Gordon Ramsay’s Playing with Fire. Gordon Ramsay
grew into Gordon Ramsay Holdings and set the stage for three new openings a year for the following five years.
The opening night was a glitzy affair – a real ball for all. The restaurant was cleared of tables and chairs so that over 500 guests could enter through the magnificent foyer of Claridge’s to see the fabulous transformation of the mausoleum. Outside along the kerb were half a dozen nineteenth- century hackney carriages, each with a pair of horses with their noses in their feedbags – right back to when Claridge’s first threw its doors open to the public. The press boys were everywhere, and even then, on that very first night, before the till had even rung up once, I knew that we had just broken through rock and found a vein of gold. John Ceriale, a shy man when it comes to the public, was there to see the launch of his baby with a grin the size of the Brooklyn Bridge.
That is not to say that Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s proceeded without a hitch. In the first year, we bottom-lined at £600,000. The second year was much the same. But in the third, we closed the year off at £1.65 million and then went on to reach close to £2 million in each successive year, and that must tell a tale.
The first year was hard. We were soon receiving, on average, sixteen letters of complaint a week, and something had to be done about it. The weekly operations meeting was born, which was no more than a meeting of the restaurant director, his managers, the head chef and his lieutenants, the head receptionist, the HQ heads of department from HR, training and private dining, and either Chris or myself to chair the meeting. They were often merciless meetings in our search for perfection. I recall one week when there were eighteen people all sitting in a large circle without a table to hide behind, and one of the receptionists, a fat, self- contented moose, smirked after admitting that she had lashed up on a booking. The smirk drained away as it was pointed out that, as she had risked jeopardizing the GR name with her recklessness, she could now leave the room, leave the company, and never be heard of again. And that is exactly what happened. Amazing, after that, how we had everyone’s undivided attention.
So, what happened during the first two years that added a million pounds to the bottom line? Why did that not happen from the beginning? Surely there was a simple enough formula here of booking guests in from an apparently endless list of reservations requests, offering the same menu each day and washing the dirty plates at the end of each service. Most restaurants would have given their eye teeth to make £600,000 a year, but we knew that there was an opportunity to fine-tune every area of the operation, leading to bigger bucks and true longevity for the restaurant.
The single most effective step was to introduce profit and loss numbers to the kitchen management. Chefs are not normally numbers people, but I saw how they sat up when Chris alluded to the information that the office could pick up from the kitchen’s activities just from the food margins, the primary indicator of how much was spent on ingredients, compared to the amount of food sales. If the chef carried on buying Welsh lamb when the prices went up without increasing the menu price or switching to Pyrenean lamb, his monthly food margin would drop a couple of points, and the office knew there was a fuck-up somewhere. The menu stayed more or less the same and, therefore, the food margins did not falter.
As the kitchens began to understand the importance of buying intelligently, turning stock and charging in accordance with market costs, a bonus system was introduced in accordance with performance. As such, it represented financial rewards for doing the job right. Commission or bonuses are nearly always associated with sales or deal making, and it just seemed right that safeguarding aspects of the bottom line also deserved reward and motivation to keep going along that track. This had to be carefully watched, as the last thing I wanted was overkill when margins rose at the expense of quality. That was not the idea. It’s just that, when I think back to Royal Hospital Road, it was always our boast that we never bought on price, just quality and timely delivery.
The other essential indicator was salary costs as a percentage of sales. There had to be sufficient staffing, but not over-staffing. Also added into the formula had to be the training and retention of staff. When commis enlisted and then left in less than six months, we came up with a bonus system, whereby those staying for a year earned a one-off payment at the end of the term. This immediately had anyone thinking twice before throwing in the towel.
The art of upselling is a sensitive but necessary subject. There is nothing more irritating than when a table is approached half a dozen times and asked if they want water. Once is fine, and the question has to be asked. After that, it is vital that an indicator is left on the table so that any further approach is avoided. Either remove the water glasses if it was ‘No,’ or place a bottle coaster on the table to indicate that a bottle is already on the way. So simple.
Successful and intelligent upselling is bringing to the guests’ attention something that they want, but just hadn’t thought about. Sit a party down at the table and ask them what they may like to drink, and there will be total confusion. Particularly if the guests don’t know each other. Suggest the champagne trolley, and you’re home and dry. It cuts across the whole problem for a guest who doesn’t want to be the first to choose. And, in the meantime, you kick off with six glasses of pink champagne on the bill at £9.50 a glass, with six happy guests who are beginning to realize that they are going to enjoy themselves.
Statistics on the Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s scale did my head in at the beginning. At Claridge’s, we agreed to put £1 on every bill in the months of November and December for a London charity called StreetSmart. The proceeds were to go to London’s down-and-outs, and we, in fact, decided to extend this to six of the restaurants. So, how much did £1 a table produce in those two months for six little restaurants? Something in the region of £23,000. That means that we served 23,000 tables – not guests – in sixty-one days. Extend this to the number of feet belonging to all the guests (allowing an average of two feet per guest) that make up these tables, and you begin to understand why we need a twenty-four-hour maintenance team, why we need to replace the fucking carpets every three years, and why, unless you do this, the place will wilt like a lettuce leaf at Ascot.
What do guests look for more than anything when entering a restaurant? What they want is attention. They want to see a smile, an acknowledgement, a welcome the moment they enter, and the average restaurant is fucking crap at this simple courtesy. Either you are completely ignored and staff at the reception desk carry on talking among themselves, or someone challenges you with ‘Name?’ And on giving your name, they repeat it like a fucking automaton, without so much as a ‘Mr’ or ‘Mrs’. Their attention then flicks down the reservations list, and they proceed to highlight the name in Day-Glo green or rub it out like a gleeful schoolgirl, fresh from a shoplifting spree at Office World.
People in a restaurant see it as their chance for recognition. Give them a warm, welcoming smile. Get their name right with the appropriate title, and make it sound like you are really pleased to see them. They are already flushed pink that they are recognized and have your undivided attention. A good restaurant manager understands this, and ensures that his staff are drilled to follow these simple rules. For Christ’s sake, the guests’ satisfaction is what your job is all about. Get it wrong and you will hear no more because there won’t be any guests left.
Once past the desk, the guest is now looking out for two things: which table he’s going to get and whether any of the other guests are looking and thinking, ‘a regular’ or ‘Who is this git who’s getting the special stroking?’ All part of the service, and still not a menu in sight.
So, in the early days of Gordon Ramsay at Claridge’s, we decided to do something about the smile factor. I guess it stemmed from a remark that Chris made when he was asked what qualifications he had to run restaurants. He just looked up and said, ‘I eat in them.’ You see, what was going around in his maze of a brain was that chefs and waiters only see what they do from their own positions. They come through college, tiny kitchens and bistros, and never get to see the wider picture. I think it’s called one-dimensional. So what I decided to do was invite our own staff to experience their own restaurant. Get done up, bring their nearest and dearest, and have a good time. They’ll soon get pissed off if they are kept waiting for the main course or they have to pour their own wine or they have to try and