 BIZ TALK INTERVIEW: William Bray – Founder & General Manager, Gourmet Café
William Bray is Founder and General Manager of Gourmet Café, Shanghai’s
first gourmet burger restaurant, which opened in 2007. As a passionate
cook, he is also instrumental in the development of new menu concepts.
This week, sees the opening of a second concept, Gourmet Noodle Café –
promising to “breathe new life into the traditional noodle.”
Before opening Gourmet Cafe in 2007, what market research did you undertake – and how did this help frame your business plan?
W.B.: We started this venture with limited resources and, therefore, for the most part, concentrated on first-hand visits to other operators in the city to analyse their pricing, brand positioning, menus and service and assess whether our concept would be met with much or minimal competition.
From the outset we believed the concept was quite unique for China, and as there was no real benchmark, we had to rely on unique ways to research. My wife is a business owner herself, with a successful marketing agency, so I was lucky that there was also a relatively large pool of potential customer segment in her staff, which we could question about our proposed positioning and offerings.
In terms of the business plan, we had to make a number of creative estimations based on our research, but we certainly did not collect reams of numbers to crunch. For the most part there was a lot of gut-feeling and instinct based on the brief time I had spent living in Shanghai.
What are the main challenges for creating and developing an independent F&B brand in Shanghai?
W.B.: The biggest challenge, perhaps, is educating the mindset of the locals. The culture of dining is often deeply rooted in a person since their childhood. They grow up eating a particular way and favouring particular tastes and sometimes it is hard to persuade them to experiment. I believe that for any brand, let alone an F&B brand, to succeed in the local market it is paramount to be accepted by the local target audience. At Gourmet Café, we try to attract customers with disposable income, who are financially independent, and are often white-collar workers or international Chinese returnees Shanghai may be an increasingly metropolitan city when viewed from a distance, but the development of the local culinary culture still has far to go. Of course, we are trying hard to increase our market penetration for local Chinese too, and the challenge is how to allow to get them to embrace our informal fine-dining concept. Finding the exact positioning and brand message is difficult as the target group is still very much in its learning stage.
Another big challenge concerns the operational aspects, from hiring, training and retaining staff to dealing with the ever-changing government policies. Unlike other more developed countries, where the hospitality market is more sophisticated and the average candidate already possess certain basic prerequisites, the people who seek jobs in the F&B industry in China are largely untrained, with no applicable life or job experience, and with limited vision.
How important was the choice of location to the success of the business?
W.B.: Along with food quality and pricing, location is of the great importance – and is critical in any retail business. In order to ensure traffic for lunch and dinner, we need a location that is in proximity to where people work and/or where they live. Because our positioning is that of an informal fine dining concept, people typically won’t travel a long distance to enjoy our food as much as a destination restaurant; which makes the selection of a location even more important. We spent a great deal of effort choosing the right location, but there was always an element of instinct involved. After short-listing a couple of spots, we had to take the plunge.
What key lessons have you learned from running Gourmet Cafe, and how will you adopt these to the new restaurant?
W.B.: Our learning curve has two elements. We’ve had to really improve in terms of our understanding of government policies, staff training and operational management, and we’ve had to continually refine our marketing and promotion.
Our target audience is in a state of continual cultural evolution, and we must learn to match our message to it. One of the biggest steps we've taken recently is to introduce another unique concept to the market with our Gourmet Noodle Café, which naturally differs somewhat in terms of the way we manage our operations and our marketing approach. So while we might have our Gourmet Burger Café more or less figured out, we are learning new things in the process of setting up the noodle café. We are still learning, but have a more solid ground to fall back on than before.
How do you think the dining scene has changed in Shanghai during the last 18 months, and how do you see it evolving in future?
W.B.: It has evolved a lot. In the past 18 months we’ve seen many new concepts introduced. Some have done well, while some closed down within a few months. Success or not, the plain fact that so many new concepts have been introduced should indicate that there is real a need for diversity being driven by the market and that investment and talent continues to pour in.
Either way, this continued influx should continue to push the dining scene to evolve towards other more developed international dining markets. We just hope that with this evolution will come progress in the other areas critical for making a restaurant business successful.
From the consumer’s side, an increase in choices and offerings should help to push them beyond their natural culinary preferences, and I’d say that it should also help accelerate the education process. On the down side, unfortunately it also means that costs will increase because of the competition for space, supplies and staff, much of which we have already suffered in the past 18 months.
Last update : Friday, 11 July 2008
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