Tanners, Plymouth

Chris and James Tanner run the fine dining restaurant Tanners, the brasserie Barbican Kitchen and the recently opened Kitchen Café, all in Plymouth. They describe their approach to cooking as very focused, and their Modern British food style as simplistic, using locally sourced West Country ingredients as much as possible. After finishing school, James studied Hotel Management, while Chris studied for a City and Guilds in catering, before going on to work in a number of restaurants, sometimes together. Eventually James was invited by the Roux brothers to work with them in the US, while Chris, after a spell as commis chef at Le Gavroche, worked with them around the world at places such as The Point resort and Hotel Diva. James returned to England to take a job at the two Michelin starred Lettonie, Bath under Martin Blunos and they opened Tanners in 1999 in one of Plymouth’s oldest buildings. Their second restaurant, The Barbican Kitchen opened in 2007. The brothers have also had substantial television careers, appearing on shows such as Food Network Daily, Good Food Live and their own series The Tanner Brothers. James and Chris have also appeared as guests on ITV’s This Morning. So first and foremost thank you very much for inviting me down to Tanners today. Let's start by getting an understanding of Tanners as a business. Tell us what you have in terms of restaurants, operations, covers you do, sites that you run. (CT) We run Tanners which is the fine dining restaurant and this year will be our twelfth. We serve round about 60 covers, open Tuesday to Saturday, closed Sundays and Mondays. Alongside that we've got the Barbican Kitchen which is our brasserie, which is a seven day week operation, big, big volume of people, over 1,000 every week that come through that operation. And we've just opened the Kitchen Cafe. Why the Barbican seven days and the other one five? (CT) Predominantly I think because of the area that it's in. It's on the Barbican, so it can be seasonal, however, because it's also in the same site as Plymouth Gin that really drives the amount of people that come through. It's such a diverse mix of people & clients that come through there. Tanners is different, a very different operation logistically, a hard site to run purely as it's a mediaeval building dating back to 1490 it's a succession of rooms which demands much more on the front of house staff and it was always, when we first started off, we needed to get at least a day off which didn't happen for quite a few years and we decided to close Tanners, on Sundays and Mondays. We've grown again, as now alongside the Brasserie operation is the kitchen café which we opened about four weeks ago, it's just a little addition really, it's very simple, coffees, cakes, pastries, sandwiches, that kind of thing, ideally to complement what we do there in the Barbican site, as it is a heritage site. So how do you Chris and James divide your time between the business then? Who does what role? (JT) Dividing our time sometimes it used to be a case of, "Right where are you going today?" "Right well I'm down at the Brasserie, or I'm at Tanners," either/or but as the years have gone on we've obviously got a head chef in place now at the Brasserie and we're up to about a team of about ten and that's over a seven day week, so always keep an eye on it as an operation but you've got to let your team, do their job. It's a very busy place and there's a lot to organise now with holiday entitlements always on the increase and everything else that come with managing staff and restaurants, so it is a bit of a juggling act. However, they run a very good ship down there at the Barbican and it is a case of now we've finally got to the point where you can rock up, do a service, you haven't got to worry about the doing mise en place there in the morning and a lot more of our time is always at Tanners Restaurant. When we first opened the Brasserie we split and I went down to run the Brasserie and stayed down there, but 18 months on we'd have a head chef in place. Chris and did swap around at times, but out of the two or three sites we now run, even when we opened the café there was an initial, "Let's stay down here for the first couple of weeks," Tanners to us it's a little bit more personal I think and where it all began and that's the one with our name above the door. And in terms of different food styles, you know you say one's fine dining, one's Brasserie, is it important in the business then to diversify what you do commercially? (CT) Yes I would say, I mean you say fine dining, I think our main ethos behind all of it initially is it doesn't matter what you do as long as you do it properly. That was drummed in to me from, a fairly early age and I've sort of been in the industry now for 28, 29 years and worked at different establishments , whether it's three star Michelin to exclusive New York operations, France, to the City of London. I think it's just doing it differently and most importantly I think for us now, 12 years on, bearing in mind