Epic adventure

10 April 2002 by
Epic adventure

Pat McDonald's latest venture looks set to succeed. Tessa Fox went along to the first in his planned chain of 12 bar-brasseries to find out more.

Five days before opening, with builders, electricians and suppliers buzzing around his new bar-brasserie, Pat McDonald appears curiously relaxed. He says he'll be happy to do 20 or so lunches and perhaps 40 dinners in the early days. "Let's be realistic," he says.

Five days after the official opening on 25 March and McDonald sounds more frazzled: "We did over 100 last night and 60 for lunch yesterday. We've stopped bookings for tonight at 95… it's been fantastic," he says.

Epic Bar Brasserie is McDonald's latest venture as a restaurateur and one he's been itching to realise for several years. It takes him for the first time into the increasingly fashionable world of pubs, where he has opened what he hopes will be the first of a 12-strong chain of bar-brasseries operating under a new company, Epicurean Brasseries.

Until McDonald took over the roadside site just outside Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, at the end of last year, it was a traditional pub called the Ewe and Lamb. Having ploughed more than £300,000 into creating his new brand and refurbishing the property, and securing a brand new 20-year lease, McDonald is understandably at pains to explain why his concept is a fresh one: "This is a pub in which we've put in a contemporary brasserie but I don't want it to be a gastropub. People can come in just for a pint but the nibbles are things like roasted almonds and olives and there's no pool table or jukebox. I want Epic to become a lifestyle brand."

Location is crucial to the concept. To avoid competing with the likes of Petit Blanc, Bank or Paul Heathcote for prime high-street properties, McDonald is going for semi-rural sites. "I don't want to be in a backwater but city-centre sites come with big premiums and sorting out the licensing, fire control, planning permission and so on is laborious and expensive," he says.

All sites will be within a 45- to 50-mile radius of Pershore, home to McDonald's head office, and able to draw business from at least three residential areas.

Equally important is the fact that McDonald will take over only existing pubs. "Every public house is already licensed from 11am to 11pm, has permission to serve food, and has a kitchen and car park," he says.

Working with London firm Cobalt Design, McDonald's wife Claire, herself an interior designer, has come up with a look that combines contemporary and rustic details which will be replicated in future outlets. There's lots of texture - leather seating, exposed brickwork, oak tables and floorboards, galvanised steel and a chrome bar. There are open fires, and the vibrant colour scheme of aubergine, deep pink and orange, is reflected in striking screen prints of oversized clams, globe artichokes and fish. The dining areas include seating indoors for 100, a patio with a barbecue and heaters that will seat 60 and picnic tables for a further 60.

McDonald is the first to admit that he's not aiming to be on the culinary map of England but he does want to develop a good local reputation. He struggles to give his food an all-encompassing tag because the menu is wide-ranging in its inspiration "Lifestyle food is probably the best," he suggests, "because dishes are light, fresh, clean, simple. We've got some great local suppliers so there's fantastic produce on our doorstep."

Key to the menu are stove-to-table dishes for two such as a spiced Moroccan lamb and lentil soup (£4 per person); an Italian fish stew (£13.75 per person); and slow-roasted duck (£13.75 per person). Organic dishes include a vine tomato, red pepper, crème fraîche soup (£3.25) and organic sausage, red onion jus and spring onion mash (£9.50).

McDonald expects the average spend to settle at £12 at lunch and £17.50 at dinner and for 60% of revenue to be generated during Friday and Saturday nights and Sunday lunch.

So where does the money come from? At this stage, it's a combination of McDonald and a handful of shareholders. Between them they have raised enough money to open the first three sites, after which McDonald will approach venture capitalists and banks.

With such a clear ambition in place, it's not surprising that McDonald is already well on the way to opening a second Epic Bar Brasserie - he's already secured a site between north Worcester and Kidderminster - before the end of 2002 and aims to open three next year. At that point, he says, he will take on an area manager, an area chef and consider setting up a central production unit.

And beyond that? McDonald is weighing up two options: to take handsome dividends from the business or to sell up once he's achieved his business goals. "If each of the 10 sites makes a net profit of £2,000 a week, that's £100,000 a year per site and £1m a year over the whole group," he says. "With those figures we'd see a good price for a trade sale and an even better one if we floated. And I do have a couple of other ideas I want to pursue."

He won't elaborate, but it's odds-on that his ideas are considerably more advanced than he'd have us believe.

McDonald's empire

Epic Bar Brasserie is just one of the strands to Pat McDonald's professional life.

Consultancy work is the main source of income, which took off after he appeared in the TV series If You Can't Stand the Heat as a troubleshooter for struggling catering businesses. Operating as Pat McDonald Consultancy, he charges £750 a day and is able to pick and choose projects.

Being a consultant, however, doesn't mean everything will necessarily be plain sailing for Epic: "We've tried to eliminate as many risks as possible but there's always an element of risk, no matter how big your name is or how much money you've got," McDonald says.

While he insists he doesn't go out of his way to do media work, McDonald is discussing ideas for two television series with production companies. He's coy about details, saying only that they will be food-related and that he will get to travel. There's also a cookbook he's dying to have published.

Then there's Epicurean Events, his outside catering business; Pat McDonald Development Company, which buys residential and commercial properties; and, of course, Epicurean, the restaurant in Pershore that he opens once a week and at other times by arrangement.

As if that were not enough, McDonald is a qualified and active rugby coach. It's just as well that he says he loves "organised adrenalin".

Epic Bar Brasserie

68 Hanbury Road, Stoke Prior, Bromsgrove, Worcestershire B60 4DN
Tel: 01527 871929
Fax: 01527 575647

Owner: Pat McDonald
General manager: Richard Partington
Executive chef: Jason Lynas
Head chefs: Andrew McNorton and Duncan Mitchell
Operations director: Kevin Webley
Opened: 25 March 2002
Seats: 100 inside, 120 outside
Opening costs: over £300,000
Projected average spend per head: £12 at lunch, £17.50 at dinner
Projected turnover, year one, from first site: £650,000
Projected annual net profit per site: £100,000
Projected number of sites: 10-12
Projected opening costs per site: £200,000 to £250,000

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