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Fri 2nd Aug 2024 - Friday Opinion |
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Subjects: A very different kind of family dining, are youngsters being priced out of eating and drinking out, driving home the point
Authors: James Hacon, Glynn Davis, Phil Mellows
A very different kind of family dining by James HaconMany of you know that I am very active in Scandinavia with Think Hospitality Consulting, and I've just returned from a fabulous few days in Denmark with my family. Inspired by a presentation by Erik Nissen Johansen, of Stylt Trampoli AB, a few years ago at Restaurant Marketer & Innovator, we made a special trip to the home of Lego in Billund. We enjoyed a day at Lego House, a remarkable attraction that truly embodies the spirit and creativity of this world-renowned toy. With fantastic experience zones, play areas and, most importantly for this post, exceptionally delivered restaurants, it was a memorable visit.
Mini Chef: play to eat
Mini Chef, the seated restaurant at Lego House, operates under the playful tagline “you play to get your food”. The concept involves building your meal with four Lego bricks and scanning the order at your table. Mini-figure chefs in the kitchen then prepare your meal. When it's ready, a cool, customised animation appears on your screen, and you pick up your food from two robots. It's whimsical and fantastically fun, and our kids were captivated.
Beyond the fabulous theatre of the concept and the incredible experience design, what struck me was the quality of the food served – not just at Mini Chef, but also at Brickaccino, its counter outlet. There was a strong emphasis on wholesome food that felt locally relevant and creatively designed, encouraging balanced choices in a theatrical way. The ingredients were clearly fresh and high-quality, and the offerings worked equally well for both adults and children with minimal adjustments.
More broadly in Denmark, there is a more considered approach to children's food. Speaking to local friends, it is evident that the New Nordic Food Revolution has significantly impacted the entire industry and population, resulting in a much greater focus on wholesome and nutritious food. In the UK, while the great efforts of many, including Jamie Oliver, have led to improvements in public sector catering, I am not convinced this change has been reflected at a societal level.
A broader perspective on food at attractions
This experience got me thinking about other attractions and their approach to food, particularly those operated by Merlin Entertainments, which shares ownership with Lego through the founding family’s investment company, Kirkbi A/S. As regular visitors to Sealife attractions and recent visitors to both Alton Towers and Legoland Windsor, the difference in food ethos is stark. Sealife typically offers basic coffee counters, while the two theme parks feature an array of fast food and standard kids’ menu fare. The forced exit through shops filled with sweets can be a challenge when you need your kids to decompress for the car journey home.
After almost five years of ownership, one wonders if Kirkbi A/S might consider adopting the fantastic food vision and strategy seen at Lego House across its other Merlin assets. This would enhance the overall visitor experience and promote healthier, more enjoyable food options for families.
In recent years, we’ve worked with numerous organisations that view food as a peripheral service to their core business. Our goal has been to understand the role of food and hospitality, defining a vision and strategy to ensure it aligns with their brand and broader values. This is particularly relevant for retailers, universities, sports teams and retail brands that often outsource their food provision. Without clear governance, caterers might prioritise commercial returns over brand impact.
The visit to Lego House highlights the potential for attractions to rethink their food offerings. By prioritising quality, creativity, and wholesome ingredients, venues can significantly enhance their appeal and ensure that dining becomes a memorable part of the visitor experience. The robotics and playful approach at Mini Chef demonstrate how technology and creativity can combine to create a unique and engaging dining experience that appeals to all ages and drives healthier and more balanced choices for children. It also shows how a dining experience can highlight and cement brand values in a way very few other offers do.
James Hacon is the managing partner of Think Hospitality Consulting, the specialists in growth, performance and internationalisation strategy for multi-site hospitality brands. This article first appeared in Propel Premium, which is sent to Premium subscribers every Friday. Companies can now have an unlimited number of people receive access to Propel Premium for a year for £995 plus VAT – whether they are an operator or a supplier. The single subscription rate is £495 plus VAT for operators and £595 plus VAT for suppliers. Email kai.kirkman@propelinfo.com to upgrade your subscription.
Are youngsters being priced out of eating and drinking out by Glynn DavisDuring the Euro 2024 match between England and Switzerland, I found myself in a historically-rich City of London pub, the atmospheric Viaduct Tavern, which is in the hands of Fuller’s, and which had a good range of beer on the bar including a quaffable 4% pale ale on cask from a fashionable craft brewery.
Although I was fully ensconced in the game, I couldn’t help but notice a group of people in their early 20s, who were undoubtedly students, meeting up for an early evening drink. The way they were nursing their drinks, I suspect they were most likely studying medicine. They undoubtedly have fine careers ahead of them, and their patients will be in very safe hands.
During the course of the match – which went into penalties – most of them seemed to have only consumed a pint or so. This took me back to my days as a student, when one pint on an evening out would not have qualified as an evening out. But then when I realised my admittedly premium option cask ale was £7.10 and the keg beer I tried was £8.15 (my solo pub visit set me back £26.45) my sympathies were very much with them.
When you have limited disposable income as a younger visitor to pubs and restaurants, then these numbers must seem astronomical. This is certainly no dig at Fuller’s – and yes, I am talking about the pricey City of London – because the average cost of a pint of standard draught lager across the whole of the UK, covering all pub companies, has been on a tear in recent years. It has increased from £4.57 to £4.78 between June 2023 and June 2024, according to the Office for National Statistics, which represents a 29.1% jump on the cost of the same pint in June 2019, when it stood at a much more acceptable £3.70.
No wonder the concept of rounds has disappeared among younger drinkers. The numbers are simply too big to jump in and buy for a group of anything larger than about two people. Such price rises have no doubt contributed to the reduced consumption of alcohol – certainly in hospitality venues – and my own take here is that these people have not necessarily switched to low or no-alcohol drinks because they are just as costly as the full-fat alcoholic versions. Lesser alcohol consumption, in many cases, must be down to cost rather than for health reasons, despite much of the narrative in the industry pushing the line that youngsters have all gone teetotal.
