I think probably the biggest contract is our deal with the cruise ships. And also working with Virgin Australia.
P&O probably came to me about three or four years ago, wanting to get better – they wanted to change their perception of food and restaurants on board cruise ships. And initially when they came to me I wasn’t interested because I didn’t think it was a brand I wanted to be involved in.
Going back to what I said before, they shared the same philosophy as me, they wanted to fix up what they had, which they didn’t think was that good, but they really wanted to make it better. And I said, “Well then, love to, but the only way I can do it is by having individual restaurants, separate kitchen and separate staff,” and they agreed. So that’s how we formed our partnership and it’s been fantastic ever since. So if you have two visions wanting the same thing, you can make it work.
It’s surprising but I’d say Tokyo, even after everything that happened in the last 12, 18 months with the tsunami. It’s really bounced back. Obviously, we were a small part of everything that happened over there at that time, but business really dropped off, naturally, but it’s really bounced back to bigger and better than it was before. Singapore is incredible business for us, an incredible market as well.
I think micro managing. I think when you’re a chef in the kitchen you want to be over every plate of food that goes out. And you probably can in one individual restaurant if you’re there, but you can’t micro manage ten restaurants, you know, so I like to put a lot of trust and faith into the restaurant manager and the head chef and let them run with their gut. And they know what I want and my philosophies and how we treat customers, and what I want – restaurants to be value for money and all that – but I don’t want to bother them with day-to-day stuff. That’s their responsibility and I’d like to think they could pick up the phone to me and say if they’ve got a problem and this is how we’re going to handle it, what do you think? So that’s the way I like to manage now.
I don’t focus on what my competitors are doing. I eat out a lot; I travel a lot; I take my staff away a lot. We see different things. So you pick up on the trends that way, but I certainly don’t like to think of us as just following trends. We’re probably creating trends for others to follow.
In the industry generally, people aren’t spending as much nowadays: so when the financial crisis kicked in, obviously our business was affected and, thankfully, we did pretty well out of that. We had a wine bar that seats about 40, and we made some changes to that. We didn’t change anything in the restaurant, and that was a very important decision I made and a good one, because you can’t drop your prices and keep your product the same. So my goal was not to change our product or change our philosophy of using great produce or expensive produce. I think once you start tampering with that, you’ve got issues.
But what we did, with the wine bar, was we offered a choice of three things: a great burger, a great pie, and a great fish and chips. So choose one of them with a glass of wine for 25 bucks. And we’re still full in the wine bar every day because of that deal. Yet we haven’t affected our business in the restaurant, or affected the quality, or cheapened it in any way. And I think that’s an important lesson I learned as well. It was pretty ballsy at the time to do it, but when I spoke to all my key guys and discussed it, we made the right decision. We didn’t know we were making the right decision, but we do now.
Cara Waters is a former SmartCompany editor. Previously, Cara was a senior reporter for the Financial Times’ website and worked for The Sunday Times in London.
