Benefit of Heijn-sight

A simple wish to eat by the River Wye led Dutch businessman Albert Heijn to build the award-winning Left Bank Village and open the Castle House hotel in Hereford. Susan Clark heard his story.

There has been a quiet revolution going on in the heart of Hereford over the past few years. Where there once stood empty and derelict warehouses and shops, there is now the Left Bank Village, a bustling parade of colourful façades and a Bath stone-fronted three-storey building where a teeming mass of people eat, drink and have fun.

A short walk away, a rather mundane hotel has been transformed into a four-star gem, with individually designed suites and a fine-dining restaurant. But the multimillion-pound regeneration of this area has happened in spite of, rather than thanks to, the city guardians. Just one man changed the face of this part of the city, and only because he wanted somewhere to eat beside the river.

At 74, Albert Heijn is relatively unheard-of in the UK, but is known in his homeland of the Netherlands as one of the richest men in the country and one-time president of Ahold, the third-biggest supermarket chain in the world with 3,000 stores and an annual turnover of €60b (£37b).

Nine years ago, Heijn retired from the family business and moved to the UK. A few years later, he married a Dutch friend, Monique, who had lived in England for 30 years, and the couple settled in Hereford. The town's River Wye, however, quickly became a source of frustration. He explains: "There is this lovely river in Hereford but there was nowhere you could sit and eat. I was used to eating next to water in Holland."

In 1997, Heijn decided to take matters into his own hands. He was financially strong and had time on his hands after reducing his business involvement to a small number of non-executive roles. He was also experienced at every level of commerce, having run companies that owned hotels and restaurants, including a Michelin-starred eaterie and the Dutch Wimpy franchise.

The initial plan was for a small riverside restaurant, and Heijn found an ideal site next to the 12th-century packhorse bridge, where an old motorcycle warehouse stood. The site was levelled and plans made for a complex to be built to house the restaurant, plus conference and banqueting facilities. Then planning restrictions and archaeological investigations meant that work was delayed.

Meanwhile, Heijn became irked by the row of dilapidated and boarded shops adjacent to the site. He bought them, and by December 1998 had converted them into stylish destination shops, with a wine merchant, bakery, pâtisserie, coffee shop and gift shop. The Left Bank complex started to grow.

As the project burgeoned, Heijn and his wife had been viewing local hotels to find a suitable place for their many visitors to stay. Frustrated by the lack of quality establishments, Mrs Heijn had joked with the owner of one hotel, in the old Bishops House, separated from the Left Bank by the cathedral, that if he should wish to sell he should give her a call. Six months later, the Heijns were the owners of a 32-bedroom hotel. Since then, Heijn has spent £2m converting it into the 15-bedroom Castle House hotel, each room designed by his wife and German design firm Neumeyer. It opened in November 1999 and was named AA Hotel of the Year this year.

A fine-dining restaurant, initially to keep executive chef Stuart MacLeod occupied while the restaurant on Left Bank was delayed, was opened in the hotel. MacLeod had been recruited from his post as executive chef at the Close hotel in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, where he had won three AA rosettes. By the time La Rive opened in July 2000 as part of the Left Bank, the Castle House restaurant had won four AA rosettes.

La Rive also received four rosettes soon after it opened. The high standard is helped by the 500-acre farm Heijn owns, which supplies the restaurants with pure-bred cattle, free-range chickens and Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs, as well as vegetables and herbs. Next goal for MacLeod is the Michelin guide.

But Heijn's background in the compulsively innovating and competitively driven supermarket business means that he is not a man to sit back and consider everything finished. The success of Castle House and the Left Bank has been given a boost by the AA's accolade and by the rosettes, but Heijn is still developing the business.

Feeling that Hereford could support only one fine-dining restaurant, he closed La Rive at the Left Bank and opened the 150-seat Floodgates Brasserie in its place, pushing weekly turnover up to £9,000. The Castle House restaurant was renamed La Rive and received five seals in the RAC Dining Awards for the 2000/01 guide, only one of nine restaurants in the UK to do so. Heijn's next project is to extend the hotel to make a bigger kitchen and dining area so the number of covers at the Castle House restaurant can be doubled from 30 to 60, raising the turnover from £5,000 to £10,000 a week.

At present, the Left Bank complex is regularly full at the weekends and often during the week, with the banqueting floor hosting wedding parties for as many as 100 people every Saturday. However, the hotel is running at only about 70% occupancy while the average achieved room rate is suppressed by the hotel's popularity with corporate guests. It is currently between £75 and £80.

However, Jamie Alexander, general manager of the complex and the hotel, is confident that both businesses will go into profit next year, according to Heijn's five-year plan. "We hope to offset our current figures with more leisure business, and so we have joined the Small Luxury Hotels and Pride of Britain consortia," he says. "The growing profile of the restaurant will also help."

Hopes are also high that the creation of the Left Bank and Castle House will boost tourism to the area, which at present needs all it can get. Hereford is an agricultural city facing its own challenges, with high unemployment and the aftermath of the foot-and-mouth crisis, which kept away US visitors. Heijn is confident that things will improve, but meanwhile he and the locals and tourists in Hereford have a stylish and affordable restaurant where they can eat on the riverbank.

Left Bank Village

Bridge Street, Hereford

General manager: Jamie Alexander
Shops manager: Richard Archer
Five shops: wine merchant, delicatessen, pâtisserie, bakery, coffee shop/gift shop
Complex opened: mid-2000
Conference centre opened: February 2001
Floodgates Brasserie: 150 seats, 1,500-2,000 covers a week (includes coffees and snacks)
Banqueting: six conference and banqueting rooms
Charles Bar: 90 seats
Warehouse: four meeting rooms

Castle House

Castle Street, Hereford
Tel: 01432 356321

Opened: Christmas 1999
Owner: Albert Heijn
Managing director: Allard Constandse
General manager: Jamie Alexander
Executive chef: Stuart MacLeod
Hotel manager: Lisa Eland
Rack rate: £210
Average achieved room rate: £75 to £80
Occupancy: 70%
Restaurant: 34 seats, 150 covers weekly
Awards: four rosettes; AA Hotel of the Year; RAC dining award, level five
Investment: £2m