thedrapersarms

[thedrapersarms]

Gaza/Lebanon

Every year for the last ten plus years we have held an event at The Drapers in aid of Action Against Hunger.  I have been remiss this year in organising anything. By way of confession I have felt a bit exhausted by what seemed a Sisyphean task trying to (help other people) do a very little to address some of the gross, immoral inequalities and desperate human consequences of greed, corruption, selfishness and violence.  The horrors of Gaza and now Lebanon happening in plain sight … the march of racist women-hating fascists in the wealthiest country in the world where half the country seem to either bay in approval or tacitly agree.

But then I though you know who must be really tired and exhausted by it all?  The mothers raising children in rubble and poverty under daily assault for over a year by one of the most powerful armies that ever existed.  The same for people worried about their friends, sons, daughters, parents, grandparents….

Action Against Hunger have continued to work bravely in Gaza and Lebanon across the whole period.  As well as in Syria, Sudan, Darfur, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Yemen and many more…

I realise it is too late for me to organise a ‘Too Many Chefs’ this year but I realise that in inactivity, in capitulation, in turning a blind eye and going about normal life cover is provided for evil to flourish.

I had blocked off 20th NOVEMBER as a possible date for TMC but I am going to unblock that now…. AND PLEDGE TO DONATE 100% of takings that day to help those impacted by the genocide occuring in Gaza and Lebanon.  50% to Action Against Hunger and 50% to the specific appeal for the region.  Please come and enjoy yourselves, eat and drink well and make me give it all away!

Nest year I will endeavour to do another dinner.  I would love to work with chefs/restaurants who come from countries where Action Against Hunger work.  I’d like to draw attention to the fact that our city benefits hugely from immigration across all aspects of life; to the fact that immigration is hugely driven by simply unimaginable conditions at ‘home’; that we should welcome people fleeing hardship because compassion demands it and we have so much; and of course and undeniably that the countries in turmoil are so often so because of our colonial past, our interference, our exploitation, our violence, our arms sales.  And of course I want to raise more funds for the amazing work of Action Against Hunger.

[thedrapersarms]

Love is the drug

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how” … as ever mining Nietzsche yields up an apposite quote for even these strange times… but in a sense this precisely captured truth is the underpinning of every day in hospitality.

As so many of our wonderful industry sit confined to home apart from our one allowed for trundle along the streets, zig zagging to avoid dogs, pedestrians and cyclists by the prescribed distance – notwithstanding those creative, admirable and industrious entrepreneurs who have retooled as wine merchants, farm shops and agents of cooked meals to take away – it helps that we have a ‘why’ to live for that can carry us through this infernal confinement.  This ‘how’ of four small walls, too much screen time, guilty immoderate drinking, reruns of Friends, Zoom, store-cupboard creativity and loo roll insecurity definitely requires some considerable ‘bearing’.

It is the same why that drags us up out of our beds to open after a late and gruelling close, slaps a smile on our faces and keeps us working all the unsociable hours and weekends when we are open.

Why is it that we miss so desperately the opportunity to go to work?  What is it that is so wonderous about our moderately-rewarded, relentless, something always going wrong, one bad review can ruin your week gruelling industry? Is it the pleasing routine of a week that starts gently with a clean up, settling of accounts, re-up of stock and new menu plan for the week ahead? Before building through the week via Friday night dates and drinking, Saturday parties and celebrations to Sunday families tucking into convivial shared roasts that offer all the joy of time spent together without any washing up?  The daily preparation for service, everything in its place, menus done – updated online - fridges stocked, condiments and fruit at the ready and sections allocated?

Always with half an eye on the danger of virtue signalling, I am often unable to resist on a Sunday evening as the weekend comes to a post coital, spent close tweeting out my heartfelt thanks for my team, the multitude we have fed and watered for coming by and the love and support we get from friends and the community of stakeholders in our little restaurant and pub.  And there lies the essence – for hospitality, love is indeed the drug.

Of course we live for the sense of camaraderie and family that helps you feel ok as you summon up the courage to walk into a kitchen flailing through a Friday night push, confess to having royally messed up an order and beg to be bailed out. The chef answering the call after two doubles to drag an overindulged body back into work to uncomplainingly cover a colleague’s shift does so not out of a debt to the owner or for fear of losing a job – but for loyalty to the brigade forged in the heat of a kitchen overwhelmed by the endlessly chattering order printer, stacked ticket rail, failing equipment and front of house, unreliable except in their mess ups, special requests and repeated requests for timing on table 111.

The joy of course is in the being part of, participating in and watching people have some of the times of their lives.  And in no small part the instant feedback loop of seeing that pleasure unfold, knowing you have played some role and receiving heartfelt thanks there and then is a gratifying dopamine hit that gives like almost no other.  A couple of old friends having an infrequent catch up over a drink, gangs riffing joyously as they re-bond and flirt, families gathering for those significant moments, couples returning to the scene of their first meeting – or just an average evening upended by a surprise announcement, a great bottle or some strange alchemy of food, wine, the atmosphere around the room where everything notches into place like the perfect gearchange sweeping fast up an alpine hairpin. We bathe daily in the love our guests bring in and share with each other.

So we get to be there helping with the icing on the cake of life… the treats and treasured moments, rites of passage, introductions, reconnections – love ups and make ups.  It nourishes and rewards and makes every how bearable.  As I sit in my confinement missing my work and reflecting on those whose work is going to get us through this by actually preserving the very fact of our lives, work that is several orders of magnitude more important than waiting tables and pouring drinks, I do hope they are all feeling the love we have for them, that the gratitude nourishes and rewards them one hundredfold what it does us.

God I miss it! (notwithstanding that of course … he remains dead).

[thedrapersarms]

Thank you for January visits!

As January becomes February there is bitter wind outside that makes for a cold, dark and miserable night.  A good one perhaps for snuggling up on the sofa and calling a delivery company and watching episode xx of box set yy… and yet and yet as we start another shift the doors swing open a few times, not quite a barn door in the wind but often enough to be gratifying and most importantly reassuring.

There is no doubt in my mind that 2017 was a hard year for restaurants and pubs across London and the UK.  Many much loved old stalwarts have closed and some good friends are struggling.  It isn't just the wind at the window as I type this that makes me think that stormy times lie ahead for 2018 too.  In part the industry is a victim of its own success - record numbers of restaurant openings year on year have made the London restaurant scene 'toppy', crowded and relentlessly competitive.  Tax advantaged investment SEIS schemes, crowdfunding and other channels fuel future chains and single site ventures alike.  Businesses, such as the recently restructured Byron and Jamie's Italian, well-funded and with ambitious growth targets, compete for and are offered every decent new site and aggressively bid up rents …. before over extending, relying on discounting and special offers that suck customers up and then having to retrench; but not before having eaten the lunch of small independents and crowded out the market.

Delivery firms that take 30% of full restaurant prices combine with on demand television to provide the digital firestorm for dining out that so many other industries have previously experienced.  That moment of standing in front of an open and yet uninspiring fridge going 'ah sod it lets go to the pub and grab a pie' so easily segues into 'oh but what about episode 8 of peaky blinders and a delivery'… taking just enough off the top line.  And a craven government, fresh from organising the biggest act of economic idiocy that slashes the value of the pound to increase food and drink costs, sends fabulous and much needed workers home and puts the fear of god into consumers making them unable and/or loathe to go out, looks around for ways to raise much needed funds - too scared to raise income tax on the rich, unable to tax the self-employed because of manifesto pledges and too spineless to tax the huge profits of big business they settle on business rates (a pre profit expense); with a resulting 60% increase for us last year and much much higher for some.

Don't think I resent any of these things fundamentally; new restaurateurs have every right to open new restaurants and raise money where they can; digital technology has changed the lives of high street book sellers and taxi drivers alike and people like having food delivered to their home while they stream high quality telly; hospitals and schools need funding.  (Europe doesn't need leaving but hey ho). These things do however have an impact.

Dry January, like Stoptober, invariably has an effect too not just in the month itself but also as the proportion not returning to drinking after the period of abstinence steadily grinds away marginally but surely at the size of our customer base.  Again, there is no cause for feeling persecuted by this; people are beyond entitled to choose healthy lifestyles and there is no integrity in pretending, because it is our living, that for some the perception of potential harm in excessive alcohol consumption (not that I feel our predominately dining pub encourages or relies upon excessive drinking) doesn't legitimately outweigh for them the benefits and pleasures of a social life of eating and dining out.

All of this does make us is very, very appreciative of the people who continue to come to the pub, especially on cold and miserable late winter squally midweek nights - but truly all of the people all of the time.  Thank you for coming in January, thank you for coming in July; thank you for your enthusiasm for bar snacks, pies, dinners, Sunday lunches and big group feasting meals; thanks for loving our beers on rotation, our wine list and wines of the week; for your enthusiasm, support for the values we try to live by; for voting us into the #top50gastropubs in 6th place; for telling your friends, and the world by going online and sharing your positive experiences.  Sorry if you ever had a less good one.

Thank you also to the fabulous team of enthusiastic, hard working, generous hearted, passionate, attentive staff.  There can be few joys in life to match the privilege of running this pub, taking care of your special moments and everyday visits at the head of such a wonderful gang.

