I like Giraffe. There's one of their restaurants in Heathrow Airport and it always strikes me as a haven of sanity and decent food at reasonable prices. They do good fresh salads, quality coffee and smoothies. The service is efficient and it is always busy.
Tesco bought the Giraffe chain last year and have opened a Giraffe in Silverburn, attached to their store. It was reviewed in Saturday's Herald and a terrible review it is too. Nothing - service, food, atmosphere - got good marks. The food earned 2 points out of 5. The dishes ordered didn't contain the fancy ingredients the posh menu said they would. One dish even contained what looked like tomato ketchup.
The Silverburn Giraffe is close to a Nando's. On the day the reviewer visited, Nando's was full and Giraffe mostly empty. It's just along from Wagamama and I'll bet that was quite lively too. There's also a 'handmade burger' place in that group of restaurants. These are all chains. They operate the same menu in every branch. Their food and service are quality-controlled. They all charge the same prices almost to within a pound of each other.
The Giraffe prices are higher than any of these.
I know little about the restaurant business - or the supermarket business, come to that, except as a customer. But I've got a few questions:
Why did Tesco decide to get into the restaurant business? And why now? For decades, those of us who work in the public sector have been urged to look at how things are done in the private sector because the private sector does things so much better. But even I can see the flaws in Tesco's decision to diversify by buying a restaurant chain, an area they have no experience in, when they are already struggling to hold their own in the supermarket business - which they do or should know about - against Lidl, Aldi and Home Bargains. The old adage 'stick to what you know' comes to mind.
And who did the market research before the restaurant opened in Silverburn? A quick swatch (as we say in Glasgow) at the menus of nearby restaurants would give you an idea of (1) how much competition you're going to have; (2) what you can charge if you're going to compete with them; and (3) the blindingly bleedin obvious fact that you need a unique selling point.
Nando's is Thai/Chinese fusion and offers mainly chicken dishes. Not to my taste, since I reckon peri-peri sauce is mostly used to disguise the fact that chicken these days has no taste. Wagamama is Japanese/Chinese fusion and has the added excitement of chopsticks, which I've never got the hang of myself but I can see young people love them. My sister and I love the Wagmama spicy noodles and chicken but I doubt if any of the men in my family would eat there more than once. They'd be next door wrapping their gnashers round a handmade burger.
I'm not sure what the unique selling-point of Giraffe at Silverburn is meant to be. I hope Tesco either get these restaurants right or get them sold to people who know what they're doing.
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