Richard Tear is CEO of Searcys 1847, soon to be rebranded Searcy of London. The company operates the restaurants at the Barbican Centre, London, Royal Opera House, the National Portrait Gallery as well as the Champagne Bar at St Pancras and the restaurant St Pancras Grand
How long have you been with Searcys?
I've been with the company for 19 years. I was Chief Executive from 1994 to 2006, Chairman from 2006 to 2009 and now back as Chief Executive since June 2009.
During your time, how has the company changed?
Well in the 1990s it was a smaller private catering company with only one contract which was the Barbican Centre. Since then we have moved away from private catering entirely and we look after 16 sites in London and one in Bath, sites such as the Royal Opera House, the Barbican, National Portrait Gallery restaurant, London Transport Museum, Royal Opera House, St Pancras Grand and The Champagne Bar at St Pancras. We are touched by a lot of travellers, both private and business, and a lot of what we do, particularly at the National Portrait Gallery, is not necessarily about gallery visitors but about being a destinations restaurant for tourists and businessmen.
Yet Searcys isn't well known to the public.
It's a lack of marketing on our part which we are trying to address with a more focussed marketing effort based around an organisation called the Searcys Club. We are also changing the identity of the company and calling ourselves Searcy of London which gives us a more international feel. The idea is that if you go into the Barbican you'll see one of us, and then see another in the Royal Opera House and if you've had a good experience you'll be more likely to use it.
Why has it taken so long?
In part because they are contracts and our arrangement with our host organisation is we adopt a lower profile than you'd normally expect in the retail market, but we think we can add to the marketing.
Can you remember such a challenging environment as now?
Certainly 1978 was a very challenging time when retail restaurants were closing one after another, and 1991 was thin and difficult, but we sailed through that. I think in this current recession because of the strength of the product and the brands we seem to be less affected than we expected to be, and although we had a fairly serious dip there are signs of the market coming back partly in corporate events and parties later in the year. What has happened is a certain amount of business entertaining has gone underground, people who would have had large cocktails parties have cut back - but that has benefitted us because they've been spending money in the restaurants doing one on one entertaining, so we haven't suffered as much as many.
Having such a concentration of sites in London must have also helped.
It does work very well, being strong in the City and the West End attracts the business traveller and encourages them to move from one to another. Where our strength lies is that the business diner who comes to us in Monday to Friday lunchtime also uses us for family dining at the weekends. So we pick up evening business from our lunchtime business.
How much of your business comes from international visitors?
It varies from site to site, but I would think we are looking at 15-20% of incoming travellers, particularly in iconic sites such as at National Portrait Gallery where it might be as high as 30% there.
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St Pancras Grand |
How do they first visit you?
At the moment, because we are in an iconic location, but once we get over that, and once we've looked after them they will come back and seek us out elsewhere. We then aim to get hold of a business card, get them on the database and start marketing towards them. There are three levels of marketing: there are value added offers, there are promotions and cross promotions to sites they haven't been to, so for example if we had someone through St Pancras, a promotion at the Royal Opera House or National Portrait Gallery. And lastly there is the Searcys Club which is the future focus for us as being the vehicle to put all these offers together and run a series of offers which will go out through emailing.
We are not in the business of offering discounts and vouchers, however. We believe the product is good enough to not to have to do that. We are starting to feature Hotel du Vin, Malmaison and De Vere hotels - but we are selfishly featuring ourselves first, but there will be more of those offers coming through.
You are part of the same group as De Vere hotels. Will you run some of its restaurants?
We are developing a brand called Searcys The Claret Jug which is specifically aimed at De Vere properties with gold courses and that is in the process of being rolled out. We wouldn't do that everywhere, for instance in some of the contracts we operate such as the Hurlingham Club in Fulham we don't brand ourselves Searcys at all. We are quite comfortable operating without plastering the brand everywhere, but we do want to get the name across. There are differences in the operations as well, of course. The geography of the building for instance, and whether or not we are in partnership with some other activity such as the arts. But where the similarity comes in is the experience and the customer journey that we try to give that is better than the next place that is readily identifiable as a Searcys experience. We are looking to arrange other partnerships. The Carluccio experience of a retail shop works very well, and we'd look at moving the Searcy's brand into retail as well. The company currently employs 2,500 people which had probably doubled in the last five years.
 
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Searcys 40|30 on top of the 'Gherkin' in London |
What will the future hold?
We are looking for more contracts and more retail sites where we are the tenant, trying to develop more more Champagne Bars such as the one in St Pancras and Westfield and I'm talking to a number of property companies who want to put Champagne bars in their properties, and more retail restaurants. We are also looking outside London - Manchester, Birmingham and other major centres, Brighton and Bristol. We're also looking for catering contracts - if the Royal Albert Hall asked we'd be very happy to have it, of course, and any other large catering contracts - but we are trying to develop on a broad front as possible
How have bookings changed in the recent environment?
Booking is very short term, three years ago we'd expect to see our diary from September through to December pretty much full, yet in July we're only just seeing people booking from September onwards - it's become a three month window rather than a six month window.
So what can you do about that?
We actively chase after previous business, lapsed business, business we think we should be getting, we're very strong at knowing where we are and what we've got to offer when they are ready to take the decision.
www.searcys.co.uk