Up to speed in the City
Lloyd's of London
1 Lime Street, London EC3M 7HA
Tel: 0171 327 5046
General manager catering: Mary Kilcullen
Restaurant opening hours: Monday to Friday, 8.30am-5pm
Investment: Market research - £15,000
Lloyd's building: 1688@lloyds.com, Captains' Room and kitchen - £200,000
1958 building: Jack Dustys - £75,000, Food Hall - £150,000
Chatham offices: Jack Dustys - £25,000
Back of house: Four kitchens
One executive chef, one head chef
15-strong brigade across all sections
Like it or not, age is an issue. The customers of the in-house catering at Lloyd's of London in the City are men over 40 or men and women under 40. But it took £15,000 of market research for general manager of catering Mary Kilcullen to find that out.
The research was undertaken last year to help Kilcullen and her team identify the clientele in an effort to boost performance. Prior to the research, the team had identified its clientele either as internal staff, from receptionists to the chairman, or as the "market", including Lloyd's Names, brokers, underwriters and specialists from other firms.
Kilcullen discovered her 2000-strong customer base could simply be broken down into men over 40, and men and women under 40.
Taking this to its logical conclusion, she started to look at customers as those who want traditional service and food, and those who want faster, livelier service and more modern, lighter fare.
But besides needing to improve business, Kilcullen, who became general manager 18 months ago, also wanted to strengthen the in-house team's position. Although the catering has never been run by outside contractors, she's only too aware that companies constantly make tempting approaches to her bosses on the board.
The result is that Lloyd's, a bastion of the City in its 12th year at Sir Richard Rogers' futuristic building, has been dragged further towards the 21st century. Last April, Kilcullen used the evidence from the market research to persuade the board to spend £450,000 to reposition and revamp the catering operation, starting with the Lloyd's building. The three-phase modernisation also embraces the company's other two properties - the 1958 building across the road and offices at Chatham, Kent.
The £200,000 first phase was completed in October refocusing the coffee shop, the Captains' Room restaurant, and refurbishing the kitchen.
The emphasis was to target the under-40s market, particularly the women. Kilcullen renamed the coffee shop 1688, the date the original shop opened, and then set about dismantling its traditional associations by adding @lloyds.com. Out went old furniture and carvery, in came designer tables and chairs and a 30ft mural.
The menu has also been modernised. Starters include deep-fried goats' cheese in lager batter served with stewed lentils, olive oil, garlic and tomato (£5), with mains such as red wine marinated monkfish served with curly kale, shaped new potato and a red wine glaze (£10). There's also a set-price menu at two courses for £12.95, with three courses at an extra £3.50. One side of the room is set aside for a lighter bar menu.
Competitive prices
Not all traditions have eroded. Kilcullen has built on the fact the coffee shop is seen as an extension of the trading floor. To compete with high-street coffee bars and capitalise on Lloyd's history, she developed Lloyd's own brand of coffee with Monmouth Coffee House of Covent Garden and now offers everything from espresso to caffé latte at competitive prices - for instance, £1.25 for a cafetiäre. Some 400-500 teas and coffees are still served every morning, and spend has risen slightly.
But while the coffee shop is playing to the younger market, the Captains' Room has consolidated its offering to high-earning older customers, who enjoy dishes such as sirloin steak with béarnaise sauce (£14.95). Like 1688, the restaurant is divided, with one half devoted to fine dining and the other half set aside for fans of the carvery, which was moved from the coffee shop and is priced £15.50 for three courses.
Kilcullen also knew service needed a shake-up, particularly in the revamped coffee shop. She wanted to see a balance of flair and quicker service so customers could order and then get down to business.
To tackle this, she phased out the team of 30 casual workers and transferred the three traditional service full-timers into the Captains' Room. The coffee shop was then staffed from scratch through ads in Stage magazine and trained on the job. The downside of recruiting this way is that nearly half the 10 original recruits have already left. The upside is that the vacancies have been refilled by their thespian friends.
As an incentive to get waiting staff to interact with customers, they earn a 2% commission on everything they sell.
Total turnover is £5m, and the return on investment has been set at five years, so for Kilcullen the pressure is on. She is reluctant to discuss figures, but says she has to pay her bosses "a huge amount" for the department's space. She does say, however, that Lloyd's staff get a 50% subsidy, the market gets 10% and her brief is to recover 100% of the food costs.
Kilcullen also reveals that to reach her targets, she and deputy general manager Malcolm Mullins identified that the 85-seat Captains' Room needed to boost the 40 covers at £25 a day to 70 covers at an average of £30 a head. The 220-seat coffee shop needed to push its 57 covers a day at £16 a head up to at least 60 covers and reach an average spend of £25 a head.
Her targets are already in sight. The coffee shop is attracting 50 covers a day at £25 a head. The bar menu sees an average of £7.50 a head. The Captains' Room is up to 67 covers per day with average spend still at £25 including wine.
With catering in the Lloyd's building seemingly on the right track, Kilcullen has been focusing on the second phase - relaunching the food offering in the 1958 building, which comprises a pub, wine bar and restaurant areas.
Kilcullen took her cue from the 17% increase in wine bar business, which indicated customer preference, particularly among women, for fresh food over pub grub. So in January she took on nearby Marks & Spencer by launching the chrome-and-steel-designed Jack Dustys deli, which offers ready-made and made-to-order sandwiches. The in-house brand, which cost £75,000 to launch, will also be introduced during phase three into the Chatham building by the end of March, where total budget is £25,000.
Theatre cooking
Equally geared towards the female market is the new £150,000 hi-tech food hall. Its self-service counters - rotisserie, pasta, modern, traditional and vegetarian - are open, providing a forum for theatre cooking and attracting an average spend per head of £5.
Kilcullen doesn't underestimate the drawing power of the Lloyd's building and for this reason she has recruited sales and marketing manager Elaine Vyner. Banqueting for outside clients is the biggest profit centre, bringing sales of £995,000 last year, with a target of £1.275m in 1999. Facilities include four conference rooms and the Adam room - a period dining room within the state-of-the-art building where dinners regularly notch up £145 a head.
Noting the importance of outside business, Kilcullen launched a hospitality club before Christmas. A £15 fee gives other City professionals a card to enter the building and a means to pay dining bills on credit. She expects to have 500 members before the end of the year. "Some people don't want to eat at work, so we thought there must be others who want to get in," says Kilcullen. n
