From A to Z and back again

No sooner had the manager announced that day’s specials – prawns sautéed with a Campari reduction and suckling pig - at Al Duca , the well-priced Italian restaurant in St. James’s which Claudio Pulze has owned for the past five years, than Pulze ordered them both. "When you are the owner you have to try everything," he explained with his customary smile.

If that is a leitmotif for success in the volatile restaurant business – and Pulze’s successful track record in London goes back to April 1974 when he opened Montpeliano in Knightsbridge – then Pulze’s diet is going to consist of a long run of daily specials.

In addition to the three restaurants he controls (Al Duca, Deya and Zaika), he also owns between 25 and 33 per cent of another five - Edera, Fiore, Latium, Lucio and Cantina Vinopolis. And he has just completed the purchase via the receivers BDO Stoy Hayward of a further seven restaurants which formed the most profitable nucleus of the A-Z restaurant group which Pulze not only launched in 1992 but also named (A stands for Aubergine, Z for Zafferano while the others are Alloro, L’Oranger, Spiga in Soho and two branches of Ken Lo’s Memories of China).

I wanted to catch up with Pulze to see whether revenge, that well known culinary dish best served cold, had played a part in his calculations. A-Z restaurants was initially a three-way partnership with Giuliano Lotto, Pulze, who had resigned in 1998, and Franco Zanellato who had sold out in 2001. Now Pulze and Zanelatto were taking over again with a third partner to beat off 30 other competitors to pay the receivers £6.5 million plus a further £500,000 for stock to gain control of seven restaurants with a combined annual turnover of £15 million.

"There wasn’t a second’s thought of revenge,” Pulze claimed, “although I do feel sorry for my former partner because he had an accident some years ago which forced him to bring in what in my opinion was too much expensive management and his bankers do seem to have been over hasty. They pulled the plug when they were owed £3.5 million but the receivers seem to have got far more than that. No, the problem is that when I hear about restaurants I get too excited and this was just too good an opportunity to miss. I couldn’t let it pass. For the past five years I have been not a player but a playmaker, putting sites, backers and chefs together, most recently bringing Umberto Vezzoli, whom I consider a very talented chef, over from Rome to open Fiore. Now I am back in the deep end.”

And, he added, it is a troubled deep end. “Business in the West End has never been as difficult as it is today. The competition is intense and the combination of the congestion charge, high taxi fares, rent and rates are making a restaurateur’s life very difficult. But that was one major incentive to buy these particular seven. Although they have been somewhat neglected physically they still made a profit of £1.3 million to July 2004. If they can do that when times are tough they must be good businesses and I think we can improve their profitability by 20 to 30 per cent.”

Pulze intends to adopt two proven techniques to achieve this. The first, somewhat incongruously, stems from running a group of diverse, independently managed restaurants which serve very different menus and are allowed to buy autonomously. “What collectively the weekly figures from these Italian, Indian and Chinese restaurants provide is a much broader spectrum of management information. There is a bigger database which highlights anomalies in pricing and gross profits which in turn helps us to identify the best suppliers.”

The second, and this may come as an unpleasant surprise to the staff at A-Z restaurants who chose to back Pulze’s bid rather than another backed by Gordon Ramsay and Giorgio Locatelli (both once in partnership with Pulze at Aubergine and Zafferano) is his management approach, details of which were slightly delayed as Pulze dealt with the crackling on his suckling pig.

“It is just like riding a horse. If you are not a good rider and you get on a horse then the horse recognises this immediately and takes charge. It’s the same with restaurants. You either drive them or they drive you, “ he added.

Pulze does not want to appear a bully but rather a pragmatist who has come to appreciate that a restaurant’s staff, its profitability and ultimately its customer satisfaction are closely intertwined. “The level of profitability depends on just how disciplined the staff are and this necessarily trickles down from the top. My managers and chefs have to know that I am looking after them. They have got to be continually motivated to do the very best they can. In essence, restaurants are very simple affairs – after all it is just a question of providing the right food and the right atmosphere at the right price. In practice, it is much more difficult, like a juggling act when you can never take your eyes of the balls and particularly so at the moment when you have to ensure that the customer gets great value for money.”

But despite all this, Pulze still has doubts. “Is the timing right? I don’t know. Come back in a year to congratulate me or to commiserate with me. But I’m Italian and there is a sense of destiny. What will be, will be.” But as I left the restaurant I couldn’t help noticing Pulze deep in conversation with the manager, doubtless trying to motivate him and, via him, the rest of his team.