Feeding the 5,000 (or more)

13 November 2003 by
Feeding the 5,000 (or more)

I sometimes think I'm a mathematician rather than a caterer," says Mike Dawson. Number crunching is certainly a large part of his role as head of retail and hospitality at ExCel, London's exhibition centre and the new home of Hotelympia.

Dawson is responsible for the organisation and performance of more than 20 retail catering outlets. Most are in a central area called the boulevard, where the exhibition halls branch off. He also manages conference and banqueting in partnership with Compass division Payne & Gunter at the 100-acre Docklands site. The entire retail and hospitality offer brings in about £6m a year.

Pulling a fistful of spreadsheets from his briefcase, he shows me how he records and analyses the year-on-year turnovers as well as show-on-show turnovers of each outlet. The next row of figures shows their market share, and the next the turnover-linked rent they pay to ExCel. Every week Dawson reports progress to ExCel's chief executive Jamie Buchan.

On a sunny autumn day Dawson is wearing a tailored pinstripe suit. But it's not so long ago that ExCel was just a field of mud and he was sporting a pair of wellies. When ExCel opened in 2000, Dawson remembers how nervous everyone was because multiple commercial catering outlets at an exhibition venue had never been tried before.

Traditionally, exhibition venues have kept their hospitality in-house. Even at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre, the largest in the UK, the in-house caterers have adopted their own high-street style concepts rather than bringing in commercial brands from outside. But Dawson wanted ExCel to have different independent brands because he wanted to create competition. This ensures levels of quality and efficiency that are "self-policing", he believes.

ExCel plays host to a dizzy mix of trade and public shows, from the Congress of the European Society of Cataract and Refractive Surgeons to the Big Dolls House and Miniatures Show. With such a wide variety of audiences, how does Dawson find out what works and what doesn't? He gestures to his spreadsheets again. "From every show I'm gaining more market information, which I share, so the operators can see if they're up or down," he says. "They're very keen to know who's done what, and whether one's taken more money than the other."

One thing he's learnt is the importance of flexibility from one show to the next. He knows the ice-cream cart won't be hugely popular at World Travel Market, but will at a family-orientated event like the London Triathlon Expo show. "I know if they're not going to make money on a certain day and I'll tell them," he says. But operators have a service agreement which stipulates they must open if an exhibition is covering a certain number of halls.

With exhibition organisers, Dawson draws up a catering plan, including opening hours and the capacity of each unit to accommodate the estimated number of visitors. "I know how may units will cope with 8,000 people, for example," he says.

A meeting with the operators follows at which he talks about the demographics of the visitors to the show and how well he thinks the catering outlets will do. This provides the chance for operators to use additional mobile carts if necessary. Dawson likes mobile carts because they offer a rapid response to demand and take the food to where people are. A Costa coffee cart can take £1,500 a day.

From a questionnaire put to 5,000 visitors and exhibitors, 70% said they wanted to eat in less than 40 minutes, which pointed the way to fast service. Birley Sandwiches serves made-to-order sandwiches but also has an express lane for ready-prepared baguettes. At the Salon International hairdressing show recently its turnover was up 30% with sales of more than £10,000 on one day. Overall, revenue at Salon was up 15%.

Dawson is trying to encourage people to spend outside the peak hours of 11.30am to 2.30pm. One idea is for exhibitors to buy their lunch in the morning and take it into the exhibition hall. "That's very important because hopefully you're growing revenue rather than cannibalising it," he remarks.

Ironically, it's not the food or hospitality shows such as the International Food Exhibition (IFE) that generate the highest retail food and beverage sales. This is because the free samples on offer eat into Dawson's revenue. The biggest money-spinner so far has been the Defence Systems and Equipment International Exhibitions, held in September. With a large number of visitors on expense accounts, average spend was £10. This compared with £2.60 at IFE, where visitors can sample such delicacies as horsemeat sausage from Kazakhstan for nothing.

A show that will demonstrate ExCel's strengths as a location is the London Boat Show, which moves from Earls Court for the first time, on 8 January. The site benefits from one mile of dock space for exhibitors and an inland waterway with a pub in the middle. The pub, complete with waterwheel, will be purpose-built and knocked down afterwards.

Dawson is still looking for businesses to complete the picture. "You could say I'm missing salads, a noodle bar, and a traditional fast-food outlet. I'm looking for people who can produce quality, deal with high volume, and add to the variety," he says. Operators meet the cost of fitting out their units and pay a percentage of turnover as rent which Dawson says is a way of sharing the risk.

Central boulevard
Dawson originally thought the focus of hospitality would be along the side of ExCel on a mile-long stretch looking on to the river. Here is a series of Viva café-bars, a brand that used to belong to Granada Retail before Compass bought it in 2000. But it seems most visitors want to stay nearer the exhibition halls and choose to eat along the central boulevard. The queues outside the two Costa outlets are indicative of its dominant brand power at ExCel. Even so, Dawson wants more even throughput of customers. Leaflets are handed to those waiting, to let them know what else is on offer, but many are happy to stand in line.

