Eric Yu

Eric Yu

CONTROLLING INTEREST

ERIC YU

interviews, controlling interest, october 2006, COMMENTS

On 15 September, Breakfast Group MD Eric Yu was in court in Westminster arguing to extend the hours of his Shaftsbury Avenue venue Bar Rumba, an enduring and respected dance club that currently trades until 6am - with a liquor licence til 3am.

At the same time south of the river, final preparations were being made for DJ Deep to play the opening soulful house allnighter Substance at another Breakfast Group venue, The Annexe, a 200 capacity Brixton basement newly converted from its former guise as SubStation South.

When Eric gave his growing portfolio of venues a name in the early ‘90s he chose The Breakfast Group because, he remembers, “the one common factor that spanned the venues was that they were all late night, and when the managers finished work it’d be 6am or 7am and they’d go for breakfast.”

Not that he’s a club operator. In fact he’s positively averse to the definition, grudgingly accepting it as a description of The Annexe (‘because it functions as an old fashioned club’), but adamant that it be kept away from his other venues - which as well as Bar Rumba include Opium, The Social, Salvador and Amanda and Pop, all located in the West End.

“When I open a unit I go around telling people not to call it a club,” he says defiantly. “I don’t like the word because it implies limitations. When I started in this business, ‘club’ meant a venue that was only open fifteen hours a week, that didn’t serve food and that had maybe eight spirits behind the bar. And that was it. When you say club, the public thinks Ikon or Maverick or Ministry of Sound. That is not the kind of venue we run.”

With a background in chartered accountancy Eric Yu began his career in late night leisure from an atypical approach. Wanting an outlet for his dual passions of music and design, he bought his first venture Villa Stefano in 1991 and added Bar Rumba soon afterwards, in 1993. From the start he was motivated to do things differently - in part as a response to perceived weaknesses in the existing scene.

“At that time, the late night trade in London wasn’t well developed,” he remembers. “It was typically run by people who had stumbled upon it, and there was little significant investment. Where there were good venues, they were often under utilised. In the West End there was the potential to trade 24 hours a day, seven days a week, and yet these assets, often big assets, were only opened for a few hours on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights. Which seemed like madness to me. And an obvious opportunity.”

With most of his eight businesses situated in basements, the extent to which Yu could capitalise on daytime trade was limited. But by “looking at the biggest horizon possible” he has established some exceptionally strong propositions that are favoured by an enviably broad clientele.

The Annexe is somewhat of an anomaly, situated at the end of the Victoria line just off Brixton Road and, with its pared down aesthetic and powerful sound system, earmarked strictly for after dark action. But far from an afterthought, the relaunch of this venue shows trademark operational savvy. Brixton, which Yu describes affectionately as ‘a bit of a war zone’, is nevertheless experiencing a period of creative vibrancy centred around its eclectic urban music scene. Whilst Vauxhall’s newly acquired gay village status has drawn the club’s original crowd, muscle men have been seamlessly replaced by drum ’n’ bass and soulful house heads. Head of promotions and marketing for the Group, Della Khoury has drawn established relationships with promoters at Bar Rumba to build weekends at the club - with the connection being played up in The Annexe’s marketing - but has at the same time been inundated with requests from new promoters wanting to use the brilliant, basic basement space. She’s setting out to be adventurous with the club’s programming, hoping to emulate the success of a former Annexe venture that was explored when the Group temporarily traded a new acquisition under the moniker, whilst seeking planning permission to develop bar/restaurant Opium on the site. That venue was the breeding ground for two of London’s favourite club nights: Erol Alkan’s awesome, forward thinking indie disco Trash, now at The End, and chic gay night DTPM, now housed by Fabric. If the new Annexe’s legacy is as potent, her job will be well done.

Eric attributes the recent renaissance of Brixton’s club scene to the costs associated with operating in central London. “A lot of people who want to put dance venues together probably cannot find opportunities - or the money - to do that in the more salubrious parts of London, so they’ve gravitated outwards. Brixton has places that are lower cost, that allow operators and promoters to make money on people buying beer and soft drinks, whereas in the West End operators are reliant on cocktail and champagne sales. That’s why the music-led club scene over there, with the exception of a few venues, no longer exists.”

