Trade profile: Montpeliers (Edinburgh)

Mark Ludmon visits the newly refurbished Rick’s in Edinburgh to catch up with Montpeliers development director David Johnston

When Rick’s bar and boutique hotel opened in Edinburgh in 2000, it marked the arrival of contemporary cocktail culture in the Scottish capital. Nine years later, the city is home to many of the UK’s top bars, but Rick’s is keeping up with the competition: a £150,000 refurbishment this summer, involving designer Joelle Reid, brightened up the bar with new lighting and a palette of pistachio green, brown, slate grey and cream.

Much of the competition comes from bars owned by the same company, Montpeliers (Edinburgh) which operates eight venues including Rick’s. “We have five other sites within half a mile but, if we hadn’t done what we had, somebody else would have done it,” explains the company’s development director, David Johnston. “We have always felt that every single one of our places is unique with a different personality and feel.”

The business dates back to 1992 when David and Ruth Wither, along with Rob and Wendy Elliot, opened Montpeliers Bar and Brasserie in Bruntsfield Place, followed by Iguana café and bar near Bristo Square in 1995 and Indigo Yard in Edinburgh’s West End the following year. Rick’s was a new direction for the company, says Johnston, who was general manager when it opened. “We didn’t know anything about cocktails so we employed a good team who did know.” The bar was run by Chris Langan, who went on to co-found consultancy Barnomadics, and more recently by Mal Spence who left last month to run the bar at Glasgow’s new Blythswood Square.

“We loved the idea that the drinks could be as good as the food,” Johnston recalls. “It was really exciting. It captured the flavour of the moment. For the first time, Edinburgh didn’t think it was two or three years behind London and it could compete, and it kicked off an enormous amount of new places.”

Opal Lounge in George Street followed in 2001, attracting A-list customers including Prince William, while Iguana was revamped to become Assembly in 2003. The next venture was Montpeliers’ biggest, developing another site in George Street into bar Tigerlily and sister club Lulu which doubled the company’s turnover. “We enjoyed doing it but it probably nearly killed us,” Johnston says. “We were trying to run the company and do this enormous project at the same time. There was a three-year period where we hadn’t been able to pay the same amount of time to the rest of the places.”

However, after Tigerlily and Lulu opened in 2006 and bedded down, they turned their attention to the other bars and last year refurbished Opal Lounge, Montpeliers and Candy Bar, which they had bought in 2005. More refurbishments are planned for Indigo Yard and Tigerlily, but developments are not just in interior design: Rick’s has become the first bar in Scotland to offer cocktails made in an eight-pint cobbler shaker.

Johnston says a financial restructuring last year was fortuitous in putting Montpeliers on a sound footing before the recession hit. “We are now focusing inwardly on getting the product right, the standard of our people and training,” he adds. No new sites are planned although it is not ruled out, and there are certainly no plans to roll out existing concepts as “that would bore the arse off us and isn’t what we enjoy”, Johnston says.

“When you start going out to other towns and cities, even to Glasgow, the demographic changes,” he adds. “There are too many opportunities in Edinburgh. At times like these, it is very important to know your marketplace and we are pretty much born and bred in Edinburgh and know our city very well.”

October 2009

Trade profile: Novus Leisure

After a financial restructuring, Novus Leisure is investing £7million into its estate and new ventures, reports Mark Ludmon

This month, new tiki bar Kanaloa opens in the City of London, created by Nick House and Piers Adam, the team behind Whisky Mist and Mahiki, the model for the new £700,000 venue. But this has caused a particular stir in the industry because of their partners: Novus Leisure, which operates about 40 bars in London and the rest of the UK including Tiger Tiger.

Designed by Design at Source, this is the first of many tiki-style bars planned, according to Steve Richards, chief executive of Novus. “I wanted to open an upmarket, fun cocktail bar in the City. I can’t think of a better example than Mahiki, hence the partnership with Nick and Piers. In addition, the business will learn a lot from working with the Mahiki team who are some of the best promoters in the sector.”

Kanaloa (originally due to be called Kanola) is just one of a number of projects from Novus since a financial restructuring in June, which resulted in a major reduction in debt and saw Barclays Ventures become majority shareholders followed by the management team, led by Richards, with 25 per cent of the equity. Novus is now investing £7million into its existing venues – £4million by October and the rest by February.

In September, Novus unveiled a new nightclub, Groovy Wonderland, in the basement of its existing venue, The Loop, in Mayfair, London. Created by Link Design, it is inspired by “1970s and 1980s music and style”, with a central colourful flashing dancefloor and classic cocktails. It follows the success of Groovy clubs at Tiger Tigers in Portsmouth, Croydon, Leeds and Newcastle.

