September 2007 Archives

Rumours on the floor of trade-shows can spread like Chinese whispers but the talk of the National Licensed Business Show in Birmingham's NEC yesterday was the appearance of Greene King earlier in the week.

Its Pub Partners managing director David Elliott was scheduled to conduct his key note speech at 2.35pm but the word on the street (or the NEC show floor) was that disgruntled Greene King licensees planned to heckle Elliott's speech. By all accounts Elliott was whisked into the trade show under-cover, swapped time-slots with an earlier speaker and gave his speech before the hecklers could arrive!

As Greene King (almost) says in its current batch of advertising: the key-note with nothing to prove!

Word reaches Kitchen Rat that Whitbread, owner of budget hotel chain Premier Travel Inn, has bought Golden Tulip UK.

Peter Roberts, chief executive of Golden Tulip UK, was tight lipped but a move by Whitbread for the seven-strong hotel group would make sense especially with rival Travelodge expanding so aggressively.

Whether Golden Tulip’s Tulip Inns would be converted to Premier Travel Inns would need to be seen, although as a 3-star offer you’d imagine it would be relatively straight forward to convert the existing sites.

At the start of the year Golden Tulip promoted Andrew Silver to managing director to support its ambitious expansion plans in the UK and set itself a target of 25 hotels by 2009.

Golden Tulip is backed by private equity firm Graphite Capital and Barclays Bank.

Golden Tulip UK signs £40m deal on three new build hotels>>

Golden Tulip UK appoints first managing director to support expansion>>

Update: Sept 27. The Rat strikes again. The deal was confirmed by both parties yesterday.

Another week, another bit of egg on face for the beloved taxman.

After much delay and following extensive revision, the last ambiguity (hopefully) in the taxman’s reissued guidance on tips from last October has been cleared up.

Thanks to the sizeable balls of one unnamed London restaurant group with able assistance from financial advisory firm Vantis, the practice of topping up staff pay to make or exceed the minimum wage but from a separate tronc payroll to the main wage payroll has been judged perfectly legal.
It’s good news for the industry as it means a host of restaurants in line to be pursued for not paying the minimum wage by the Revenue if the decision went its way are now in the clear and can get on with what they do best, namely running a restaurant and feeding and looking after guests.

Kitchen Rat hears its all cisterns go at Manchester’s Etrop Grange hotel where boss Chris Falcus has declared a Loo Chain Amnesty.

Has former Chelsea defender and Portsmouth FC acquisition Glen Johnson - famously caught attempting to steal a toilet seat from a Kent B&Q - been to stay recently, I hear you ask?

Well, no, but apparently other guests can’t get enough of the 18th century grade-two listed Georgian hotel’s classic loo chains (and you thought the odd pair of slippers going missing was a headache).

Sara Edwards, the award winning vice president of human resources at the Maybourne Group, is leaving the Claridges owner for pastures new, Kitchen Rat has learnt.

Staff at the group were this morning informed that Edwards - one of the most high profile HR chiefs in the hospitality sector - will be joining luxury department store Liberty as group HR director.

Under Edwards' guidance, the Maybourne Group was nominated as a top 50 workplace by the Financial Times and this year won a HCPTA training award, while she herself is in the shortlist for the HR manager award at the Hotel Cateys.

The will they won’t they drama of restaurant chain Tragus and its possible route to the London Stock Exchange continues – much as it did for the Nescafé couple in the late eighties – with a report in today’s Financial Times suggesting it will happen in 2008 if at all.

Chief executive of Tragus Graham Turner is quoted in the paper as saying “we continue to look at out options but if we did decide to float it would be at the start of next year”.

The Café Rouge owner had been considering such a route to grow the business when it was snapped up by private equity company Blackstone last December as this Caterer and Hotelkeeper story from October 2006 shows.

If Tragus, which bought Strada earlier this year, does list it’s predicted to be valued at around £500m, which should see Blackstone get a rather nice return on the £267m it paid for the business.

Whatever the eventual decision about whether to list or not is, Thank God service at the company's high street restaurants doesn't take this long.

Tragus to focus on Strada and Café Rouge>>

Stock market flotation remains an option for Café Rouge owner>>

Blackstone deal shows the value of good management at Tragus>>