Building a brand, not a chain

M Restaurants, the brainchild of former Gaucho MD Martin Williams, has just seen a record year of growth despite the challenging conditions. Williams talks to James Wallin about how he is outperforming the market and why he is building a brand rather than a chain.

Martin Williams is nothing if not ambitious – but he is keen to stress that what he is building with his fledgling M Restaurants empire is a brand, not a chain.

He has been outspoken of late, accusing casual-dining clones of presenting the customer with a “mediocre offering in a soulless environment”.

In the face of this sea of homogeneity, Williams sees no end of potential for M – for further flagships sites, a rollout of its Bar & Grill offer, its Raw gluten-free format, bottle shops and even expanding into hotels or the travel industry.

Considering there are currently only three outlets under the M banner, this may seem fanciful, but Williams has form in building brands. He started his career with the Kaye family and was part of the team that grew Zizzi from six to 36 sites. He is most famous for his 10 years at Gaucho and its sister concept CAU.

He launched the M family at a site off Threadneedle Street, in the City of London, in 2014, with a second iteration opening in Victoria a year later. The group opened a smaller footprint Bar & Grill offering in Twickenham in September of last year.

Proud of good figures

He is justifiably proud of the numbers the group produced in 2017 – a year in which like-for-like sales grew 11%, to exceed £6m. The group saw 680% growth in total restaurant EBITDA for the year to December and in the final quarter of the year group like-for-like sales were up 19%, while EBITDA grew 97%.

Threadneedle Street was the driver for this growth, with like-for-like sales up 19% and EBITDA growing 78% to £608,000. Meanwhile, in the Victoria site EBITDA was up 54% on a like-for-like basis and likefor-like sales grew 2.4%. The first four months at Twickenham, the most recent opening, saw sales slightly under-budget but a modest EBITDA profit achieved versus a budgeted loss for the period.

Williams puts the success down to a number of factors. Surveying his debut restaurant on a bustling Friday lunchtime shift, he tells me: “It took us a while to get the offer right, to communicate that well and for people to really get to know us.

“When we opened I was amazed at the fact that people would walk into the restaurant to criticise it – literally standing there taking it all in and saying, ‘nah it’ll never take off’.

“People often have this view of customers in the City that they have so much money they will just accept anything. That’s not true at all – they have incredibly high standards and they’re not shy of telling you what they think.”

Refining the offer

The Threadneedle Street site was originally split evenly between the high-end grill offer and the Raw model. However, last year the Raw section of the restaurant was converted into a members’ lounge, which complements the existing clubroom offer on the first floor.

Williams says: “The idea was that Raw would broaden our offer and that it would appeal to a younger, health-conscious demographic. What we actually found was that, although a lot of people say they want glutenfree, the demand when eating out in this kind of environment is more limited. When we opened the restaurant in Victoria, we made sure that Raw was a third of the size of the Grill rather than half. Here we have moved several of the dishes from the Raw menu onto the starters in the Grill. There’s still scope for it and I see it fitting particularly well in a wine bar-type environment.”

On other lessons in the three years learnt since Threadneedle Street opened, Williams says: “We were throwing our box of marketing messages at everyone and it became quite confusing. Is it a steakhouse? Is it about sushi? Is it a cocktail bar? Oh, they do breakfast. About two years ago we decided, let’s talk about the hero products – about having the world’s best steak, about the quality of our offer.”

Community feel

Williams says M has created a community, both through its M Den members’ club and through its crowdfunding investors, following the campaign in 2016.

The community element feeds into Williams’s concern about creating a brand. He says: “I was always very excited when I was at Gaucho with the concept of growing a brand. We only have three restaurants here but, from day one, it has been about building a brand and one of the things I’m conscious of is not turning it into a chain.”

So, how does he define the difference between the two? “If you look at the mid-market sector, the Ivy is definitely a brand because it suggests a lifestyle. When people in Milton Keynes go into the Ivy they expect to see Joan Collins. That’s probably the strongest brand in restaurants right now and it took 20 years to build that up to something that became an institution. The proposition may actually be better at a Bill’s or a Côte but it doesn’t communicate that same sense of a lifestyle. Chains mean consistency and standards, but they don’t create a sense of belonging.”

Having obsessed over the finer details of his brand over the past few years, Williams says M is now ripe for expansion. He is in advanced negotiations on another flagship site in London, which is likely to open in 2020 or 2021, and plans to open another two or three Bar & Grills before then.

The scaled down pricepoint of the latter (Williams describes it as “gastropub level”) makes it an easier model for roll- out. He says the group has identified 40 potential locations in commuter belts around the capital but is also keen to try it out in central London.

However, the model is far from the only focus for expansion. Williams says: “The future of M could be more restaurants like this, it could be expanding Raw, the Bar & Grill, the private members’ clubs, but it could also be about bottle shops. We are talking to several retail brands about working with them to put bottle shops or a cocktail bar in their stores. Beyond even that we could look at going into hotels, we could even be a travel company. It’s about building that brand around quality and luxury and that can stretch into many different areas.”

Since this interview was conducted, Williams has expressed an interest in taking on Jamie Oliver’s Barbecoa brand, saying it could be a third pillar for the group.

The chances of this happening seem to have been reduced by the Naked Chef’s assertion that its St Paul’s site will continue to operate under the Barbecoa moniker.

Regardless, the move shows Williams’ ambition is far from sated yet.