Fingers crossed for 2018….

[thedrapersarms]

Valentines... again

Valentines 2018

Deeply infuriating though it is this blog lives on another year... same as always all takings to Refuge... 

(and I promise to write about something else this year too)

Valentines 2017

Where I previously believed this to be part of an inevitable tide of progressive tolerance, love and liberal values now I feel we are part of a fight where every source of light in the dark matters.  In some small way I hope the pub is a source of light and part of the fight for love, tolerance and shared humanity.  As ever every £ spent… etc

Valentines 2016

Valentines 2016… my this comes around.  This time it is a Sunday so it could be another big big year for us.  Do please come and eat and drink well and as ever 100% of gross takings will go to Refuge.  I’d like to see if we can make that over £10,000.

Valentines 2015 - it is a Saturday, make it count for Refuge

2015 - has one blog post ever been as recycled?  As ever in 2015 I wish I could avoid reposting it but things don’t seem any better.  This year Valentines is on a Saturday so if you come for lunch or dinner you will hopefully be causing me to write Refuge a decent sized amount.  So, again… an explanation of why we give 100% of our takings on Valentines to Refuge charity that helps women with a need for the right kind of love in their lives.

2014

Since I wrote the below last year I continue to be amazed at the forgiveness of women in the face of this extraordinary war waged on so many fronts.  The ‘social media’ abuse directed at so many women who dare to speak up must be indicative of behavioural patterns which make daily life at times extraordinarily difficult.  It is still the abuse in the home and from those who are supposed to provide love, support and tenderness that moves me most viscerally and that is why we will again be donating every penny spent in here on Valentines to Refuge again this year.  It’s a Friday so come in droves and cost me a fortune!

Valentine’s at the Drapers Arms 2013..

The autumn and winter season has a rhythm and series of events in it that perfectly suit the pub – and it gives operators a framework for hanging events and ‘get yourselves down here’ marketing messages on.  The whoooooo of Halloween; crash, bang, whooooosh ….ahhhhh! of the 5th of November; lighting the fires…mulled wine and cider (bleeuuuurgh); carols and mince pies; Christmas parties and gatherings, from family dinners to vomit and shots corporateathons and finally the crash bang snog and lengthening bog-queue fest that is New Year’s eve as our exhausted staff thank god the month is over (whilst wondering how they are going to survive New Year’s day service).

And then the barren wasteland that is late winter in the new year and early spring…our customer’s wallets are exhausted, their livers tender and there’s little on the horizon to celebrate.  Oh hurrah as valentine’s pops over the horizon, like a piece of driftwood edging toward a drowning man on an otherwise empty sea.

My early valentine adventures seem so very long ago…hazy memories across the mists of 30 years.  At a boys only boarding school and whisked off at the end of term to what was effectively a mining town in the middle of Africa where I met no girls there was never a danger of my being overwhelmed by valentine’s cards, and yet walking out of breakfast to where our post was set out was always a nervous time, tinged with hope – and sure enough after a while the odd card popped up.  As more time passed the day transformed for me so that, broadly speaking, at my stage in life I think of valentine’s as an opportunity for us blokes to show our love for our womenfolk and I think sometimes we do ok on the day and step up to the plate.  *pats self on back*.

But I get to thinking, what about the other 364 days, how do we blokes do then? Well I’ve got a little list of how women fare the rest of the year, and it isn’t exhaustive. Women:

Are paid on average around 15% less to do the same job as men

Have glass ceilings and working practices at work that prevent them from enjoying an equal opportunity for fulfilment through work and career

Are ganged up on, bullied and trolled on the internet when they dare to be smarter, cleverer and funnier than men

Are  depicted in magazines and ‘newspapers’ that take pictures up their skirts, of their sweat patches, underwear, weight gain, weight loss, aging, poor plastic surgery, bad hair days, poor clothes choices – at the same time as being bombarded with images of ‘perfect’ unattainable ideals for womankind ….so there is no woman anywhere who can ever feel un-judged, secure and happy with their appearance

Are raped at home, at work, at play and in the outside world where rape convictions are at shockingly low levels

Are sexually abused as children principally in the homes and schools where they should feel most secure

Are forced into marriages they don’t wish for

Are subject to attempts to deny them control of their own bodies by refusing them abortion rights including after rape

Are ‘honour’ killed when they don’t do what they are told

Are called sluts if they enjoy sex and frigid or lesbians if they don’t sleep with us

Are called ���normalised’ pejoratives like ‘bitch’ and ‘ho’ in everyday language

Are the target of acts of domestic physical and psychological violence that destroy and undermine their entire lives

Have men mutilate their genitals with the express intention of preventing them from enjoying sex

Have rape against women used as an act of war in conflicts propagated mainly by men

Quite the list, and taken around the world collectively it affects billions of lives.  So, in the round, I’m not that comfortable ringing the tills in the name of mens’ love for women on the 14th of February and turning a blind eye the rest of the time to mens’ collective acts of violence against women.  Women should step out into the world feeling genuinely loved by men 365 days of the year.  This year and every year until it is no longer needed we will treat all of our takings on valentine’s as a voluntary donation from our customers to a charity organisation that supports women affected by the violence of men.  This year that will be Refuge.

Because there are 365 days in the year, not just one.

[thedrapersarms]

Too Few Chefs for Action Against Hunger 2017

If, in this age of shortened attention spans, this self-indulgent text looks too long please do feel free to scroll down to the link to the booking page!

 “Nick thanks so and so for their kind invitation to dinner and is delighted to be able to accept.”  Or something along those lines.  I have a vague memory of being told that that is how one should respond to a formal dinner invitation; you’ll have to forgive me I am old and this was some time back in the last millennia…

 As I was thinking about writing this ‘invitation to dinner’ I reflected on the contrast between being concerned about whether your children know how to respond ‘correctly’ to a dinner invitation and wondering how to get enough food on the table to feed your children so that they avoid malnourishment, starvation or death.

 I know it doesn’t make literal sense for me to be grateful that the person I am now came out into the world so luckily into an environment where I and those who took care of me never had to worry about food but, especially since I started working in the business of feeding people requiring me to think intensely about food on a daily basis, there isn’t a day when I don’t feel both grateful for my good fortune and a heightened sense of our mutual obligation to do something for those less fortunate. Less fortunate for no fault of their own; every bit as much as my good fortune is through no merit at all of mine.

 I have been lucky enough to be involved with Action Against Hunger on a couple of fundraising events in India and Myanmar these last few years and as part of that have seen them at work.  They are not merely compassionate and kind; they are effective, professional, determined – they have considered long term plans and strategies.  They don’t just apply sticking plasters they fix structural problems and go upstream to prevention as well as being there when treatment and emergency supplies are needed.  They change and save lives every single day.  Remarkable really.  I remember standing in a room of terribly sick tiny babies in India and the image that struck me then of the children as flickering candles guttering in the wind has struck me vividly every time since when I think about what ACF, and indeed others like them, do to make the world a better and fairer place for everyone. Once you have seen those flickering candles in danger of being extinguished before they can share their light with the world you can’t help wanting to help – to the extent that I don’t even think there is particular merit in it – it just becomes obvious one has to do a little, what one can, to help.  I am sure many of you feel the same way about this and other good causes, and that you work hard to make the world a better place in many ways across many of the incredible good causes that are close to your hearts for personal reasons or that you just find incredible compelling.

 As some of you know at the Drapers we do try and do a bit on an ongoing basis – many other people in this industry do too and do far more.  Every day pies sold at the pub trigger donations to Action Against Hunger; we are lucky enough that a great friend of the pub, Neil Rankin, organises a multi chef event called ‘Too Many Chefs’ each year to cook up a fantastic 10 course feast from some of the finest chefs in town.

 In 2015 I decided, together with Ben Maschler, that I wanted to do something more direct than merely play host to the greater talents of others – and so ‘Too Few Chefs’ was born.  Intended to be a fabulous feast for up to 80 people, the striking difference is of course that it is a meal not cooked by chefs at all, but by me and possibly a few friends who also know one end of a knife from the other.  Last time we had a lot of fun, we think we cooked a pretty decent meal and we think lots of people had a great time.  Most importantly of course we helped Action Against Hunger with a good few pounds and they went away and did more amazing things with the cash.

 So this year I am planning on doing another one – a full feast of food that I can think I can cook well for a really enjoyable evening for a truly great cause.  100% of ticket sales will go to Action Against Hunger.  They can pay for an emergency treatment required to save the life of a severely malnourished child and nurse them back to health with just £42. You can find out more about what they do, where they do it and how funds raised are spent on their excellent website: www.actionagainsthunger.org.uk which provides full details about all the longer term and more strategic work they do as well as the emergency relief ‘lifesaving’ stuff.  I will also be donating 50% of our drink sales on the night to ACF… if you drink enough good wine you could save the lives of two children!

