The popularity of business breakfasts

Giacomo Maccioni, the general manager of Cecconi’s

A recent conversation with show business journalist Baz Bamigboye reminded me how different business lunches are now from 25 years ago, when he used to dine at my former restaurant L’Escargot in Greek Street.

We fondly recalled the TBL, which for younger readers unfamiliar with the expression, is short-hand for a “two-bottle lunch”, a phenomenon that has long since evaporated. In fact, Bamigboye observed, business lunches are in general much rarer these days: “When I need to meet someone I invariably arrange to meet them for breakfast in a restaurant because it saves so much time.”

So what marks out a restaurant that opens for breakfast? To find out, I meet Giacomo Maccioni, the general manager of Cecconi’s restaurant in Mayfair, which serves up to 180 breakfasts a morning. Our breakfast features French toast, granola with yoghurt, honey and mixed berries and two pots of English breakfast tea.

Maccioni’s 20-year career at the restaurant has given him a good perspective on the growing trend for people to hold breakfast meetings in restaurants. Cecconi’s, like the nearby Wolseley, is a popular breakfast venue for hedge fund managers working in the area and also attracts those who work in the fashion industry in Bond Street.

The 48-year-old, originally from the west coast of Sardinia, started at Cecconi’s as a waiter when, like so many other restaurants, it opened only for lunch and dinner. Among his duties then was maintaining the stock of spare jackets and ties without which no customer was allowed in. Enzo Cecconi, the original owner, once turned away the actor Mel Gibson for refusing to follow the dress code. An exception, though, was made for the British boxer Frank Bruno because none of the restaurant’s jackets was big enough.

When Nick Jones, chief executive and founder of London private members’ club Soho House, bought Cecconi’s in 2005, he decided to open the restaurant for breakfast. At the beginning, business was slow. “We were getting to work at 4am but only serving 20 customers all morning. It was very disheartening,” Maccioni says.

An executive review revealed three reasons for this initial lack of success. The first, Maccioni admits, was personal. “I’m Italian so I am not in the habit of eating breakfast. But I realised that if I wanted this part of our business to be successful, then I would have to give it every inch of my effort.”

The second reason was the menu – it was too long, and the layout too fussy. So they redesigned it to help customers choose their breakfast quickly while remaining focused on business. It is now one single sheet, with the drinks at the top and the 20 odd breakfast dishes, including scrambled eggs with generously sliced black truffles (priced at only £10), listed underneath.

The final improvement involved a complete reorganisation of the kitchen and waiting staff to ensure that the breakfast service was as professional as at lunch and dinner. This meant a new rota for the cooks; a reorganisation of the timing of deliveries to ensure that they arrive long before the first customers; and a careful grouping of the waiting staff. “What I quickly realised is that breakfast customers like to be served by the same faces,” Maccioni says. The staffing levels are the same as for lunch or dinner, although there is one extra person on the espresso machine. At 6.45 every morning, the waiters hold a brief meeting with the cooks, as they do 15 minutes before the start of the lunch and dinner services, to run through the list of reservations and any special requests.

To ensure that they can meet customers’ expectations of a 30-minute breakfast meeting, Maccioni introduced something he learnt from Enzo Cecconi.

“When customers used to come in for an apéritif in the evening we used to offer them a little finger sandwich to nibble on”, he says. (Italians never serve an apéritif without food). So he decided to reverse the tradition. “Now we offer every customer the first glass of freshly squeezed orange or grapefruit juice with our compliments. It gets the whole service moving,” he says. The aim, then, is to get coffee on the table in two to three minutes with the full English breakfast, “the most complicated dish of all with sausages, bacon, eggs and roast tomatoes, served in no more than six or seven”. Maccioni says he has learnt from his early experiments as a breakfast restaurateur and declares he is fully committed to it now. Nonetheless, I couldn’t help but notice that the Italian did not finish his French toast.

www.cecconis.co.uk

nicholas.lander@ft.com

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