Working Capital
As managing director of the Capital Group, Joseph Levin faces many challenges. But perhaps one of the most complex is working in the shadow of his father, David. Founder of the Capital Group, 1991 Caterer & Hotelkeeper Restaurateur of the Year, 1994 Hotelier of the Year and a visiting professor at Oxford Brookes University, David is no unsung hero.
But Joseph is not fazed by this. "My approach has always been to embrace it and to take the good parts," explains Joseph, who took the helm of the Capital Group about 18 months ago. "Dad has achieved so much, and I can't fight with that."
Nevertheless, Joseph's grooming for the job has been second to none. He was born 35 years ago into a hospitality environment. At that time his parents owned the Royal Oak in Yattendon, Berkshire, so he grew up rolling barrels and smelling beer while they worked behind the bar. When the family moved to London and came across the site in Basil Street, Joseph was just five. Although he attended Harrow, he always stayed close to the business and it was typical for him to be found working behind the cashier's desk during his school holidays.
"Having conversations with my father now I can see that, although he claimed he never had any grand plans for me, it was all part of a clever plan. He desperately wanted me to be involved in the industry, but he knew that if he forced me I would probably not want to do it. The only thing he said to me was, ‘There's a place for you at [hotel management school in] Lausanne if you want it.' That was as much as he would ever say."
At 18 Joseph plunged straight into the supply side of the business, moving to Australia and working in the wine trade (including a period with wine-maker Brian Crozer) before returning to Europe in 1982 to take on a formal apprenticeship. He started at the Ritz in Paris, primarily to learn French in preparation for Lausanne, and then joined the Vier Jahreszeiten hotel in Hamburg.
Joseph describes his time at Lausanne from 1985-89 as "special" but that he learnt "absolute piffle". "We had to learn 400 varietals of soup," he explains. "But I did learn the importance of people." Even so, finishing Lausanne was an achievement for Joseph. At school he was constantly told that he could do better, so the fact that he had graduated successfully in hotel management while having to converse in a foreign language boosted his confidence.
First management job
In 1989, when he returned home to England, his father asked him to run L'Hotel and Le Metro Wine Bar & Brasserie, situated next door to the Capital hotel. "Maybe when I first came back I should have gone to work for Hyatt or Hilton and I would have got away from the shadow of Dad. But he asked me to run the two businesses, and I was really excited by the prospect. It was a frightening time because it was my first management job, but I only had five employees working with me, which made it a real adventure," says Joseph.
After a couple of years, Joseph moved on to become manager of the Greenhouse, working alongside head chef Gary Rhodes. "Those years with Gary were brilliant," says Joseph. "TV chefs were a new thing and it was so exciting to be in the limelight. It was one of the best times of my career."
The opening, with Rhodes, of the People's Palace at the Royal Festival Hall in 1994 allowed Joseph to stamp a little bit of his personality on the business. "I'd always worked for Dad, and the businesses were very much his. But I put the People's Palace together from scratch. I negotiated the lease, talked to the bank and borrowed the money."
In 1997 Joseph returned to "head office" and spent a year working closely with David. But he quickly hit a midlife crisis. "I needed a break. I had worked with him for 10 years, and most marriages don't last that long. I felt I was entitled to a trial separation, and he generously allowed me to go away and have a sabbatical."
Joseph's sabbatical turned out to be a return to education to take an MBA (Master of Business Administration) in consultancy. He wanted to prove himself to the people who said he could do better, and working for the qualification gave him the opportunity to study the family business without actually being involved in it.
"By stepping back from the wood I could actually see the trees, and I learnt more in those months than I did in the previous 10 years. Some of the things I learnt were worrying, other things were what I had expected; but it allowed me to plot my future, and that was a luxury."
The study revealed how hard it was to change things in his organisation. It took conversations with staff and employee surveys which got no response to make him realise that there was something there that he did not understand. "It's the underlying bits you don't see, the bits you sense are there. It was about what made the business work, what made its heart beat, and the power of that knocked me for six."
But his year out - which also included the birth of his third child - reinvigorated him. "I felt like a Rottweiler with loads of energy." On his return to the Capital, he was given the title of managing director and immediately got together with the other senior members of the company, including his father, to discuss how they would progress his plans for the company.
An essential part of his strategy is that the group should become more self-reliant to reduce outsourcing certain elements of the business. For example, he would like to create an in-house laundry service, and he hints at the possibility of introducing a centralised production kitchen where base items such as stocks can be made for the group. The practice was already established within the group in 1996 when Capital hotel head chef Philip Britten launched his fresh-produce company, Solstice, with the encouragement and support of the Levins.
"I want to improve the quality of things we supply rather than go out and buy more businesses," says Joseph. "It's patently obvious that there are too many businesses in London."
Following his studies, Joseph is also keen to establish a more relaxed management structure, in which staff can speak openly about problems that arise.
"I'm not saying that in five years' time I'm going to be in the place I want us to be, but we've started on what will be a continuing voyage. I have tried really hard to establish my values on the business, to make people understand what is important to me, and to be clear with people and straight with people, and it's been an enormous pleasure so far. I think we're moving in the right direction."