In the past, Sam Smith’s had been a safe haven for cash-strapped students in London, frazzled by the pricing in other pubs, but even here the prices have skyrocketed. A recent visit to the glorious Fitzroy Tavern involved pints over the £7 mark, and my own favourite, Sam Smith’s Nut Brown Ale at 5%, is now a punishing £6.90 for a 355ml bottle (that’s the equivalent of £9.20 a pint). It looks like JD Wetherspoon is becoming the one standout option for value.
It’s clearly not only in the pub that we are seeing cutbacks in hospitality spending among youngster as takeaway consumption (definitely the domain of the young, especially when delivery is factored in) has dropped this year. In May 2024, the level of spending on takeaways and fast food declined for the first time since May 2020, according to Barclays, which also found that 54% of people stated they are cutting back on such treats, and 53% are also reducing their eating out at restaurants.
We all know the various factors behind the higher prices in the industry, but the upshot is that a generation is potentially being lost to the uplifting joy that is brought by drinking and dining out in pubs and restaurants. Maybe operators need to investigate the potential of introducing some sort of student/young persons’ discounts. The ability for today’s tech to run complex, multi-level loyalty schemes must make this a possibility, although care clearly has to be taken, as Pret A Manger cited students sharing its subscription scheme as a reason for dramatically changing the proposition.
As I was mulling over this situation, an email from Fuller’s landed in my in-tray highlighting a “Five Pound Land” promotion on Thursdays at my local, the Great Northern Railway Tavern, involving a selected pint of beer, wings and Negroni’s – all at a very affordable fiver. It’s not restricted to just younger customers, but it’s a good start, and I’m sure it will go down very well with this cost-conscious grouping that invariably injects life into my local and across hospitality in general. The reality is, if the Viaduct Tavern and Great Northern Railway Tavern, along with other pubs, were solely full of people like me, then I’d probably stop going!
Glynn Davis is a leading commentator on retail trends
Driving home the point by Phil MellowsA jump in drink-drive fatalities hit the headlines at the end of July, inevitably prompting calls for a cut in the limit in England and Wales and tougher legislation. This is something that comes around every so often and pubs, bars and restaurants, especially those out of town, will take seriously any moves that will deter custom at a time when trading is difficult enough.
But no alcohol business will want to feel they are an accomplice to fatal traffic accidents. So, are the latest figures from the Department for Transport (DfT) a cause for concern? During 2022, in Great Britain, the DfT estimates there were 300 deaths related to collisions in which at least one driver was over the limit. The figure is the highest since 2009 and equivalent to 18% of total road deaths compared with a low of 13% in 2012.
Yet in 1979, the year police were given the go-ahead to use breathalysers, there were a shocking 1,640 casualties, 26% of the total. We’ve come a long way. All traffic accidents have reduced steeply since then, and drink-drive accidents even more.
The longer-term picture suggests we’ve been in broadly the same place since 2006. In fact, when you include seriously injured people along with the fatalities, 2022 saw fewer casualties than in 2019, before pandemic lockdowns stirred up the statistics. And when you look at in all alcohol-related collisions, the 2022 figure is the lowest ever.
This promising trend did not, of course, deter the Scottish government from reducing the drink-drive limit from 80mg to 50mg of alcohol per 100 millilitres of blood in 2014, a measure that appears to have no impact on drink-drive accidents whatsoever. I can confidently say that because the information comes from the anti-drink Institute of Alcohol Studies, in a report it commissioned in 2021.
It added, quoting a survey of a small number of businesses, that the lower limit hadn’t affected hospitality, either. Certainly, this wasn’t the view of industry at the time. It depends on who you talk to. Pub operators outside the major cities reported that trade declined, especially “early doors” as they lost drivers who would drop in for a beer on their way home from work. The official message is, of course, that you shouldn’t drink and drive at all. But in practice, people calculated that one standard-strength pint wouldn’t put them over the 80mg limit – at 50mg, they weren’t so sure.
The trade has to adapt, campaigners say. As the trade has adapted to shifting regulatory and commercial environments over several centuries. When the breathalyser began to have an impact, rural pubs turned to food to survive, not all of them successfully. It’s not as simple as it sounds. And the 80mg limit allows designated drivers to join their companions in a small glass of wine that, for many, completes the experience of a good meal. Without it, the temptation to stay at home becomes stronger.
Yet, if the lobby for a lower limit gains traction, hospitality businesses will find it a hard one to argue against, since it comes from a moral high ground. My driving instructor warned me that a car was a lethal weapon in my hands, enough to put me off the idea of driving entirely, had it not been a condition of employment for a local news reporter.
Towards the end of the last century, as our horror at drinking and driving became normalised, an American sociologist called Joseph Gusfield controversially argued that perhaps we’d gone too far in our demonisation of the drink-driver. We all know good human beings who drink and drive and get away with it. Very few get caught, and there seems to be little appetite for costly stronger enforcement by police.
Traffic accidents are complex affairs. They are rarely simply a result of someone getting behind the wheel while drunk. Safety measures, and safer cars, have reduced accidents and their resulting casualties over the years. Why, when the number of drink-related collisions fell in 2022, did the number of people who died in them rise? Was it something to do with covid? Something to do with the strains on our health service? Or something else? It’s hard to know.
Of course, this does not diminish the suffering of victims and their families, and we need to regulate and educate around drink-driving. But simply blaming alcohol when something goes wrong is a good way of dodging the need for a fuller understanding of the question and, indeed, a better understanding of the real problems with alcohol.
Phil Mellows is a freelance journalist
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