A quicker tikka

Pub chains have got it wrong with curry: they think that by buying it in frozen or using sauce from jars they can compete with an authentic Indian restaurant. They never will. That is the forthright view of Suki Patel, owner of the Vine, in West Bromwich, which successfully combines two authenticities, the Indian restaurant and the English pub.

Putting beer and curry under the same roof is not a new idea. Pub operators, both independent and chain-owned, have tried it in the past, but their high failure rate is because too much emphasis is put on design and marketing and not enough on the food, continues Patel.

Patel's success in selling curry in his pub is evident in his trading figures. From a cold start seven years ago, when the Vine was purely wet, curry sales are now worth £33,000 a month and showing steady growth towards the monthly wet sales of £46,000.

Patel's business strategy, real curry apart, is to keep a lid on costs, charge very low prices and let volume drive the business. Those, he adds, are the three areas in which the pub chains usually go wrong when they try to develop curry menus.

"Buying in curry from food factories drives up the prices you have to charge, beyond what an Indian restaurant would charge for a far better curry; pub companies also spend a lot of money on doing up the pub and they have high staff costs."

The Vine is a typical West Midlands town-centre community pub, surrounded by a mix of factory, office and residential properties. The front half of the pub is a rabbit-warren of small rooms, while the main dining area, contained in two rear extensions, is simply decorated and simply furnished. This helps keep prices low and customer volume high.

Meals start at £3.25 for a chicken curry with a choice of rice, Indian breads or chips. The most expensive main-course item on the menu is king prawn curry, at £5.95. The biggest seller, chicken tikka masala, comes with rice at £3.75. Average lunchtime spend is about £4, with evening spend about £6.50.

Despite the stereotyped link between six pints of lager and a vindaloo - which is not on the Vine menu - Patel says drinks sales are mainly modest, albeit 99% beer.

There is not, explains Patel, a problem with boisterous gangs of customers coming into the restaurant towards closing time looking for a curry to soak up the lager. No orders are taken after 10pm and the kitchen closes down by 10.30pm.

"That stops that kind of business coming in," says Patel, who firmly refuses to consider later opening hours than normal pub times.

The low prices, coupled with the central location, produce good midweek lunchtime business. "People come in during their lunch hour and they know they are not going to spend more than £5 and get a very good meal deal," says Patel.

They can spend much less than that if they want. The Vine does a light lunch menu of a barbecued protein item, such as skewered chicken, fish pakora or sis kebab, with salad for £2.25. "I'm competing with the lunchtime sandwich market with a sit-down meal in a restaurant," says Patel.

Customer throughput is inevitably heaviest from midweek onwards and, by Friday and Saturday, tables are seeing as many as four sittings in one evening.

This high level of table turning is again due to the location of the Vine. People coming out of the factories and offices in this hugely congested part of the West Midlands will go straight to the Vine from work to eat and relax before going home, so missing the worst of the commuter traffic.

There is a completely different ordering and eating system in each of the two 50-seat rear dining areas. There is conventional table service in the main dining area, but behind that, an indoor barbecue kitchen. Here, in full view of diners, chefs work over a bank of real charcoal barbecues, cooking to order skewers of marinated meat and fish.

This makes good food and good theatre. Customers walk up to a barbecue, see what is being cooked and place an order. In true barbecue style, the skewers come on paper plates with a mixed salad and no cutlery. Prices range from £1.50 for chicken wings to £2 for a methi chicken tikka. To combat the smell and fumes, the Vine has a huge extraction system over the barbecues.

This is a big food operation, and with so much of the meat needing up to two days' marinating, everything works to a regimented routine. Meat, the basis of most of the dishes, arrives pre-portioned in the early morning when staff begin a yogurt-based marinating process that is both comical and clever.

Marinating used to be a long, manual process involving turning as many as 200 chicken legs in huge pots until all the meat was coated, ready for storing in the fridges. But Patel's labour-saving solution has been to use a cement mixer to tumble the meats and marinades. And to keep the environmental health officers happy, the cement mixer was fitted with a polypropylene drum, which can be cleaned and sterilised after each morning's preparation.

Key to any Indian restaurant's culinary success are the masala mix and the curry gravy - another thing that pub chains can't get right, says Patel. At the Vine, both are made by either Patel or his wife, Bhanu, from recipes used at home in Uganda before the family emigrated to Britain in 1967.

The dry masala spice mix contains no peppers, just aromatics, and is used to cook down a mix of onion, garlic, ginger and tinned tomatoes. This base curry gravy is then used to make up the menu's wet dishes with whatever extra vegetables, meat or fish and spicing the recipe needs.

It's a simple cooking process - and quick, explains Patel. The curry gravy pot, he adds, is probably the single most important item in the kitchen.

FACTS

The Vine

Roebuck Lane, West Bromwich.

Tel: 0121-553 2866

Web site: www.sukis.co.uk

Owners: Suki and Bhanu Patel, who bought it from Bass in 1993

Seating: 50 each in two rear dining areas, 30 in the front of the pub, 30 in outdoor area.

Staffing: three family, plus 35 part-time

Monthly turnover: £33,000 on curry, £46,000 on beer

Business strategy

Patel remains staunchly traditional in the way he runs the business - "I've never put a finger on a computer keyboard" - and gross profit control and fixed margins don't exist. But things are changing. Patel's son, Bharat, has just completed a degree in hospitality management at Birmingham College of Food and Tourism and at 21 he is running the business side of the Vine.

Computers are in the office, accounting is now on spreadsheets and the Vine's Web site is just about to launch. Suki Patel says that when his son said he wanted to come into the family business, he insisted his son study business management rather than cooking.

Bharat Patel now has his own ideas about the Vine's future. While his father doesn't want to extend the business any more, Bharat says the concept has been so successful he would like to see a second Vine curry pub, or possibly look at franchising the concept. "But whatever we do, the food will be at the heart of the business."

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 20-26 July 2000