A cut above the rest

Ted Docherty is thinking about meat. Not what he's going to have for his tea. Not about what he's going to buy over the next few days. Not even about how prices are going to move in the coming weeks and months. Docherty thinks about meat on a bigger scale.

"I worry for meat long term," he says. "There's a movement against it and we can't really win on the politics. Meat is a drain on resources. It's going to get rarer over the next 200 to 300 years." Fortunately, this distant crisis is unlikely to hinder progress in the pub concept operated by Docherty and his partner Dion Korving.

Tailor Made Steaks currently consists of four large food-led leaseholds between Bristol and Surrey, three of them with Brakspear, one with Greene King. As the name suggests, their defining feature is that diners can order their steak by the ounce any size they like, and it's sliced in front of them on a butcher's block.

The idea works. In the evenings 50% of dishes sold are steaks and 75% of those are tailor-made. Brakspear has had enough confidence in it to invest £250,000 in the latest outlet, the White Hart near Henley, Oxfordshire, a smart, expansive 120-

cover pub-restaurant that also includes a dozen letting rooms.

But the road here has been neither straight nor smooth. The story of Tailor Made Steaks, like any entrepreneurial venture, is bound up with Docherty's own life, a story that twists and turns with the fortunes of his South African homeland, personal tragedy and the risky business of business itself.

Tailor-made beginnings​

Docherty first arrived in Britain in the late 1980s as a backpacker among many, discovering a world from which apartheid South Africa had been ostracised. And like many he paid his way by working behind bars. He was different, though, in that he had already launched a career in catering back home. Young's Brewery spotted his talent and within a couple of years he was managing one of its pubs.

By then, though, Nelson Mandela had been released. "The dynamics of South Africa changed," he says. "It was a new country, it was back in

the sporting arena. Friends there wanted me to open a bar with them, so I went back."

Docherty proved his abilities as an independent operator, running four bars in Johannesburg and Pretoria. As the century turned he felt he could do the same in the UK so he returned — in a move that at first looked like a big mistake.

"I came back to a fuel crisis, foot and mouth and flooding. And the pub industry had changed dramatically. I lost my confidence. I wasn't sure that what we wanted to do would work," he says.

"But I talked to Greene King and the company persuaded me to take the manager's role at the Plough in Wokingham, Berkshire. It did tremendously well and I got my confidence back."

Greene King was happy, too, and offered him a 15-year lease on the Percy Arms in Guildford, Surrey, where he boosted the annual take from £180,000 to £1.5m. It was here that Tailor Made Steaks was born.

"In South Africa it's a common way of offering meat, but its origins are in the US. It allows people to choose. It doesn't mean you have to have a big steak. It can be small. You can have a three-ounce steak if you want.

"We take time over the quality of the meat. It's not cheap. It's from grain-fed cattle and it's aged 28 days. We're using Australian beef at the moment. Most cattle here just graze and the more a cow's wandering around in the fields the tougher the meat gets. That's a fact of life.

"And we follow that philosophy of quality through the whole business — everything's as good as it can be.

"The way I see it, there is an opportunity for us to exceed a customer's expectations. Whatever their mood, when they arrive here we have to make them feel like the most important person in the pub — and we have to do that with everyone.

"It's emotional intelligence we're looking for from staff, and you can spend a lot of time looking for that and not finding it," he says. "Service like that can't be trained. It's something you're born with. I think that's why foreigners are better at service. The British just don't like to serve!"

Difficulties​

Tailor Made Steaks was never going to be a one-off, but his second was his "big property mistake". He realised he wouldn't make money on a lease unless it could take £15,000 to £20,000 a week.

In 2008 two pubs that fitted the bill came along at once. "We decided we'd have both, and sell the Percy. We would be swapping one good site for two we knew we could build up."

Then, at that crucial moment in the evolution of the business, disaster struck. Docherty's wife was diagnosed with leukemia. She died last summer.

"It was the hardest year of my life. I don't know how the hell we survived it. We had two teenage daughters and I was driving up and down the M4 between family and pubs and hospital. The round trip from home to the Royal Marsden alone was 100 miles. The Warwick (near Bristol) was opening, we were trying to sell the Percy.

"It was unbelievable. I was living on two hours sleep a night. But what were the options? I had to be with the kids and my wife, I was employing 60 or 70 people and I still had to find them their pay cheque."

The staff, though, turned out to be part of the solution. "I was forced to delegate, to give them the authority to make decisions, and I was amazed at what they could do.

"It was alarming, but we got through it. We sold the Percy, got our cash flow back and got onto an even keel."

Looking ahead ​

Now Docherty is contemplating the future. He's convinced he's on a winner, but expansion is not easy.

"We know what we want. There's been a re-emergence of steak houses; there's definitely a market there and we're in a good place to expand. But we don't quite know how we're going to achieve it.

"I'd love to get into the freehold market. The banking crisis has stopped us doing that, but we do need to get into a position where we can be masters of our own destiny.

"I've spoken to venture capitalists in the past and never felt ready to commit. We pay a lot of rent, £550,000 a year, and to a venture capitalist that changes the equation. If we owned freeholds it would be different. But we'll look at that again. If the relationship is just about money, though, it breeds resentment. There's no such thing as a silent partner."

Docherty is also rethinking his branding. "I've never really been a brand person. My pubs have always been very bespoke. The company is only called Tailor Made Steaks by default. We'll keep it as a menu that can link the pubs together, but there may be a better name for the group. 'Ted's Grills'? I'm not a marketeer."

It looks like there may a be a few more twists and turns in the Ted Docherty story yet.

'MY KIND OF PUB'​

"Mitchells & Butlers pub the Inn on the Lake, in Godalming, Surrey — it's got good staff and a relaxed atmosphere. I also like the Mulberry in Chiddingfold, Chris Evans's place. It does good food. But if I want a steak I go to one of my own pubs. Nobody else does steak as well. The only trouble is, you end up working."