M&C Report speaks to Mary Willcock, managing director of Stonegate’s Slug and Lettuce brand at its site in Hanover Street, central London. Willcock, who has worked at the brand for eight years under its various owners, discusses how the concept has evolved, with an insight into food and drink developments, the Costa trials, investments and expansion.
Performance
Exact figures are not available, but Slug and Lettuce, which stands at 72 sites, has experienced three years of double-digit like-for-like sales growth.
Investments
“In the last year or so we’ve done nine or 10 majors and three sparkles,” says Willcock. “That’s been hugely successful for us. As you could imagine being owned by a private equity business, your hurdle rate is pretty tough, but we actually smashed it.” An obvious innovation over the years has been the colour scheme, which was previously blue and later brown, and now purple and aubergine. She adds: “You can’t just change the paint colour and think customers are suddenly going to want to come in more often. You’ve got to think about where you are spending that money and how it’s going to make a difference. We look at two things: whether or not it can take that nighttime package, [where we would] put the lighting and the effects in. We also look at what’s equally important, if not more important: the under-bar counter - is it set up to serve the customer quickly and efficiently?” Roughly two investments per month are planned this financial year, “a blend of majors and sparkles”. “We are always looking at ways to get the impact from a sensible amount of money,” Willcock adds. Investments tend to be more in big cities in order to get the required uplift, she adds. Recent major investments have included a £200,000 spend at the venue in South Woodford, Essex, where a wall has been removed in the bar to create open space. The new colour scheme has been added and there’s also a new lighting system.
Expansion
“There’s a huge opportunity, I think, still, in terms of acquisitions,” says Willcock. “We’re not done at 72; I think there’s loads of towns and cities we can go into.” She points out that while Manchester has five sites within a very small radius, most major cities have just one or two, and there’s just one in Scotland (in Edinburgh). Willcock says the estate could easily reach 100 sites, but stresses that the business is not bound by numbers. “I think there’s definitely an aspiration to get more sites, but to get the right sites rather than the number.” She adds: “You’ve got to get the location right, absolutely. But within reason, the thing that will make it work is getting the right manager in. It always comes down to the people in the end.”
Locations
Willcock says Slug is a brand that works in both city centres and secondary high streets, “It’s a slightly different model. If you’re in a secondary high street, you can be the biggest thing in that high street. You can do the whole thing of opening in the morning through lunch and the evening. When you’re in somewhere like London you have to become a little more specialist.” She says the Hanover Street site “doesn’t go to late night because there are probably 10 places you could go to that would be much better”. “Slug works really well in a secondary high street because it can be that chameleon that works through the day and in the evening and gives you reason to go there. I think in big cities it’s something people feel comfortable and safe in, so it works from that point of view too.”
Promotions
Willcock discussed the two biggest promotions introduced in the brand in the last four years. Firstly, Hungry Monday, offering 50% off food. “That’s not stopped growing for us,” she said. The second is the two-for-one offer on cocktails. Unusually, the deal operates in peak time rather than quieter trading periods. “We just don’t mess around with it,” she said. The idea is to bring loyalty from customers. Willcock said it was “pretty painful for the first few months” in terms of the impact on takings. “You’ve got to hold your nerve.”
Drinks
Cocktails are “huge” in Slug and Lettuce, Willcock says, and the venues offer a combination of something that’s attractive to the customer but also relatively easy to make quickly. There’s a core range and seasonal specials three or four times a year, to “keep it fun and interesting”. Similarly, there’s a special lager on offer that changes quarterly. Willcock explains that there’s a 50/50 split between premium and standard lager drinks, due to its broad customer base. The wine is “entry level”, she says, “and it’s about pinot on the whole”. She says Slug is constantly trialing new products, giving the example of flavoured Red Bull, which has been on sale since last spring - it’s also on sale at Yates’s. “A couple of the flavours are going really well. Some of them are more difficult to push than the others, but I think it’s been relatively successful. To get in on something like that before it hits the big time would be really good - but you get as many that don’t work as do.”
Costa
Costa coffee has being trialed at three sites over the past eight months. “It’s worked in as much as it’s definitely driving volume. For me, the question is, is it the brand name that’s driving it, or the quality and consistency that’s driving it?” She revealed that trials are set to take place with a more automated and an unbranded offer. “It’s more difficult to get people through the door if you’ve not that brand to support you in it, but ultimately if we do our marketing right, and it’s a good cup of coffee…”
Food
“We’ve played around with food quite a lot over the last eight years,” says Willcock. “The first thing that you have to realise is you need to constantly go back to the customer, have customer focus groups and speak to then. There was a danger a few years back when we thought we were more premium food. I remember one of the brand’s summary used to say, ‘Slug and Lettuce is about added value, it’s not about discount’. That was just so arrogant and our customers had moved on.” This led to the introduction of deals like Happy Mondays, but also some dishes for £5.95. “That’s not about cheapening the brand. That’s just about giving people what they want - good quality food but at a sensible price.” Another experiment a few years ago was brining in a ‘best of’ range. “That was what the customer told us they didn’t want, and sales fell backwards,” she says. The wet/dry split is about 70/30 overall, but varies between 50/50 and an 85% wet trade. Looking ahead, the idea of adding calorie counts to the food and cocktail menus is being looked at.