 I know all the people who see this will be bombarded with compelling alternative charitable causes, and I am sure that many of you give generously, quietly, repeatedly.  I would implore (that is a longer word for beg) you to consider coming along to this dinner.  I am resolutely determined to cook you a feast worth every penny of the ticket price and to make sure it is a huge amount of fun.  If you prefer to think of it as £5 wasted on a terrible meal and £45 given to this fantastic charity then I shan’t quibble with your assessment and Action Against Hunger will be most grateful indeed for your generosity. The menu is below and I can’t wait to cook it for you. There’s a ticket link here too:

 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/too-few-chefs-2017-tickets-29518811560

 Nick’s ACF Dinner

aka “toofewchefs”

23rd February 2016

  Wild Mushrooms on Bone Marrow Toast

W Lardo

 *****

 Confit Squid, Salt Cod & Clams

 Morcilla Polenta Chips

 *****

 Slow Cooked Shoulder of Forest of Dean Wild Boar

 Boulangere Potatoes, Seasonal Vegetables

 *****

 Custard Tart

 *****

 Neal’s Yard Cheese

  If you can’t or don’t want to come but do like this charity then this dinner is part of a broader fund raising effort centred around a trek in Nepal in March.  I am promised that this will be a truly challenging expedition.  I’m hoping to raise significantly more than £10,000. If you’d like to make a donation however small then it helps them help children in desperate need. https://nepal2017.everydayhero.com/uk/nick

[thedrapersarms]

Valentines 2017

Valentines 2017

Where I previously believed this to be part of an inevitable tide of progressive tolerance, love and liberal values now I feel we are part of a fight where every source of light in the dark matters.  In some small way I hope the pub is a source of light and part of the fight for love, tolerance and shared humanity.  As ever every £ spent... etc

Valentines 2016

Valentines 2016… my this comes around.  This time it is a Sunday so it could be another big big year for us.  Do please come and eat and drink well and as ever 100% of gross takings will go to Refuge.  I’d like to see if we can make that over £10,000.

Valentines 2015 - it is a Saturday, make it count for Refuge

2015 - has one blog post ever been as recycled?  As ever in 2015 I wish I could avoid reposting it but things don’t seem any better.  This year Valentines is on a Saturday so if you come for lunch or dinner you will hopefully be causing me to write Refuge a decent sized amount.  So, again… an explanation of why we give 100% of our takings on Valentines to Refuge charity that helps women with a need for the right kind of love in their lives.

2014

Since I wrote the below last year I continue to be amazed at the forgiveness of women in the face of this extraordinary war waged on so many fronts.  The ‘social media’ abuse directed at so many women who dare to speak up must be indicative of behavioural patterns which make daily life at times extraordinarily difficult.  It is still the abuse in the home and from those who are supposed to provide love, support and tenderness that moves me most viscerally and that is why we will again be donating every penny spent in here on Valentines to Refuge again this year.  It’s a Friday so come in droves and cost me a fortune!

Valentine’s at the Drapers Arms 2013..

The autumn and winter season has a rhythm and series of events in it that perfectly suit the pub – and it gives operators a framework for hanging events and ‘get yourselves down here’ marketing messages on.  The whoooooo of Halloween; crash, bang, whooooosh ….ahhhhh! of the 5th of November; lighting the fires…mulled wine and cider (bleeuuuurgh); carols and mince pies; Christmas parties and gatherings, from family dinners to vomit and shots corporateathons and finally the crash bang snog and lengthening bog-queue fest that is New Year’s eve as our exhausted staff thank god the month is over (whilst wondering how they are going to survive New Year’s day service).

And then the barren wasteland that is late winter in the new year and early spring…our customer’s wallets are exhausted, their livers tender and there’s little on the horizon to celebrate.  Oh hurrah as valentine’s pops over the horizon, like a piece of driftwood edging toward a drowning man on an otherwise empty sea.

My early valentine adventures seem so very long ago…hazy memories across the mists of 30 years.  At a boys only boarding school and whisked off at the end of term to what was effectively a mining town in the middle of Africa where I met no girls there was never a danger of my being overwhelmed by valentine’s cards, and yet walking out of breakfast to where our post was set out was always a nervous time, tinged with hope – and sure enough after a while the odd card popped up.  As more time passed the day transformed for me so that, broadly speaking, at my stage in life I think of valentine’s as an opportunity for us blokes to show our love for our womenfolk and I think sometimes we do ok on the day and step up to the plate.  *pats self on back*.

But I get to thinking, what about the other 364 days, how do we blokes do then? Well I’ve got a little list of how women fare the rest of the year, and it isn’t exhaustive. Women:

Are paid on average around 15% less to do the same job as men

Have glass ceilings and working practices at work that prevent them from enjoying an equal opportunity for fulfilment through work and career

Are ganged up on, bullied and trolled on the internet when they dare to be smarter, cleverer and funnier than men

Are  depicted in magazines and ‘newspapers’ that take pictures up their skirts, of their sweat patches, underwear, weight gain, weight loss, aging, poor plastic surgery, bad hair days, poor clothes choices – at the same time as being bombarded with images of ‘perfect’ unattainable ideals for womankind ….so there is no woman anywhere who can ever feel un-judged, secure and happy with their appearance

Are raped at home, at work, at play and in the outside world where rape convictions are at shockingly low levels

Are sexually abused as children principally in the homes and schools where they should feel most secure

Are forced into marriages they don’t wish for

Are subject to attempts to deny them control of their own bodies by refusing them abortion rights including after rape

Are ‘honour’ killed when they don’t do what they are told

Are called sluts if they enjoy sex and frigid or lesbians if they don’t sleep with us

Are called ‘normalised’ pejoratives like ‘bitch’ and ‘ho’ in everyday language

Are the target of acts of domestic physical and psychological violence that destroy and undermine their entire lives

Have men mutilate their genitals with the express intention of preventing them from enjoying sex

Have rape against women used as an act of war in conflicts propagated mainly by men

Quite the list, and taken around the world collectively it affects billions of lives.  So, in the round, I’m not that comfortable ringing the tills in the name of mens’ love for women on the 14th of February and turning a blind eye the rest of the time to mens’ collective acts of violence against women.  Women should step out into the world feeling genuinely loved by men 365 days of the year.  This year and every year until it is no longer needed we will treat all of our takings on valentine’s as a voluntary donation from our customers to a charity organisation that supports women affected by the violence of men.  This year that will be Refuge.

Because there are 365 days in the year, not just one.

[thedrapersarms]

Tipping under fire....

The new government review of tipping currently underway seems to have brought out a number of people celebrating the end of this ‘dubious and murky practice’ – including a number of restaurant reviewers and other ‘friends of the industry’.

For the record – we pass all of our tips and service charge on to staff through a tronc system; not all tables are charged service charge; we certainly don’t add service charge to drinks bought over the bar, that would be an odd thing to do in a pub.  Apart from a few high profile, bottom line driven, private equity businesses that have been caught out abusing the system and rightly castigated for it how much actual factual evidence do those who disparage tipping and service charge really have that the money doesn’t reach the people that it is meant to – ie those people who make your visit enjoyable?

I do wonder if those hailing ���the end of tipping’ have thought this through in terms of the implications for staff.. and specifically whether this is actually going to be good for them – or indeed for customers.  Just to run some illustrative numbers imagine a business with a turnover of £1m net of VAT and staff costs of around 30% (ie what is paid out in wages not inclusive of what staff receive via a service charge tronc system).  That is a wage bill of £300,000 – we do after all need some money for rent, business rates, food, drink, power, furniture, crockery and glassware, maintenance, insurance, printing, cleaning, chemicals, recruitment, staff food, credit card charges, marketing, banking, loan interest….

If 12.5% is added to every single bill and paid by all customers that would be 12.5% * £1.2m (it is charged to the full bill inclusive of VAT) for a total of £150,000.  So fully one third of total income for staff would be coming from tipping and service charge.  As I said we don’t put optional service charge on all bills but our front of house staff do see their wages from us (the National Living Wage paid irrespective of age) boosted about another 50% by their share of tronc.

So what would happen if we needed to find another £150,000 from our top line to bring total staff gross income back up to the same level?  Well inclusive of VAT that would be £180,000 extra on bills (not just the £150,000 because obviously what we charge customers is VAT able whereas tips and service charge is not – so lots of VAT for the government who would then get £230,000 not the £200,000 originally billed).  And this is a much higher net take because the VAT we claim back on expenses would not increase, just what we charge and pay.  But for customers who were keen to fund the business so it could afford to pay staff the total cost of dining would be £1,380,000 instead of £1,350,000 (that’s the £1.2m plus £150,000 service charge) – or a 2.2% increase.

So would all restaurants increase their gross prices inclusive of VAT 15% (from £1.2m to £1.38m for our illustrative business) if tipping were immediately banned and fully maintain staff income for all employees?  Well the business environment is very difficult at the moment, we are down every month this year. We have already increased wages to move from the minimum wage to the national living and we are also seeing increased wage costs through take up of the workplace pension.  There is a competitive marketplace for chefs and a shortage of talent so to some degree the kitchen staff have some ability to ensure they are well paid or move on (although I would argue that applies more to senior and experienced staff not junior staff with no distinctive skills and especially those who might be more likely to work at large groups and chains). What about front of house staff? Well the floor across the industry is going to reset to National Living Wage from National Living Wage plus service… so how many places are going to have that as their starting point rather than a repricing of their entire product to maintain total staff income?  And might those ones falling short perhaps be the sort of place most inclined to ‘mis-allocate’ service charge and tips in the first place? You only have to look at how many restaurants are resorting to discounting, special deals and special offer menus to see how desperate some places are for revenue and custom to inform you as to how likely it is that prices will rise across the board to fully cover the shortfall.

