SCOTT’S has opened its first branch, in Richmond. While that is a fillip for the south-west London borough, it’s also a telltale development. Time was when the venerable Mayfair restaurant would have plumped for the City or Canary Wharf. Instead, it’s opted for the suburbs.
Richmond is affluent all right, and its riverside is cosmopolitan, upmarket and buzzy — round the corner from Scott’s is an outlet of The Ivy, also owned by restaurateur Richard Caring. Whether Richmond can stomach Scott’s prices of £40 for fruits de mer, £46 for Dover sole and a bottle of white Burgundy Grand Cru at £1200 remains to be seen. To be fair, they are at the top end of the menu and wine list. They’re also cheaper than the mother ship —Dover sole in Mount Street is £48 and fruits de mer £50, and it carries several bottles at more than £1000.
Nevertheless, the new Scott’s is pitching high, at a level that sits happily with expense accounts in finance, law, accountancy, insurance. The holders of those accounts now work from home part of the week, in neighbourhoods like Richmond — hence the choice of location.
The burghers of the City of London Corporation and the managers of Canary Wharf should be alarmed. It comes, too, as research from OpenTable shows that the number of diners making reservations through its system across the UK rose by 18%in September but in London it fell by 14%.
Meanwhile, data from CGA by Nielsen IQ and Alix Partners reveals the City has lost 14% of its licensed premises in the past two years.
Lockdowns and restrictions on commuting and tourism were to blame. The City’s hospitality trade was hit harder than most by Covid.
We’ve moved on since then, however, and life has settled into a pattern — one that suggests WFH, or hybrid working, is here to stay. Rather than journey into town, it’s easier for a lawyer and client, both at home in SW postcodes, to meet for lunch or dinner at the local Scott’s in Richmond.
While this is good for them and for Scott’s in Richmond, it cannot be positive for the capital as a whole. The City (and with it, Canary Wharf) did not become the world’s leading financial centre by virtue of its rainmakers preferring to WFH and their offices remaining at best, half-empty.
What is not obvious is any attempt by the authorities that run the City, run London, to do anything about it. That includes the City Corporation and Canary Wharf’s owners, but also the Mayor of London, Transport for London and the Government.
Covid and the subsequent trend towards working from home coincided with a boss of City Hall who has displayed little tangible support for business and an occupier of 10 Downing Street who famously promised to “f*** business”. Sadiq Khan is still in situ, but Boris Johnson has gone.
In Johnson’s place we have a Prime Minister who has come in, all guns blazing, vowing to launch “Big Bang 2.0”, freeing the City of red tape and stifling regulation. Financial services, Liz Truss and her advisers have determined, is vital for increased economic growth.
Before the first Big Bang in 1986, I was working in the Square Mile, and it was nothing like it is today. Not least because there was hardly anywhere to get a decent meal: the area was a culinary desert. Following the great explosion and the advent of the foreign investment banks, smart restaurants arrived in their droves.
The City transformed into a concentrated, dynamic, relentless hub, with powerbrokers striking deals over breakfast, lunch and dinner. That energy spilled over too, into the West End. Indeed, I would go so far as to attribute much of London’s modern renaissance to Big Bang.
Here we are again. Truss wants to do something similar. Loving the City, though, is more than lifting the cap on bankers’ bonuses, it’s also about creating the right physical environment for its unique, world-beating alchemy. WFH, aided by Scott’s in Richmond, will not produce that same magic.
Chris Blackhurst is the author of Too Big To Jail: Inside HSBC, the Mexican drug cartels and the greatest banking scandal of the century (Macmillan)
