'People see the value in it': Tomas Maunier explains Fazenda's secret to success

Our first site was in Leeds, then we went to Liverpool and Manchester. We opened a couple of different brands that didn't go so well – one was Bossa in Leeds, which didn't go as planned, and Picanha in Cheshire, which was a casualty of Covid.

In 2018 we opened in Edinburgh and Birmingham. Covid came and changed our plans, but now we've opened in London and we're already looking for another site in the capital.

Having been based in the north you opened in London in September 2023. How has it gone at the Bishopsgate site?

London is great, but the reality is we're doing well everywhere. I've been speaking to colleagues in the industry and it seems that some people are doing amazingly and others aren't doing so well.

We've doubled our predicted turnover in London and our spend per head is 50% up on sites like Edinburgh year-on-year, so we're happy. But London is the only site that has a proper bar, so that trade accounts for some of it as people come in and have a drink or two before or after their meal.

Have you done anything differently at the London Bishopsgate site?

We have launched a slightly different operation to cater for differences in the market, which includes an à la carte menu to complement the rodizio grill. It has gone extremely well and we're now considering taking the same menu to the regions. It's not something completely new, just an evolution.

Does the rodizio concept make costs more predictable than an à la carte menu?

The beauty of the Fazenda experience in the regions is that once you know how to operate and what is working, it becomes simple. It's simplicity in execution and in the guest experience, which is why I believe we do well in tough times. People are struggling, which we know, and though we're not cheap and never will be as it's an expensive product, we serve loads of meat – around 800g of meat per cover – but people see the value in it. So for guests it is predictable as they know the cost before they arrive.

It's also a little more expensive in the capital because of the cost of rent, business rates and service charge, but guests at Fazenda know they will spend around £50 for a meal plus a few sides, so they are able to budget. You go, you have a lot of meat, and you leave happy. That predictability and simplicity is key for Fazenda.

"People who haven't visited for a while are coming back because they want to be sure of value"

Does than mean the London operation is more complicated?

If guests want something elevated in terms of complexity they can, but we're still offering that simplicity. There will always be that. I think that's why we're so successful right now. People are considering how often they're going out and what they will spend. They might only go out twice a month, with one place being somewhere new and quirky, and the second somewhere where they know they'll get value for money. We're finding that people who haven't visited for a while are coming back because they want to be sure of value.

How do you make it work from a cost perspective, since the concept is to offer a high-value product at a fixed cost?

We saw an article about a barbecue group who were really struggling with meat prices having gone up 40%. I thought that sounded incredible, so looked into how much ours had gone up and it was the same. Since 2019 the cost of our meat has gone up 40%.

In that time we've increased prices 10%-15%. We're also squeezed on wages, which is bad timing for us, though I appreciate it makes sense from an economical point of view. But the only way we can cope is to increase prices. So our gross profit has been really affected in the past four years.

In 2021 the business went into administration, but you managed to buy it back through Southern Wind Group. How different is the business now?

It was the same people that did the management buy-out, Terence Langley and me, with some other friends who put in some money. We knew the value of the business. We didn't want to let it go and we wouldn't have done anything similar if it wasn't for Covid.

Obviously, in that situation, we sat down and negotiated with everybody as best we could – the landlords and the bank. And although most of them were understanding, the reality is some weren't. Some didn't understand how a business that had been so busy was asking for so much. Some said no and the thing crumbled. It was a tough time and I feel like I lost 15 years of my life stressing. When you make a wrong decision you can accept it, but in this case it was hard to take.

It's impressive that two years later you have opened in London and you are looking at further sites

We're also growing double digits. I speak to other operators and some are going really well, growing turnover by some 30% – but some of that is down to poor comparables from 2022, particularly in London. But right now we feel good. Life is a balance and we have had really tough times, so it's great to be on the up. Last year was a good year and our like-for-like growth, excluding London, was 13%. It's great growth for us and now London is trading twice what we budgeted.

What's the biggest challenge for the business?

I didn't expect it to be quite so hard to recruit good people in London. As a result we're not maximising the business as we don't want to put pressure on the team. I have a feeling if we had the right staff we could be doing another 20%-30% more, but we're blocking time slots and limiting the amount of guests who can come at the same time, as we don't want to push too hard. There's definitely room for us to grow and I think we could have two or three Fazendas in London for sure.

Five years ago, if you had a vacancy, you recruited someone and that person was amazing, you didn't have to worry about it and they'd stay for two years. Now, we might have the same number of vacancies but the churn is massive and some of the candidates just aren't good enough. My view is that people is still the biggest issue in our industry.

Fazenda Bishopsgate

Fazenda, owned by the Huddersfield-based Southern Wind Group, opened the doors to its first London site in August 2023. This is its sixth site after Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Edinburgh and Birmingham. All the restaurants offer an upmarket take on the rodizio concept, with a fixed price menu (£49.90 in London) for continuous table-side service of grilled meats and access to a ‘Market Table' of charcuterie, cheese, seafood, salad and vegetables. Diners are given a coin to place on the table which indicates whether they would like chefs to continue to bring them skewers, depending on which face is displayed.

At the 170-cover London site the rodizio is complemented by an à la carte menu devised by executive chef Francisco Martinez, with dishes including caviar and churros, wagyu crudo, moqueca (Brazilian seafood stew), and confit cod with potato, egg, peppers and black olive.

Meanwhile, the meats that are served at the table by skewer-wielding chefs include cuts such as pincanha, ribeye, sirloin and rump, as well as pork belly, lamb cutlets and chicken hearts.