I’ve been meaning to write about Professor David Nutt’s attempts to create a hangover-free form of alcohol for some time, but haven’t got round to it until now! Professor Nutt, you may recall, was an advisor on illegal drugs to the then Labour home secretary Alan Johnson. He suggested that ecstasy was no more dangerous than horse riding. Now, in terms of death and injury, on a purely statistical basis, he may have been right, but the comparison shows a not-real-world naivety in terms of how he must have imagined this would go down with his boss, who promptly sacked him.

But the good professor is nothing if not consistent. His new product, fetchingly called alcosynth, will, he says, replace regular alcohol by 2050. He has stated that: “The drinks industry knows that by 2050 alcohol will be gone. They know that and have been planning for this for at least ten years. But they don’t want to rush into it, because they’re making so much money from conventional alcohol.” Well, I have been accused of being quite close to the drinks industry, but the last time I spoke to “Big Alcohol” it never mentioned this to me! Sounds like a bit of wishful thinking from an entrepreneurial academic pushing what is, essentially, a kind of “legal high” with a novel marketing plan. It is unclear to me if alcosynth would be unlawful under the New Psychoactive Substances Act 2016, but I suspect it would.

According to Nutt, he has invented a form of synthetic alcohol that will allow people to enjoy the sociable effects of a few pints, “but skip the hangover that usually follows”. Quoted in the Independent he said: “So we know where the good effects of alcohol are mediated in the brain, and can mimic them. And by not touching the bad areas, we don’t have the bad effects.” You can have the pleasure without the pain! What an affront to puritanical thinking, no wonder Alan Johnson sacked him!

Advocates of alcosynth believe it could revolutionise public health by relieving the burden of alcohol-related harms on the health service. Now, I’m all in favour of finding private sector solutions to public health problems, such as e-cigarettes, which provide a safer nicotine delivery system to the conventional one that involves setting fire to a tube of tobacco and inhaling the smoke, but I really don’t think the comparison holds up. In addition to alcosynth, we have also recently seen the development of a powdered form of alcohol called Palcohol – flavoured, powdered alcohol added to water; and also vaporised alcohol that you can inhale. The government has now altered the legal definition of alcohol to include the powdered variety. 

Now, powdered alcohol and alcohol vapour producers don’t claim their products can deliver problem-free intoxication, but the development of all these products plays into the hands of the alcophobes of “public health” because one of the techniques they use to de-normalise alcohol use is to take the drinking of it completely out of its social and cultural context and say it is “just another drug”. Once we separate ethyl alcohol from beverage alcohol – from the tradition of craft and flavour, and the use of natural ingredients and local provenance – then those of us who defend the drinking of beverage alcohol as a lawful and socially acceptable activity are placed in an untenable position. 

There is, of course, a much simpler way of avoiding a hangover, and that is to drink in moderation. Also, it is unclear whether Professor Nutt’s alcosynth will deliver the health benefits of moderate alcohol consumption – you know, those benefits that “public health” are in denial about – such as reduced risk of all-cause mortality and reduced incidence of ischaemic heart disease and stroke. 

Nice try professor, but I don’t think I’ll be abandoning my pint of IPA just yet!

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been asked by clients and prospective clients why so many bars and restaurants fail. Having worked in this industry for more than 20 years, I’ve witnessed a lot of food and beverage brand success stories and also a number of failures and with an archive of experience noting what has worked and what hasn’t, here are the top ten reasons why I believe bars and restaurants fail, which I hope will be a useful reference for how to avoid this in your business! 

It’s the most obvious reason, but many people seem to miss this crux. The right location is not just about footfall volume, or visibility. It’s about the right kind of footfall. Footfall that’s looking for somewhere to eat or drink, not marching by on it’s way somewhere else. The right location is all about knowing your customers, understanding their lifestyle and how your concept fits into it. If you have the option, know your customers first and then find the location that suits them. Or if you have the location already, make sure you adapt your concept to fit the location’s most likely customer base. 

Doh! We’ve seen this too many times. So much time, energy and money goes into launching a new concept that many people run out of all three just as they finally get the doors open! It almost always takes longer to get established than you expect, so it’s vital there are sufficient resources to maintain the business during that time. 

If there is one thing I’ve learned, it’s that being in the right place at the right time is quite simply the one thing that every single success story has in common. However, the catch is that it’s only in retrospect that it becomes obvious it was the right time! Right here, right now – it’s far less obvious. It’s all too easy to get the timing wrong. So many businesses aim to be innovative, to do something new and exciting, to grab the headlines, to drive awareness through their extraordinary offer. Flip your thinking. Ask yourself what is it the right time for right here, in this market? Or simply put, what is there a growing demand for?

Coming from a branding background I would say this, but at least I didn’t put this at number one! All too often we’ve seen operators open the doors to their new bar or restaurant concept and expect people to start flooding in. Many of the places we’ve known to fail didn’t have a marketing plan; didn’t have the right marketing plan for their customers; or were not implementing their plan effectively. Get your marketing right – it’s essential. 

