Charlie Gilkes on being a restaurateur
How was the idea of operating restaurants born?
My business partner, Duncan Stirling, and I started in the hospitality business by organising events in other people’s bars and clubs. Ultimately we had a desire to open a venue of our own. Our first venture was Kitts. It was a disused basement in the Sloane Square Hotel and we convinced the hotel owners to grant us a management contract. It was a great operational learning curb but we wanted to open something we fully owned. Barts, a speakeasy bar was our first solo venture followed by our 1980s-inspired club Maggie’s. In September 2011 we launched our first bar/restaurant, Bunga Bunga. It is a bar/pizzeria and karaoke venue and was our first site with a substantial food offering. The concept was born out of a desire to create a venue where you could eat, drink, dance and be entertained under one roof without having to move on to another bar or club.
Celebrity patronage is becoming increasingly important commercially. Would you say that this is key to operating a successful restaurant?
Absolutely not. We strongly believe that celebrities like other customers have the right to privacy and their patronage should not be exploited for commercial gain. Ultimately the key to a successful restaurant is good food and drink, great friendly service and a fun and original concept, not who may happen to go there.
Do you cultivate this or do you think quality will out in any case?
As above we do not cultivate this and feel that quality is key for sustained success.
A certain entrepreneurial spirit is always needed to prosper and particularly so at a time of recession. is this hard-wired or cultivated?
I think it’s a mixture of both. We’ve both always had entrepreneurial characters and viewed our venues above all as businesses, so that is something you could describe as ‘hard-wired’ in us. It’s cultivated because during a recession you have to work even harder to ensure your businesses are successful and we’ve both learned so much since we started out.
The idea of Barts as a prohibition bar – would you consider it reflective of the (economical) times we live in? Is yours a political statement or a marketing gimmick.
Prohibition was in operation in the USA at the time of the great crash of 1929 and somehow a prohibition concept fits well with the current economic climate. During a recession discretion is key – people would rather be hidden away drinking out of a teapot than ordering magnums of champagne in a club. We visited various speakeasy bars in New York in 2008 and found the idea exciting and different and opened Bart’s in early 2009 before the trend had reached these shores.
You have a passion for art as a collector and feature it in your establishments – is this passion something you are trying to share with patrons of your restaurants?
Collecting art and other curious objects for our venues has been one of the most fun and rewarding parts of the refurbishment works we’ve carried out. We have traipsed car boot sales, ebay, and antiques markets to find all manner of interesting items. We drove a van down to Italy in order to find as many authentic Italian items as possible for Bunga Bunga. We have also worked with local artists commissioning a variety of art installations at all our venues such as our 80’s graffiti mural at Maggie’s and the Venetian scene at Bunga Bunga. By sourcing things this way and working with artists we’ve been able to create original looking interiors with a great story.
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