All restaurateurs need a love of food, a love of wine and a love of their fellow men and women, as well, of course, as a fair amount of good luck. But to really succeed they need more than these essentials.
There is the ability to pitch your restaurant at what the public want: the business nous that is essential for any successful entrepreneur. There is the sensitivity to be aware of your own shortcomings and to compensate for them. And then, most importantly, there is the ability to communicate everything that you have in mind, successfully, clearly and concisely. ‘You have to be able to explain your restaurant in one short sentence’, as New York restaurateur Joe Bastianich once told me, ‘because that is all a customer can take in and remember.’
This is why the premature death of London restaurateur Russell Norman is so sad. Not only did Norman die young – he was only 57 – but his death exactly a month ago has deprived the restaurant industry of a man who, by virtue of his initial training, as well as his innate charm, good looks and gift of the gab, was the consummate restaurateur-communicator.
In my era in the 1980s, there were only a few opportunities to communicate to my team and even fewer means of communication. There was the annual staff outing when almost everybody was together in one space if not all quite at the same time. There were the occasional staff gatherings. In early January I would warn the staff how much lower the spend would be for at least a couple of months after Christmas. I might gather them together when a new opening posed an existential (or so it appeared to me) threat. There was little written communication other than the occasional memo pinned on walls around the restaurant that could all too easily be ignored.
But for Norman, communication was what it was all about. He came from outside the restaurant world. He was a teacher of drama, at a girl’s school in Stanmore, Middlesex, and he was particularly successful by following this principle: ‘I never allowed anyone to be an observer, whether it was the headmaster or someone from the school inspectorate. They all had to join in.’ He employed this tactic at his frequent and all-important staff training sessions when he transferred to the restaurant business.
I came to appreciate this principle of involvement when I attended one of his restaurant training sessions when I was researching my 2012 book The Art of The Restaurateur. In it he allowed me to repeat his ‘sequence of service’, all the 32 steps he wanted his waiting staff to follow, from when the customers enter his restaurant to setting up the table for the next customers.
Norman was also a restaurateur who understood the importance of what he wore. He was initially lured into the restaurant profession by a regular Saturday evening shift as maître d’ at the extremely popular Joe Allen’s in Covent Garden. He then went to work for chef Rainer Becker at Zuma in Knightsbridge, then at the Ivy Group alongside Mark Hix, who was then executive chef. (Very much more recently Norman was to take over Hix’s site in Smithfield for Brutto, his popular last opening.)
Twenty years ago, top restaurants were still formal affairs and Norman dressed the part. He wore smart suits, perfectly knotted ties, and a pair of shining cufflinks adorned his crisply ironed white shirts. Ten years later, he had left every stitch of this formal attire behind. As restaurants became more casual affairs and Norman had branched out on his own (always with his partner, old friend and fellow marathon runner Richard Beatty) with Polpo, Spuntino and Mishkin’s, his take on a Jewish deli with cocktails, Norman followed suit. He wore jeans, a less-than-crisply ironed shirt, and his ‘office’ in a knapsack hung diagonally over his chest.
I asked New York’s best-known restaurateur Danny Meyer for his opinion of Norman and in particular for his thoughts about the importance of communication in his business. Norman clearly made a huge impression on Meyer and he responded in detail by email. ‘Russell was certainly a force of nature. I met him for the first time when he was managing Zuma in Knightsbridge. After which I tried to lure him to be general manager at The Modern when we opened in early 2005. But alas, though he loved visiting New York, I couldn’t persuade him to move here. What a mensch he was.
‘As crucial as it is to cook well, to pour good wines and to welcome guests – a restaurateur is well served to love communicating. Russell did that as well as anyone. Russell was a great storyteller, and if you think of a restaurant as a story and the staff and patrons as your audience, you can see how crucial it is to keep them all captivated.
‘In my career, I’ve communicated through writing newsletters to our guests, writing the “lyrics” for our menus (the chefs write the music); sending memos to our staff; and writing letters – both thank-you notes and, on occasion, apology notes to our guests.
‘Verbal communication skills have served me with our team members, guests, community members, suppliers and investors – in large and small groups as well as in one-on-one sessions. And since I’m really bad at reading a speech or giving PowerPoint presentations, I’ve instead had to learn how to read an audience to know whether or not my message is landing as intended. At our core, we restaurateurs are teachers, coaches and cheerleaders – and people need clearly to know what we mean when we speak.
‘As a young restaurateur I was already a pretty effective written communicator but was often nervous when communicating verbally. I’ve been able to overcome that trepidation and to turn public speaking into a subsidiary career, one that helps promote our restaurants, serves as a recruiting tool for talent, fosters new business opportunities, and even provides funding for our businesses. And let’s not forget that a significant responsibility a restaurateur has is to communicate effectively with the media – both published and, increasingly today, on social media.’
I asked Will Beckett, one of the two founders of the Hawksmoor group, for his opinion of the importance of communication to a restaurateur and his response was typically modest.
‘I have to admit to a bit of bias here as, unlike Russell, I have no skills whatsoever in the kitchen or on the floor and I am not a natural planner or administrator, but I am a passionate believer in good communication. I think it is underrated as a skill and I also think it has changed considerably in the past decade.
‘I admire people who can inspire confidence and optimism, who can rally people to a cause, an idea or a plan of action, who can persuade people of different opinions and who can advocate effectively for the things they believe in.
‘Communication has become more “short form”. At its best this means great communicators package ideas well, and get to the heart of things quickly, or speak to logic or reason with fewer words than previously. At its worst we have become bludgeons, effectively just shouting our views and considering good communication effectively speaking over or louder than someone. We stop being curious about things and others and just entrench ourselves in our own world view.
‘Russell had a knack for a bon mot or a memorable thought, and that rare quality of drawing people in with his enthusiasm and curiosity. Danny Meyer does likewise, and I have spent many years of my career trying to learn from both.’
It is sadly only too common that we tend to fully appreciate those we have known and respected only when it is too late. But I believe it will never be too late to raise a glass to the memory of Russell Norman, the consummate restaurateur-communicator.