This drift of musical credibility from central London to its outskirts isn’t limited to the Breakfast Group’s venues. In the West End, new venues are typically celebrity rather than musically driven. Going to Boujis or Umbaba is about a new kind of escapism: no longer powerful sound systems and thundering 4/4 rhythms but cocktails, champagne and celebrities.

“Everybody can live the dream and the dream is no longer about the music, it’s about the lifestyle - albeit a very shallow one,” says Eric. This obsession with fashion and fast cash is, according to Yu, one of the biggest challenges currently facing central London’s late night scene.

“There’s a real short termism surrounding the bar scene now,” he considers. “Certain operators are opting to cater for the Fulham/Chelsea/San Tropez set, charging £1,000 a table, trying to take £30k a night, but they know full well that by doing that, their time in the sun will be short lived - that customers are not going to be ordering magnums of Cristal in the same club for more than six or nine months at the very most before they move onto the next. And once the clubs cease to be fashionable, what happens then? We’ve seen venues make minor alternations to their design and invite people in to begin the nine-month cycle again, with varying degrees of success. A lot of these venues are all about spin. When you turn on the lights on at the end of the night there’s no substance there.”

The longevity of Yu’s operations indicates a very different philosophy. The company invests significantly in its openings, creating a solid foundation of quality in food, music, drinks, service, design and technology that engenders and justifies the loyalty of the company’s passionate customers. At 13 years old Bar Rumba proves beyond doubt that the right approach can breed incredible longevity and, particularly given the venue’s location, represents a huge achievement.

“It shows that if you offer a friendly reception, good value entry, a good bar with reasonable drinks, friendly service and value for money - and ultimately a good sound system, lights, great DJs and good opening hours – then clubs can last.”

So back to that issue of opening hours over which Yu is currently in conversation, in court, with Westminster Council. Whilst some councils in London have been supportive of operators seeking appropriate extensions in order to provide their customers with a better clubbing experience, Westminster Council have taken the opposite approach, maintaining a tight check on liquor licences beyond 3am in a designated ‘stress zone’ around Leicester Square, within which Bar Rumba sits. The venue already trades until 6am but, says Eric, closing the bar at 3am is at the least confusing to customers, and at the most will put them off altogether.

“It’ll be interesting to see how we fare since we have such an extraordinary case,” considers Eric. Asked what he thinks the effect of Westminster’s policy will be, he muses: “the West End is where tourists and visitors inevitably gravitate, in much the same way that when you go to NY you go to Manhattan rather than into the Bronx, which to some extent gives us a captive market. But Westminster Council’s policy does put the West End at a commercial disadvantage since all around us are ploughing a different furrow.

“I imagine that there will be so much pressure exerted on Westminster that we should begin to see some progress. Hopefully Bar Rumba will be the first.”

As well as trips to court, also on the agenda for Eric is the daily task of staying ahead in the fast moving bar scene: influenced by the constant influx of new venues, the march of technology and the increasing appeal of out-of-town alternatives. The internet’s impact on the capital’s club scene has been huge, providing a lot more perfect information to customers and allowing them to make spur-of-the-moment choices with greater confidence. The net result is that operators find it difficult to predict levels of business as confidently as they once could - a challenge compounded by the drift away from central London not just by music driven clubs and their audiences, but by bar and restaurant goers able to afford West End prices who are increasingly attracted by venues in the outlying communities in which they live.

“Whereas before if you wanted good food and drink you had no choice but to come into the West End, now you can find good food in London’s periphery. Why should people go through the hassle of coming into central London on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday nights when can they can get it on their doorstep at a fraction of the cost?” he considers.
Out in Brixton, these issues loom less large.

Words: Jerry Gilbert

Photograph: Jim Ellam

From: October 2006 Issue

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