One question at the Women’s Institute did trip me up, however. A lady asked:
‘Do you mind it when other people use your toilet?’
For some reason I replied:
‘No. I’m not anal.’
I’m pretty sure this is the first time the word ‘anal’ has been used at a Women’s Institute lecture. And it’s true, I don’t mind when 200 strange bottoms use my loo. After all, I’ve been to India and Tibet.
A question people never ask: Why are you doing this?
Because I love to cook. Because I love to mother. Because I’m a feeder. Because I love to share. Because I like to be in control. Because I enjoy the potential for chaos. Because I’m lonely. Because I like to stir things up. Because I like causing trouble. Because I find it funny and it makes me laugh. Because I want to change things. Because it’s now my job, it’s my living. Because it makes me cook things I wouldn’t be bothered to try for just me and my daughter. Because I don’t have a big family. Because I love community. Because it’s fun to come up with an idea and make it happen. Because, although I love words, I like action even better.
How to Start Your Own Underground Restaurant
If you are a keen cook, a foodie or a traveller, you will probably, at some point, have dreamed about opening your own restaurant or café. People put their life savings into setting up a restaurant, but the reality is that around a third of all restaurants close within the first year. The long hours and small profit margins are tougher than you could ever imagine.
On the other hand, you may never have wanted a professional restaurant but simply adore cooking.
Or perhaps you are sick of inviting people to dinner, always being the host, spending a small fortune and never being invited back?
This chapter is for all of you…
So before you spend your money on buying a lease, hiring staff and equipping a professional kitchen, why not rehearse by starting a supper club? The main qualities you will need are friendliness, trust in others, faith, hospitality and a certain amount of bravery.
First of all, just do it. Go on, play restaurants. Take the plunge. It may even cure you of any urge to open a restaurant. I’m not going to hide the fact that it is a lot of work, you won’t make much money, you may even make a loss, but hell, it’s great fun. And believe me, you will never again go to a conventional restaurant with the same attitude. Suddenly all will become apparent: the mistakes, the cover-ups, the pressure and the sheer bloody slog of making food for large amounts of strangers.
Starting a supper club requires different rules to opening a restaurant. As a new phenomenon, the parameters are changing all the time. I will give you the benefit both of my experience and of the expertise of other underground restaurateurs.
So here is the 12-step programme:
1 LETTING PEOPLE KNOW................
Most guides on how to start your own restaurant focus on things like making sure your restaurant is in a good location and is obvious from the street, with effective ‘signage’. You don’t have that problem. The harder it is to find your supper club, the more obscure the location, the better. You will have no business from the street. Your clientele will come from word of mouth or word of mouse!
First of all, announce it. Tell your friends and family, and their friends and families. But you also want strangers, don’t you? Otherwise it’s just a dinner party with your mates. So you need to know how to pull in strangers. (Sounds like L’Auberge Rouge, a kind of hoteliers’ Sweeney Todd, doesn’t it?)
New media is your friend. Facebook, Twitter, blogging, Craigslist, Gumtree, Ning, these are all great methods for spreading the word. Start a Facebook group, set up a Twitter account, write a blog. By the time this book comes out there is bound to be some new fashionable social-media method, so find out what it is and use it. Age is no barrier to this: most of these media are user-friendly. Lynn Hill, who started the My Secret Tea Room near Leeds, is in her 60s and adept at making connections with new media.
But don’t forget old media: once you’ve found your feet, let your local newspaper know. You could even put ads up in newsagents and shops. (Sheen supper club did this, got a few snooty remarks but soon filled up with locals.) If you have a particular theme – say, organic seasonal food – then put up a little notice in your nearest organic produce shop.
Get cards printed; I get mine from MOO.com via Flickr. Easy-to-design, small and attractive. Personal marketing: every time you go out, take your cards with you, hand them out, explain your new venture. You could also get brochures done. Flypost, as if for a gig. All this is basic marketing and PR. You want to fill your places. Bums on seats.
Choose a name that is emblematic of your living-room restaurant. Most supper clubs use words like hidden, secret, underground or midnight in their name. This gives an indication of the clandestine and guerilla nature of the operation. Sometimes they call it after the location, such as The Shed or Ahoy there! (on a boat), or the menu served, like The Bruncheon club.
Best not to call the press until you’ve set foot in the kitchen. Go for a soft opening and practise your mistakes in private. (As one of the first, I did not have this advantage. The Guardian and several food bloggers insisted on coming for the first night even though I had explained that I probably wasn’t ready. It really added to the pressure. I had not foreseen the level of interest that my home restaurant would trigger.) However, it has not been PR expertise that got me publicity and renown: I’ve been making it all up as I go along, but I was excited about it, and that enthusiasm conveys itself to others…
It’s also a good idea to do some research. Go and visit other supper clubs. Read up on them if you are too far away to visit. Volunteer to help out for a night or two. I get e-mails all the time asking to work. Lady Grey of the Hidden Tea Room in London offered to take me to lunch to pick my brains. Feeding a cook is a perfect method of extracting information. You will soon work out what tricks and techniques you want to retain and which do not suit you. When I started, there were no others to check out. Now there are…so use them!
2 TAKING BOOKINGS................
Once you have people booking, you will need to work out a method for handling their enquiries. Do be courteous and answer all their e-mails within, say, a 24-hour period. If they have paid all or a portion up-front, remember that they don’t know you. If you don’t reply, they will get anxious, especially if you haven’t given them the address yet. I went to a supper club in Brighton that didn’t give me the address until the morning of the dinner. Anything could have happened, my e-mail could have gone down, I could have been staying the night elsewhere.
Another underground restaurateur