One final nuance to the numbers – service charge and tips do not incur national insurance – employer or employee - so the same gross income numbers delivered through wages as previously via a combination of wages and tips would actually be a net reduction for staff and generate a further additional cost for employees.

That is just the numbers – I also believe that service charge and allowing people to tip brings a positive direct connection between the staff and guest. Positive and negative feedback is immediate and staff feel very incentivised to provide better service in the hope of immediate reward and also because if people either come back or encourage others to visit the business grows in turnover and they participate in that success.  If they haven’t got a product or environment that they can be proud of and they don’t see lots of customers coming in, enjoying themselves and leaving tips willingly then they are likely to look to find a place to work where they do – rewarding better employers and better restaurants and leaving those without a good, caring environment with greater challenges in recruitment.

As to those who think that the business should just stump up and ‘pay people properly’.. we operate on significantly less than 10% margin so the capacity to just take the hit to some theoretical big fat juicy bottom line and stop lining our profits simply isn’t there. Likely that won’t stop people making that argument obviously…

So if you’re thinking about joining the chorus of people celebrating the demise of tipping I would just ask - are you sure you are celebrating the cause of the people who look after you?

[thedrapersarms]

Valentines 2016

Valentines 2016... my this comes around.  This time it is a Sunday so it could be another big big year for us.  Do please come and eat and drink well and as ever 100% of gross takings will go to Refuge.  I'd like to see if we can make that over £10,000.

In 2015 I noticed that sometimes, as a bloke, when you are standing at a urinal the air spray refresher goes off and, being relatively stationary, you get covered in rather unpleasant and deliberately lingereing concentrated loo air freshener.  Truly we suffer.  Notwithstanding that all of the below still makes me rage:

Valentines 2015 - it is a Saturday, make it count for Refuge

2015 - has one blog post ever been as recycled?  As ever in 2015 I wish I could avoid reposting it but things don’t seem any better.  This year Valentines is on a Saturday so if you come for lunch or dinner you will hopefully be causing me to write Refuge a decent sized amount.  So, again… an explanation of why we give 100% of our takings on Valentines to Refuge charity that helps women with a need for the right kind of love in their lives.

2014

Since I wrote the below last year I continue to be amazed at the forgiveness of women in the face of this extraordinary war waged on so many fronts.  The ‘social media’ abuse directed at so many women who dare to speak up must be indicative of behavioural patterns which make daily life at times extraordinarily difficult.  It is still the abuse in the home and from those who are supposed to provide love, support and tenderness that moves me most viscerally and that is why we will again be donating every penny spent in here on Valentines to Refuge again this year.  It’s a Friday so come in droves and cost me a fortune!

 Valentine’s at the Drapers Arms 2013..

The autumn and winter season has a rhythm and series of events in it that perfectly suit the pub – and it gives operators a framework for hanging events and ‘get yourselves down here’ marketing messages on.  The whoooooo of Halloween; crash, bang, whooooosh ….ahhhhh! of the 5th of November; lighting the fires…mulled wine and cider (bleeuuuurgh); carols and mince pies; Christmas parties and gatherings, from family dinners to vomit and shots corporateathons and finally the crash bang snog and lengthening bog-queue fest that is New Year’s eve as our exhausted staff thank god the month is over (whilst wondering how they are going to survive New Year’s day service).

And then the barren wasteland that is late winter in the new year and early spring…our customer’s wallets are exhausted, their livers tender and there’s little on the horizon to celebrate.  Oh hurrah as valentine’s pops over the horizon, like a piece of driftwood edging toward a drowning man on an otherwise empty sea.

My early valentine adventures seem so very long ago…hazy memories across the mists of 30 years.  At a boys only boarding school and whisked off at the end of term to what was effectively a mining town in the middle of Africa where I met no girls there was never a danger of my being overwhelmed by valentine’s cards, and yet walking out of breakfast to where our post was set out was always a nervous time, tinged with hope – and sure enough after a while the odd card popped up.  As more time passed the day transformed for me so that, broadly speaking, at my stage in life I think of valentine’s as an opportunity for us blokes to show our love for our womenfolk and I think sometimes we do ok on the day and step up to the plate.  *pats self on back*.

But I get to thinking, what about the other 364 days, how do we blokes do then? Well I’ve got a little list of how women fare the rest of the year, and it isn’t exhaustive. Women:

Are paid on average around 15% less to do the same job as men

Have glass ceilings and working practices at work that prevent them from enjoying an equal opportunity for fulfilment through work and career

Are ganged up on, bullied and trolled on the internet when they dare to be smarter, cleverer and funnier than men

Are  depicted in magazines and ‘newspapers’ that take pictures up their skirts, of their sweat patches, underwear, weight gain, weight loss, aging, poor plastic surgery, bad hair days, poor clothes choices – at the same time as being bombarded with images of ‘perfect’ unattainable ideals for womankind ….so there is no woman anywhere who can ever feel un-judged, secure and happy with their appearance

Are raped at home, at work, at play and in the outside world where rape convictions are at shockingly low levels

Are sexually abused as children principally in the homes and schools where they should feel most secure

Are forced into marriages they don’t wish for

Are subject to attempts to deny them control of their own bodies by refusing them abortion rights including after rape

Are ‘honour’ killed when they don’t do what they are told

Are called sluts if they enjoy sex and frigid or lesbians if they don’t sleep with us

Are called ‘normalised’ pejoratives like ‘bitch’ and ‘ho’ in everyday language

Are the target of acts of domestic physical and psychological violence that destroy and undermine their entire lives

Have men mutilate their genitals with the express intention of preventing them from enjoying sex

Have rape against women used as an act of war in conflicts propagated mainly by men

Quite the list, and taken around the world collectively it affects billions of lives.  So, in the round, I’m not that comfortable ringing the tills in the name of mens’ love for women on the 14th of February and turning a blind eye the rest of the time to mens’ collective acts of violence against women.  Women should step out into the world feeling genuinely loved by men 365 days of the year.  This year and every year until it is no longer needed we will treat all of our takings on valentine’s as a voluntary donation from our customers to a charity organisation that supports women affected by the violence of men.  This year that will be Refuge.

Because there are 365 days in the year, not just one.

[thedrapersarms]

Horizontal beef tasting?!

A few years ago I had a 'discussion' that went on for about two hours on the merits of the movie "Forrest Gump"... I was in the 'it's really shit' camp.  Nothing so odd about that and I happen to still think I was right.  What was notable was that I hadn't seen the film and had no intention of doing so.  This is by way of a confession that I haven't always been rigorous about making sure I am well informed before forming, and being happy to share - dogmatically, repetitively, brooking no argument-ally, righteously - a strong opinion on any subject under the sun.

Oddly, and perhaps because I really care, I began to have less tolerance of this habit in myself and others relatively recently and specifically in the area of food and drink.... I began to see value in opinions well considered, thoughtful.... based, even, on "knowing what one is talking about".  I have no regrets about this because a couple of years ago it led to one of my favourite nights ever:

Looking daily at menus, supplier offers and media I noticed that there was a widespread presumption that the older the piece of beef you were eating the better it would be (ceteris paribus).  I love beef, I've eaten sufficient quantities to represent selfishness on a planet violating level such that if Greenpeace ever found out they would probably revoke my membership.  It occurred to me, however, that I actually had no specific knowledge to support that view.  In fact I couldn't have sworn that I could have told the difference between 28 days, 40 days and 60 days dry aged with any degree of reliability.  Following the same principle that lies behind our drink they list wine event (that for most of us inexpert consumers we don't have the palate and visceral memory bank for reference to compare different things tried on different days) I decided the only way to really know how age modifies meat was to try different ages on the same day.

I was very fortunate to find in Nathan at the Butchery, surely among London's finest butchers although I don't know them all (😉), someone with a similar willingness to apply scientific method to the problem.  Thus it was after some careful husbandry by him that we lucky few sat down to a 'vertical' tasting of four gigantic slabs of sirloin from the same herd, aged in the same meat fridge, cooked in the same kitchen but with different ages (23, 55, 79, 98 days).  As well as being a display of relentless gluttony by all the lucky participants it was a remarkably informative, enjoyable, convivial and educational evening.  Some of that conviviality might have come from the vertical Bordeaux tasting that we indulged in simultaneously with wines brought by James Handford, Master of Wine.

I've been wanting to eat the same meal again pretty much every day since - but without the justification of not having done it before and because setting it up is a big ask for Nathan we haven't managed to get together and indulge ourselves.  But.... if we can't justify 'vertical' maybe we can justify 'horizontal'.  By which I mean, same cut, same age as much as to not matter, same butcher, same chef... different breed!  For me the appeal is the same - I often hear people talking reverentially of dexter, adoringly of longhorn, worshipfully of white park but how many of us could actually describe the differences? I'm not sure it really matters on a global scale but it sound like a plausible excuse for a multi course beef eating feast to me.  And, if we got James Handford to go horizontal on the Bordeaux that would be an opportunity to actually compare Pauillac, Margaux, St Julian and, say, St Emillion (same year, same broad level).  Which might be fun...

