A word with Caterer MidEast's 2012 awards winner

Caterer Middle East catches up with the winner of its Bar and Restaurant of the Year awards, Okku, to find out the secret behind its success

After leaving last year’s Caterer Middle East Awards ceremony with three awards, Okku Luxury Japanese Restaurant & Lounge, Dureturned to collect another four for it’s trophy cabinet.

Before the winners’ list was announced, I took a couple of hours out to visit the team and find out the secret behind its success.

Tucked away on the first floor of the H Hotel on Sheikh Zayed Road, the first thing that strikes me about the outlet is that it’s not actually that big – 78 seats – confirms founder Markus Thesleff; puzzling– considering Okku has just posted a 13% increase in food sales over the last eight months and is generating covers of between 350-400 each night.

“On a monthly basis we do around 10-12,000 guests,” says Thesleff. “On a night like tonight (Sunday, – their LOVE night) there is a two-week waiting list. On a regular night – and we’re not even into the full season yet – it’s a week (wait time) for a guaranteed table. We do ok,” he asserts.

More than “ok” springs to mind. The outlet has had to re-think its strategy based on demand. It’s certainly not at the lower end when it comes to pricing. A small plate of the popular spicy tuna on crispy rice would cost you AED98 (US $27); and a large plate of Yuzu-Saiykyo Miso Black Cod would set you back AED140 ($38). Sushi and sashimi start at AED35 ($10).

But it is still competitively priced compared to its rivals, insists Thesleff: “If you look at some of the reviews – with our competitors you wouldn’t get much change out of AED1000 ($272). With us, we come in at around AED350 ($95)per head. Our portions tend to be larger as well,” says Thesleff.

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A Fine Balance
General manager, Mark Eggberry, joined the team in the last year. He says financial success has been down to the right balance between volume and price.

“Where people will just pop in and order what they normally have, we try to steer them in another direction. There are certain dishes that are phenomenal such as the king crab which will bring up your average spend. But while we are still a business and are looking to do just that, it is also about creating the greater experience.”

This has seen the team concentrate on the customers in at that particular time instead of trying to drive in further custom. Between 70%-80% of Okku’s guests are repeat customers.

“We’re allowing people more time to eat on the tables – allowing people to have maybe a cocktail after their meal – stick around a bit longer. Previously we were under such pressure to turn the tables that it got to the point where too many people were not enjoying their meals. It was going too fast – so we slowed it down, and our average spend went up,” says Thesleff.

Where the food is concerned, award winning chef Hugh Sato Gardiner, has designed, and with his team produced, 50 new dishes resulting in a 25% increase in the number of dishes being served. Impressively, food costs have dropped by 3% too.

waste watchers
Gardiner, named Chef of the Year; stand-alone, for a second year running says this is purely down to being careful.

“We’re using some very expensive items. If there’s not attention to detail, in some instances – neglect or an “I don’t care attitude” then wastage will happen. You’re going to have wastage in any kitchen. It’s being proactive about it.”

Eggberry adds that “using the whole carcass” is key to cutting wastage also.

“It’s not as if we are in any way jeopardising on our quality of product. The tuna and crispy rice is one of our best sellers, it’s a really simple dish which we can only use certain off-cuts for. To achieve a cost like that we’re not only being clever on how we engineer our menu but being aware of not wasting; using the whole animal or vegetable wherever we can.”

One of the reasons Okku is so “aggressive” in its approach to cost cutting is the challenge of obtaining authentic Japanese produce. Thesleff reveals that if you previously looked to obtain a Japanese melon you’d be AED300-400 ($80-$110) worse off.

“When we started out back in 2007-2008 it was the toughest scene. I was doing supply hunting with other chefs and it was very, very difficult. For example, the largest seafood distributor here didn’t know what rock shrimp was – didn’t carry black cod so it was very difficult,” says Gardiner.

“Without pointing fingers, when the campaign was launched here – you had private and government entities involved. They weren’t thinking from the consumers’ point of view. They weren’t thinking from the consumers’ wallets or purses. By the time those products ended up at Choithrams, Lulu or Spinneys, the prices were outrageous – people didn’t buy and reverted back to the sub standard Asian products.”

This has driven Gardiner to look into directly buying from a farmer in Japan. As Okku opens more outlets, this relationship will allow it to get the volume it needs to lift the supply chain of items such as fresh wasabi, moeshi bean sprouts, edemame on branches – which Okku didn’t have access to before. It will also make these products more freely available to local supermarkets.

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Growth Spurt
Okku recently announced plans to expand, of which its first venture will be in the St. James area of London. Spanning three floors, boasting over 18000sq.ft with seating for more than 435 guests from restaurant to bar, Okku London will be the first high-end restaurant born in Dubai to set foot into the UK capital.

