Rants & Reviews: Marco Pierre White
In a new series of quick-fire Q&As, eNews brings you soundbites from the hospitality industry's most inspirational luminaries...
At this year’s ScotHot exhibition in Glasgow, Hospitality Assured's Philip Stanley MIH snatched time with chef, restaurateur and Unilever Foodsolutions’ Knorr product range ambassador Marco Pierre White, to get a snapshot of his views on celebrity status, on-the-job learning and his tips for riding out the recession.
MPW on the restaurant environment....
The most important aspect of any restaurant in my opinion is the environment you sit in. You have to be relaxed, you have to feel comfortable. The eye must be amused.
Once you relax customers they can start to enjoy these things. They can start to see the true beauty of the environment they’re sitting in. And then, more importantly, they start to spend.
MPW on back of house efficiency...
Rents, rates, food prices are labour costs are going north, the bottom line is going south, so how do we stabilise that situation? For example, we’ll buy very good Prosciutto - Parma ham. We’ll do Parma ham with melon, Parma ham with figs, Parma ham with mozzarella. No labour, no skill. The only skill needed is buying the right ham and making sure that the fruits are ripe. We’ve cut down on the labour, we’ve cut down the wastage. We’ve created consistency in the way we purchase.
MPW on the risk of reducing quality...
"In this market it’s about survival, it’s about cash, not percentages. It’s as simple as that."
If you have a very healthy business and all of a sudden we move into recession, why change? The customers will notice. If I’m a customer and I walk in today and there’s no veal chop any more, there’s no fillet steak on anymore, there’s no nice rib eye steak, there’s no nice piece of halibut, but I’ve now got haddock, I’ve now got pork chop, I think this is not the restaurant I’ve bought into for many years. They must be struggling.
MPW on maintaining margin...
In a recession you’re not going to get more people through the door. That's illogical. You’re going to get less people. So if you’re going to have 20% less people, how do you do it? If you’ve got 100 people, who spend £10 a head, that’s £1000. The business goes down by 20%, you’ve now got £800 because we’ve lost 20% of our punters, but we had £1000 a week before. So now we think, let’s get that extra £200 out of the customers spending £800 in a week - that’s about £3.50-£4 more we’ve got to add on to stay where we were.
"Do not try to get more punters, that’s the biggest mistake. Put your prices up."
MPW on front of house service...
Service. It’s very simple. When we all go to a restaurant, what do we look for? A nice welcome, a smile, clean and tidy staff. I’m very happy if they put the wine on the table, I can pour it myself. I don’t like all the formalities, because it interrupts my conversation, it interrupts my evening with whomever I’m dining. This is a modern day individual. If we’re all honest with ourselves, our favourite restaurant is where we know the owner. It might not be the best food, it might not be the best service but you know, we’re spoilt, we’re made to feel special – he knows us by name. The person who works in the front of the house is the most important person within that restaurant. Not the chef.
Celebrity chefs - a help or a hindrance to the hospitality industry?
Philip Stanley: Celebrity chefs are just part of the bigger jigsaw, said MPW. To weigh up putting a chef through college for two years versus putting a chef through training in Marco's kitchen and MPW believes his protégés will be the best equipped to enter industry. He's been dubbed an "enfant terrible" in the past, but despite this MPW believes he's a true ambassador to the hospitality industry.
"I've been misunderstood in the past but my prime interest is fighting for our industry. My number one passion is my customers."
Despite speculation, MPW stands firm in his admission that the only customers he has ever thrown out of his restaurant we either abusive to staff, so loud they were offending and disturbing other customers, or they were drunk.
Qualifications or experience?
Philip Stanley: To go straight from catering college into full-time employment in a working kitchen does not leave them effectively equipped, which "is such a waste", says MPW - much the thinking behind the new Hospitality Diploma, which promotes on-the-job learning and employer engagement.
"Young people need a strong work ethic and by the time they're 19 years old, it's almost too late. At 16, they're much more impressionable."
What's more important, the food quality or the customer experience?
"It’s all about consistency. The environment of any restaurant will dictate absolutely everything in a restaurant. If the service is poor then that spoils the whole experience. People want to go out and have a good time and not sit as if they’re in a museum."
Comment on "Rants & Reviews: Marco Pierre White"
Related articles
- The Big Fix (eNews March 09) >> Bad things happen in good organisations. How do you get it right when it all goes wrong?
Subscribe in a reader
