Manchester's cultural revolution

30 January 2004 by
Manchester's cultural revolution

Manchester is shaping up to be one of Europe's leading conference destinations, according to Mary-Jane Wiedemann, head of convention bureau and membership at Marketing Manchester, the organisation charged with promoting the city nationally and internationally.

Although the city now has its own designated convention centre alongside the G-Mex centre, Wiedemann says lots of companies want unusual, imaginative venues to stage events, and the corporate buyer can have very high expectations when it comes to catering.

Manchester is now in a better position than ever to satisfy this demand. Museums and cultural venues have played a big role in regeneration, which has gathered pace ever since an IRA bomb destroyed part of the city centre in 1996.

The Lowry, the Imperial War Museum North and Urbis have all sprung up in the past few years. Quite apart from their appeal as visitor attractions, these new cultural landmarks are important as conference and corporate hospitality venues and their catering operations have to be of high quality to be competitive. This can explain why Urbis, the museum of urban life, has chosen to have a fine-dining restaurant on its top floor.

The new wave of museums has learnt much from the experience of the Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester. It was a pioneer in demonstrating that leisure and culture could help bring about economic and environmental improvement.

The museum opened in the Castlefield area of the city centre in 1983. Museum director Bob Scott remembers: "This area was in an absolutely shocking state. Twenty years ago, you'd never have thought this would become a tourist part of Manchester."

Scott says that the profile of his museum has rocketed since 2000, when Loyd Grossman opened the restaurant and Sodexho was contracted to run it. The museum invested £1m in the light, spacious 60-seat facility, and Sodexho paid for the fit-out as part of an eight-year deal. Four years on, Scott and catering general manager Clare Duvall are more than happy with the arrangement.

Catering was "small beer" under the in-house operation, and Scott was keen to contract the service out to a specialist company. "If a visitor has a bad meal it colours the whole visit, so catering is bloody important," he exclaims. "We've got the menus right and we've got the pricing structure right, which we owe to Clare and the team."

Duvall attends the museum's planning meetings and packaging is themed to the temporary exhibitions. Dinosaurs, Captain Kirk, the Starship Enterprise, and the current exhibition about Blackfoot Indians have all made their way into the meal experience.

A children's pick-and-mix menu was introduced last summer. For £2.50, kids can pick five items such as ham, tuna, cheese, cereal bars, muffin, fromage frais, and drinks. Each meal comes with a colour-in sheet and crayons. When the Titanic exhibition opens in June, lunch boxes will have a nautical theme.

Parents can choose from hot dishes at £3.95, such as chicken chasseur, pasta with oven-roast vegetables, steak and mushroom pie, and chilli burritos. Catering spend per visitor has risen from 45p in 2000 to more than £1, and total catering sales from museum visitors have jumped from £150,000 in 2000 to £475,000 last year.

Free entry, introduced in December 2001, has contributed to the rise in revenue. "We're fortunate we are an all-day attraction," Duvall says. "Especially over Christmas, we are inundated with dads and kids who come in while mum goes shopping. We also have regulars, people who live or work locally, and older couples. They're more likely to pop in and eat because of free entry."

In comparison, free entry at the numerous South Kensington museums in London has not been so positive for caterers. Scott explains: "Before free entry, people would pay their six quid and stay there all day. Now they can say, ‘OK kids, we've done an hour here, let's go and see the dinosaurs next door.' They only eat in one place, so, across the board, sales have gone down there because each museum no longer has its captive market. They're having to split their catering revenue now."

With no competition from neighbours, there's still more than enough to see at the Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester. With 18 separate galleries, some accessible only by the museum's railway line, it's easy to see how visitors work up an appetite. The museum buildings formerly housed the first passenger railway station and warehouse in the world.

But when it comes to corporate hospitality, the number of separate buildings presents Duvall with a challenge. Evening events often take place in the Power Hall, a gallery of 19th-century whirring cogs and hissing pistons, or the Air & Space Hall, which is crammed with aeroplanes and space travel artefacts. One is across the car park and the other is over the road. Neither has a kitchen.

But Scott is confident the museum will clinch a £3.5m regional development grant in the coming months. The grant will go to modernising the Air & Space gallery, installing more interactive exhibits, and - more importantly for Duvall - a kitchen. This will stop her and the team having to take heated trolleys back and forth across the road.

Corporate hospitality and conferences, which bring in sales of £100,000 a year, are seen as a ripe growth area. The museum markets events and takes a proportion of sales. Recently Richard Branson launched Virgin's Manchester to Los Angeles flight route and the BBC board of governors had their annual dinner.

Unlike many other venues, the museum doesn't use a number of preferred caterers but deals only with Duvall and Sodexho. Duvall says: "Competition has increased over the past two years with the Imperial War Museum North and the City Art Gallery, but we haven't suffered much. We have a much bigger daytime capacity for conferences."