Link Design also created The White Room, a new dance club and VIP lounge based on VIP sections in Ibiza superclubs, on the top level of its multi-storey venue, On Anon, next to the Trocadero in Piccadilly Circus. Again, the White Room concept has already been a hit within Tiger Tiger sites.

Then last month, Novus opened Grace on the site of the former Sugar Reef in Soho. Named after glamorous actor Grace Kelly, it is split into different sections: the Terrace Bar & Restaurant, the Milk Bar and Cocoa Club, with white leather banquettes and a black-topped bar.

Once market conditions improve, the group will look to expand through acquisition, but a key part of the investment strategy has been to develop its own concepts as well as forge joint ventures with well-known entrepreneurs, such as Martha Lane Fox and her Lucky Voice karaoke bars which are now within several Tiger Tigers.

The business has changed considerably, including its name, since it started as an investment vehicle to acquire the Trocadero in the mid-1990s. After John Conlan and Nick Tamblyn took the helm in 1997, it initially moved into intellectual property, such as Noddy, and became Chorion. They then acquired three bars from Luminar and, in 1998, launched the first Tiger Tiger. After massive expansion, the bars and clubs were demerged to form Urbium, which, after Richards arrived in 2005, become Novus. This name is played down, at least in London, where its venues are represented by the name of its consumer website, Latenightlondon.co.uk.

“The key is to differentiate from competitors and keep evolving the customer offer,” Richards explains. “The business has performed significantly ahead of budget this year, and we are seeing significant like-for-like sales growth driven by our determination to enhance our customer proposition. Fortunately, we are being helped by many of our competitors who are cutting costs that directly effect their customer experience.”

November 2009

Trade profile: Jamie's Italian trip

Jamie Oliver is expanding his empire with a growing chain of Italian restaurants, reports Mark Ludmon

Ever since he burst onto our screens in The Naked Chef 11 years ago, Jamie Oliver has become ubiquitous, whether touring the diners of the US or tackling obesity and poor diet back in Britain. A weekend break to Sweden last month was no escape for this writer: staying in a Scandic hotel in Stockholm, I woke each morning to a poster by my bed telling me how Jamie’s recipes could be enjoyed in the restaurant.

One of his newest ventures is to become just as ubiquitous on the high street. At the end of last month, the seventh Jamie’s Italian opened, across two floors in Cardiff’s St David’s shopping centre, with another eight new restaurants planned for next year, starting with Cambridge and Reading and including Covent Garden in the summer.

The business is owned by Jamie himself with a small number of investors, with the food overseen by executive head chef Jules Hunt. Experience of the branded restaurant sector comes from managing director Simon Blagden who has been operations director of both Browns and PizzaExpress. While there is little Italian about Jamie’s Essex roots, he has brought in creative partner, the Amalfi-born chef Gennaro Contaldo, who has been his mentor since they worked together at Antonio Carluccio’s Neal Street restaurant.

They opened the first Jamie’s Italian in Oxford in May last year, working with bar and restaurant designers Martin Brudnizki Design Studio (MBDS), followed by Bath, Kingston-upon-Thames, Brighton and Guildford. The strategy has been to create “neighbourhood” restaurants offering high-quality authentic Italian food at affordable prices in a rustic, relaxed and comfortable but contemporary setting, according to MBDS, which has also worked on Kingston, Brighton, Canary Wharf, Cardiff and Cambridge. The firm says it created spaces that use natural materials “in an honest and uncontrived manner”. MBDS injects colour into the furniture, with witty detailing and quirkiness from objects found at flea markets. While there are common design elements, each site has its own unique qualities such as a spray-painted graffiti image of a Welsh dragon at Cardiff.

At time of going to press, the most recent opening was Churchill Place shopping mall in Canary Wharf in August. The two-storey restaurant features a service bar with a custom-built pewter bartop from Zinc Counters, which also supplied Cardiff, and leather banquette seating from Craftwood Interiors. The main contractor at this site – as well as Oxford, Kingston, Brighton, Cardiff and Cambridge – was du Boulay Contracts which did the full fit-out.

While the design varies, all the sites have the same menu, with an extensive list of Italian wines, including a number “hand-picked” by Jamie himself. There are no cocktails but the rest of the drinks menu features premium products such as Bottlegreen soft drinks and beers Messina and Castello.

