Olympics: Going For Gold

For a few weeks this summer the whole country is going to go Olympics crazy. But is it likely to be good or bad news for your business, and how can you make the most of it and still stay legal? Richard Woodard dons his spikes for a quick jog around the issue

When Lord Coe first talked about the Olympic legacy, I’m pretty certain he didn’t have in mind a spike in cachaça consumption in the vicinity of E20. But if Jamie Barber has his way, there’ll be a bit of a Caipirinha explosion across the way from the Olympic Stadium this summer.

Barber, the man who was behind Hush, Villandry and Sake No Hana, has opened one of two Cabana outlets – Brazilian-themed, upper-end casual dining – in the new Westfield Stratford City development. And he makes no bones about cashing in on the arrival
of the greatest sporting event on earth.

‘We’re quite looking forward to it because we’re the last restaurant unit across the road from the Olympic Stadium,’ he says with ill-concealed glee. ‘We’ve been told by the London Organising Committee of the Olympic and Paralympic Games (LOCOG) to expect 300,000 people a day to be going past our unit over that period. With any luck we stand a good chance of being able to attract a few of them.’

‘The Games will have a positive impact if you look at it positively’ Ed Turner

If the on-trade has an obvious beneficiary of London 2012, Cabana (and the dozens of other eating establishments in Westfield Stratford City) is it. But what if you’re a neighbourhood restaurant in Wandsworth or a country pub in Devon? Is the world’s greatest sporting event good news at all?

Listen to some restaurateurs and you might think not. Restaurant Association chairman the Earl of Bradford told The Independent that he thought the Games would be a ‘wash-out’ similar to the Royal Wedding, amid fears that regular diners and theatre-goers would desert London to escape the estimated 5.5m daytime and 900,000 overnight visitors predicted during the Olympics and Paralympics.

‘I think it is a bit like the Royal Wedding,’ agrees Ed Turner, commercial director of Geronimo Inns, before swiftly adding: ‘It’ll have a positive impact if you look at it positively. If you think people are going to leave London, then you’re not going to get anything out of it.’

Packed like sardines

And Barber highlights a crucial contrast between the Games and Kate and Wills plighting their troth. ‘People did leave London during the Royal Wedding – I left central London myself – but there wasn’t a corresponding influx of people coming in from overseas. By the nature of this event, it’s going to be packed. So this really is totally different.’

Clearly the impact of visitors and competitors is going to be greatest in the areas around venues (and team camps), diminishing with distance. Some parts of London – and much of the country outside the capital – will reap no direct benefit from spectators and competitors.

‘These areas will need to work harder to attract business and get people off the sofa and into the bar,’ says John Graves, Bibendum’s director of sales for London. ‘We saw during the Royal Wedding last year that some operators just assumed the business would come, and on the day they were very quiet.

‘Operators need to create reasons for people to come, and one way is pre-booking an event. Creating a ticketed package that could include food, drink and other entertainment is a great way of adding value for customers while guaranteeing spend in the tills.’

planning ahead and talking to suppliers are the solution

Running a restaurant or bar in the Olympic hotspots may be lucrative, but there are challenges too. ‘From what I can ascertain, the main thing that we need to gear ourselves up for is supply – making sure we’re well supplied with food and drink, and allowing the suppliers to come in earlier than usual,’ says Pierre Condou, owner of Paramount and Century in London’s West End.

‘I’m not sure anybody is really clear how we’re going to get deliveries to the Olympic Stadium,’ adds Barber. ‘It’s probably not going to be the easiest task. We probably need to take storage facilities very nearby… We don’t want to max out of things and suddenly have to wait three days for six cases of cachaça.’

Planning ahead and talking to suppliers are the solution, believes Natalia Di Palma, marketing manager for bar and restaurant operator Drake & Morgan, which has three venues in the City, one at Canary Wharf and one in Southwark.

‘We’ve spent six months operationally thinking about what we should do – talking to suppliers, scheduling consistent drops of food, and organising wine ordering with Justerini & Brooks,’ she reports. ‘Now it’s all about the marketing and getting ahead of other venues.’
Turner agrees. ‘It’s going to be a headache for everyone, but it’s all about preparation. It’s like Christmas. Buy some extra freezers if you have to, and bring in stuff in the middle of the night. Old pubs have got big cellars, and we’re certainly going
to use that space.’

