The Big Interview: Ross Sanders
When the next Lazy Cow opens its doors, Ross Sanders is expecting the usual barrage of complaints. “I’m ready for it now,” he says.
In June the second Lazy Cow, formerly the Kings Arms in Salisbury, attracted its own Facebook campaign — a coalition of people who were emotionally attached to the old name and those who found the new one offensive.
But for Sanders, as for Oscar Wilde, there is only one thing worse than being talked about, and that’s not being talked about.
In any case, he’s confident his daring concept — bringing together a steak-house and ale-house with a boutique hotel — can win round the dissenters by being very far from lazy about what it does.
“So many people say to us ‘Please don’t call it the Lazy Cow’, but many find the humour in it — and it’s a name you’ll never forget. What won me over, though, is that the initials spell TLC, and that’s what we’re trying to give people.”
Proof that it works is the first Lazy Cow. A year after it opened on the site of a Thai restaurant in Warwick it’s taking £50,000 a week.
“It’s the most successful business I’ve ever had — and I’ve had lots!”
Indeed, in his short but dynamic, almost impulsive, creative career Sanders has found plenty of winners — plus one very public loser.
Job for life
Sanders was born into pubs. Or as he puts it, “I was forced into the industry”. His father, Tony Sanders, owned Mercury Taverns before selling to Pubmaster in the 1990s, and from the age of 16 Ross worked in the pubs. “I really enjoyed the environment,” he says.
After training in hospitality and catering he became an area manager with Luminar Leisure and was quickly promoted to its new-openings team. It was part of the job to learn three cheesy songs and a dance routine and perform them in the street on opening night.
“I can’t go back to those towns,” he laughs. “But as much as I find it embarrassing, it was an extremely successful time for me and it taught me systems and procedures.”
His first pub was the Durham Ox in Shrewley Common, Warwickshire — a Greene King lease he took with his father and Nick Skelton, the show-jumper. In a part of the country that was well known for its gastropubs he set the Ox apart by introducing pub classics alongside the gastro menu and keeping a bar for locals.
“I turned up once and there was a tractor and a Ferrari next to each other in the car park. That summed up the business really. We had a successful three years and ended up doing £30,000 a week.”
Surprisingly, perhaps, after selling the Ox, Sanders returned to managed houses with Spirit Group’s DevCo division, “to hone my skills”.
His talents had already been recognised, though, and Orchid Group’s Rufus Hall asked him whether he’d like to buy 16 Bar Room Bar outlets that had come in a package he’d acquired from Spirit.
“I didn’t have the money but I knew Bar Room Bar and I knew what needed to be done with it. I wrote a business plan around modernising the brand.”
That was enough to convince Allied Irish Bank to provide £18.5m of the £20m Sanders needed, and he became a significant multiple operator overnight.
“According to the business plan we had to refurbish every site, which I calculated would bring an average 10% to 15% uplift in trade. After we’d done the first four we were getting a 50% uplift.”
But he couldn’t plan for the 2008 credit crunch.
“The bank refused to release more cash for refurbishments. We had to call in the administrators. It was a very dark time and it knocked my confidence. It was a personal thing for me. The headlines in the Midlands, where I lived, were ‘Local entrepreneur loses £20m’.
“It’s not what you want on a CV. But the people who knew me knew that the business plan was performing.”
One of them was Andy Ruhan at private finance firm Bridgehouse Capital.
“He told me there was an opportunity to buy 36 pubs out of administration and we had two weeks to do the deal. That was Massive Pub Company.”
Jewels in the crown
Funded by Bridgehouse, Sanders formed Urban & Country Leisure to take on the job. After a year he reduced the estate to nine “jewels” and was already turning his attention to what would become the Lazy Cow.
“I’d always wanted to do a steak- house,” he says, the roots of inspiration lying in a year’s work experience in New York while he was a student. He goes back there regularly to find ideas and on one trip a brand called BLT Prime stuck out.
Described by Sanders as “traditional with a modern twist”, this is the model for the Lazy Cow, but by no means is it a copy. For a start Sanders has bolted on an ale-house with six cask beers on at any one time — including a house ale brewed by the Warwickshire Beer Company.
“It’s American steak-house meets English pub,” he says. “The other trick was to have the best steak. I thought that would be easy — but clearly not. It took six months to get it right.
“When you start specialising you get into things such as the genetic make-up of the meat. The kind of butchers you’re dealing with pick their beasts according to the rainfall on the grass those cattle were eating the year before.”
Such a farmer-butcher is Darragh O’Shea, who supplies the Lazy Cow’s meat. “It’s expensive but you pay for exceptional quality.”
As well as choosing a steak by size, cut and ageing, customers are also encouraged to appreciate the breed, be it short-horn, long-horn or the rare Belted Galloway.
“They all taste very different,” says Sanders. “We’re educating customers as we educate ourselves.”
Then there’s the cooking. To recreate the American steak-house effect Sanders has installed a £15,000 Josper oven, a Spanish-built “industrial barbecue” that seals the flavour into the meat at 400°C.
“We use a special blend of three types of charcoal, too: one for heat, one for flavour and one for the smoke.
“We’re not trying to win a Michelin star, though. It’s a lot of fun. I like the theatre, creating the talking points that get remembered.”
Alongside the steaks are classic pub favourites, and fish and crustacea are sourced through the Really Interesting Crab Company, which goes so far as to tag each piece of fish with the location in which it was caught and what the temperature of the water was.
The quirky boutique hotel rooms upstairs are a desirable rather than an integral part of the brand and Sanders tries not to let hotel formality interfere with the relaxed social atmosphere of the pub and steak-house.
Two more Lazy Cows are set to open by January — one of which is at former Massive pub, the Telegraph in Putney. More will be added, predominantly in market towns, as opportunities come up to sell the remaining Massive pubs.
“The opportunities are there, and the funding is there,” says Sanders. “We’ll get to 15 sites in three years, and that’s when we’ll decide whether we roll it out further or sell it as a successful brand.
“Whatever happens, I’ll probably start all over again with something different. I can’t see myself sitting behind a desk at the same company for 20 years. That stifles your creativity.”
My kind of pub
“My preference is for a vibrant town-centre pub with a good selection of wines by the glass.
“I’m also a big fan of Paul Salisbury’s Lovely Pubs. It’s the consistency of service that does it for me. I’ve been going to those pubs for 11 years — and I used to be a bartender at the Boot, in Lapworth.”
Key dates
1993
Ross Sanders works in his father’s Mercury Taverns pubs
1995
Studies hospitality and catering at Stratford-upon-Avon College
1998
After a spell as assistant manager at the Dirty Duck in Stratford, Sanders joins Luminar Leisure as assistant manager at the Maidstone Chicago Rock Café
1999
Opens nine Chicago Rock Cafés for Luminar
2002
Runs three Red Rose Tavern pubs
2003
Takes Greene King lease on the Durham Ox
2006
Joins Spirit Group’s DevCo division and manages Greswolde Arms Hotel, Knowle
2007
Buys 16-strong Bar Room Bar chain for £20m
2009
Bar Room Bar goes into administration. Forms Urban & Country Leisure to take over 36 Massive Pub Company sites, later reduced to nine
2010
Opens first Lazy Cow in Warwick
