Stephen Evans, development director at Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK), looks at how mundane and anti-brand some of the emerging areas in London have become and says if we are not careful, gentrification will mean a “second tier of homogenisation filled with artisan coffee shops and brunch joints and very little else”.
Whilst channel hopping the other night, I was misfortunate enough to catch a glimpse of Eastenders on BBC One. Like a car crash, I couldn’t help getting drawn in by the drama and just how divorced from reality the soap opera has become. I mean, I’m all for escapism, but the extent the writers have gone to portray what they deem to be entertaining is frankly frightening!
As you may have seen in Danny Boyles Slumdog Millionaire, they show episodes of Eastenders at call centres in India so operatives can ‘pass themselves off as British’. If Indians think Britain is based on such aggressive, miserable drivel then tourism from the Sub-continent would almost certainly fall through the floor.
Other than losing a little faith in British television and getting slightly annoyed about where my licence fee is going, I started to think about just how different today’s ‘East End’ is to the East End portrayed in Eastenders (which hasn’t really changed since the soap first aired in 1985).
Let’s start with the people. Eastenders is full of cockneys, real cockneys, the ones who were born within earshot of Bow Bells, however, today’s East End has been colonised by the rather amusingly named ‘Mockneys’. I’m sure you know the ones, usually seen in hideously skinny jeans and thick rimmed glasses with a soft Essex accent blended with a public schoolboy twang. The Urban Dictionary describes a ‘mockney’ as “Someone who, bizarrely, wishes they were a Cockney but isn’t one. Even more annoying than a cockney wanker since the latter can’t help it, but a Mockney is so by choice’. Example; ‘That Jamie Oliver is a right mockney w****r’ (their words, not mine!).
If Eastenders was based more on the present day East End of London, the current proprietors of the Queen Vic would probably have cleared the first floor and would be running monthly food residencies. The ground floor bar would be cleared of all mainstream beers in favour of four hand pull cask ales and an impressive collection of overpriced craft beers. I once visited such a pub in Hackney with a colleague and was told, ‘play it cool, these people can smell fear’. He was right.
The café, which if I recall correctly is owned by local entrepreneur Ian Beale, would be an Artisan Coffee shop complete with a roastery on the first floor selling craft coffee and organic pastries. The Baristas would naturally be antipodean with prize winning coffee skills, a perfected look of indifference and a distinct lack of urgency.
Network Rail would have realised the value in ‘The Arches’ evicting Phil Mitchell and his band of merry mechanics and replaced them with a Nando’s, the one brand that seems to span a diverse range of cultural, demographical and geographical locations. Of course Nando’s, being a ‘brand’, would still ruffle the feathers of the independent-loving local yummy mummies Mount Anvil, London Square or a similar residential developer would have secured an option on the car lot and pre-let the ground floor to Tesco Express and Costa Coffee. For some reason Costa Coffee doesn’t stir the same anti-brand mob mentality with the yummy mummies – must be a coffee thing! Pat and Frank Butcher would have retired to the Caribbean, never to return.
The laundrette would still offer service washes but would have added an iron and delivery service for those ‘too posh to press’. The market would have rebranded as a Farmers Market selling a wider range of polished fruit and veg, homemade jams, olives and funny smelling cheeses. The nightclub would hold open mic nights for fledgling artists and every summer a ‘pop up food festival’ would appear on The Square, complete with obligatory fairy lights, trestle tables and wooden cutlery.
Whilst I write the above mostly tongue in cheek, in my opinion it does highlight a number of important issues. Firstly, when it comes to innovation East London has it wrapped up. The density of early adopters in these various locations means, within reason, anything will go. What worries me however, is how mundane and anti-brand these emerging areas have become.
Whilst working at a branded restaurant chain, I felt the wrath of angry locals following our opening in an up-and-coming’ area of north London. Such was the outrage, every morning, after dropping the kids off at school a small, but proactive contingent, would swing by our front door, superglue the locks, before heading to the local Fresh and Wild for the daily shop. Their main bone of contention was that the restaurant was a ‘brand’ and, by its nature, ruined their London village.
Yet, through selective prejudice or excellent marketing, these locals failed to recognise that Fresh and Wild was at the time owned by Whole Foods, one of the largest corporations in the America. On this occasion journalist Richard Godwin made his feelings more than known using his column to lead an anti-brand campaign in the area, making the situation infinitely worse. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for anti-homogenisation but if we are not careful, gentrification will mean a second tier of homogenisation filled with artisan coffee shops and brunch joints and very little else.
There are currently seven times more independent coffee shops in the UK than there are Nando’s and Pizza Express put together, the majority of which are selling the exact same thing. The bottom line is that brands, when done well, can offer a far superior and more consistent product and service experience than most independent operators. The caveat to this is ‘when they’re done well’, unfortunately this isn’t always the case. How many times have we seen a perfectly good brand expand too quickly or get sold for an enormous multiplier, fuelled by debt, and the quality and consistency of product and service completely erode over a very short period of time.
It will be interesting to see what happens to brands like Bill’s, Cote or Byron over the next 18 months as they traverse from having the perception of a start-up independent to the reality of being private equity backed businesses. What is encouraging, however, is that in these challenging economic times people are becoming more and more entrepreneurial and areas like east London are excellent locations for start-ups, whatever the sector.
I recently read there are 700,000 more self-employed people in the UK today, a rise of 18%, than there were in 2008 before the economy stated to slide into recession. This may be borne from lifestyle or necessity but in either case it’s providing jobs, prosperity and more importantly fresh options for consumers.
Finally, it is clear producers at the Beeb haven’t visited East London in some time. Then again, why would they? After almost 30 years on air clearly the Eastenders formula, however far from reality it is, makes better telly than a bunch of middle class hipsters sipping lattes.