we didn't have basically a pot to piss in when we started, is that it's become"¦ our playground really, that's where we want to"¦you know, we can play with a few bits, not complicate it. If that's well received by the clients then hopefully we're doing a good job really. Commercially, we make the decisions together, there's nobody else involved in what we do, there's no shareholders or anything like that. It's nice I mean our board meetings are generally on a Saturday night about half one in the morning with a few Peronis or Kasteel Cru depending what's"¦literally no seriously. ((laughs)) No I can imagine and why not? (CT) And we've come up with some great ideas at those meeting and also concepts, but it is difficult. It's hard, you know, there's a lot of sacrifice that's gone into where we are today, we've both got kids, and it's trying to get the whole balance right. I think you've got to be fairly strong willed and focused on exactly what you do and just look at the whole bigger picture because all these people you employee are looking at you to lead them and it's like James said earlier you don't want to stifle that creativity, you know, let's cut the shit it's a young man's game there's some good talent coming through. It's no different to what I saw 20 odd years ago it's just everything's different now with just the social media side of it and people's expectations Do you embrace the whole social media side of it? I've seen you both personally on Twitter but do you have a Tanners' Twitter and do you have the Facebook sort of stuff? (CT) The three sites are all on twitter, and we are. Yeah I'll be honest we're not on facebook"¦we haven't really"¦we haven't done Facebook it's the time, it's the time with it really. So you don't have any dedicated marketing behind you like a PR company or anything like that? (CT) No. We never have done, we've never had a PR no. (JT) I think TV shows of five million help, you know, that's the bonus of eight years. So yeah, it's good for business but going back to your original question about the commercial viability of the businesses it's great because we've got something now in each section and also where we are. We're not central London, we're not Manchester, we're not an idyllic little place by the sea that's 30 covers or anything like that, we're in a city centre, which is a big city in the south west, we've got high end, we've got mid market but I'll be honest nowadays with the trend of food I can't really tell you what mid market is any more because on one table at the Brasserie for example you'd have a millionaire on the next table you'd have a student and I think"¦ But that's good isn't it? (JT) Yeah that's fantastic we embrace it I think it's brilliant and it's great to hit all markets, and now with the, coffee shop, if you want a Devon cream tea, you want a quick sandwich, or someone in your office block. We offer great coffee with freshly ground beans and a nice bit of local ham with some mustard and salad it's not rocket science, have a sticky bun on the way out, thanks very much, you're hitting something for every market and I'm a great believer in wherever you are you've got to cook for what your public want around you. It's all very well, you could go to somewhere and you'd have this young hot shot chef that wants to put a foam and puree on everything and he's doing six covers, now if you own that business you're in the shit and you're not making money"¦ Yeah big time. (JT) "¦and you're not making money, you're not making money and you can be the best chef in the world but if you don't do it business-wise you're screwed and what's the point if it doesn't work and you've got so much on the line. Absolutely. (JT) Don't get me wrong we turnover a lot of money and a lot of money goes back out again to pay the bills, I don't need to sit here and say but with escalating food prices and different legislations that have come in and, we've always done everything by the book, we're not a couple of wide boy wheeler dealers that'll start up and go under and reinvent the company in a different name the next week, it's business and it's something we've built up, we want to tap into even more, we've still got a few years left in us yet definitely and by working with all the different markets and getting into the outside catering operation side, where there are the biggest numbers, for our company so far we've catered for 550 people, don't get me wrong I've been to ones before, organised gala dinner events with1,000 and 2,000 I mean brilliant, fantastic, so we're always looking at different angles and opportunities for Tanners as a business and brand to move forward. James, you mentioned TV there and I guess it's impossible to talk to you and not talk about the TV, if you use the term celebrity chef, whatever that means, it will divide opinion"¦ (JT) Yeah. "¦what's your take on the term celebrity chef? (JT) To me that was something that was invented years ago, probably about eight years ago or so and you're a celebrity chef and you're the guy on the telly and,