Paris catch

In operating eight English pubs in Paris, Mayday Inns has made subtle yet vital concessions to French culture. The PMA Team meets founder Jeremy Bown J eremy Bown can't understand why a "grown-up English pub company hasn't come over here and done it properly", as he muses on the lack of competition from major UK pub operators in Paris. His operations director Roger Harby, a former Whitbread Pub Partnership marketing director, is quick to supply the answer. "I think people have looked at it but shied away," he says. "I think they've pulled back because they simply don't understand the culture." To visit Mayday's latest opening, the Honest Lawyer, a stone's throw from the Champs Elysees, is to appreciate the subtle adaptations to French culture that Mayday has had to make. Unmistakably an English pub, the outlet nods to French design values with full picture windows and uncluttered bar and dining areas. Even more important, the menu offers discerning French customers the high-quality, indigenous dishes that are the very reason for lunchtime visits. Mayday hopes its newest pub will turn over in the region of £750,000 per annum as a valuable boost to its existing £5m-a-year cashflow. The story of Mayday's growth is all about a willingness to gear its very English offering to French expectations. Says Bown: "We're seeing more and more French people using our pubs ­ because they realise a pub is a fun place to be." Bown was a stockbroker working in Paris when he decided there was a gap in the market. "I thought there was a good opportunity to do an English pub," he says. A business plan followed and 35 investors, mostly friends and family, came forward to offercapital ranging from £800 to £3,000 ­ Adnams chipped in with a further £10,000. And in January 1995, a year after Bown gave up his day job to pursue his dream, the Cricketer opened. The pub occupied the site of a bankrupt French café and the lease was bought at a £100,000 premium. "There is a real scarcity of retail property in the areas you want to be," explains Bown. "And the reason that a bankrupt lease is worth something is that you are buying into a below-market rent. France has been a socialist country for many years. So, with French leases, it's more difficult to find the key money. But once you've done that, it's much more likely you'll survive." This first pub was quickly filled with expatriate friends. "Very often in the early days of our pubs, sales are driven by expatriates," says Bown. "The Cricketer used to be 80% expatriate customers, it's now 80% French. But the whole point is that, if we don't appeal to the French, there's no future for the business." Bown's first pub, open until 2am in line with Parisian licensing laws, was a roaring, if chaotic, success. "I'd never owned, run or even worked in a pub," he says. Even though £200,000 was spent opening the Cricketer, the bank had only offered Bown two thirds of the money he asked for. The result was it opened without a stereo or other important pieces of kit. "We opened for a couple of months, took a bit of money, closed and then finished off the refurbishment. It was fairly cowboyish ­ but we didn't have a choice." However, such was the popularity of the Cricketer that Bown found customers practically falling over themselves to offer capital for Mayday's second pub, the Bowler, which opened in late 1996. "I was convinced that a grown-up pub company would come across from England and we had to get a foothold in Paris," says Bown. Trading at the Bowler was as solid as with the Cricketer and, soon after, came two more pubs. The opening of the Long Hop provided the company's first salutary lesson in the realities of the market. The pub, in a student area of Paris, haemorrhaged red ink. There was very little lunchtime trade, and its labour-intensive and, therefore, expensive food operation found very little demand. "It was a very chaotic period ­ we went from two pubs to four, one of which was losing money heavily," says Bown. "There was quite a lot of panicking on my part. "Looking back it was a good lesson ­ you have to tailor each pub to its immediate environment." A solution to the Long Hop problem was found in reducing trading hours to between 5pm and 1am and making it a dedicated student bar. Mayday's next big opportunity came when Punch Taverns decided to sell the three Firkin pubs in Paris it had inherited on its acquisition of the Allied estate. Bown had been thinking about selling Mayday to realise capital for himself and his band of investors, which had by this stage swollen to no fewer than 65. But the Punch pubs proved too tempting. "It's been the one time that three pubs in Paris have come on the market at once," says Bown. "Sites tend to be owned by former bar staff who have clubbed together to buy the lease." A wealthy French businessman who Bown had been courting for a while, appetite whetted by the Firkin opportunity, agreed to buy out the existing shareholders. "The Firkin pubs changed things for me. It gave me the chance to get just one big investor on board." Mayday, which had one year to remove the Firkin name, picked up three pubs in superb locations. However, one Firkin, on the rowdy, red light area of Rue St Denis, was sold on to two Irish investors. "It's a rough pub in a rough area, although they've done extremely well with it," says Bown. Aside from opening the Honest Lawyer this year, Mayday has taken over its first pub outside of central Paris. The Regency, now trading for 10 months, is in a prosperous suburb 10 miles east of the city centre. This has provided the strongest reinforcement of the importance of food to Mayday's French customers. "We are having to work very hard to educate the clientele about what a pub is," says Bown. "It is very food-orientated. There's no leeway given by its affluent and demanding clientele on issues like service and food quality." Here, customers have been slower to respond to one major component of Mayday's pubbish character ­ the emphasis on live sport. "We don't get anybody in to watch matches," says Bown. In central Paris, by contrast, live sport is a key business driver. The World Cup saw Mayday's pub heaving with customers at 8am ­ even though France made an early exit from the competition. "Customers are coming for the atmosphere and we've been greatly helped by the improved marketing of major sporting events.