If you might be interested too we are hoping to get something together for April.  If it does happen places will be very limited... So keep an eye out on Twitter for an announcement that it is going ahead..

[thedrapersarms]

Valentines 2015 - it is a Saturday, make it count for Refuge

2015 - has one blog post ever been as recycled?  As ever in 2015 I wish I could avoid reposting it but things don't seem any better.  This year Valentines is on a Saturday so if you come for lunch or dinner you will hopefully be causing me to write Refuge a decent sized amount.  So, again... an explanation of why we give 100% of our takings on Valentines to Refuge charity that helps women with a need for the right kind of love in their lives.

2014

Since I wrote the below last year I continue to be amazed at the forgiveness of women in the face of this extraordinary war waged on so many fronts.  The ‘social media’ abuse directed at so many women who dare to speak up must be indicative of behavioural patterns which make daily life at times extraordinarily difficult.  It is still the abuse in the home and from those who are supposed to provide love, support and tenderness that moves me most viscerally and that is why we will again be donating every penny spent in here on Valentines to Refuge again this year.  It’s a Friday so come in droves and cost me a fortune!

      Valentine’s at the Drapers Arms 2013..

  The autumn and winter season has a rhythm and series of events in it that perfectly suit the pub – and it gives operators a framework for hanging events and ‘get yourselves down here’ marketing messages on.  The whoooooo of Halloween; crash, bang, whooooosh ….ahhhhh! of the 5th of November; lighting the fires…mulled wine and cider (bleeuuuurgh); carols and mince pies; Christmas parties and gatherings, from family dinners to vomit and shots corporateathons and finally the crash bang snog and lengthening bog-queue fest that is New Year’s eve as our exhausted staff thank god the month is over (whilst wondering how they are going to survive New Year’s day service).

And then the barren wasteland that is late winter in the new year and early spring…our customer’s wallets are exhausted, their livers tender and there’s little on the horizon to celebrate.  Oh hurrah as valentine’s pops over the horizon, like a piece of driftwood edging toward a drowning man on an otherwise empty sea.

My early valentine adventures seem so very long ago…hazy memories across the mists of 30 years.  At a boys only boarding school and whisked off at the end of term to what was effectively a mining town in the middle of Africa where I met no girls there was never a danger of my being overwhelmed by valentine’s cards, and yet walking out of breakfast to where our post was set out was always a nervous time, tinged with hope – and sure enough after a while the odd card popped up.  As more time passed the day transformed for me so that, broadly speaking, at my stage in life I think of valentine’s as an opportunity for us blokes to show our love for our womenfolk and I think sometimes we do ok on the day and step up to the plate.  *pats self on back*.

But I get to thinking, what about the other 364 days, how do we blokes do then? Well I’ve got a little list of how women fare the rest of the year, and it isn’t exhaustive. Women:

Are paid on average around 15% less to do the same job as men

Have glass ceilings and working practices at work that prevent them from enjoying an equal opportunity for fulfilment through work and career

Are ganged up on, bullied and trolled on the internet when they dare to be smarter, cleverer and funnier than men

Are  depicted in magazines and ‘newspapers’ that take pictures up their skirts, of their sweat patches, underwear, weight gain, weight loss, aging, poor plastic surgery, bad hair days, poor clothes choices – at the same time as being bombarded with images of ‘perfect’ unattainable ideals for womankind ….so there is no woman anywhere who can ever feel un-judged, secure and happy with their appearance

Are raped at home, at work, at play and in the outside world where rape convictions are at shockingly low levels

Are sexually abused as children principally in the homes and schools where they should feel most secure

Are forced into marriages they don’t wish for

Are subject to attempts to deny them control of their own bodies by refusing them abortion rights including after rape

Are ‘honour’ killed when they don’t do what they are told

Are called sluts if they enjoy sex and frigid or lesbians if they don’t sleep with us

Are called ‘normalised’ pejoratives like ‘bitch’ and ‘ho’ in everyday language

Are the target of acts of domestic physical and psychological violence that destroy and undermine their entire lives

Have men mutilate their genitals with the express intention of preventing them from enjoying sex

Have rape against women used as an act of war in conflicts propagated mainly by men

Quite the list, and taken around the world collectively it affects billions of lives.  So, in the round, I’m not that comfortable ringing the tills in the name of mens’ love for women on the 14th of February and turning a blind eye the rest of the time to mens’ collective acts of violence against women.  Women should step out into the world feeling genuinely loved by men 365 days of the year.  This year and every year until it is no longer needed we will treat all of our takings on valentine’s as a voluntary donation from our customers to a charity organisation that supports women affected by the violence of men.  This year that will be Refuge.

Because there are 365 days in the year, not just one.

[thedrapersarms]

India Cycle with Action Against Hunger

#IndiaCycle with Action Against Hunger

https://rajasthancyclechallenge.everydayhero.com/uk/nick-gibson

This week I was enormously flattered to be asked by Action Against Hunger to speak to a few of their hospitality industry supporters about the bike ride a number of us recently completed in India.  This is what I meant to say before I got a bit choked up…

As I reflect on what ACF hoped to achieve by sending 20 chefs, restaurateurs, staff and supporters on a 400 plus kilometre cycle ride I guess that they had three main objectives; to raise money to support their activities, to raise their profile and to expose supporters to their work to build a greater understanding of what they do and achieve – in order to create ambassadors for the charity.

To the first point the total raised so far is in excess of the stated target of £100,000 which will make a massive contribution to the amazing work that the charity undertake.  I passed my personal target and reached around £13,000 and taking account of all the activities at the pub which helped support other riders that number exceeds £20,000.  So a huge thank you to all of the people who donated, came to events, donated raffle and auction prizes, tweeted retweeted and retweeted again in support of our fundraising efforts.  Especial thanks to Neil Rankin and all of the chefs involved in ‘Too Many Chefs’ which raised around £14,000 alone, to Meera Sodha for her Indian food night and to Giles Webster for our quiz night.  I don’t mean thank you from me, or even from ACF – I mean I am deeply privileged to thank you on behalf of the hundreds whose lives will have been saved and transformed with your support.

As to raising profile – there were many higher profile, younger, more charistmatic, better looking televisual and media savvy people along for the ride on whose shoulders that rests.  I look forward to seeing the film that has been made of our journey and catching sight of myself in the background – look out too for a piece in the Indpendent on Sunday by Lisa Markwell who joined us out there.  I will share links as soon as I can.

India – it is trite to describe it as spiritual but it does seem to have an extraordinary effect soothing inner demons and helping contemplation.  The people we met along the way were engaging, happy, curious, colourful, warm and generous.  The colours, sounds and smells were hypnotic and overwhelming.  The countryside was remote, rural and simple while the towns we cycled through were bustling and chaotic; traffic, camels, tractors, cows, tuk tuks, cyclists, pedestrians, trucks, busses, motorcycles, more cows and us all spiralling through with little observance of rules of the road.  The food was universally exceptional – so much lighter and fresher that almost all the Indian food I have eaten in the UK – warm and spiced, sometimes fiery but always encouraging us to want more.  I, we, would all have loved to have spent more time there.  But… the thing that we had all being looking forward to was the bike ride – getting on our cycles and setting off.

The best thing about the ride was that it was a challenge – the days were long, hard and hot.  Themometers reached 40degC and slamming through potholes for 12 hour days with dust and heat exhaustion kicking in meant that we had to work as a team.  Everyone needed some help – a little nudge along, help getting back on the saddle after a break when you just don’t want to, being picked up off the floor after a tumble or gentle encouragement up a hill.. and the best thing about everyone needing help is that we all had to give help and that feels really nice.  I think we all like to think of ourselves as nice people with kind hearts and we all have a preference for doing some good along the way through life’s rich, busy and distracting journey.  I know however that when I look in the mirror I see someone who is probably well meaning but at the same time is lazy, given to procrastination, easily distracted, greedy, acquisitive, needy… my list goes on.  I do however also see that sometimes, for very short bursts I can be good and I can briefly come close to being the person I aspire to be; whether that is helping someone out, donating to charity, giving a little time, getting angry enough to do something about something that upsets me, that I can see is wrong.   Being involved with ACF and doing this ride and subsequently visiting some of their projects to visit their work I realised there is a special bit of magic in the air.  The amazing, big hearted, hard working staff both in London and abroad harvest all of these little bits of us being the best we can and, with a little sprinkle of fairy dust, make us as a team far better and greater than we are as individuals and the whole of that goodness they produce is far far bigger than the sum of our parts.