From the outside looking in, the biggest modification to the company during Joseph's term has been the change to more youthful personnel in key positions. Britten, the Capital hotel's head chef of 11 years, left in February 1999 to spend more time running Solstice, and one-Michelin-starred chef Eric Crouillère-Chavot was appointed two months later as his replacement. In the same year, Jeff Galvin, head chef of the Greenhouse, resigned and was swiftly replaced by Paul Merrett.
In Merrett and Crouillère-Chavot, Joseph sees great potential. Just as Joseph stepped into the shadow of his father, Merrett found himself in the shadow of his employer of seven years ago, Rhodes. "Only now are we prepared to admit it," says Joseph, "but when Gary moved on from the Greenhouse he left a big hole. Paul spent a lot of time with Gary, and although I don't see much of Gary in him, he is the guy with broad enough shoulders to fill the hole that Gary left."
Crouillère-Chavot is a completely different chef. "His enthusiasm gives me goosebumps. It's like watching somebody who is really good at sport - he's naturally gifted. Before I employed him I had met with loads of people, but there was no spark. When Eric turned up I just met this lunatic and I thought, ‘This is the guy for me.' It was love at first sight and it's gone on from there."
Joseph believes this year will be the best the group has experienced. Group turnover for last year was about £10m and the company has been experiencing a continuous growth of up to 5% a year. "As it has become more competitive over the years, we have had to have a good look at our profit margins. We've added value to the product and we've squeezed our margins," says Joseph. "There are always ways to increase and improve profitability, but that's not the goal here. This is a long-term thing - it's about passion and quality."
The Capital Group
Almost 30 years ago David Levin had the foresight to borrow nearly £1/2m from Barclays Bank to build the Capital hotel, the foundation of what is today a £10m-a-year hotel and restaurant group.
"I wanted a small hotel with 60 bedrooms," explains Levin (the hotel now has 48 rooms, as some have been enlarged), "while everyone around me was saying that everything should be big - big hotels, jumbo jets. Of the 27 hotels that opened in 1971 [among them the Copthorne Tara, the Inter-Continental Hyde Park and the Inn on the Park, now the Four Seasons], we were by far the smallest."
Levin went ahead and built his discreet hotel, clear in his mind what services he would offer. The hotel was built around a chimney, so that a charcoal grill would become an intrinsic part of the cooking process, and he appointed Richard Shepherd - a larder chef from the Dorchester - as head chef.
"We did simple food - steaks, sea bass and lobster on the grill," says Levin. "It was a limited menu, but I didn't want to serve 15 different versions of Dover sole - I could not bear any of that."
In 1973 the Michelin Guide was launched in the UK, and the Capital - along with the Connaught and the Inter-Continental - was among the first to be awarded a Michelin star.
Amazingly, the Capital's chef today, Eric Crouillère-Chavot, is only the fourth person to have headed the hotel's kitchens. After Shepherd's seven years at the helm, his sous chef Brian Turner was promoted to head chef (Turner's service at the Capital spanned 16 years), while Philip Britten, who left last year, was head chef for 11 years.
As David grew the business, with the purchase of the Greenhouse in 1977, the opening of L'Hotel in 1982 and the acquisition of the People's Palace five years ago, offers flooded in from larger corporations.
"The brand people are most interested in is the Capital - it is its name and its image," says Joseph, "and we've even had approaches to buy the group including our involvement. But you can't put big business management into something like this."
FACTS:
Capital Hotel
22-24 Basil Street, London SW3 1AT
Tel: 020 7589 5171
Opened: 1971
General manager: Olivia Hetherington
Head chef: Eric Crouilläre-Chavot
Restaurant manager: Hervé Dubois
Bedrooms: 48 (from £180 for a single to £350 for a junior suite)
Staff: 90
Accolades: four AA red stars, three AA rosettes, one Michelin star
The Greenhouse
27a Hay's Mews, London W1X 7RJ
Tel: 020 7499 3331
Opened: 1977
Head chef: Paul Merrett
Restaurant manager: Vincent Gerbeau
Seats: 100
Staff: 44
Average spend: £40 at lunch, £50 at dinner (including drinks)
Accolades: two AA rosettes
L'Hotel
28 Basil Street, London SW3 1AS
Tel: 020 7589 6286
Opened: 1982 (Le Metro Wine Bar & Brasserie, located in the basement of L'Hotel, opened in 1983)
General manager: Olivia Hetherington
Head chef: Eric Crouillère-Chavot
Restaurant manager: Natalie Jarnot
Bedrooms: 12 (from £145)
Staff: 16
The People's Palace
Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, London SE1 8XX
Tel: 020 7928 9999
Opened: 1995
Head chef: Guy Bossum
Restaurant manager: Sion Parry
Seats: 250
Staff: 80
Average spend: £25 at lunch, £30 at dinner (including drinks)
Accolades: one AA rosette
Source: Caterer & Hotelkeeper magazine, 22-28 June 2000
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