So, bearing in mind that answering all these e-mails takes up a lot of time that you could be spending in the kitchen practising dishes, get yourself a system. Write a stock response, copy and paste it into each email. Have several replies ready:
1) I’m afraid we do not have space for that date blah blah but will put your name on a waiting list.
2) This is where to pay (bank details) or where to book tickets (web address).
3) Here is the address and time to come. How to get there, a map perhaps or transport directions. You may want to give them a phone number. But be wary of this unless you have someone to answer the phone for you. There’s nothing more annoying than last-minute phone calls from people who think nothing of pestering you endlessly with questions and requests for step-by-step directions to your doorstep. I’ve actually lost friends at my own parties by snarling at them when they called wanting to discuss their love lives, what they should wear etc., just as you are trying to organise everything and get your own make-up on.
4) Any house rules or information you might want to give.
5) Menus. I change them every week and post it up on my blog or on my Facebook group. But they are subject to change; the lack of choice is part of the appeal. You will eat what Mummy tells you!
At the beginning I would have, say, a group of four people booking and each of them would e-mail me twice. That’s eight e-mails for one group. Your head starts to explode and it can be a struggle to stay polite. Early on I had one guest who called me when I was in the bath. I tried to sound professional but he could hear the splashing. Eventually I confessed, ‘Well, this is a home restaurant, it’s not every day you get the chef taking reservations from his bath!’
If you have done a few dinners and want to continue, consider signing up with a ticket agency who will take the pressure off you and answer those e-mails. You will still get e-mails...from, say, people informing you of food allergies or birthdays, but not as many.
I forgot to give my address to one couple. My dinners start at 7.30 p.m. I was cooking all afternoon, but at 8 p.m. I just happened to check my e-mails. There were several desperate messages saying, ‘We’ve booked babysitting and we don’t know where you are! Please please call.’ I felt terrible. They did get here in the end and were rightly given a free bottle of wine.
So a website handling all that is rather a good idea. Unless you’ve got a huge amount of elves working for you for free.
3 PAYMENT.........................
Are you going to allow people to pay on the night? In cash? I knocked that idea on the head after the first week.
I had sold 15 places, the last two places booked only that afternoon. I was turning other people away. The last two people did not turn up! They had got drunk and could not be bothered. A supper club has no walk-in traffic. You need everybody to attend and pay. Profit margins, especially at the beginning, are so tight that you will, as I did, make a loss.
I had already spent the money on ingredients and increased the amount that I was cooking. Straight away I realised I needed a system of prepayment, or I would be losing money every week. One week, Horton Jupiter had ten no-shows. You can’t afford that. Nor do you want to live on the same leftovers for the rest of the week.
It’s not only the money: empty tables and spaces look bad, especially if it’s supposed to be a large mixed table and some people haven’t turned up.
Now in the confirmation e-mail I say: ‘Treat this like an invitation to a friend’s dinner party. If you can’t come, at least let the hostess know.’
So my advice is to at least take a deposit, if not to get them to pay the full amount beforehand. You can go two routes with this: they can pay directly into your bank account, in which case you are revealing your name and address. If you do not want to do that, they can pay via Paypal or a ticket seller. I started with Paypal, but I still had to respond to e-mails and their customer service is abroad. Also, let’s face it, it is a multi-national company, and part of the underground-restaurant movement’s ethos is that you are sticking it to The Man. Why sign up with a globalised corporation? It’s everything we are against.
I went with a British ticket seller: wegottickets.com. They charge ten per cent on top, to the customer not to you. There are other ticket sellers too, like brownpaper tickets, but I haven’t tried them.
You have to remember that this is still a new thing for many people. They can be quite nervous about coming and need reassurance. A ticket agency is, hopefully, reputable and gives the added guarantee that should something go wrong, the customers have a third party to complain to, get their money back from.
A good ticket agency will quickly deal with e-mails, bookings, and have English-speaking customer service. The only disadvantage is that, under British law, they will be the ones who have the mailing list, not you, and it’s an opt-in list. You need to build your mailing list for future events, so I suggest that you get a visitors’ book where people can write their comments, e-mail addresses and Twitter IDs. Or come to an arrangement with the ticket seller.
DECIDE YOUR PRICE.........................
Find out what local conventional restaurants are charging. That’s a good guideline.
While many people expect to pay less at a home restaurant – after all, you are not paying business rates and rents – at the same time you are not getting the bulk discounts and trade prices that conventional restaurants benefit from. Also, if they don’t sell a dish one night, they can sometimes sell it the next.
But remember that you are offering a unique experience that restaurants cannot offer. Don’t undersell yourself. It’s a tough balance.
Work out what you are comfortable with and stick to it. The rule is a third of your income should get used for expenditure on ingredients; a third on staff, laundry, equipment, utilities, bills, everything else; and the remaining third is profit. You probably won’t make a profit at first. In your anxiety to please, you may overspend on ingredients, buy new furniture and all sorts of equipment.
Decide on your policy about free places. I don’t give any free places except to my mother. My friends pay. The press pays. I can’t afford to give away free seats. I run a tiny little operation.
You could give discounts to friends if you like, or people could volunteer to work in exchange for dinner. I save places at cheaper rates for the unemployed. I do this for a couple of reasons: I’ve been a single mother for many years, living on very little money. I have a great deal of understanding of what it feels like to be left out of something because you simply can’t afford it. Plus I’m political, idealistic. I want the world to be a better place. That may sound mawkish but it’s true.
4 LOCATION................
As I said before, you have an advantage over a conventional restaurant. It doesn’t really matter where you are located. People are, in effect, ‘invited guests’ and you are not depending on footfall in the vicinity. In some ways, just like at the peak of the rave culture, the more obscure the location, the more exciting it is for the guests.
Are