After the ride we split up and visited different villages and projects – it was never going to be appropriate for us all to shuffle in and gawp at desperately sick children in a big group of twenty.  The first place that I went to was a hospital ward where tiny children, from nearly newborn to very little older, suffered terribly from malnutrition and fought their huge, brave battles.  They were as just lit candles with flames flickering and guttering in a draft, at real risk of being extinguished before they had a chance to share their light with the world.  It was heart wrenching but the charity can and does work with carers, mothers and families and it really does save and change the lives of these wholly innocent helpless children undeserving of their desperate state.  I repeatedly put in my begging tweets that it only takes £42 to save a life… and here was the dramatic illustration of what that meant given flesh.  These lives, real lives, beating hearts, gently lifting, struggling chests – gaunt, stressed, desperate mothers.  If you gave, if you give I wish I could share with you the tangible, visceral connection with the meaning behind the words but giving, helping, your best bits – ACF was there being real, doing what they said, making a difference.  Whole, actual, real lives.  Beating hearts.

ACF are very keen not just to be seen to be dealing in just emergency care for children suffering from malnutrition – although they are there at the front line.  They emphasise the work that they do in preventing child malnutrition through education and long term projects to address all of the causes be they systematic, cultural or economic with the aim of preventing it happening in the first place, not just fighting it when it does.  One of the things that I realised as we cycled through the country was the huge scale of the challenge facing India as it seeks to move its vast population across a huge country into the 21st century in an equitable, smooth and fair way.  The rural population exists across an enormous space some of it desperately remote.  Basic resources can be scarce, education, culture and tradition can all be both helpful and a hindrance.  I was deeply impressed with what the country has achieved and is achieving, both from an economic but also in a social context.  As a group we visited numerous other projects to see the teams working with communities, community leaders, parents and children to address myriad issues both understandable, scandalous and baffling all with the same end of ending child malnutrition.

 There is an enormous amount to be done and we saw ACF staff engaging with the challenges in deeply moving and impressive ways.  Their staff are without exception among the most professional, determined, calm, kind and dedicated that you could ever meet anywhere doing anything.  It is an absolute privilege to have had a chance to support these amazing, big hearted, magic dust bearing people in their life changing work.  If you support them, feel very good that your best bits are being put to great work – and accept the gratitude of the people we met whose lives you help them transform.  If you haven’t given yet I am sure that you get asked plenty, I’m sure you do plenty and I know there are many great causes.  If you can consider just a tiny bit more it will not do anything less than make a tiny innocent child’s fight worthwhile and successful. XX

https://rajasthancyclechallenge.everydayhero.com/uk/nick-Gibson

To the cycle gang - thank you it was wonderful to share the experience with you all

[thedrapersarms]

What does Nick do?

I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to tender for a new site this week in central London – part of the plan is to go in as partner with a well-established chef restaurateur… and for the first time probably with external investors.  Around the same time that we were putting finishing touches to the presentation to the landlord we received a long list of detailed due-diligence questions from our prospective investors.  The investors seem to have a good sense of what a chef does and therefore what my pitch partner brings to the table but they seemed less sure of the point of me.  ‘What does Nick do?’ was one of their questions.  As we drew toward the end of quite an eventful week I couldn’t help but chuckle as I worked on the answers to their questions and, as one of the aims of this blog on our website is to provide access to our business and a real sense of what it is like inside the pub, I thought I would share with you some of the rhythms of this particular week:

Monday starts before I get to work.  Just as I am leaving home I get a call from my GM – there has been an incident at the pub.  A member of the public has entered the building before 9am, coming into an empty premises which was briefly unattended by our kitchen porter who opens the doors as first in, and has injured themself.  An ambulance and police are in attendance the injured person is being taken to hospital.  Jump on bike and cycle to work quite quickly.  When I get there we talk through what has happened and any implications, write up an incident report, notify the council and insurers – everyone is a bit shaken but pleased to hear that the precautionary visit to hospital proves just that and the injured party is ok and discharged.  Normal Monday business of a full stocktake, timesheets, banking, providing details on the week to the accountants, drinks ordering, team meeting of front of house and kitchen are caught up with.  Quite a busy evening service.

Tuesday is pitch day, swing by the pub to make sure everything is ok and prep all the presentations, menus, winelists etc.  Make the presentation which goes quite well – it is an exciting opportunity and it is always thrilling to lay out a vision for a new place and talk with passion and belief about what you think you can do.  At the same time we talk a bit about our existing businesses and it is a great opportunity to be reminded how much I love what I do, why I do it and how proud I am of my team and what they achieve.

Wednesday spend two and a half hours with Islington council Health and Safety team briefing them in fine detail about the nature of the event – this provides an opportunity for them to ask us about every aspect of our health and safety training, policies, procedures, to ask for and review documentation, records, files…. Payroll has been processed so needs to be checked, drinks are delivered from Monday’s ordering spree.  Future events need to be planned, menus set – medium term thinking always throws up a to do list for me.  We’ve had a number of painting, maintenance and wiring tasks done but there is a little shortlist that got missed out and needs chasing up on.  Some people turn up to try and sell me a self contained mini brewery that we can install in the cellar – apparently we can make our own beer for some tiny amount of money and sell it for £4 a pint thus delivering huge margins.  But would the beer be better than what we currently buy in on rotation from multiple fantastic expert brewers I ask?  How would this machine deliver a better customer experience?  Seems to befuddle the salespeople that that is the primary concern.

Thursday. Process payroll – the very most important thing I do, I think the number of times I have paid someone a different amount to what is shown on their payslip is less than two. Early evening I get a call that one of our best known restaurant reviewers is going to swing by – I don’t expect a review but it is nice that this person is checking in on Gina’s settling in.  I’ve arranged to meet with a friend to talk through her birthday party she’s holding at the pub in a couple of weeks so I am not going to be free to look after our guest.  It is right to leave it to my staff and carry on.  Feedback on the food is that it wasn’t all fabulous and I think the specific feedback is probably spot on – the dish discussed isn’t quite right and was new on that evening.  An opportunity missed which is a shame although my delight in Gina isn’t affected and I am unconcerned for the general direction – I think our food is interesting, rewarding and consistent at the moment.

Friday we get a strange email, one of those occasional ones that seems to carry an implied threat or invite compensation – ‘can you tell me the name of your manager I want to write a review of a recent experience’ – I check OpenTable and there are no new bad reviews and I am gratified to see that the recent run is pretty strong really reflecting our determination this year to drive up the quality and consistency of our guests experiences.

 I need to quickly grab Gina when she is in to talk about last night’s feedback and the slight tweaks needed to a couple of dishes.  This is the most difficult thing I do – the head chef’s role is as a creative person and I am not yet confident that my enthusiasm for and knowledge of food makes me obviously qualified to communicate effectively in this area.  As a leader of creative people you look to provide guidance, motivation, encouragement but I don’t think instruction.  At the same time the kitchen needs to receive constructive feedback on how dishes work at the table.  Gina is receptive as of course I knew she would be, early days in our working relationship.

Friday it is baking in the pub, hot and humid and there is a limit to what we can do to cool things down or make it less crowded.  We have a new starter and a trial shifter in and a very busy Friday night pub, plenty of drinkers and a very busy garden.  8pm I get a very strange message – we have a temporary agency chef in this week as staff are on holiday and Gina has not yet fully settled her team.  This temp chef has decided on the spur of the moment to walk out on the shift taking offence to being asked what to do by his Head Chef.  I go up to the kitchen and ask him if he isn’t going to work to leave the building while we try to work out how to deal with the pretty full ticket rail and chattering kitchen printer.  The temp asks me to sign his timesheet so he can get paid which I decline to do saying I will talk to his agency.  He is obviously a little stressed and unhinged and he is also about half as big as me again, two inches from my face.  The kitchen is full of hot liquids, heavy and sharp implements.  I ask him to leave again and he continues to be abusive and threatening so I call the police who say they may be an hour.  After another half hour of abusing and threatening me he goes off to get dressed and leaves the building.  His last words are that if he doesn’t get paid he is coming back to get his money but not in a nice way.  Another of our chefs arrives in a taxi, the break on taking food orders is lifted and mostly people are fed in a timely manner, the show goes on.  We move everyone in from outside and shut all the windows as required by our licence and policed by our neighbours.  Because the relative humidity is around 90% and the temperature in the 90s rivulets of sweat are just pouring off everyone but especially staff.  I take 10 minutes out to sit in the beer cellar and cool down – friends drop in to say hi which is nice.  Staff chat – ‘it’s been quite a week’ I say, “two weeks”, ‘why what happened last week’, “well there was the burglary”….jeez that seems like a lifetime ago…

At the same time each of Monday to Friday this week has been one of the top two busiest days of the year so far for that day of the week – so I’ve poured a few drinks, taken a few food orders, restocked some fridges, cleared some tables, scraped some plates, taken some bookings, seated some customers, corrected some mistakes, soothed a few frettled customers, posted too many pictures on Instagram, tweeted too much personal stuff, spent time with suppliers …

Sunday we have a staff meeting pre-service to prep for.  Our new head chef Gina is doing great things in the kitchen and our front of house really are the most lovely, kind and rewarding group of people we have assembled.  But there are always a few things that can be improved; ideas for better engagement with customers, thoughts on how they can make the very most of their opportunity to take care of people, areas where standards need a little nudge back in the right direction.  We might also mention that we have a date booked for our summer staff party at MeatMission and no that doesn’t mean we can shut for three days for them to recover.  Then there are the 200 plus people we will feed and water – I absolutely love Sundays in the pub, the most rewarding and convivial of services most perfectly suited to what it is that we offer.

