Creating a successful chain restaurant takes skill, says Neil Rankin

Neil Rankin shares his thoughts on how successful chain restaurants are formed, and why many chefs don't have the right mentality to create them

I don’t think I’m capable of coming up with a good restaurant chain. In fact, I’ll go further and say that fancy-pants chefs in general suck at coming up with anything resembling a restaurant chain.

The concept of chains and what makes them popular is so anti- my chef mentality it’s like it’s a different industry, which is why my latest personal revelation feels so awkward to say… but I think they might be better than us.

 

“Chefs in general forget that people aren’t necessarily looking for the greatest dish in the world but a place to just be”

I’d say there are three main things that make a good chain restaurant. (By chain I mean something that is 50-plus stores outside London.) The first is having a tight, populist menu item structure or, in other words, a menu liked by almost everybody. Pizza, burgers, seafood, steak and chips or roast or fried chicken, for example. As a chef my first thought is to do something new or something more complicated with those concepts, like cut those burgers from a whole carcass of a 30-year-old native breed cow raised on a diet of wild foraged leaves, or cook hand-dived seafood in a some fancy oven that’s powered by sustainable charcoal made from vertical farmed bamboo. But nobody really asked for any of that or got sick of eating a nice scallop or burger cooked in a pan.

The second thing a successful chain can be is a mainstream take on a regional cuisine. Be it Spanish, French, Indian, Italian, American or Chinese, though it can’t be too specific, different, rare or localised. On the contrary, chefs only really want to induce new concepts and find new dishes that are undiscovered domestically. Because what’s the point of repeating what’s already been done – apart from it being what most people actually want to eat.

The third and most important thing is being a positive benefit in society. Whether that’s being an affordable choice, a place to meet or to be a place to take your kids, chefs in general forget that people aren’t necessarily looking for the greatest dish in the world, but a place to just be.

As much fun as they are, to me hospitality isn’t about some restaurant serving small plates and low-intervention wine that’s booked up for months in advance. It’s mostly just about somewhere to go that’s not your work or your home.

To add to all this, my impression of chains changed when my career changed, because I’ve started to see what’s inside them. I’ve started to see the focus on heath and sustainability I’d only previously seen in independents, the commitments to getting the right produce at an affordable price, and the surprising attention to detail they have. The good chains are driving things we need in our society that independents can’t make a dent in.

The independents may start trends and influence, but the chains drive the changes. I think it’s time to show them a bit more respect.