After 30 years in the business, restaurant owner Adrian Barbieri believes that he has found the winning formula with his City eatery Fuego. Adam Tinworth reports.
Considering the roller-coaster ride that the City had been on that week, the Fuego bar in Pudding Lane was a busy place. City types were cheerfully drinking and eating as if they had not a care in the world.
Restaurant owner and managing director of Figaro Trading Group Adrian Barbieri was in a similarly cheerful mood. “Some of the institutions will have made a lot of money,” he said. “After all, everything – bar running up flags – had been done to tell people that a crash was coming.”
He has reason to be cheerful – after a few years on a rocky road, Fuego can now claim success. Barbieri freely admits that the restaurant, on the site of the start of the Great Fire of London, lost significant amounts of money in its first two years of trading.
But he is convinced that, after four years of tweaking and a major refurbishment, the formula is almost right. “We’re down to the last 20% of changes,” he says. The restaurant has also achieved the holy grail of many local operators in the City – evening opening. The bar stays open until 2am, and has attracted a reputation as a singles hangout.
Why has Barbieri succeeded where so many others have failed? “I’ve invested £40,000 in the sound system, I’ve got the best DJ and I pay my staff a decent wage,” he says. “I guarantee that if you get here at 9pm, you won’t be able to get in.”
A second branch of Fuego restaurant is planned for South Quay in Docklands. But Barbieri is under no illusions about trading conditions there. “There’s been a high failure rate in Docklands,” he says. “It’s a hard market and it’s not for amateurs.”
Back in the City, competition is fierce. The influx of the national brewers and pub operators into the area do not worry Barbieri, who aims to expand all aspects of his business. “I know they’re committed to mediocrity, and I’m committed to excellence,” he says. “The old maxim is true: if you pay peanuts you get monkeys.”
Booming A3 rents are a concern only in the short-term, he says: “I watch them come in, I watch them go out of business and then I pick up the site.”
He has been through the cycle before. Barbieri, now in his 50s, inherited Figaro Trading when he was just 21. It has a contract catering arm, which includes a chain of luxury sandwich bars and Fuegos.
During his time in business, Barbieri has seen rivals come and go, while he has weathered the various recessions. “I’m a typical Italian peasant,” he says. “My grandfather told me that for every £5 I make, I should put £2 in the bank. It means that the business grows more slowly, but it’s more secure.”
Barbieri has witnessed many changes in the trade over the years. He points to the ring of steel around the City as one factor, and notes that eating habits have changed. “You can forget the three-hour lunch, and there’s less alcohol consumption. That, alone, can take a third off the bill.”
There has also been a change of attitude within the City Corporation. “The City fathers, aware of the shortage of retail, resisted A3 uses on the ground floor, so restaurants have traditionally been pushed into basements,” he says. This has begun to change, especially as a growing number of A2 units have become vacant.
But if there is one thing Barbieri would like changed, it is the attitudes of developers and landlords to retail and restaurant space within their buildings. “We need a sympathetic and non-adversarial relationship with our landlords,” says Barbieri. “Catering is a necessity in any civilised society.
“In a sense, a very mild sense, the City is a ghetto. People working within it need their civilised releases.” Especially, it would seem, when the stock market is going up and down like a yo-yo.
Restaurateur Profile
