Four years ago Gordon Ker was sitting in the audience of MCA’s Restaurant Conference as a lawyer with high-profile sector firm Olswang.
He had little love of the job, though he was full of admiration for his restaurant operator clients such as Will Beckett and Huw Gott of Hawksmoor.
It was his working with Hawksmoor co-founders on their deal with Graphite Capital that set Ker on his own restaurant journey – and ultimately saw him return to the Restaurant Conference four years later as the proud operator of Blacklock, an acclaimed format that combines premium cuts of meat at a good value price point.
Yet despite his high-profile contacts, his transition from lawyer to restaurateur was far from straightforward, not least due to his total lack of operator experience.
“And I remember sitting with Will late into the night after we’d done their Graphite deal,” Ker recalls.
“We had been chucked out of every venue possible and it was about 3am – probably not the best time to do an investment pitch – but I said ‘Will, I’m going to open a restaurant’.
“I think his first reaction was to spit out his cocktail. His second was to remind me of the oft-quoted saying: ‘how do you make a small fortune in the restaurant business? Start with a large fortune and open a restaurant.’
“I didn’t have any kind of fortune to my name but with spades of naivety and gusto I decided to quit my job, phoned my parents and told them 10 years of legal training was sell spent.
“I’m not sure if Will and Huw liked me or liked the idea – they probably felt pity for a guy who had just quit a career to almost certainly fail.”
Taking on a brothel
Despite initial misgivings, the Hawksmoor founders became investors in what would become Blacklock, and while developing the idea and looking for site, Ker took a job as a waiter at Hawksmoor.
“Without them, we wouldn’t be where we are today,” Ker says. “We probably would have gone bust more than once.”
While support from the sector heroes was a boost, there was still the matter of finding a site, and with no experience, no covenant, no trading history and not even a name for the restaurant, this was a challenge.
It forced Ker to be creative, and in the end he settled on a damp-infested basement and brothel in Soho. “I decided against all legal training to sign the lease without permission to open a restaurant,” he says. “I’ve not really thought about what would have happened if the planning permission hadn’t gone through and I was left in charge of a brothel!”
The feeling diners get
On the plus side, there was no competition for the site, despite its desirable Soho location, and Ker fixed up the décor and interior on a shoestring budget.
The vision for the concept was clear – an old-fashioned English chop house, serving high-quality meat and cocktails with great service and good value.
“We try and keep things simple, and focus on serving the very best meat in the country – as cheap as we possibly can. Blacklock is a real value offer – much to the despair of my accountants.
“Great quality, great value, and we place the emphasis on service and hospitality. So much about coming to a restaurant is about how it makes people feel.”
Consumers can expect a fun experience with a 1980s cocktail trolley serving classics at the table, with an aim of having people leave happy.
“You can get quality steakhouses with great service elsewhere in London –but you usually get charged through the nose,” Ker says. “I used to go to some great places, though I don’t have the money anymore.
“Blacklock aims to give you the best and give you a bill shock at the end – but the other way round. We’ve had people come in and laugh at how cheap it is. That’s the reaction we’re going for.”
Not doing it by the book
Soho was an instant success, winning awards, praise from the critics, and making the National Restaurant Awards Top 100.
Earlier this year, Ker opened his second site in the City – also in a basement with no frontage – but with almost twice as much dining space, a booking system, and a slightly smarter, City-friendly décor.
“We would like to open more restaurants as we progress,” Ker says. “But we’re not in for a massive rollout. We want to stay true to our ethos of being quality, cheap and fun.
“If good opportunities arise we will take them. We will try and do slightly different things in different locations.”
So how does Ker manage to serve such premium cuts at such low prices and have a viable business model?
“We make a reasonable profit,” he adds. “As my background isn’t in the industry we don’t follow ‘Restaurant 101’. Our gross profit is not 70%, but we make savings in other places. Our rents and property costs are 3.5% or below. We don’t have all the bells and whistles that go with some operators – you don’t get different paraphernalia with your bill that goes into the price. We go for great post codes, but in basements with no frontage, so you have to know about us to find us. Operationally we’re set up leaner.”
Founders Forum is MCA’s quarterly networking club for emerging entrepeneurs. For details, visit www.mcafoundersforum.com
