Outdoor pursuits
Everyone loves being outside. Just look at any pub, café, hotel or restaurant with outdoor seating and as soon as the sun comes out it will be packed. Even if you've got only enough room to squeeze in a table and two chairs, chances are that customers will be queuing up to grab them.
But there's plenty more on offer besides tables and chairs. Patio heaters, parasols and - for something a little more grand - a gazebo, can add that all-important character to a space. Games, too, can make a spot memorable. The key is to get leftover space to work hard for your business.
One small operator trying to add that extra dimension is the Big Fill Café in Sutton, Surrey, co-owned by Naz Manji and Damian Southin. Outside the parade of shops where the café is situated is a narrow strip of grass which the owners have decided to turn to their advantage.
After obtaining a licence through town planning and the Highways Agency, they are planning to build a wooden platform, about 20ft x 15ft, on which they will put concrete tiles ("Wooden decking can be slippery when wet"), chairs and about eight tables. "We will use aluminium ones because they are lightweight and easy to clean," says Manji.
The two great things about this kind of project are its cost and competitive edge. After the partners have paid the council for a six-month outdoor licence - in this case, almost £400 - Manji reckons the start-up costs will be only £600. And the terrace will provide much-needed visibility, helping to turn the café into a daytime destination.
Pubs are also areas where a few simple landscaping touches can persuade people to turn a swift half into a whole afternoon's drinking. Nichola Green, who runs a Young's pub, the Coach and Horses in Barnes, south-west London, presides over a bar the size of her living room, but what her pub lacks inside is more than made up for by the garden.
Proud winner of the London In Bloom Best Pub in Richmond last summer, Green says she tarted up the flowerbeds - which helps attract new clientele, "especially women". But it is the larger lower area, "the paddock", that marks out the pub.
The paddock features a floodlit boules pitch - or, to give it its correct French name, a pétanque piste. This game of bowls, played with heavy metal balls that are lobbed rather than rolled, requires only a gravel (or any rough material) area of about 17m x 14m, making it very simple to set up but giving the pub a unique attraction.
"We hold tournaments most Saturdays," says Green. "We've even set up a match between the pub team and the local bowling club for later in the year."
Green has also installed a food station in the paddock, with gas barbecues, a chip fryer and a microwave. The barbecue season will kick off this year on 6 April, the date of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, and, weather permitting, will continue to September.
Green keeps food simple on the race day, offering sausages and burgers, but during the summer the pub serves a range of barbecued food, from home-made kebabs served with pitta bread and salad to minted lamb steaks, sardines and chicken fillets.
If you're looking for a little more glamour, parasols can lift the visual appeal of a terrace. Design-led hotel group Hotel du Vin turned to Tradewinds Parasols as supplier for all their outposts.
General manager at the Winchester branch, Mark Huntley, says: "We get precious little opportunity to eat outside in this country, so when we do we want to make the most of it."
Parasols maintain the level of design outside that the hotel nurtures inside. Breakfast can be served there, and it is very popular at lunchtime, although staff have to operate this on a first-come, first-served basis.
The square parasols can also be zipped together to create a much larger ceiling with a guttering effect between. They are used in this way at Cornwall's Eden Project, where a food service area of about 50 tables is covered by a single canopy between Easter and October.
According to visitor services manager Ian Marsh, the Eden Project has plans to create an arena this summer for live entertainment. The parasol structure has proved so successful that they are likely to use a similar set-up again. "It's flexible, so you can just zip more on to it or take some away as much as you like," says Marsh.
The Eden Project plans to build a more permanent outdoor food service area in the future, but for the time being the parasols offer the best temporary alternative.
Tradewinds Parasols offers a useful hibernation policy, whereby it takes away the parasols at the end of the summer, and cleans, dries and re-waterproofs them ready for next summer.
If space is not a problem in your garden, a gazebo can be used as a permanent feature to impress guests and clients. Invented in ancient times and beloved of the Victorians, these wooden structures create a private but open area that can be used in a variety of ways. Two hotels that have installed gazebos are the Combe Grove Manor hotel, at Monkton Combe, near Bath, and the Hornsbury Mill Conference and Banqueting Centre, near Chard in Somerset.
Julian Ebbutt, general manger of Combe Grove Manor, says he chose the gazebo as a covered alternative to the hotel's terrace, which seats about 40 people. The Strasburg model of gazebo from the Great Pavilion Trading Company sits above the terrace, and Ebbutt says he'd love to have more.
"The vagaries of the English weather mean that people want to know that if they come up here they can still go under cover." The gazebo is also used by people taking afternoon tea or morning coffee. And, as the hotel also owns a health club, people enjoy the chance to relax there after they have exercised.
The Hornsbury Mill Conference and Banqueting Centre has only five hotel rooms, but owners Brian Covington and wife, Terry, provide guests with a range of other services including a marriage facility. They installed an 18ft x 18ft Classic Pagoda gazebo next to their lake specifically for weddings last summer, and it has proved incredibly popular ever since. Among those getting married there has been ex-cricket star Dermot Reeve.
The Covingtons are keen to nurture the attraction and have already started training roses and honeysuckle around the wood.
"Guests also enjoy booking it for small birthday parties, having a meal for around 16 people, or even just for cream teas and lunches," Brian says. The couple also have plans to use the structure as a stage for jazz bands, erecting a marquee next to it to accommodate the audience.
Bath-based Great Pavilion Trading Company's designs range in size from 8ft x 8ft to 18ft x 18ft. The company also offers a lease/rental facility that enables operators to offset the rental fee against taxable profit. The cost of base preparation and decorating can be included in the rental payment, and weekly leases begin at £28 plus VAT.
Safety Issues
Outdoor entertainment may sound like fun but it brings with it plenty of safety concerns.
Matthew Clark from Tradewinds Parasols explains how the company has had to develop a new design for its parasol bases after a guest at one of its clients' hotels tripped over a concrete block base (pictured). The injury sustained has led to an insurance claim.
To avoid future accidents, the company is putting permanent shafts in the ground into which the poles can be slid. This will fix the parasol in position and means that concrete blocks are not lying around as potential hazards when the parasols have been put away. It has the added benefit of stopping customers trying to move the parasols themselves and risking back injuries.
It is also worth checking whether your standard table insurance covers tables outside. Remember that hot food and drinks may have to be carried across footpaths and further than usual, so extra care is needed.
Contacts
The Great Pavilion Trading Company,
01225 840760,
www.greatpaviliontrading.com
Tradewinds Parasols,
020 8400 7618,
www.tradewindsparasol.com
Pétanque Promotions,
024 7645 7815,
www.britishpetanque.org
Furniture
Classic Furniture Group,
01952 825000,
www.classicfurniture.co.uk
Hillswood Aluminium Furniture,
01474 85441
PJ Bridgman & Co,
020 8804 7474
Barbecues
RH Hall,
01442 875578,
www.rhhall.com
Cinders Barbecues,
01524 262900,
www.cindersbarbecues.com
