1., ::, - i, .gi'2'The business is in the very lucky situation where it can rely on the evening trade alone. So, we can experiment at lunchtime to try and find another way of delivering satisfaction to our customers. I believe The Outsider and Apartment have lost some of their initial customer base and I would like to see us win them back.
7) ’w'niiei
m w v on?‘l don’t think it need be, I really don’t. I go back to my experience in London at Caprice, a restaurant that was developing its trade every week of every month of every year. And yet its core customer base had remained the same virtually |since it opened [in 1981].
I personally felt The Outsider and
The Apartment were beginning to
become slightly above themselves.
We want to be very careful that we
don’t almost throw out the baby
with the bath water. In business terms, there are basic principles
[of brand building] that one should
pay some attention to: not
deviating from what got them successful in the first place. This is an issue that [owner] Malcolm
Innes and | enjoyably butt heads
about
: V .i ...Well, today, the Bishop of Edinburgh is here somewhere. I must say hello to him. What’s great about The Outsider and the Apartment is that they are far more about being consumer conscious as opposed to wishing to lead the consumer. Malcolm had no preconceptions and put together a menu that was almost slavishly © different in terms of there being no
starters, the skewers or brochette or Cl-lLs, as they’re called, and the random combinations of textures and flavours that most people in the know would have said: ‘You’ve got to be kidding.’ And the public took it to their bosoms. It appealed to a new wave of inexperienced diner: some place where there were no rules.
But I still believe the fundamental truth was the price point. It was so frighteningly good value, dare I say cheap. It just became too big too fast.
Top tips for eating out well on a budget
Go to restaurants that allow you to bring your own wine Mark-ups on wines can be as much as 2.5 times the retail costs. Bring your own.
~ ' Em i .Again, that’s the point we keep coming back to in this conversation. When I started in June, there were dishes on this menu that were £13 or £14. I said: ‘Malcolm, stop and pull it back.’ Malcolm was on this trajectory where he was aiming towards fine dining, towards that market where
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