite.  Take your eye off anything and it goes wrong, which is hell if you are involved in a business that is made up of so many disparate parts.

Yet if you can get the bulk right most of the time you are on to a winner.  So maybe the salt and pepper pots are not ideal, or the cutlery and candles are not quite what you wanted.  Your customer doesn’t know what you would rather have in their place.

Getting the detail right is more about deciding who and what you are, and setting out to deliver that over time.  Gordon Ramsay recently remarked: "Without a viable restaurant, you can kiss any hope of awards goodbye."

Viability is key and innovation is the way to work your way through to that end.  A restaurateur in the north of England bought table bases and MDF tops but couldn’t afford the laundry bills so improvised with paper tablecloths and the crucial addition of small vases of flowers.

"Customers just complimented us on the flowers which, during the summer, we gathered from the hedgerows and in winter substituted with some bought.  It certainly cost us more than not having flowers at all, but nothing like what the linen would have cost.

We’ve now reduced our loan sufficiently for me to increase our operating costs so we have linen on the tables, with the flowers.  Nobody has mentioned the linen! Although I still think it is correct for us to have it, particularly as we plan to increase some prices a little next year."

Pricing itself is a detail so often overlooked, particularly at chain level.  Even a 5% increase in prices across the board gets noticed by customers, one operator said to me recently.  He operates around the M25 and people are very price-conscious.

"We are always selective, massaging any price increases into the menu over time, and sometimes with negative movements which we see positively, like reducing the price of a dish but no longer accompanying it with a side or addition," he said.

What must follow all of these activities is training.  You must train staff in how to sell the detail you are engaged in providing.  The Swiss chard is revealed as something delicious when tasted at the staff supper earlier in the evening; paper tablecloths are there to ensure everything is clean which is difficult "when you are so busy"; a name proffered when the phone is answered makes customers feel in touch with a person rather than a machine.

Is there a secret? Not really, as every restaurant, thankfully, is different. In some, the wine is poured, in others it is left on the table.  Which is correct? The answer lies in the question, why? If you ask this and can answer clearly, with well-argued reasoning the chances are you are on the correct track.

If not, the process will enable you to question the wisdom of your ways later on, look at the reasons why you went down a particular path and adjust accordingly.

One major fault of this industry is to think it is all an art.  There is a great deal of science available to guide you and it is simply not sensible to sidestep making use of it.  Dish costings may seem like a behind the scenes detail hardly necessary to the running of a restaurant.

Hunch and experience so often land you in the right arena so why be concerned with something so trivial? Yet, time and again, chefs are caught out overcharging for dishes. Suddenly fruit salad climbs by £1.50, or the Dover sole changes to lemon sole at the same price.

These kinds of tweaks can lead to serious misunderstandings with customers.  It may not lead to a walkout (the easy problem) but worse, the customer who leaves but doesn’t return and spreads the word like wildfire.

Suddenly you have an adversary campaigning to destroy your business. Surely, something  to avoid at all costs.