A different clientele

If the logistical demands during the Olympics will be different to normal, so will the customers – for some parts of London at least. ‘One area that we expect to do disproportionately well is the City – especially at weekends,’ reports Graves.

‘Usually, the Square Mile is a ghost town on Saturday and Sunday, but next summer many visitors will use it as a base, as it offers good links to both Stratford and the West End. City operators will need to look at extra opening hours, extra staffing and also advertising – how can they let people know they are open, especially if they are not on a major thoroughfare?’

For Condou, with two central London venues, it’s difficult to call. ‘Ten per cent of those visitors will be the upper-end socio-economic group and will be our customers,’ he reckons. At the time of writing, he’s looking at extended opening hours for Paramount – but is also mulling over a possible private hire for the entire Olympics period.

Be prepared

Di Palma, however, thinks that spending time worrying about the changing customer profile is missing the point. ‘It’s all down to preparation, making your websites transportation friendly – linking to the TfL website, for instance – using social media and Twitter to keep up with what’s going on,’ she argues.

‘For instance, The Parlour at Canary Wharf is close to where the German team is based, so we need to adapt things to make it more German-friendly, with menus in German, for example. We’re also lucky to have a lot of international European staff, so we can give them pins to represent the languages they speak.’

There’s a feeling that restaurants and bars shouldn’t get too hung up on second-guessing their ‘Olympic’ clientele or trying anything new or fancy – rather they should focus on doing what they do best. And, even in London, not everyone coming through your door will be a Serbian shot-putter or a beach volleyball fan from Australia. ‘I think it’s like being in the West End during the summer,’ says Turner. ‘There will still be a lot of people from London walking around and wanting to see it on the big screens in the park.’

Focusing on delivering your normal standard of product and service also extends to pricing, Geronimo Inns’ Turner adds. ‘I’m not a fan of cashing in. If you do it right, you will get extra volume. If you rip people off, they’ll never come back.’

However, Condou is not so sure. ‘The truth of the matter is that we’re going to have some added cost,’ he points out. ‘We can’t absorb all of it, so there’s bound to be some kind of inflationary movement on prices. I don’t think it will be catastrophic, but you might have longer hours, staff having to stay in town overnight.’

The screen debate

None of this, of course, applies if you’re a pub in the middle of Dartmoor or a restaurant in a market town in the shires. You could, like the London bar chain Be At One, provide a bit of an Olympics-free oasis by not screening the Games (although the company is deliberately constructing a healthy menu and opening up its bars for private hires).

Turner, however, thinks not. ‘When the 100 metres is on, or there’s a Brit going for a gold medal, make sure the telly’s on and tell everyone,’ he suggests. ‘Get the kids involved and use the family angle – it’s during the holidays, remember – and give people a reason to come out.’ Condou thinks ‘fantastic screening facilities’ are part of the answer, but fears for outlying areas of London in particular. ‘My gut feeling is that I may consider that my regulars will be stuck watching TV or going into town. I would be a little bit worried – I might even think about going on holiday.’

On the latter point, Barber agrees. ‘Take a long holiday,’ he advises. ‘It’s going to be difficult and contrived to do some kind of Olympic activity that’s going to draw people to you when actually all the action is happening on the other side of town. There’s nothing naffer than seeing lots of little tacky offers that are there because you think you should be doing something and you haven’t really thought it through.’

‘sweat it out. it’s not that long – a couple of weeks of trade’ Jamie Barber

He also offers some perspective on the event as a whole. ‘Sweat it out. It’s not that long – a couple of weeks of trade. Some people will do well, some will do badly and some will not notice the difference – as with the Royal Wedding.’

And Condou reminds us that all the educated guesses about levels of trade and the impact of the Games are exactly that – guesses. ‘Nobody is quite sure what it will mean. I’ve spoken to one of the previous sponsors, and he says the truth is nobody quite understands the overwhelming effect it has on towns and cities. After the event, you go: “Wow! What was that?”’

Editorial feature from Imbibe Magazine – January/February 2012

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