HARD TO SWALLOW
Customers who book and then don’t turn up are hammering struggling restaurants, storms TV chef
TV chef Nick Nairn has hit out at ‘disrespectful’ customers who risk the recovery of beleaguered restaurants in the pandemic by failing to show up.
The 62-year-old says his own business has been ‘hammered’ in the past few days as tables go unfilled.
He said: ‘I have been doing this for 36 years and we’ve hardly ever had no-shows. But the last two weeks have been the worst we’ve ever seen.
‘It’s disrespectful and harming at one of the hardest times we’ve seen for the industry in years and it’s a new trend for which we don’t have any answers.’
At his restaurant the Kailyard, in Dunblane Hydro, Perthshire, on Friday night, 30 people out of 200 booked guests failed to show up – including a table of nine who confirmed by phone they would be coming.
On the same evening, at his nearby Bridge of Allan restaurant, Nick’s on Henderson St, only 98 of the 120 people booked turned up, while at his newly opened Nick’s at Port of Menteith, Perthshire, there were six no shows out of 60.
Mr Nairn added: ‘This no-show thing is becoming an increasing problem. I know that a lot of our colleagues have had huge problems with it and we were quietly pleased that it hadn’t really bothered us.
‘But it’s bad when 20 per cent of your customers don’t honour bookings when we’ve got the staff, food and wine in place to give them hospitality.
‘It’s a tough time for the industry as we’re already wondering how many people are going to be pinged, contact traced, who’s going to turn up for work and will we be allowed to open?
‘We already had to shut for a week four weeks ago because some members of staff got pinged and, although none of them actually developed Covid, that’s £25,000 down the drain – with a £340 grant from the Scottish Government to make it all better.’
Mr Nairn, who became the youngest Scottish chef to be awarded a Michelin star in the early 1990s, and cooked for the Queen as part of her 80th birthday celebrations, said he was reluctant to introduce credit card deposits because it felt ‘mean-spirited’ when many of his customers still honour their bookings.
The chef, whose business partner is wife Julia, added: ‘We take contact numbers and we do phone every single table but we’re finding people increasingly reluctant to pick up.
‘Maybe they’re embarrassed because they know it’s us that’s calling. It’s bizarre and the irony is we could have filled those tables a number of times over but we had to turn people away because the places were already allocated.
‘It’s going to force us down the route of taking card deposits which I don’t want to do.
‘You need a crystal ball to run a hospitality business these days. I really don’t understand what motivates people to make a reservation and then not turn up.
‘Maybe because we’re all out and about again, people think things are back to normal and, in hospitality, our job is to present a fabulous face. But while we are the swan, gliding across the lake, underneath the legs are paddling away like crazy trying to keep things afloat.
‘We’re not back to normal at all. We’re struggling for staff, we’re struggling for ingredients because of recent problems in the supply chain caused by Brexit and the pandemic, and now we’re struggling for customers.
‘I have to stress, however, that we’re talking about a tiny minority who are upsetting the apple cart. The vast majority of our customers are fantastic, they come on time and are appreciative.’
During the pandemic, the chef, who has been awarded two honorary degrees by universities for his contribution to Scottish cooking and healthy eating campaigns, was also forced to temporarily close the Nick Nairn Cook School, which has been based at Lake of Menteith, in Perthshire, since 2000.
He is now focusing on reopening the facility as soon as social-distancing measures allow. Meanwhile, he has been busy during lockdown filming his At Home With The Nairns cooking classes.
Mr Nairn joined the Merchant Navy at 17 before becoming a chef. A few years later he opened his first restaurant and is best known as one of the regular chefs on the BBC’s Ready Steady Cook, from 1995 onwards.
He also presented Wild Harvest and Island Harvest on television, as well as presenting the BBC Scotland programme Landward from 2007 to 2009.