Review

Mistletoe and Wine

28th November 2016

As the festive season approaches and 2016 comes to an end we’ve been collecting our thoughts and reflecting upon the year that’s past.

The Reinvigoration of Café Rouge by James Spragg

26th February 2016

I remember reading an article about restaurant brand management in these pages by Tony Hughes. He noted a certain pattern of behaviour for operators who come in new to a brand they’ve inherited – paraphrasing, he said they cannot help but criticise anything and everything, and then some. I totally agree. Hughes’ words were ringing in my ears as I sat down to write this article, after Propel asked me to pen my thoughts on the transformation programme at Café Rouge. So let me just start by saying this is, and always was, a fantastic brand. There were some very specific reasons as to why it had perhaps lost its way in recent times, which I plan to touch on, before giving a flavour of what we’ve done in the past 12 months, and what we intend to do next.