Boring. Who wants to stare at a computer crunching numbers all day? [Oh, you do? Skip this part then!] For everyone else – financial control is vital to any business and we’ve seen what happens to restaurants and bars that do not master it. The most successful hospitality businesses ensure they have an iron fist clamped around the finances. Often (although not always), it’s controlled by someone who is the last person you’d associate with “hospitality”, but if you can find one and keep them locked in a room back-of-house, you’ll be rather pleased you did.

 

Nothing stays the same. That’s one of the philosophies behind several of the successful operators I’ve been fortunate enough to work with. Conversely, I believe there’s a strong resistance to change inherent in most people. Be prepared to evolve your business. Amend it. Tweak it. Do anything except keep it locked up behind a big safe wall. 

The obvious point to make about scale is the danger of growing too fast, or losing the essence of what makes the concept or the brand special in the first place. The brand is core to the success of a scalable restaurant and bar business. Without a clearly defined brand the goal of scaling a business is at best delayed and at worst dangerous.

It’s important not to underestimate your competition. Just because your food, your drinks, your service, your environment, and your prices are better, does not mean people will switch. Recognise that competition is coming from so many different places now. Making sure your brand connects with customers in a meaningful way and builds loyalty and rapport is an important step towards protecting yourself from competitors.

What is the mystery ingredient that creates a compelling restaurant or bar? It’s the exact same ingredient that can kill a place if it’s missing – soul. Soul comes from the people in the business. You have the right people in the organisation and most of the other challenges can be faced and overcome. You have the wrong people and the culture becomes undermined, the soul or the magic that makes it special disappears and the customers go too. Knowing your brand and being able to communicate it succinctly and authentically to potential recruits and partners will not only help select the best candidates, but also act as a filter for the wrong ones.

All the elements of a hospitality business are inter-related and if one goes, so do the rest! Our advice is often to look at your own business and write a plan or diagram that shows how the arrangement of all the dominoes in your own business are inter-related. This is a good way of ensuring you have covered all your bases so that you can pre-empt how each element of your business affects another and can therefore prevent the domino effect.

Running a food and beverage business is hugely complicated and fraught with dangers and we can’t foresee every potential threat, but if you have taken into consideration all the above key reasons for potential failure, you’ll be in the best position to make your business a real success. 

I found the Donald Trump book “Think Big: Make it Happen in Business and Life” in the Elliotts library last week and I thought it was worth another look at some of the advice he offers. There were a few gems in there:

This is about thinking positively. That’s not always easy because, as someone once said: “When you’re up to your neck in alligators, it’s easy to forget that the initial objective was to drain the swamp.” Napoleon Hill in his seminal book “Think and grow rich” was the first person to write about the concept of an optimistic disposition attracting positive change and increasing achievement. Worth reading, if dated. 

I think a positive mental attitude might be needed in the next few years leading to Brexit. Many of the comments I’ve heard recently remind me of conversations I had with chief executives in spring 2008 when banks stopped lending to operators. I hope they are not a portent of really tough times to come. Unrelenting optimism though, particularly in the face of adversity, has worked for many operators over the years – just as it has for Mr Trump and it might just pay off for him. 

 

If Donald Trump wins, it will no doubt be in part due to his single-minded communication of his love for America and his promise to make America great again. This focus is really resonating with those who feel disenfranchised by the current political system (read Chris Arnade’s brilliantly illuminating article in The Guardian on the subject).

If he wins or not, Mr Trump’s comment “you have to love what you do” is so true. I cannot think of one successful operator that hasn’t loved what it does. On the whole, operators love bringing people on, developing them, seeing customers enjoying themselves and they love growth. It cannot be faked. Success follows. 

This too I can buy into. Such confidence can be compelling and unifying. Businesses that say they are going to double in size, or treble their like-for-like performance or gain millions of pounds of funding can, and do, inspire their own people and outside investors. These goals can provide true inspiration.

However, legal agreements that “put feet to fires” due to their scale and ambition – I don’t really think so, and particularly not now. Considered proven growth can be fun. Bankruptcy, pre-pack, or administration due to overambition is not.

There is an argument that if it’s all too hard and it isn’t coming naturally, then maybe it’s just not right. It could be running the operation, it could be one property that’s proving impossible to acquire, it could be one employee who just isn’t working out or it could be one site that’s not successful. Sometimes you just have to walk away. Will Trump pretend that defeat doesn’t matter I wonder? 

He is right. In today’s market though there is no reason not to find support for an instinct-based decision particularly relating to customer-facing issues. Using intuition supported by data must be the best way to go. I suspect Mr Trump has used both to appeal to the everyday American in this election.

Some wise words from Mr Trump but I hope he isn’t celebrating a victory next week. After all, building a wall blockading Mexico is hardly in the spirit of free movement, something our industry thrives on.