Patty & Bun founder Joe Grossman is enjoying the trappings of running a four-branch cult hit and believes the concept would do well across The Pond too. Mel Flaherty reports
“I have the mind of an eight-year-old,” says Joe Grossman, the founder of Patty & Bun, with nothing short of glee.
As the owner of four burger restaurants and counting, he obviously fully possesses the faculties of someone much closer to the 30 years of age that he actually reached the day before this interview. However, he also has refreshingly unapologetic and quite contagious youthful exuberance in spades. The words ‘awesome’, ‘naughty’, ‘epic’, ‘rocking’ and some other more colourful but less printable adjectives pepper his conversation in a totally unaffected way. It seems he is having the time of his life evolving his brand with an enviable balance of success and cult essence.
Perhaps it is the fearlessness, enthusiasm and open-mindedness that come with youth that has enabled him to achieve that. Certainly, his growth strategy to date has been almost entirely opportunistic, he admits but, so far, it has paid off.
In July, the company will open a fifth site in central London. Grossman is not giving much away other than “it is sexy”, will have a late licence, a private room downstairs, which is hireable, with a one-man bar and a DJ for around 15 guests and a stripped back version of the main Patty menu. He says it is not in the West End but is close to one of his existing operations. He is incredibly excited about it. As with all of the Patty & Bun sites, it will also have its own feel and style of operation.
Self-funded development
So far the brand comprises the inaugural restaurant in James Street, which opened north of Oxford Street bordering Marylebone in 2012 and is a seven-days-a-week, 30-seat operation where average spend per head is around £13 for about 500 customers a day; Liverpool Street – a small, double glass-fronted unit opposite McDonald’s with an emphasis on fast, New York-style counter service, catering for between 800 and 900 people on its busiest day, Friday. Average spend is £10 a head (this is also the only site that serves breakfast); London Fields where there is communal seating for about 35 to 40 people, who spend about £10 each, in the front part of the arch (the rest is occupied by Patty’s central preparation and development kitchen used not only for the four sites but also for the events that the brand, going back to its roots, literally pops up at). It is the least busy of the restaurants, as Grossman expected, but this gives the opportunity to host residencies where outside chefs take over for a night.
Finally, as of March, Patty also operates in Old Compton Street, in the heart of Soho, where there is more emphasis on drinks, with a cocktail menu and larger bar area, pushing spend per head up to the £16 mark.
Up until the most recent site, the brand’s development has been self-funded (after the original borrowing from friends and family necessary to get James Street up and running). The business has taken on some investment, although Grossman is coy about discussing details. He does say it should be enough to get both July’s mystery site, and another, which he has just signed for (all he reveals is that it will be more akin to the James Street restaurant in terms of style of operation) up and running.
Grossman is ambitious for the brand but not in the predictable way.
“You never know what is going to crop up in terms of sites and opportunities. We have a path laid out that we want to achieve but there is a lot of luck and timing involved. I do have a five-year plan, especially now I have an investor involved, but I am also a firm believer in living in the here and now.
“The aim is to do seven or eight ‘gems’ in London, each with a completely different personality. I have no desire to go beyond London. But if I could wave a magic wand, I would open abroad.”
Improving existing operations
Interestingly, New York and LA, birthplaces of the upscale burger, would be top of his hit list. It is a bit of a turnaround when you consider his original idea was to do his own English interpretation of Shake Shack.
“I think we would do really well out there as we are doing something individual and different. For years, everyone has been saying all the new ideas come from New York, but Hawksmoor is going there next year and I think there is a really cool, interesting shift in terms of America now looking to London because it is so cutting edge,” he explains.
Hong Kong and Singapore would also be on Grossman’s wish list for Patty and, less specifically, he adds, Europe.
In the meantime, he spends every minute thinking about how to improve the existing operations and maintain the balance between the brand’s cool desirability, which still attracts customers willing to queue out of the door on to the street, and growth.
“I am a loony,” he says. “Whenever I go into the sites, I am like: let’s do this or try that, and the other guys are telling me to calm down. But we are still in the early stages of the business really and we are still learning.”
Grossman says he is a born and bred foodie, from a family of foodies and always wanted to run his own restaurant business. He originally started his career in insurance underwriting, which anyone who meets him would feel must be the least suitable job for him. Unsurprisingly he hated it and decided to leave to pursue his original ambition.
His travels in America inspired him and when he got back he was itching to open a burger restaurant and not miss the posh burger boat at a time when it was just beginning to set sail.
He got about 18 months of operational experience at Roast in Borough Market, did a stint in the kitchens at Leon and wrote what he now calls “a pathetic business plan”, which did not have the desired effect of helping him to secure funds to open his first restaurant.
“I was very naïve and was trying to get from A to Z without anything in between,” he recalls.
Cult status achieved
During this time, he met and befriended Mark Jankel (or Jankers as Grossman affectionately refers to him), of Street Kitchen, who encouraged him to try the pop-up route, which, at that stage, was emerging as the ‘big thing’ it has since become. This proved a defining decision for the brand, as it gave it cult status from day one – something it was able to carry with it as it opened its first permanent site and, so far beyond.
Grossman says his close team of like-minded staff is key to that and social media is a good way to keep it going. He also keeps the brand fresh and exciting by continually trying new things and operating pop-ups at events like Meatopia at London’s Tobacco Dock in September and August’s Wilderness festival at Cornbury Park, Oxfordshire.
For these reasons, he is characteristically confident that Patty & Bun will continue to hold its own in what some commentators feel is becoming a crowded burger market.
“I don’t think there will be any consol-idation. The great thing about burgers is that everyone likes something different,”
he says.
“I feel so lucky to have this great platform. The past three years have been a great learning curve and now, hopefully, we can step up to another level.
