Hungry for love
Love is in the air at Hogarth's restaurant in Bournemouth, mainly between chef-owner Ian McLelland and his till. Andrew Davies reports.
At five o'clock in the afternoon on 14 February Ian McLelland, chef-owner of Hogarth's restaurant in Bournemouth, was still fielding phone calls from desperate men looking for a table for two.
"They were calling and saying, ‘Please save my life'," he laughs. "I could've filled the place 10 times over. In fact, we even had couples coming in off the street to try and get tables."
They were leaving it a little too late, though. Hogarth's had actually been fully booked two weeks previously. The chip shop over the road was probably pretty busy by the end of the night.
It's safe to say the evening was a success. McLelland did 38 covers, six more than a usual full night after turning over a few tables.
"We probably could've turned more tables," he says, "but at the end of the day I can't handle it - 38 covers by one person is a lot."
Through the entire night Hogarth's took £1,300 - the best night it's had, according to McLelland, especially considering it was midweek and he had done no advertising.
"That's the best thing about it," he explains. "I had expected to get more bookings in December for Christmas parties and I thought we should've done more advertising, so I was going to do plenty for Valentine's Day. But before I had figured out what I was going to do we were already filling up."
Valentine's Day was also a good indicator of how Hogarth's customer base is changing, probably by word of mouth rather than marketing. "Amazingly, 80% of the people there on Valentine's Day were new faces, which is great," McLelland says. "Generally speaking, from the middle of January until now, there's been a big increase in new people."
The average customer age has also dropped. When McLelland took over, the punters were mostly 50-plus, retired types, but now he's serving predominantly the affluent 30-plus group.
On a more general note, McLelland is still managing to juggle all the different ingredients that make him up. As well as tackling his first restaurant, he also has a young family (his daughter Hattie is 16 months old) and he's two years into a hospitality management degree.
How does he cope with studying and running the business? "I must admit, I don't make very many of my classes," McLelland says. "But I hand in what I need to hand in to get the marks. I keep in contact with my lecturers, and they're very understanding - they give me all the handouts from the classes I miss."
What keeps him near the top of the class is the fact that Hogarth's has become a running project that feeds his studies with practical application. He admits that a lot of what is covered in class are topics he has already encountered in the running of his restaurant.
"I have an essay that I need to hand in in two weeks' time on target market analysis," says McLelland, "which is great, because it gives me a chance to do stuff that I probably wouldn't have got around to for years."
And with Mother's Day on 10 March it gives him the perfect chance to try it out. He's planning a big advertising push for lunch and dinner which, he thinks, could bring him yet another record-breaking day.
Next visit to Hogarth's: 4 April
The story so far
Canadian chef Ian Mclelland, 28, is realising his dream of owning and running his own restaurant, the 32-seat Hogarth's, in the Ferndown area of Bournemouth, Dorset. Under the same ownership for the previous 12 years, the restaurant had built up a solid base of regular customers. Now Valentine's Day has given him his most successful evening yet.
Hogarth's
173a New Road, West Parley, Bournemouth, Dorset
Tel: 01202 574769
Owner and chef: Ian Mclelland
Staff: one
Opened: 22 October 2001
Purchase price: £42,000
Seats: 32
Valentine's Day covers: 38
Valentine's Day turnover: £1,300