This isn’t, thankfully, a standard week but, it turns out….. there is generally something going on for Nick to do…

[thedrapersarms]

Thank you to Action Against Hunger for India...

I remember stepping off my first flight to England to come to school aged 7 and being picked up by my maternal grandparents in their Austin.  My grandfather was a monumentally and overtly intelligent and intimidating Cambridge graduate.  Mostly leaving the small talk to his wife he played chess, ate four meals a day (a proper tea), watched the news, did the Times crossword, listened to difficult classical music, engaged in multiple aspects of the community from the local Conservative party (we came to disagree), historical society, town twinning programme and church, managed a small portfolio of shares diligently and corresponded with his children who lived around the world in Australia, the US and Kenya.

He was a kind man, gentle and generous although I am not sure he had too much time for small children.  Although I came to love the sound of his shaky hand rattling a cup and saucer up the stairs and along the corridor bringing me tea in bed every morning (slightly earlier than I would ideally have wanted) I would be lying if I said we were warmly close despite the fact that he and his wife did so much for me in locus parentes – I think I was scared of him when I was young and then I became a most unpleasant teenager when I was getting to the sort of age when he might have begun to find engagement interesting.

I have a few strongly ingrained memories of him – I remember him, my brother and I falling about with laughter at some joke he made about reincarnated sandwiches coming back to life from the freezer one evening when my grandmother was out and we were left to fend for ourselves with something he would not have considered a real meal.  I’ve no idea how he made the idea of defrosted, flabby leftover sandwiches funny but I think the reason it sticks in the mind is I just didn’t think of him as someone who found much to laugh about and even now I think whatever he said must have been one of the funniest things I ever heard - it was helpless, stunned, surprised laughter that I can close my eyes and see and feel.

A further key memory was of opening a letter from him after I had got my degree result from university.   I was absolutely devastated by the poor quality of my degree having always vested much of my self-esteem in a strong academic track record.  The reality of it, however, was that I had failed to take advantage of the incredible privilege and opportunity that was presented to me; my application disgracefully failed to match the opportunity given to me.  As the result became known most people including my brilliant tutors had expressed support, condolences and hard luck these things happen messages.  My grandfather took a different tack.  A short note in his increasingly difficult to read handwriting simply said ‘I was disappointed to hear about your degree result I didn’t know if we could expect a first [which I hoped for] but I thought that we could at least have been confident in a 2:1’.  As I write that it strikes me that you might think that was harsh but, actually it was wonderful, deserved, robust and hearfelt.  I felt intensely how much I had let him and everyone down and his disappointment in me was tangible, visceral.

The third memory I have of him relates to his time in India.  After a brilliant career at Cambridge that ended with a double first George Creek had sailed through his exams for the Indian Civil Service and was in Darjeeling during the war.  I am, I think rightly, deeply ambivalent about the British and other colonial exploits – I do however believe that he would have gone out there with a sincere belief that he was doing a good job and have been diligent and honest and hard working.  I don’t know exactly what it was that he did from day to day but I do know that absurdly each member of the ICS was responsible short years after leaving an English university for the administration of the lives of 100,000’s of Indians.  I remember him talking about the experience of travelling from town to town as a magistrate administering justice but there is another significant conversation that defines my memory of him and was unlike any other conversation I had ever had with an adult up to that point.  I don’t recall the lead up but I remember him telling me about the 1943 Bengali famine.  The story is long and complicated and the explanations are myriad for why over a million people died in Bengal when the floods, crop diseases etc that had presaged the shortfall in food in the area were understood and when there were warnings of shortfalls a year in advance – from poor statistics on harvests, a failure to know the extent of the population, an unwillingness in other better prepared provinces to send food, a lack of communication as to the severity of the problem, structural administrative barriers, British deliberate scorched earth policy to the East in fear of a Japanese invasion as well as siphoning off food for the war effort.  I know I don’t know enough about it, that I need to tread carefully and that I would emphasise that I am not finger pointing.  What I do know that is that listening to my grandfather speak about it was my first experience of an adult expressing deeply felt hurt – not that he was responsible or felt responsible personally, just at the having been in the place at the time and in and of a system that failed on a massive, tragic and pointless scale.  I was quite young and unused to the complexities of adult emotions.

Lack of communication, parochialism, ignoring warning signs, failing to coordinate, greed… I don’t know what Action Against Hunger would point to as the principal reasons why in the next century we still have the utterly avoidable situation of people going without enough food and dying of starvation but I do think we should all feel a sense of shame that we are part of a system that doesn’t do enough day to day.  I am proud of the fact that the restaurant business understands that there is an incongruence in spending so much time deciding what food to have done how when others have not enough or none – and that we are one of the important supporters of Action Against Hunger as a way of in some small way addressing that incongruence.

I am incredibly grateful to have been invited by Action Against Hunger to join a charity bike ride in India this October to raise funds for their work – we will be doing a number of things at the pub over the next few months to raise sponsorship money for the ride, from donating £1 per pimped burger sold every weekend to huge dinners with some of the best chefs across London, plus quiz nights and raffles.

As I have reflected since being invited on the fact of the ride taking place in India my mind has filled with thoughts of my grandfather – I hope that in some way by going there in particular to raise money to make a tiny contribution to helping fight hunger if he were here it would help with the hurt he seemed to feel and that I would perhaps start to make him feel that he could be a little bit proud of me again.  If you would like to donate to help to you can here:

https://rajasthancyclechallenge.everydayhero.com/uk/nick-gibson

[thedrapersarms]

Would you like to be head chef at The Drapers Arms

Five years ago this May when I opened the Drapers Arms with Ben Maschler we were very lucky to have Karl Goward as our head chef.  Karl had been head chef at St John Bread & Wine so he brought great ‘chops’ to his cooking, credibility to the pub and experience to the kitchen.  Mostly when I say lucky though I mean he brought calm, professionalism, great organisational skills, planning – a personality that could help get a new business off the ground without meltdowns, chaos, pan throwing, chef branding or tantrums. Lucky indeed.

At the end of our first year when Karl and Ben decided to head off and try other challenges I looked around the kitchen to see if there was someone who could take the business into the second phase of consolidation and development.  One face shone out…literally shone out.  James de Jong was not the sous chef or the junior sous… I’m not even sure if he was the most senior CdP but his sunny personality, can do, creative approach and general demeanour made him stand out as the person I thought I would enjoy working with and for the last four years I have enjoyed having him as head chef enormously.  Although he turned green when I asked him if he would like the job that was a reflection of his modesty and seriousness of intent – wonderful characteristics I think in a leader.

In the last four years James has led a team which has cooked for 1,000s of people – including creating memorable occasions for numerous weddings and other important days; retained the Bib Gourmand the Karl obtained for us in the first year; built on the established foundations of the approach to food with his own style to strengthen the distinctive identity of the pub; helped us to 19th place nationally in the Morning Advertiser’s list of top gastropubs (I’d like to be higher!); been rated as the top London pub in the Scotch Egg Challenge for the last two years; shared his kitchen with Henry Harris, Jackson Boxer, Andrew Clarke, Tom Oldroyd, Gizzi Erskine, Raymond Blanc and James Ramsden.  He has done all this with calm, maturity that belies his years and the respect of everyone that has worked with him.  Understandably he has caught the eye of other restaurateurs and, equally understandably for someone young, talented and ambitious he has felt the call to move and seek new challenges and experiences.  He does so with my thanks and very best wishes.

What that means is that at five years old we are now looking for someone who is excited to be head chef here and to take us on to hopefully, higher levels still.  I hope that this is a great place to work and that the opportunity is attractive – the broad brush is that the head chef and I discuss the approach, philosophy and targets and then he or she runs the kitchen and writes the menu.  The core values and approach will remain the same and there are a few ‘signature’ Drapers things that I’d need a lot of talking out of, but as I muse through sleepless nights I come up with the following thoughts, we:

cook seasonal, British, honest and authentic food

use fresh, high quality ingredients that we buy from suppliers who we believe provide the best produce at prices that help us to be great but affordable

seek to be generous to our guests

hope to be great because we want to send people away having added pleasure to their lives as an end in itself

have aspirations and ambitions not pretensions – if that isn’t too pretentious

use interesting ingredients, are contemporary and stay in touch with new ingredients and techniques without chasing fashions – this week we have had wild garlic and asparagus because they’ve been great, nduja because it brings thrilling, rich depth and warmth and sweetbreads and ox-heart as we use and adore the whole animal, but we haven’t found a place for kimchi yet and that’s been around for a while now

work 6 shifts and encourage the team to have the time to enjoy life

work as a team and treat each other with consideration and respect

have a searing determination to be better because if this is what we are going to do with our one life then we don’t want to waste it being mediocre

If you like the sound of that and you think you might be the person to take us to the next level then I would love to hear from you.

Nick

[thedrapersarms]

James (MoW) Handford's special wine selection ... and Drink the List

Moving swiftly on from my love of morphine to my actual day to day partner drug – wine!