Urbis

The Museum of Urban Life, which opened in June 2002, was overseen by the City Council's special projects team as part of the wider Millennium Quarter redevelopment - the last stage of rebuilding after the IRA bombing of the area in 1996. Its unusual ramp-like shape (described as "a glass ski slope") dominates the approach to Manchester city centre from the north. The building cost £30m, of which £20m came from the Millennium Commission. Its top two floors house Le Mont, a 75-seat fine-dining restaurant with its own street-level entrance and stunning views across the whole of Manchester. Urbis's executive chef, Robert Kisby, made a name for himself at the Charles Halle restaurant at the classical concert venue Bridgewater Hall - another new Manchester arrival. He's hot on using local produce and serves "French food with a Manchester influence", also overseeing a 60-seat café on the ground floor.

Urbis did not meet its target of 200,000 visitors last year, notching up 133,000, so it scrapped the entrance fee in December to bring it into line with the city's other museums. Sarah Russell, business to business manager, will not provide sales figures from the museum café but says: "The number of visitors per day has increased since Urbis went free and this has had a positive impact on all areas of the business, including the café."

The museum's main displays of "urban life" have not been an unqualified success. But its attractive architecture, and temporary exhibitions of the calibre of the new Peter Saville show (Manchester's best-loved graphic designer), are doing much to boost Urbis's profile as a hospitality venue.

Urbis has hosted a multitude of events, including the launches of the Bentley Continental G2 coup‚ and a new Marks & Spencer range of menswear endorsed by David Beckham. Room hire starts at £650, buffets cost £13.25 per person, and evening dinner is £25 a head.

In fact, Russell claims that the only challenge Urbis faces in terms of boosting hospitality and catering sales is the limited space available. "We receive so many enquiries from companies wishing to book Urbis as a venue that unfortunately we have to turn a lot of business away," she says.

Museum of Science & Industry

Facilities: 60-seat restaurant, 20-seat coffee shop, four meeting rooms, 130-seat auditorium. The Air & Space Hall and the Power Hall can accommodate 500 for buffets or 200 for dinner.

Number of visitors: 450,000 a year

Total museum sales: £3.7m (2003)

Museum visitor catering spend per head: 45p in 2000, £1.10 in 2003

Museum visitor annual catering sales: £150,000 (2000); £475,000 (2003)

Conference and corporate hospitality annual sales: £100,000 (2003)

Contractor: Sodexho, the sole provider, is four years into an eight-year contract

The Lowry

The Lowry, a £120m publicly funded complex of theatres, galleries, conference space, restaurants and bars, has been hailed as a catalyst for the regeneration of Salford Quays. A retail, leisure and residential development called the Designer Outlet, and the Imperial War Museum North have both sprung up in its wake. Since the Lowry opened in May 2000, more than £500m of public and private investment has come into the Quays. The Lowry has helped generate 5,700 jobs in the area since it opened.

The art and theatre complex includes four bars and a 120-seat restaurant with canalside views and the opportunity for al fresco dining in fine weather.

The performance of the restaurant and bars is closely linked to the theatre programme. During longer shows, such as operas and ballet, dinner can be staggered throughout the show with courses served during intervals. Most restaurant revenue comes from theatre-goers and it is fully booked when the Birmingham Royal Ballet or Opera North are in town.

Since opening, the Lowry has hosted more than 1,400 events, ranging from degree ceremonies to product launches and the whole range of conferences and seminars. Hospitality events can include anything from a business breakfast to a full-scale banquet.

Although the construction of the Lowry was funded from public money, its ongoing running is financed by its own revenues and an annual payment for services from Salford City Council. Corporate hospitality brings in revenue of about £800,000 a year, and more than 500 companies have used the Lowry. It has a number of corporate sponsors, including Interbrew and DeVere Hotels, who enjoy a private bar and their own designated theatre boxes.

Imperial War Museum North

The museum has always been free to enter since it opened on Salford Quays in July 2002. Its catering facilities face competition from the Lowry on the other side of the Manchester ship canal as well as outlets such as Pizza Express, Harry Ramsden's, and Burger King in the nearby leisure centre.

Sodexho Prestige and the museum events and catering manager, Tony Smith, have decided to offer "high-quality traditional fare with an innovative twist" in the 120-seat restaurant and grill. Bubble and squeak soup, confit of belly pork, spinach and ricotta potato pie, and bubbly fish and chips with roast vegetables are on the menu when we visit. A main course costs £4.95.

Annual sales from visitors to the restaurant and the caf‚ were £305,000 last year. Nearly 300,000 people visited the museum and one-third of them used the catering facilities.

Smith says spend per head and the number of people using the restaurant has continued to grow since the initial few months of opening. He gives two reasons. First, the museum and Sodexho Prestige has acted on feedback from customer comment cards. Most comments have been positive, but some regarding portion size and children's choices have led to changes being made. Secondly, Smith has gathered marketing information about what kind of customer visits on particular days and can tailor the menu accordingly. Wednesdays are for older visitors and weekends for families.

Corporate hospitality provided the museum with £140,000 last year. Sodexho Prestige is one of four approved caterers. Clients using the museum for corporate events have included Manchester United, Bank of Scotland, Umbro and BAE Systems.

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