More permanent advertising and signs in the form of carpet tiles aim to divert more customers to the Viva outlets along the riverfront. To improve speed of service, Dawson has considered using cashless payment systems that come with the admission ticket, but the idea proved too complicated because he is dealing with a number of separate businesses.

Given the pull of a brand like Costa, Dawson says getting more "hard brands" will be the way forward in the future, but then thinks again: "I have to qualify that. I have to keep flexibility and the smaller owner-run places give that. It's an evolving jigsaw."

What's his proudest achievement at ExCel? The reply comes straight off the bat. Pushing average visitor spend up from £4.81 last year to £5.40 this year, a figure higher than that at motorway service areas, museums, zoos and galleries. He's proud of the feedback from visitors. Out of 5,000, 62% of those who expressed a preference said ExCel was the best place for catering compared with other exhibition sites.

His relationship with the operators - Birleys, Costa, Oi! Bagel, etc - has developed since 2000. "We must have reached a stage where they're relatively happy, and the customers are relatively happy. It's important because you could just milk something. I could have not enough catering and have customers complaining because there's not enough, but the caterers would be very happy. It's a matrix. The variable has to change with every exhibition." The mathematician's work continues. nwe

HOTELYMPIA 2004

Dates: Monday-Friday 23-27 February 2004
Venue: ExCel, London Docklands
Opening times: 9.30am to 5.30pm (Friday 9.30am to 4pm)
To register: Telephone 0870 4294644, or visit www.hotelympia.com

Several new features at the show include a Grab ‘n' Go zone, for the growing convenience and vending sectors; Bar Scene, for the drinks industry, including a new competition programme called Bar Excellence for bartenders; and an area dedicated to the latest design projects, called Design Link, with speakers including Sir Terence Conran and design supremo David Collins, and a focus on gardens and spas. For further details on the new-look show, go to the website, www.hotelympia.com.

HOW TO GET THERE

  • Remember, Hotelympia is no longer at Earls Court.
  • ExCel is connected to the Jubilee line at Canning Town via a three-minute Docklands Light Railway (DLR) journey to ExCel's dedicated station, Custom House. Custom House is also on the Silverlink main-line route between Richmond and Woolwich.
  • ExCel is a 10-minute drive from Tower Bridge and a 25-minute drive from junction 30 on the M25. The venue is also easily reached from central London via the Limehouse Link and via the M25, A13, M11, A406 (North Circular), the Blackwall Tunnel and Rotherhithe Tunnel from other parts of the country. ExCel has parking for 4,000 cars.
  • ExCel is a five-minute taxi ride from London City Airport. For flight information, visit www.londoncityairport.com.
  • ExCel Retail & Hospitality, London Docklands, London E16 1XL. Tel: 020 7069 4000

Fax: 020 7069 4747
Email: mikedawson@excel-london.co.uk.

What's on offer

  • Oi! Bagel
    Costa Coffee x 2, plus two mobile carts
    Soup Opera
    Birley Sandwiches
    Pizza this Pasta that
    The Fox@Boulevard pub
    The Ice Creamery
    DP - mobile coffee carts
    Truckers Bliss - mobiles that move into the halls for the contractors
    P&C Morris - units selling hot dogs, chicken sandwiches, and baked potatoes in the exhibition halls

Compass outlets

  • Leith's restaurant
  • Olive Tree restaurant
  • Viva café-bars
  • Reef café-bar
  • Seabar
  • Juicepiration

The operators

"ExCel is different and difficult to manage because it has different peaks and troughs," says Clair Beer, Costa retail development manager for the West End and London attractions. "You can make £10,000 one day and nothing the next. We rely heavily on Mike Dawson for information and advice. We have higher wastage at ExCel because you're constantly opening and shutting down, unlike at an airport or train station. We can't avoid it sometimes.

"The best thing is the presence it gives our brand. It's an international stage with up to 60,000 visitors on any given day. For the staff it's exciting because it's always different. At the moment we're trying an experiment to see if we can stay open from Monday to Friday and trade when there are no shows on. It's early days, but we're seeing if ExCel will become more than just an exhibition centre."

Oi! Bagel gained its site at ExCel through its property agent. The hot bagel chain has five more stores in the City, with another two due to open. The ExCel unit takes less money annually - about £275,000 - but is open only 150 days a year. On a daily basis, depending on the show, turnover can be much greater than at the City outlets.

"It's not been an easy ride," says Paul Salter, managing director of Birley Sandwiches. "The peaks are very good indeed, but the troughs are too many. We're used to a regular audience. Birleys has four shops in the Canary Wharf area. As a small operator we've found it difficult to organise staffing in a cost-effective way. But we're genuinely positive about being there and want ExCel to take over from Olympia and Earls Court as the key London exhibition venue. It's all about more shows and more footfall. We're looking to get the right return."

"We consider ourselves market leader in exhibition hospitality and ExCel represents our jewel in the crown," says John Jackson, general manager for Payne & Gunter. "What is fabulously exciting is the amount of new shows it's taking in. Shows that have got a bit jaded and entrenched at one venue can reinvent themselves at ExCel. We play our part in this process of rejuvenation."

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