Table toppers
Catering in football grounds is big business. Middlesbrough FC earns £2m a year from it, Liverpool FC £3m and Manchester United £4m. In an effort to push earnings from catering even higher, the newest trend in top-flight football is not just to have stars on the pitch, but to sign big names from the restaurant business for the kitchen.
Paul Heathcote started the trend in May this year when he signed to advise on catering at Liverpool FC, followed by Terry Laybourne, who has recently become a consultant chef for his beloved Newcastle United. His job is to do for the New Magpie Room restaurant in the £46m South Stand at St James' Park what he has successfully done for more than 10 years at his own city centre restaurant on the bank of the River Tyne, 21 Queen Street, and get the football ground recognised as a stylish restaurant destination.
Laybourne is the best-known chef in the city, and having his name associated with the club's flagship restaurant will help the club to market it. But, says Laybourne, his involvement is far more hands-on than just having his name on the menu. "I'm not going to be cooking on a regular basis," he says, "but I'm devising the dishes, writing the menus, sorting out the kitchen layout and training the chefs."
Neither is it a one-way marketing exercise. Laybourne believes that an association with the club will be a boost for his own business. "It's a chance to get across to a wider audience what my style of food and service is," he says. "There is a lot of corporate dining in the New Magpie Room and that's the audience I'm after for 21 Queen Street."
He does have competition at the ground, though, particularly on match days, when the only way to get a seat in the New Magpie Room is as part of a package which includes a seat in the new stand. The choice of catering options at the ground ranges from snack kiosks for the terrace fans at half-time to corporate hospitality boxes and a suite of conference and banqueting rooms, which are used extensively on non-match days.
Laybourne's job is not just devising food for match days, when there is virtually a captive market, but to make the New Magpie Room a midweek restaurant choice when the terraces are silent. He is doing this by offering a competitive fixed-price lunch of £12.50 for two courses, £15 for three courses and an à la carte dinner menu that averages £30 per head, including drinks.
Newcastle United FC is open about the benefits of linking with a local celebrity chef. But Robin Buchanan, general manager of the in-house catering operation at the club, denies that bringing in an outside consultant implies that the club staff could not do it themselves. "Our restaurant has two AA red rosettes," he says. "Tell me another football ground that has that kind of guidebook rating for the food in its restaurant. Having Terry on board will just make it work even more successfully."
More accessible
Buchanan admits that, before Laybourne came in, the restaurant had a problem. It was perceived in the city as being a bit elitist. "We had to change that image, do something that made us more accessible, and be seen as a smart place to eat out without any football," he concedes. "We're in the heart of Newcastle, two minutes' walk from the city centre. No other Premier League football club can say that. It's a great point to build from."
Laybourne has a tough target to meet in his new venture. Catering at Newcastle is one of the most profitable food operations in the football game, expected to turn over £6m this season. There is a wide range of revenue streams for catering at St James' Park, and although he is reluctant to disclose details, Laybourne and the New Magpie Room are expected to turn over £1m. Indications from the first few weeks of operation are that the forecast will be met.
While Buchanan's intention is that the New Magpie Room should establish itself in its own right, he admits that it makes sense to use the reverence given to the team by the local fans to help Laybourne sell the new restaurant. One of the simplest ways this is being done is to combine a £14 fixed-price Sunday lunch with permission for customers to wander around the club, visit the changing room, stand on the pitch or sit in the dug-out. This may seem a puzzling marketing device to anyone who is not involved in football, but it's common sense to those who know the passions that surround the game.
While Laybourne insists that he is doing serious food at St James' Park, he has allowed himself a bit of fun. The menu offers a black and white striped soup, mirroring the club's strip. "It's basically a black bean soup where we layer the white stripes on with crème fraîche. We offer it to the opposing teams when they play at St James' Park," he says.
Norwich City FC has had a quite different culinary celebrity boost to its catering turnover. The club's catering director (appointed last year) and majority shareholder is influential television cook Delia Smith, whose passion for cooking has recently been revealed to be on a par with her passion for the Canaries, as the team is known.
Smith decided last year to combine her two loves, both to stamp her style of food on the catering operation and to let her name boost the catering revenue through marketing of the Delia Smith name.
As catering director, Smith is very much hands-on, and is at the club an average of three days a week, tasting the food, planning the menus and writing the recipes. But she rejects firmly the notion that she has become head chef to the club - she does no cooking at Norwich. That is in the hands of a brigade of seven professional chefs, led by Simon Hollingdale, appointed by Smith in August.
The Norwich City catering department, headed by manager Roland Schreiber - another appointment by Smith, from his previous job as catering manager at Nottingham Forest FC - has seen the fortunes of the catering business power ahead in the past few months, with the kind of success that the fans would hope for from the team.
Unique combination
The club knows it has a unique combination: a director with a passion for the club and for good food, and with an unrivalled media profile. Schreiber puts it in perspective when he asks: "Who else in the food business would be instantly recognised by their first name only?" But he emphasises that the club's policy is not to over-market its high-profile catering director and definitely not to suggest that she is actually cooking. "Delia is the first to recognise that there is a world of difference between cooking at home and cooking in a restaurant," he says.
The centrepiece of Smith's public persona at Norwich is the newly opened restaurant, Delia's City Brasserie. It has been open for a few months, following a soft launch to give the catering operation a chance to gauge customer demand, and the early indications are sound. With a seating capacity of 130, 100 diners a night is seen as little more than average, with an average spend per head of £30. All the dishes are Delia recipes, but adapted for food service by head chef Hollingdale.
Marketing is helped in no small degree by the fact that Delia herself is front of house at least one Saturday out of four, usually entertaining a table of guests, or fronting theme nights, when she selects the food and wine of a country or region and introduces it to customers.
Newcastle United FC
St James' Park, Newcastle upon Tyne
Consultant chef: Terry Laybourne
Total club turnover from catering: £6m
Target for Laybourne: £1m
Norwich City FC
Carrow Road, Norwich, Norfolk
Catering director: Delia Smith
Projected turnover from catering: £2m
Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 19-25 October 2000