I checked on google and everything and the ‘Institute of Masters of Wine’ website says that there are currently 312 masters of wine living in 24 countries around the world.  One of them, James Handford, runs a wine business that supplies us and we are lucky to have benefitted from his advice and wonderful wines for the five years since we opened.  In that time I have often wondered how we can get more of his knowledge, enthusiasm and fabulous wines to actually impact and benefit our customers.  Although we change our wine list twice a year it remains a relatively static and sadly finite collection of bottles.

But inspired by, borrowing from…wholesale stealing from – however you choose to express it…. the lovely and wonderful Sager & Wilde I have agreed with James an exciting new way for him to thrill and delight adventurous and engaged wine drinkers..

Each week starting this week James is going to wander around his shop and send me a mixed case of 12 bottles, starting out with four wines, three of each that he thinks it might be interesting to offer here as a special one off.  There really isn’t any specific guidance for him – one week he might do a theme, one week it might be a country - another some quirky things might catch his eye.  In order to make this accessible we will put a flat £ mark up on each bottle consistent with one of our ‘pouring by the glass’ wines – so hopefully if James picks a nice bottle this will represent a great value opportunity as well.  If we find we sell all the case in the first two days after they have arrived then we will up the weekly delivery.  I hope this provides a great opportunity to get access to really interesting and special wines chosen by a real expert with over 20 years of selling special wines.

If you have any thoughts, comments, suggestions or feedback then as ever I would be delighted to hear it.

This seems an opportune time to also mention that we have also set the date for our next ‘DRINK THE LIST’ which is on the 17th April (yes the day before your long weekend so you can really come with intent) – I’ve written it up before on here but to save you scrolling down here is the basics again, do call, email or twitter if you fancy coming:

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Here is a re-blog (?) of something I did to explain drink the list last year…same principle this week, come and guzzle as much wine as you like - drink only champagne and puligny montrachet or try every one of 80 odd bottles, it is your call…..

  On the [17th April] we are holding our third DRINK THE LIST event.  I’ve bedded down the new wine list and am pretty pleased with some of the new wines that I’ve got on the shelves, as well as the welcome return of one of my favourite wines - the St Ennemond brouilly.  However, even my staff seem to find it difficult to explain the event so here it is in summary:

•we take lots and lots of bottles of wine upstairs to our lovely dining room, and then open a bottle of every wine on the list, from house to the 2001 Poujeaux, 2007 Mikulski Meursault and champagne

•guests come upstairs, grab a glass and help themselves to as much of any wine as they like, drink and repeat until we sadly have to ask them to leave at closing time

•you can if you like simply drink the most expensive wine we have (£65) and as many bottles of it if you like - or you can range across the list trying different price points, countries, colours.  Compare a sancerre and otago sauvignon; finally pin down the difference between a bordeaux and burgundy; oak and unoaked; try some natural (unfiltered and sulphite free) wines, or just grab and glug….

•we will feed you some simple and stomach lining snacks to stop you falling over

  Why do we do it?  Well I enjoy it and it is a great opportunity for me to refresh my knowledge of the list and check that it is balanced and drinking well.  Underlying it originally was the idea that if regular users of the pub came they could find which wines we have they like the most and then choose the right wines when they come next, helping them to enjoy their visits more. In theory…

  For guests it is like a great drinks party - inevitably our friends end up mingling like at a good party but some people come in big groups and have a great boozy night out with a bunch of mates.  Do contact the pub if you fancy coming and kicking off the ultra long weekend in style…the full list can be found on our website.

[thedrapersarms]

Unintended consequences

This morning I awoke sharp and fast.  My sleep was like a bubble that broke free from the bottom of a glass and shot to the surface breaking instantly at the top – my sleep dissipated instantly.  Sometimes, rarely but when it happens it is so delicious, I come to consciousness imperceptibly slowly and as I become aware that has happened I can choose to remain in the moment – fully aware of being cosseted in an all-encompassing duvet, of being gorgeously warm and of just hovering on the sleep side of being alert.  Then my sleep is like the bubble that gently edges up the inside of the glass, stopping just under the surface and staying there below the surface.

A few years ago coming round from (minor) surgery I experienced an awakening like that but, incredibly drowsy and really barely awake more so that I can describe.  In some pain however I called out and was given morphine and pethidine.  The effect was like someone taking a warm blanket of love and, starting at my toes, pulling it gently up my body so that I had never felt so happy, relaxed, loved and comfortable in my whole life, hovering as I was just there under the surface yet to pop. I was aware that I had fallen deeply in love with my drug of choice.  I haven’t had it again since, and no-one has offered it to me and I am very clear that that can only be a really good thing.

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We had the busiest lunch ever this Sunday and it made me muse on my earliest Sunday pub lunches.  When I was at school (with parents abroad I used to board here in the UK from an early age) around the age of 15 a group of us took to ‘signing out’ on a Sunday to go fishing.  So we would all jump on our bikes and cycle to the pub for lunch – I suddenly remembered the name last night it was the ‘Carpenters Arms’ in Tonbridge, just far enough away for us to be safe from teachers.  When we got there we would have scampi and chips in a basket, drink two or three pints of Guinness or Director’s (if memory serves), smoke Chesterfield, Rothmans or Winston with Café Cremes for after we had eaten or sometimes a cigar from behind the bar.  What we wouldn’t do is misbehave, get drunk and loud or draw attention to ourselves.  There was absolutely no way that the publican or his staff thought that we were 18, but we both maintained the pretence and what we were desperate to do was be accepted in the grown up environment and not called out by staff or customers.  As a result we learnt how to control our alcohol intake in a social environment and how to behave when out drinking.  The publican was obviously breaking the law, as were we, and there would have been consequences if he had been ‘caught’ – but I suspect in those days there was more of a culture of the landlord being trusted to manage the situation and use his or her discretion.

I am not advocating that any publicans take a similarly discretionary approach to underage drinking now – the penalties and possible threat of losing one’s licence are way too severe and with a culture of ‘challenge 21’ I found myself challenging a 24 year old just a week ago (perhaps a sign of my distance from 18 and failing eyesight as much as of the assiduousness with which we enforce the rules!).  I am however, as my sons arrive at a similar stage in life, curious and concerned about the consequence of this robust enforcement of the rules and what it means for young people who wish to drink.

I don’t think anyone pretends that young teenagers will not drink at all – sometimes in controlled ways with their families and at other times in less controlled ways with other adults.  Where do you think that might happen and who do you think sells them the drink?  It is a shame to me that my children will not be able to enjoy the illicit going to the pub adventures that I enjoyed – and that they will not have that lesson in how to behave – but it is not my main issue.  What preys on my mind is my assumption that the source of booze will be some guy in a park, rec or estate who is probably also prepared, interested and motivated to sell drugs as well.  I am not so naïve to think that no-one is ever going to sell drugs to kids, or even to my kids, but the timing (how old they are) and social context concerns me.  If the buying of alcohol is simultaneous to and equivalent to the purchase of drugs and takes place within an unfamiliar and high pressure environment when being cool, appearing to know how to behave and with peer group pressure and (possibly alcohol induced) impaired judgement how far and how fast can they get involved and how soon?  What if someone offers them their drug of choice, the one they fall in love with when they are small, only partially formed and not ready to recognise the danger and stay in control?

I have never to this day been offered heroin, but I can’t but shudder at the consequences had I been at the time that I was desperately trying to find my way and establish my identity in this world.  I led a pretty sheltered life up to leaving school and wasn’t in fact offered drugs at any time through my teenage years.  I don’t aspire to that necessarily for my children or for yours or anyone elses because I accept they are part and parcel of contemporary society.  Perhaps I should give other young people more credit for being more grown up and less desperate, needy and keen to belong and please than I was (am).  But…. if there is something that sometimes keeps me awake at night it is the idea of children being pushed out of convivial, kindly managed and caring pubs into the shady and ill-lit spaces where they fall prey to people who don’t really have their best wishes at heart.

[thedrapersarms]

Deputy to GM needed

Yesterday we were lucky enough to be included in the Morning Advertiser top 50 gastropubs.  Looking around at the incredible quality, constant striving and sheer hard work evident in the other businesses represented at the awards it was a real honour to be there.  We were asked in advance for some comments to be read out as our position was announced...including plans for the year.  In due course the master of ceremonies announced our place and our intention....'to be better in 2014'.

Nothing fancy - we don't have room to buy woods for pigs like some entrants or to expand - but we do really need to be better at some basics in order to deliver on our customer expectations to the highest level and the highest level of consistency. We need to hire, train and retain great front of house people.  We need to do all the things that we aspire to consistently and better every day.  We need to make sure each and every person working with customers makes it clear that nothing do-able is too much trouble and that their great experience means everything to us as an end in itself not just to fill the place, get busier and make money.

We have already made some really exciting hires in the kitchen this year and I genuinely look forward to the food here pushing on to another level in the coming months.  I want to make sure we match the kitchen's efforts in the front of house.

If you think you have the interest, talent, enthusiasm, personality and work ethic to help us do that as our deputy GM in 2014 please email me nick@thedrapersarms.com