Dean Banks: casual formats are driving ‘rocket ship’ revenues

Chef Dean Banks has revealed his Edinburgh and St Andrews restaurants are enjoying one of their strongest financial years yet, with Dulse and Dune “rocket shipping to the moon in their revenues”.

Speaking to The Caterer ahead of his appearance at the Chef Summit next month, Banks said he believes the reason for this positive account is because a “casual sort of format” is coming back into fashion.

Banks said that he saw a huge boom at the end of Covid for high-end dining, but it “gave a false economy for two years of everyone wanting to spend their money”, and now the trend is moving towards casual dining.

Because of this, he and his team decided late last year to expand beyond tasting menus and move towards à la carte.

He first trialled à la carte at Haar in St Andrews before introducing it at 1925 at Pompadour in Edinburgh.

“Food is fashion,” he said. “You walk into a restaurant and it’s like a fashion store — the interiors, the chefs, how they dress and act, the social media presence — it’s all part of the brand.”

The Scottish chef, known for being a finalist on MasterChef: The Professionals in 2018, said having multiple sites gave him a good eye across the market but because of a surge in popularity for casual dining it skewed the difficulty the industry is experiencing.

“Sometimes it’s hard to be standing in one of these locations and think there’s a cost of living crisis or an issue in hospitality, because they’re doing so well. Obviously there’s lots of revenues but, on the back end, you get annihilated by your taxes. So, it’s very still hard to make profit on them,” he said.

Hear more from Dean Banks at the Chef Summit

Banks will be speaking at The Caterer’s upcoming free Chef Summit on Thursday 23 October, alongside Ruth Hansom, where the two chefs will be making their case for why they chose à la carte or tasting menu for their restaurants

Sign up to the free Chef Summit webinar