Harvey Nichols staff get new restaurant

Staff at the Harvey Nichols flagship store in London are to get their own restaurant this week after years of using a limited vending service.

The 95-seat restaurant was the idea of the store's new general manager, Paul Finucane, who was recruited from Harrods. He viewed the restaurant as a key staff benefit and a means of increasing morale and motivation among the store's 1,200 employees and concessionaires.

Missing Ingredients, the Crown Group's business and industry caterer, has won a five-year deal to run the restaurant with estimated annual sales of £500,000.

Missing Ingredients and Harvey Nichols together invested £90,000 in the restaurant, previously a rest area for staff which contained four vending machines run by Sodexho.

Missing Ingredients managing director Sean Valentine said that the choices for staff wishing to have lunch had been limited because Knightsbridge is such an expensive area. Harvey Nichols has agreed to a minimal fixed subsidy in the restaurant.

The new facility will serve Tchibo and Costa coffees, cooked breakfasts from 9am to 11am, and a hot lunch, sandwiches, baguettes, salads and wraps from noon to 3.30pm seven days a week.

Head chef Andrew Norris was previously employed by Compass as executive chef at London's Royal Albert Hall.