Thesleff says that access to new equipment and ingredients is opening up a whole new world for the team: “We have to go into each market, look at it as a unique market and look at what it will take to compete in this marketplace. Everybody’s got different profiles, tastes, their idea of fun is different – and we have to tailor that but always keep within the Okku DNA.”

Raising the bar
But it’s not all about food. The beverage side is experiencing a similar focus. Sommelier of the Year, Garth Beer, is in talks with a Japanese Brewery to do some sake especially for Okku, following the success of the outlet’s introduction of its own branded Rosé, Splash.

While there has been a 21% increase in beverage revenues over the last year, 6% of all beverage revenue has come from sakes. The team is now focusing on Japanese beverages to inject some authenticity into the outlet.

“We will have purely a Japanese port whisky. The Japanese whisky side of things has seen a phenomenal increase,” says South African native Beer.

Alongside this, Beer has worked to revamp the outlet’s entire wine menu, linking it back to the food. This involved removing 50 wines from the list of 115 and adding a further 75. The revamp has seen 70% of tables now ordering wine with their meals compared to 20% last year.

“You don’t want to re-shuffle revenue,” believes Beer. “You don’t want to take away revenue from the bar and put it into the wine. You want to create additional. We revamped the wine list so it is more food-friendly; slightly lighter; fruitier and fresh. That’s what we’ve started to do with sake.”

Splash, developed for Okku, has a strong organic background. Since its launch three months ago, the venue has sold almost 100 of 300 bottles. This focus for bio-dynamic, organic and sustainable food and drink is something that will be ongoing.

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Class a-team
Where wine is concerned, a focus has been getting the team to know what it is selling and what flavour profiles it works best with.

“The most important thing for me is that I don’t want to be the only person that can talk about wine,” says Beer. “One of the great things I’ve seen over this last year through training is the guys were a bit apprehensive; they didn’t even want to talk about wine by glass to begin with. They had the knowledge but weren’t confident in that knowledge.

After the training sessions we’ve done – they are happy to sell up to AED500 ($136) on their
own.”

And this also applies to the bar area too, which has seen cocktail sales rocket. But you need knowledge across the board to be able to boost sales says Brett Bell, head bartender and mixologist at Okku.

Bell joined the outlet as floor staff when it opened. This experience has allowed him to train the bar team on the food and what flavours work well with which drinks.

“We went along the lines of using similar ingredients they used in the kitchen such as yuzu, for example. A lot of the cocktails use yuzu. If they [customer] have a cocktail there are going to be certain ingredients that hint at dishes. All these Japanese products are very rare in other places in the world so we are lucky to work with this stuff.”

As part of creating unique flavours, Okku has started phasing out the use of syrups.

“When you are drinking something – you want that freshness – it might not taste the same every single time but if you were to add a syrup or puree you kind of get the same thing all the time and people get bored of it – it has been very successful and people are responding to it,” says Bell.

The cocktail sales increase is down to the bar team being given the freedom to work with chefs and play with different flavours, believes Eggberry.

“All the new ingredients we are getting mean we are all able to be that bit more creative. For example we got asked to make a Japanese Bloody Mary so we played around with flavours.
This drink is creating such a buzz in the bar that the guests are picking up on it,” he says.
But it’s not straightforward to have both the bar and restaurant operating with equal strength: “It’s a huge challenge,” says Thesleff.

“In the first year it was like are you a restaurant or a bar? When you go to London, Paris, New York – they have both. Not having the right spirit behind the bar would be like not having black cod in the kitchen. They go hand in hand – it’s the complete experience,” he adds.

Thesleff says this rigid black or white attitude surprised people when Okku was hitting the numbers it was for both F&B: “People were like this can’t be right – you’re either one or the other. But actually no, we were right down the middle.”

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Future
And it’s certainly risen to the challenge, smashing all expectations. After London, we will witness Okku Casablanca in Morocco and a diffusion concept called ‘O’ by Okku in Jeddah scheduled to open in Q1 2013 followed by Riyadh within 12 months. Plans are already underway for Okku Las Vegas, Mumbai and Singapore in 2014.

But its breathtaking success does not mean Okku will now rest on its laurels.

“Being based in Dubai is not a good enough reason for us to sit back and say we’re good here – we’re going into the lion’s den. It’s very exciting but it’s very scary too,” says Thesleff.

Training will continue to be an area of focus: “We have to inject the DNA so heavily within our teams so when we start and as our team spreads they have to bring that DNA with them,” says Thesleff.

However, it seems the growing popularity of the brand has foretold of Okku’s success.

“We’re going to hit the big cities and give them a run for their money. If you look at the staff that are interviewing in these places – it is the crème de la crème – you’d never expect them to come to a brand out of here, but they love the idea of combining the food, drink and late nights – the tri factor; it’s interesting,” Thesleff concludes.