When Innovation Meets Expertise:
The Engine Room Joins Forces with Acclaimed Restaurateurs Henry Harris and Dave Strauss, Creators of London’s Sensational Dining Destination, Bouchon Racine
Bouchon Racine opened last year to huge acclaim after taking over and carefully renovating the 300-year-old and hugely characterful pub, The Three Compasses. With critiques such as Jay Rayner proclaiming ‘Bouchon Racine is everything. This classic bistro offers a masterclass in French cookery’ and Giles Coren declaring ‘Best Crème caramel in England’, it is fair to say that Henry Harris and Dave Strauss have been a little bit busy. The Engine Room have the privilege of collaborating with the team at Bouchon Racine, making sure they can play to their strengths and use their talent where it matters most, like what’s on the plate and creating the great atmosphere in their intimate 40 cover dining room and The Engine Room bringing our expertise to the commercial needs of the business.
We initially worked with Bouchon Racine as a one-off project to develop a financial model to prove the business model. Later, we began work within the live business on a monthly retainer. Time poor for all the right reasons, Henry and Dave did not have the resource they thought they might to make sure every element of the business was looked after as well as the food and customers. The teams’ strengths were not well spent behind a laptop, so it was clear by the new year that The Engine Room needed to be integrated into the business.
We were bought in to put in place systems that enabled financial accuracy and created a full position of the business for the owners to make informed decisions by bridging operations and finance. This was tasks a small as organising paperwork and as big as integrating software and conducting the remote accountants and bookkeepers work so they became efficient and more meaningful for the business. Through this process the first p/l’s were generated within two weeks of month end.
‘Someone in person who we can actually talk to, bringing it all together. Before there was no accountability or integration. Old school, working with someone delivers better results.’
Henry Harris
Effectively, they could pay for an affordable retainer rather than having to lean on current team members or employ a financial administrator who would require management or a manager who would come at a high cost. Now they have useful clear daily procedures, data to measure KPI’s on a bespoke dashboard which brings reports together for analysis and effective documents to keep their shareholders happy.
All aspects of the business are now in order and the joy and spontaneity from Henry’s kitchen and detail and passion from Dave’s dining room can continue to delight and surprise the droves of people they are attracting without the distraction and with expert commercial management which feels like part of the team.
‘I was quite sceptical to begin with, I hate consultants, we’ve both been consultants and it’s worthless but this was different and not consultancy. Maria (The Engine Room – Commercial Operations Partner) became part of the team without being part of the team and that was exactly what we needed’
Dave Strauss