New owner scraps ‘failed' scheme to reinvent Rouge

The new owner of the Café Rouge and Bella Pasta restaurant chains, bought from Whitbread for a knockdown £25m a fortnight ago, has said it intends to scrap the tentative pre-sale efforts to reinvent the restaurants.

Before selling the Pelican group, which includes both chains as well as a number of other restaurants, Whitbread had relaunched Café Rouge as Rouge at several restaurants and intended to similarly reinvent Bella Pasta as Bella.

"It didn't work, and we are going to be converting them back. It was a failed experiment," said Gavin Williams, chief operating officer of Tragus Holdings, the new owner of the Pelican group.

Williams admitted that when Tragus put together the bid for Pelican it had to convince backers that Café Rouge was not the "tired, clapped-out old brand which some people were saying it was".

On the contrary, argued Williams, Tragus intended to open more Café Rouge and Bella Pasta restaurants and believed that with some development both would do well.

He said: "We think we paid a good price and we have acquired some economic brands which are not finished at all. The changes we will make at Café Rouge will be to make the menu the same all day and so avoid the idea that you only go there for lunch or dinner. It is a café, and we want to make that clear."

Williams's priority with both Café Rouge and Bella Pasta is to increase the number of customers rather than persuade them to spend more. The 75 Café Rouges attract an average of 1,350 customers each a week.

Williams added that another reason he believed the Pelican group would now do well was that Whitbread had already sold the poor performers.

Other restaurants in the group include nine Mamma Amalfi restaurants and four Abbaye beer and mussels bars as well as the Leadenhall wine and tapas bar and the Oriel brasserie, both in London.

by David Harris

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 13-19 June 2002