To add revenue, add rooms

For restaurateurs setting up a business in a remote location, being able to offer a place to sleep is often the only means of attracting customers. Amazingly, the income from rooms can also make a huge difference to the bottom line, enabling a kitchen with serious intentions to be able to pay for the finest ingredients and a full and experienced team of chefs.

Customers can benefit too. Not only do they have the option of extending an evening out into a short-break, but they will also be able drink to their hearts content without falling foul of the drink-driving laws.

Winteringham Fields is perhaps the epitome of a restaurant with rooms. Situated in a remote location in the heart of North Lincolnshire, the restaurant is the only reason why most people visit the tiny village of Winteringham. When Germain and Annie Schwab opened the business in 1988, it was their intention to create one of the country's first restaurants with rooms. Inspired by the likes of Georges Blanc in France, they initially opened their 42-cover restaurant with four bedrooms and have since expanded to 10.

"We set out to be a destination restaurant by choice and because we are in such an isolated, non-tourist area with little local accommodation, it was vital that we had bedrooms too," says Annie Schwab.

"The income from the bedrooms has also been necessary to cover the costs of running a very high-calibre restaurant. Employing 11 chefs for a 42-cover restaurant wouldn't be economically feasible without the bedrooms."

Winteringham Fields' annual turnover of just over £1m is roughly split 50:50 between the restaurant and rooms. Bed and breakfast in one of the restaurant's individually designed bedrooms ranges from £110 to £190 for double occupancy.

In the early days of Winteringham Fields, Annie Schwab says, the guidebooks were confused as to how to classify the business. "They either wanted to categorise us a hotel or a guesthouse and we refused to be regarded as either," she says. "Thankfully we stuck to our guns and the AA have now introduced a ‘restaurant with rooms' category for establishments such as Winteringham Fields."

In the AA's eyes, a restaurant with rooms is "A local (or national) destination for eating out which also offers accommodation, albeit on a smaller scale. Most have 12 bedrooms or fewer, and public areas may be limited to the restaurant itself."

Neil Hardar, editor of the AA Restaurant Guide, says that the growth in restaurants with rooms is good news for the hospitality industry. "It's a trend that is very much being spurred on by chefs who are setting up a business for the first time on their own and need the support of income from the bedrooms to get them going. These restaurants all tend to have an individual, interesting and often a boutique feel, with cooking of a high quality and accommodation that is of a superior standard," he says.

"They are meeting the needs of a growing band of sophisticated leisure travellers. Such people want to take a short break that is focused on great food, they are not after a hotel with lots of facilities."

These are exactly the kind of customers who are being attracted to L'Enclume, a 40-seat restaurant that opened last year in the remote village of Cartmel, Cumbria. For chef-proprietor Simon Rogan, it would have been impossible to open a restaurant here with aspirations to become known nationally without the support of the seven bedrooms.

Initially it was a struggle to get local people in through the door: the stark contemporary decor and menus offering the likes of gel‚e of duck with caraway parfait and sweetcorn bonbons seemed to frighten local people off rather than entice them in. "It was important, therefore, that we attracted people from further afield," Rogan says.

To this end, he employed London public relations company JRPR, and as a result a series of articles appeared in the national press, including The Guardian, The Times, the Sunday Times, the Mail on Sunday, the Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Telegraph. Now, up to 90% of L'Enclume's business comes from outside the immediate area.

In order to keep down the costs of decorating and furnishing the bedrooms in the 12th-century leasehold property, Rogan negotiated deals with leading interior design companies such as Beaumont & Fletcher and Zoffany to sponsor the rooms, and local antiques firm, Anthemion, has loaned the furniture. "It's a two-way thing: it has helped me furnish the rooms in a way that I couldn't otherwise have afforded and it gives the companies a shop window for their goods."

For Andrew Ryan, owner of the Cornish Range, a 50-seat restaurant in the Cornish coastal village of Mousehole, the opening of three bedrooms was initially a means of providing a new income stream. During the peak holiday season from April to October, the restaurant regularly serves 70 covers, and turns away some 100 or so customers per night.

While there was no need for the bedrooms to boost business during the summer months, it has made a marked difference to the restaurant from November through to March. "We used to be dead during the winter," says Ryan, who has run the Cornish Range for five years. "During January and February this year the bedrooms were full every weekend, which, of course, brought business into the restaurant as well."

Ryan opened the bedrooms two years ago, having spent £100,000 on renovation and redecoration work on his home, a conversion of two cottages, adjacent to the restaurant. Californian in style, with a quality which Ryan likens to that found at the Metropolitan hotel in London, the rooms are attracting a discerning clientele from South Wales, the North-west, London and the South-east.

Now Ryan would like to buy another adjacent property, which would add a further four bedrooms to his portfolio. The house is on the market for £350,000 and it would probably need about £150,000 to decorate and furnish it to the same standard as the other rooms. "I know I could fill the rooms, and I'm doing my sums to see whether we should go ahead," he says.

Andrew and Jacquie Pern have always known that they wouldn't have a problem filling the 11 bedrooms that they have in the village of Harome, North Yorkshire, where they run the Michelin-starred Star Inn. They offer three bedrooms in Black Eagle Cottage, five minutes' walk from the Star, and eight bedrooms in Cross House Lodge, opposite the 46-seat pub-restaurant

"We've always been full in the Star, so the purpose of the rooms was not to bring people into the restaurant," says Jacquie Pern. "But opening the rooms was an obvious way to expand and enhance the business without detracting from what we already had.

"The bedrooms have not increased our number of covers in the restaurant, but it has increased the average spend as the people who stay overnight tend to spend more money, particularly on wine."

The second phase of rooms - in Cross House Lodge - opened in September 2002, after £750,000 was sent on buying what was formerly a derelict farm building and converting it into luxury accommodation with rustic, lodge-style interiors designed by Jacquie Pern.

Luxury goods, including goose down pillows from the Cotswold Company and Ralph Lauren papers and fabrics, have been cleverly mixed with cheaper items, such as fabrics from a local mill shop in Kirby Moorside to give an overall impression of quality, but without letting costs becoming excessive. Top sheets and pillow cases, for instance, come from Peter Reed in Lancashire and are hand embroidered with stars, while the cheaper bottom sheets and pillow cases are from a local laundry.

Occupancy for the bedrooms in Cross House Lodge, which range in price from £120 to £195, has hovered around 80% since opening eight months ago.

Michel Roux's three-Michelin-starred Waterside Inn in Bray, Berkshire, was already a highly successful restaurant before it opened nine bedrooms in 1991. From a business point of view it made sense. "The top floor of the building was empty and we wanted to put it to good use, but most importantly we wanted to offer an extra service to our customers," says Diego Masciaga, restaurant and accommodation manager.

"The main attractions of the Waterside are M Roux, the restaurant and the setting on the River Thames. The bedrooms are secondary, but so many people come here for special occasions and want to stay locally that we wanted to make their visit here that little bit extra special by offering them an overnight stay."

Although the Waterside Inn is a three-Michelin-star restaurant, Masciaga says that there is no formality when it comes to guests staying in the bedrooms. An honesty bar allows guest to helps themselves to Champagne, gin and tonics or their favourite tipple and Continental breakfasts, including freshly baked croissants, are served in the bedrooms. "It's very much a home-from-home, there is nothing hotel-like about the Waterside."