Kitchen management system
Willcock says the kitchen management system, which flags up to staff the length of time it takes to be served, gives them “phenomenal” control over the food. It helped cut down average food delivery time at its Portsmouth site to 11 minutes in the peak summer period. “That kind of equipment and support for the team is really useful.”
Breakfasts
Breakfasts have become the second biggest food area for Slug and Lettuce. Willcock says the offer of breakfast with toast and a hot drink for £5 represents “pretty good value”. Stag and hen parties are particularly fond of them, she says. Sales are stronger at weekends.
Bookable areas and sales co-ordinators
“Bookable areas are big for us. One of the things we’re looking at is sales co-ordinators and pre-booked space. We’ve really pushed that in the last 18 months to two years.” Willcock says bookings for Christmas were “significantly up for the fourth year in a row”. She adds: “We used to have sales co-ordinators for Christmas and then we’d stop. We starting asking ourselves, ‘why would you’? In every site now you’ve got a sales coordinator who will either do a few hours of going out, getting bookings in, or in some places we’ve got a full time person whose looking for it all the time.” Up to 100% of the space can be booked, depending on the site, and outlets such as the one in St Mary Axe in the City of London is booked every lunchtime. “Generally every site will have two, three, four areas that they will look to book out every Thursday, Friday, Saturday night because you know that by Monday you’ve got however many thousands in the bank before you start the week. Certainly when things have been tough in the last couple of years, that’s what gets you through.”
Customers
Willcock described the customer base as “broad”, but says, “it’s not complete anarchy”. “I think it’s incredibly dangerous to say we’re going to go for everyone, and we don’t. I think there is still a core customer within Slug. It is mid-20s, it is very female friendly - we are at least 50/50, if not slightly more towards female. I’m not ashamed to say we’re mid-market; mid-market is not an easy place to be.”
Customer feedback and social media
Slug and Lettuce uses a combination of internal mystery guest visits, feedback cards and focus groups to get feedback, in addition to the opportunities on the internet. currently 450,000 people are registered on the Slug and Lettuce website, which offers instant feedback. Willcock describes social media as a “minefield” and says they are always looking at how to get the most out of it. Recently there have been trials of publicising vouchers that can be used in different Stonegate venues in defined areas. Not every venue has a Twitter and Facebook account, but venues are able to use the central Twitter account for promoting what they are doing locally. Training is set to take place on the best ways of working with social media.
Entertainment
“We don’t do masses of entertainment,” says Willcock. She highlighted the variety of businesses within the brand, from sites like Hanover Street that are more focused on day-time food and “fairly low key drinking in the evening”, to “proper high street locations” such as the Liverpool and Brentwood venues that employ DJs. “We don’t tend to do things like karaoke,” she says. “We’ve got a few bits of live music, but it tends to be about the DJ.” Willcock adds: “We still allow a lot of local variation in the brand. The things that are essential to the brand like the promotions like the offers are key but then there’s still quite a lot of room to do what is right for your local area, which I think is very important.”
Training
Like the rest of Stonegate, Slug and Lettuce employees have been taking part in the company’s new training programmes, Aspirations, aimed at general managers, and Accelerator, for deputy managers. Willcock says the former “seems to really hit the nail on the head. It’s a much more rounded programme - there’s great feedback”. Two Slug general managers have managed to secure HR positions at head office after completion. Some who go through Accelerator have also secured more senior positions, although Willcock says there’s no guarantee that this will happen; it’s a way to raise their profile in the business, she says, and it improves their chance of climbing the ladder. Part of the programme involves devising plans to help the business, for example, around speed of service. About 25 have gone through the first Accelerator programme, and two more are due this year, with about 20 in each, Willcock says.
Contactless payment
Contactless payment devices were installed about 12 to 18 months ago. Willcock is fairly optimistic about the technology. “It’s one of these things that sneaked in quietly, and didn’t seem to cause any hassle.”
Opening hours
Most Slugs open from 10am, with some earlier and some later. The last two to three years has seen a move towards later opening, generally one or two am on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, which Willcock says has been “generally really successful”. Most are licensed until at least midnight.