The success of the concept in the UK means that Jamie is to become even more ubiquitous overseas, with Tranic Franchising preparing to take Jamie’s Italian to the Asian market, starting with a Hong Kong restaurant late next year. Back in Britain, Jamie is also rolling out another concept on the high street, Recipease, a food and kitchen shop where customers can learn to cook. With more TV shows and campaigns planned for 2010, it is hard to believe that, a little over a decade ago, Jamie Oliver was just an unknown sous chef working at the River Café.

Jamie’s Italian, Canary Wharf: Who did it

Designer: MBDS
Contractor: du Boulay Contracts
Bartops: Zinc Counters
Leather banquettes: Craftwood Interiors
Stonework: Marble Interiors
Doors: Midland Veneers
Glass: RA Joyce
Staircase: All Metal Fabrication Services
Ironmongery: SDS London
Period mirrors: Looking Glass of Bath
LED lighting: Lumino Lighting
Washrooms: Thomas Crapper
Floor tiles: Couleurs et Matières
Ceramic tiles: Focus Ceramics
Electrics: Current Affairs Electrical

December 2009

Trade profile: Ross Mackenzie

With the launch of Manchester’s Blackdog Ballroom and No 1 Club, Ross Mackenzie (pictured) talks to Mark Ludmon about his 21 years in the industry

Despite growing up in a sleepy Buckinghamshire village, Ross Mackenzie has made his home in Manchester for the past 21 years, and made his mark on the city’s bar and club scene. At the end of last year, he was not only involved in the opening of the Northern Quarter’s Blackdog Ballroom, but he unveiled the new No 1 Club. On top of this, he heads The Purple Pussycat and is a director of top club Sankeys. “Manchester is home to me,” he says. “It’s just a great city for getting things done.”

Mackenzie came to Manchester to study management at university in the late 1980s but he was sucked into the club scene symbolised by the Hacienda. “Manchester was always a city without a city centre. The Hacienda was the focus of everything,” he recalls. “Now it’s got a world-class city centre.” In 1990, he launched the Most Excellent club night at the Hacienda with DJ Justin Robertson, which was such a success that Ross never got round to finishing his degree.

Apart from a short spell working as a sales rep for Allied Domecq, Ross has continued to be involved in running bars and clubs in the city long after the Hacienda was demolished and replaced by flats. He was in-house promoter at Sankeys when it opened in 1994 and then, after his time at Allied Domecq working alongside the likes of mixologist Angus Winchester, he was involved in running the luxurious club Reform. In 1999, he joined forces with Bernard Carroll to open the ill-fated Ampersand which was sold to Po Na Na Group after only nine months.

Ross’s next project was One Central Street, which opened in 2002 in what was formerly Jeff Bibby’s No 1 Club, the focus of Manchester’s gay club scene in the 1980s. In September, Ross and partner Nils Wager transformed One Central Street into a new-look No 1 Club.

With One Central Street going strong, Ross returned to a revamped Sankeys in 2006 as a minority shareholder and director, brought in by its new owner David Vincent. Also on board was club entrepreneur Andrew Spiro who had run Sankeys back when Ross worked there. The following year, these two launched a new venue, The Purple Pussycat, just off Deansgate. Located in the basement beneath Mojo, this Berlin-style dive bar is notorious for its design features such as a black rubber bar, dancing poles, a mirror-tiled ceiling, red lip-shaped urinals and a fish tank full of piranhas.

The Blackdog Ballroom opened last month in the basement of fashion mecca Afflecks Palace in the Northern Quarter in what was previously Isobar and Club North. This was a joint project with Jobe Ferguson of the Northern Quarter Restaurant & Bar and was designed by Kevin Gill of agency JudgeGill with sumptuous and dramatic interiors including dark wooden panelling, a pool room and dancefloor.

Ross says they were inspired by the new wave of speakeasy-style bars in New York such as PDT. The new venue includes the “secret” Purple Room which is accessed through a secret panel using a key code. A drinks list has been put together by Tom Sneesby, formerly of Socio Rehab and The Establishment, with cocktails based on the theme of the five boroughs of New York City. This ranges from American classics with a twist (Manhattan) and lesser-known classics (the Bronx) to camper trashier-style concoctions (Queens) and independent originals (Brooklyn). Staten Island is represented by cocktails using ingredients such as pisco, tequila and soju from the countries where immigrants sailed in from on their way to Ellis Island.

Launching two venues in the middle of a recession did not deter Ross who started in club promotion in 1990 during the last downturn. “I don’t think anybody is finding it particularly easy at the moment but there’s always room for something new and creative,” he says. “People still want to go out and party.” In that respect, Manchester hasn’t changed that much in the last 21 years.

January 1, 2010