The price of peace

Read the previous instalments…

London can be a very strange place. While hospitality businesses across the country are suffering from foot-and-mouth (the effects on business, that is, not the symptoms), the capital is suffering from an outbreak of anti-capitalists.

The sight of businesses in central London boarding up their doors and windows ahead of the May Day demonstrations is reminiscent of pubs and restaurants piling up sandbags to keep out last year's floods. As it turned out, though, the London demonstrations were more of a dribble than a torrent.

Slap in the middle of Covent Garden, the Porterhouse was one of those establishments taking precautions. Being only a short walk from all the projected flashpoints of the Strand, Trafalgar Square and Oxford Circus, the pub knew it had better do something just in case.

"We weren't sure what would happen," says manager and partner Peter Hughes (left). "We organised security and worked the staff rota so no one would have to travel to or from the pub through any trouble, but that was about it. We had Sky News on throughout the day to try to keep up with where they all were. But in the end it centred around Oxford Circus. The nearest trouble was supposed to be down by Coutts bank on the Strand, but that didn't materialise."

So Hughes's understated preparations proved to be all that was needed. The two security staff he brought in stayed from 11am until 9pm without any trouble to deal with.

Other Covent Garden businesses had barricaded themselves in, which was, says Hughes, a bit over the top. "I was surprised that places like Whittards and Pasta Browns had boarded themselves up, because they're not exactly McDonald's or Nike, are they?" he says. "Even the Griffin, which is a Regent Inn on Villiers Street, had closed and boarded itself up. But, having said that, they were right in the middle of last year's protests, so it's better to be safe than sorry."

While the Porterhouse remained physically intact following the May Day demonstrations, the pub's tills took a bit of a battering. Hughes estimates that the pub was down about £2,500 on a normal Tuesday, mainly because the post-work office trade had shrivelled. A lot of people had decided to stay at home rather than face travelling through the disruptions, he thinks.

While the protests captured all the national headlines, Hughes reckons that the Porterhouse lost more money through the next day's events. A 24-hour strike on the London Underground was scheduled to begin at 9pm on 2 May, and even though it was called off at the last minute, the damage had already been done. "They called it off so late that it affected us on Wednesday night," Hughes explains. "We lost about £3,500 of turnover compared to a normal Wednesday. I think most people who might have come out for a drink went straight home to avoid the trouble. A lot of them probably didn't know [the strike] had been cancelled until they got home."

But, strikes and protests aside, the Porterhouse is ticking over nicely. Turnover is steady at £55,000 a week and it celebrates its first birthday in July. The partners are already starting to think of ways to mark the anniversary. "We are planning to do something but I really don't know what, yet," Hughes says. "When they had the 10th birthday at the Porterhouse in Bray, they charged the prices from the night it opened. But you can't really do that after a year, can you?"

The birthday also marks the start of the first proper summer season for the pub, and Hughes is unsure what to expect. Summer is traditionally a time for drinking and eating, especially if the weather is fine, but in Covent Garden it's also the peak period for tourists, and that doesn't necessarily mean big money. "Generally, tourists have varied spending habits depending on where they're from," Hughes explains. "Americans and Japanese, for instance, don't really spend anything on drink, but Dutch, Germans and English do."

Talking to other operators in the area, Hughes has got the general consensus that summer is pretty dead from a business point of view. The Punch and Judy pub, right at the centre of Covent Garden itself, says that May is its busiest month outside December. "I was surprised to hear that, because it's right in the middle and you'd expect it to be the first to pick up any business that's around," Hughes says. "So we're going to have to run through to September before we can get any indication of year-on-year growth, because the summer is a new thing for us."

The main focus of concentration for the Porterhouse partners at the moment is finding the right site for another UK pub. They've already looked at more than 20 prospective sites in central London but, Hughes says, none have had that certain something. The nature of the Porterhouse's unique selling point - its range of own beers and stouts - means that they have to look for something a bit special.

"None of them have really jumped out at us shouting, ‘Hey, I want to be a Porterhouse'," he explains. "Because we want to develop the Porterhouse brand in the UK, that more or less says that we want to carry on with what we're doing in Covent Garden, which is to go with our own products and not the mainstream ones. So it's not just location, it's the type of clientele you're appealing to. There's an educational element in getting people to change to our products."

Some might say that if they've managed to do that in Covent Garden, then it's possible anywhere.

The story so far

The Porterhouse Stout and Oyster Bar opened in the heart of London's Covent Garden in July last year, at a cost of £3.6m. Run by partners Oliver Hughes, Peter Hughes, Liam LaHart and Frank Ennis, it is the third Porterhouse in total, but the first away from Dublin.

The other two, in Temple Bar in Dublin's city centre, and in Bray, just outside the city, turn over nearly £2.2m a year. The Temple Bar site also houses the company's brewery, which produces award-winning stouts, ales and lagers.

In Covent Garden, the Porterhouse attracts mainly the office crowd, both for lunch and for after-work drinks, and it has built up a steady turnover of about £55,000 a week in the short time it has been open.

Big takings over Christmas and New Year got 2001 off to a perfect start, and the St Patrick's Day celebrations in March almost equalled it. Now, with summer and the pub's first birthday approaching, thoughts are turning to finding a site for Porterhouse number two.

There are just a few anti-capitalists to deal with first…

FACTS:

Porterhouse Stout and Oyster Bar

21-22 Maiden Lane, Covent Garden, London WC2

Weekly turnover: £55,000 to £60,000

Covers: 2,040 a week

Average spend: £6.20

Next visit to the Porterhouse: 25 June

Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 10-17 May 2001

Photographs: Sam Bailey