Why it’s time to ditch the big restaurant chains

Quibbling over the payment of £1.20 is never edifying particularly under the gaze of a small queue in a branch of Carluccio’s with few other distractions on a quiet Sunday afternoon

It’s the principle though, isn’t it? No one likes to be shafted. The offer chalked outside advertised a coffee and pastry deal for £3.75. It drew me in. Shown to a table of cakes to choose from I picked a carrot sponge and along with an americano got a bill for £4. 95. The discrepancy, explained someone on the till gesturing towards a lone, dry croissant, was because I had chosen a cake rather than the pastry option. Inadvertently, I found myself on a different, marginally pricier deal altogether, one that at no point I’d been made aware of, along with any price difference between the cake options.

Does it all really matter? Perhaps not, but it felt disingenuous and a bit shoddy, and a reminder of the casual dining sector’s form for finding ways to subtlety inflate seemingly decent offers. Compounded by slow service, which saw the cake abandoned on the counter as the waiter caught up with a colleague, the complacency seemed misplaced. The restaurant, one of 30 branches to be spared closure as part of a CVA rescue plan in May 2020, was half empty, and is in a sector needing to reconnect with its fading customer base – fast.

Earlier this month the sorry mix of unpaid debts and job losses from the collapse of chef Jamie Oliver’s restaurant chain was laid bare as the business entered the final stages of administration. It was a reminder of the stark decline of these once seemingly invincible titans once welded to our high streets, whose margins were squeezed by the rising cost of labour and food, higher business rates and fall in consumer confidence and discretionary spend.

For some commentators, the fate of those still standing amid the acute operating pressures post-Covid are sealed, the entire sector written off as an irrelevance. It may not be so black and white but there are other forces at work to compound its woes notably the shift in consumer behaviour to more personalised offerings at odds with the homogenised approach of a sector working to a template. A report, What Customers Want: The Hospitality Operator’s Guide in a Post Covid World, from customer experience specialists, Feeditback, identifies a 14 per cent rise amongst the 18 to 24 age group for independent venues. It highlights: “Even the most youthful demographics are favouring venues that appear to be boutique-like, craft-touting or good that show they are run by people who care about them and don’t offer up the cookie-cutter anonymity of mainstream chains.”

I find myself following suit – a significant defection for someone with an enduring loyalty to these high street staples. It seems the back-to-basic simplicity of lockdown life brought greater perspective to my weary tolerance of their shortfalls along with the realisation I could do better. Indeed, the misdemeanours had been mounting with every visit, from the cost of side dishes needed to bolster the ever-diminishing main meal to the automatic charge for service.

Back to a pre -Covid Carluccio’s and even the parmesan cheese seemed rationed. I grew tired of the waiter cautiously offering up the tiniest flurry of shavings over my pasta dish, so that I had to ask for more, sensing a reluctance as they topped it up. This, in the context of the chain’s certain indulgence of large, sprawling family groups at the expense of the other diner’s experience, is mild in comparison. One Christmas, the Wimbledon branch seemingly morphed into a playground is rooted as two boys rode their scooters around the floor, knocking into tables and handbags, all unchallenged by the parents and staff.

Perhaps, most pointed of all though are some of the obvious shortcuts in the kitchens revealed during an exchange in a French brassiere chain between a customer who wanted her ice cream without chocolate sauce and the waitress’ intriguing reluctance to comply. She finally conceded that the sauce had to be served “because that’s how it arrives at the kitchen” with the customer’s defeated acceptance that she could try and scrape it off all bit pitiful. While I was under no illusion that the team in the kitchen were foraging ingredients themselves the thought of pre-prepared dishes coming in from some centralised kitchen was a depressing detail that festered as I paid another bill.

Yet I persisted with these places in the way you do with a sitcom you once loved that doesn’t make you laugh anymore – you hope will improve. At their best they were good and served a purpose, once delivering on taste and value. While the uniformity of chains can seem staid and uninspiring it can also mean ease and familiarity, a sense of knowing roughly what you’re going to get. My own enthusiasm was established over the moules and frite at Cafe Rouge, at a time when its cherry red and gold facade seemed to be a staple of every high street. Various branches around Surrey were the regular scenes of affordable get-togethers with friends with modest teenage and early 20-something budgets and despite the brand identity, each location had an identity of sorts often housed in attractive, old buildings with established front of house teams. The gradual chipping away of the offering started slowly – the salad suddenly absent from the steak frites, an extra charge for a splash of sauce that used to be free. Others must have noticed too because people stopped going in their droves.

Before the confused coffee and cake offer at Carluccio’s, my only other visit to a restaurant chain post-Covid involved a late lunch at a branch of Ask Italian. I was the only customer, and they still couldn’t get my ravioli hot. Tight margins and the pressure to chase profits at all costs – accelerated by the private equity ownership much of the sector is now under – shouldn’t be at the expense of customer experience. While the coffee may still be very good in Carluccio’s, I find myself migrating to more hyperlocal, independent offerings in the form of the community-run cafe and store, staffed mostly by volunteers who give some of the best customer service you will find – without putting an extra charge on it.