The Breakfast Club has been one of London’s best-kept secrets, but two significant openings in the past 12 months, including its first outside the capital, has edged the licensed all-day café concept into the spotlight. Mark Wingett chats to co-founder Jonathan Arana-Morton about expansion, growing pains, an aborted burrito concept and 1980s nostalgia
I have to admit that in my time at M&C there haven’t been many conversations that I have had with chief executives, managing directors or founders that have started with the admission that the actress Ally Sheedy was my first crush. However, Jonathan Arana-Morton, who co-founded the 1980s influenced Breakfast Club concept with his sister-in-law Alison Rooney back in 2005, has just informed me that the group is about to drop the “do you want to play a game?” tagline – incorporated from the Sheedy-starring 1980s classic film War Games, from the opening page of its website. Arana-Morton admits for every person who got the reference, many more were left confused by the line. It’s a small change but that indicates the inclusiveness that will become even more important to the business as it continues its growth trajectory.
Not that there wasn’t a false start to contend with. If it wasn’t for an early change of heart, Arana-Morton and Rooney could have been at the helm of the UK’s first burrito chain, obviously with a 1980s twist.
Arana-Morton says: “Save Ferris after the film Ferris Bueller’s Day Off was going to be the original name of a burrito concept we planned to develop. I had just been to the US and seen Chipotle. I thought it was amazing and that we had nothing like that back here at the time. We then had a moment of doubt when we thought that this would never work, but look at the market now, it seems like there are hundreds of burrito shops. We were still looking for a 1980s reference, hence The Breakfast Club. We somehow managed to trademark the name, which we couldn’t believe we were able to do.
“Ali and I had just always dreamed of opening a café. It got put aside as we got ‘proper’ jobs.” Rooney as a tour guide at Madame Tussauds and Arana-Morton as a head of customer relations at Warner Bros and then head of PR at the Football Association. The duo found a small café in Soho and spent a total of £140,000 getting the café ready for launch, including filling it with the contents of Arana-Morton’s childhood and took £26.35 on its first day.
No rush for openings
Ten years on and the now eight-strong group has arguably just had the most significant 12 months in its life cycle, with the opening of its largest site in Canary Wharf and its regional debut in Brighton. Last year, the group pulled out of opening on the site of the Black Cap in Camden, but is close to securing a site in Hackney Wick for an opening this spring.
“This has been a huge year for the company, also in terms of restructuring to be ready to open two to three sites a year,” says Arana-Morton. “We are not going to rush. We realised, after this year, that doing more than two or three openings a year would cause us all sorts of problems.
“We have had four strong years in a row and while we are up again this year in terms of sales, it has been challenging in regards to launching two significant sites and structuring the business for further growth. There are places we would like to take the concept, some obvious and some not so obvious but it could be exciting.
“The attraction of the brand is the small, independent café tag it has. We have to fight to keep it and if we did reach 50 to 60 sites, we would lose that. If we did go nationwide, it would be on a one-site-per-city type basis, so it is still a novelty thing. In terms of awareness of the brand in London, there is a finite amount we could do there without damaging what we already have.”
Life outside the bubble
He says that the company has never positioned itself with any demographic and that is deliberate. He says: “We wanted to create a place that our friends would want to go in and, if you go on things that are of the moment, that will date pretty quickly.”
Arana-Morton says that although Brighton seemed like a natural step in regards to expansion it is “a fairly price-sensitive city and feels like a completely different market from London”. He adds: “What we do get is that brand awareness through the London commuters, but then again that is a double-edged sword. Brighton is very supportive of independent businesses and rightly so – that keeps the town what it is. So there is that brand awareness, but that can work against you because people can see you as this big bad brand from London, that’s why we intentionally opened here fairly low key.
“It has also made us aware that we live in a bubble, where we see people queuing outside our restaurants in London and we come to Brighton and that awareness isn’t quite there yet. So you live in a bubble where you think everyone knows you, but you come here and they don’t and you have to work hard again to get people through your door, which is fine. It keeps everything fresh.”
The group’s approach and popularity caught the eye of Paul Campbell, early investor in Hawksmoor, Tortilla and Vinoteca. Arana-Morton credits the former chief executive of the Clapham House Group with helping the business “not make those big stupid mistakes, which set you back two or three years at a time”.
He says: “There is a huge lack of experience in the business in terms of getting us to grow to a wider audience. A lot of the people we employ have grown up through the business. It was a two-year courtship in terms of talking about what we wanted. It got to the point where we needed someone with a bit of nous to come in and help us.
“I am not the most business or commercially minded person in the world so it is good to have someone to whip me into shape and stop me from making any heart over head decisions. He (Campbell) has been tremendous – that little bit of advice he gives you when you are doing a property deal. In the past I would have been too scared to ask or not aware I could ask. He has been there as a good sounding board. What he is exceptional at, is that even though his interests are so varied, when he sits down with you, he always has time for you and is part of the business. He always says ‘when are we doing this’ not ‘when are you doing this’. It is those little things that actually make a difference.”
Approaches likely
On top of the cafés, the group also operates four speakeasies – the Mayor of Scaredy Cat Town, the King of Ladies Man, Call Me Mr Lucky and Dr Klugar’s Olde Towne Tavern. Arana-Morton says: “The speakeasies have worked really well. In terms of USPs, as an operator, I can’t see that anybody is doing a café and bar operation and dividing the two brands. The whole speakeasy thing is tongue in cheek. Sometimes we get criticised for it not being too secret. We stumbled on the idea of sticking the bar in the basement, and both operations work off each other and secure that all-day trade.”
He admits that the company has received approaches in regards to outside investment from the opening of its third café onwards. “We are not averse to bringing in new investment, but me and Ali want to stay in the business, so with any kind of money coming in, we would own the majority. What we have achieved so far we have done through our own money and borrowing from banks. At some point, we will have to find a way of securing the future of the business and that will mean bringing some new money in. Nothing is imminent though.”
Arana-Morton is too humble to say it, but with his business increasingly being found on awards nomination lists, those approaches should become more frequent during the next 18 months. It is a concept that is sitting pretty (in pink).
