The Big Beat route

01 January 2000
The Big Beat route

Big Beat Group

10 Clairmont Gardens, Glasgow G3 7LW

Tel: 0141-331 7600

Managing directors: Ron McCulloch and George Swanson

Group figures, nine months to Dec 1998 (versus same period, 1997):

Turnover: £12.4m (£9.4m)

Gross margin: 71%

Profit: £2.6m (£2m)

Turnover split: discos, £2.4m (19% of mix); bars, restaurants, hotels, £10m (81% of mix)

Forecast for 1999: turnover, £36m;profit, £6.5m

FOR a pair of Glasgow-based entrepreneurs, 1999 promises to be quite a year. Trading as the Big Beat Group, Ron McCulloch and George Swanson have been at the forefront of style-led bars and clubs in Scotland for some time. Now, in a £7m venture, their most ambitious to date, they plan to open a seven-storey venue in London's Leicester Square and take the capital's club scene by storm.

McCulloch, a designer, cut his teeth in the late 1980s bringing the essence of club culture from the likes of Ibiza and Barcelona back to Glasgow and venues such as the Tunnel, which opened in 1990. Two years on, he teamed up with George Swanson, former head of Whitbread Scotland, to form Big Beat. Since then, the group's turnover has risen to £12.4m for the nine months to last December, an increase of 32% on the same period for 1997.

Today, the portfolio includes 22 units ranging from Scotland's first microbrewery to a series of three-star hotels, plus a record label and soon-to-be-launched radio station.

Last year Big Beat International was formed under the brand name Home, with the launch of a new superclub in Sydney. A London venue is next in line, due to open this September, and similar ventures for Singapore, New York and possibly Hong Kong are planned for the future.

The Leicester Square site is a leasehold conversion of a 1960s office block, by Big Beat's in-house design team and Dundee-based architect Nicol Russell. It will boast a top-floor, 180-cover restaurant that extends on to a balcony with views towards Westminster. The menu is predicted to be a "stylish, eclectic mix of food with no boundaries".

There will be a bar with a faster, cràperie-style menu on the floor below and, at ground level, a café to take advantage of the huge numbers passing the door. The rest of the building will be given over to a nightclub. Precise targets on average spend and food sales have yet to be set, but the venue is forecast to turn over £11m in its first year'strading, with much of this coming from multimedia sponsorship and merchandising.

In charge of food operations for the whole group is Stephen Murphy. "My role is ensuring that the operational support chefs and management teams deliver the best quality possible," he says. "Because we're such a diverse group, I'm really here to give guidance and advice."

The job involves chef development, setting menus and hitting the profit targets on food sales. In a former life, Murphy was head chef at the original Ashton Lane Cul De Sac in Glasgow's West End, now owned by Big Beat. This 80-cover, ground-floor restaurant caters for 900-1,000 sittings a week, with an average lunchtime spend of £7-£8, rising to £15 in the evening. Above it is a bar, and above that, the Attic, which does breakfast, early-evening tapas and a so-called "smoothie" menu of laid-back bar food.

Food accounts for 30% of the venue's turnover and is based around a staple diet of cràpes, pasta and burgers, extending to salmon, veal and venison in the evening. Preventing menu fatigue is a key concern for Murphy, given the Cul De Sac's loyal following, built up over the past 15 years.

The restaurant's success has made it a template for one of the group's core brands. Today, there is a Cul De Sac in Glasgow's south side, one in Dundee and one launched in Aberdeen this March. The Aberdeen opening comes after a £150,000 refit of the former Word and Web pub, bought in November 1997 as part of an £8m package from local entrepreneur Ricky Simpson.

Included in the deal were a couple of three-star hotels - the city-centre Palm Court and the Craighaar, out by Aberdeen's airport, both sharing a rack rate of £78. At present, food and drink at these venues account for 30-35% of turnover. Murphy maintains that business is holding up well despite desperately low oil prices and a consequent slump in corporate entertaining.

Though it may share Whitbread's sense of diversity, the group's stated attitude to its staff is decidedly non-corporate. "Big Beat opposes the dominant perception that bar and restaurant work is simply ‘fill-in' employment," says McCulloch.

"Having set budgets for the various units, it's left to each one how to achieve them," explains Gordon Richardson, group operations manager. It was therefore no great surprise when Big Beat moved into the hand-crafted, non-industrial world of microbrewing with the opening of the Canal on 4 July last year on the fringes of Glasgow's West End in what was once the art deco office of a timber yard. Trading as the Miller's Thumb Brewing Co, Big Beat spent £2.1m restoring the building and inserting a downstairs bar, a 130-seat upstairs restaurant and a public-view brewery in the middle.

Inspired modern American

The cuisine at the Canal is "inspired modern American", says Murphy, and the average spend on food in the restaurant and in the 40-seat private dining room above is £6-£7 at lunchtime, and £10 in the evening. Since its launch, the number of covers has levelled out to 1,200-1,400 a week, and food accounts for 40% of turnover. Richardson believes that a successful microbrewery should be first and foremost a restaurant.

The plan is to roll out a further 10 or 12 microbreweries across Scotland and northern England, with favoured sites being areas of high population connected to a craft or industry such as shipbuilding and on a river - for example, Aberdeen or Liverpool.

Meanwhile, Big Beat is steadily moving south with a new nightclub in Nottingham on the site of the old Elite Theatre due to open this spring after a £2.5m redevelopment. Together with other openings, including a new multi-level bar and grill planned for Glasgow's Bishopbriggs this July, total turnover for 1999 is predicted to hit £36m and generate a profit of £6.5m.

But it is London that is generating the biggest buzz. "London will be the flagship venue for our global club brand - a venue for the new millennium," declares Richardson. As to how it will compete in this crowded market with the likes of Manumission and the Ministry of Sound, Big Beat's principals say that, with the restaurant, bar and café, theirs is far more than just a nightclub.

So far, Big Beat has enjoyed a relatively easy progression from cool nightclubs to community bars, hotels and restaurants, especially in its home town. Whether it can bring this spirit of the mainstream to London remains to be seen. n

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