Robert Newmark

Robert Newmark

controlling interest

East end adventure

features, September 2007, COMMENTS

Robert Newmark’s Beach Blanket Babylon has attracted a cult following in its native Notting Hill. But what will the Shoreditch set make of the concept? Robert speaks to Jerry Gilbert ahead of his latest landmark project launch

Call it an excursion from the West End to the Worst End ... or from the Mild West to the Sixth Circle of Hell, but either way a move from the leafy backstreets of suburban Notting Hill to the unforgiving backwaters of Shoreditch is not for the faint-hearted.

But then in 30 years of operating Robert Newmark has rarely shirked a challenge. In 1996 he unwittingly created the prototype for ‘metrosexuality’ at Freedom Bar in Soho - a decade before the term was coined - and at Beach Blanket Babylon, his exclusive restaurant in West Eleven, with its gothic, Gaudiesque interior embracing rooms like The Chapel, The Crypt and The Scullery, he has contrived a cross between a Hammer House of Horrors set and your wildest fantasy.

So how on earth did he get a visa to travel so far East, and bridge the cultural oasis with Shoreditch’s emerging Bethnal Green Road?

The answers are pretty straightforward. For starters Robert Newmark is a native East Ender, and secondly, despite handing little more than a loose salute to fellow operators he has passed along the way, he has ultimate respect for Nick Jones, who recently opened Shoreditch House off the same arterial road that already hosts popular hang-outs like Les Trois Garçons and Green and Red.

Set to open in September, the new BBB will service the local cultural community from an imposing warehouse with four floors and roof garden. It will incorporate a 150-seat ground floor restaurant/brasserie with open kitchens and a central marble bar. While a manned cage lift travels south into the basement cocktail bar and VIP area, further up the building guests will be mesmerised by a combo of cocktail bar, roof terrace, contemporary art gallery, private members lounge and outdoor cinema.

After growing up in the area Robert Newmark admits he is somewhat surprised to find himself now doing business there. “It’s not an area I would normally have considered. But seeing how London is developing commercially and residentially it is both exciting and fantastic. The places that are renowned are not necesarily the places to be in today - and although Mayfair has recently reinvented itself, where do you find places of this size in east London?”

Operationally-speaking, this is certainly far from his manor. There is already a feeling that he might have stolen the site from right under the noses of the trois garçons themselves, Hassan Abdullah, Michel Lasserre and Stefan Karlson - Robert notes that their attitude towards him changed profoundly once he had applied to the landlord for change of use, and announced that he was to become their new neighbour. But for all his charm, Robert Newmark is nothing if not forthright.

His confident manner, erudition and general demeanour suggest that he has risen far above an East End working class upbringing and an education which ended when he was 14. It was not long thereafter that he hitched his wagon in a westerly direction.

In the mid-to-late ‘60s everyone wanted to be a photographer, and he was soon apprenticed in Chelsea.

His diversion into catering came when Isaac Tigrett and Peter Morton opened the then über-cool Hard Rock Café in the summer of 1971. It was the first venue that marketed itself by keeping its vast clientele (mostly music industry and media types) queueing outside on Piccadilly for tables.
“It was a really hip hangout in those days. I became friendly with Isaac and one day when he had to pop out he asked me if I would look after the queue. It projected me to an era of godliness and at that point I thought I would like to make money this way.”

Robert found a disused building in Knightsbridge opposite Mr. Chow, and offered a seductive deal by a landlord desperate to offload it, opened Sloane’s Café. “I unashamedly copied the Hard Rock,” he admits.

Financing the enterprise with a bank loan, he was soon hobnobbing in high circles - welcoming people like Dudley Moore and escorting Liza Minelli onto Tramp afterwards. “It was some of the best times of my life.”

After five years, he sold the business to Kennedy Brooks. “I was in LA when the deal was concluded and although it made me nouveau riche I was sad to lose it. However, I was enjoying life so much that wealth was never at the forefront of my mind.”

While living in Paris he monitored the early development of Brioche Dorée, and having been thwarted in his attempts to franchise the operation modified the traditional fast food concept and implanted it into three prime units in Oxford Street. Although the name of the enterprise - Newmark’s Cakes, Bakes & Shakes - may now sound cringeworthy, it was highly successful and became something of a forerunner to Prêt a Manger today.

“I didn’t enjoy the fast food market because it didn’t offer the same kind of lifestyle, but the unit at Oxford Circus sold for the highest price per square metre on record.”
By 1983 he had dispensed with the estate, and was about to raise the stakes. The following year he broke from the traditiion of adapting other people’s ideas and opened his first really seminal venue in Soho - the memorable Bill Stickers.

It had been a Soho sex cinema (known as Exciting Cinema) and was reputedly once owned by the Krays. What the building contractors discovered when they excavated is the stuff of legends.
It cost Newmark nine months of refurbishment time and around £1 million - a lot of money in 1984. But by the following year - a pivotal year in the West End’s fortunes as the French influence swept into town (with the Roger Myers-inspired Café Pelican and Dôme operations) - Bill Stickers, with its outrageous murals, had established Robert Newmark as the king of kitsch. “I wrote the book on high camp,” he smiles.

By the end of the 1990’s the economic recession had descended and the entrepreneur, continuing to move in half-decade cycles, moved on as the venue transmuted yet again into Boardwalk.
Other ventures followed - and each time the operator was able to turn a modest revenue figure into something stratospheric. Examples include The Brighton Arms in Camden High Street - which he converted to the Bar Royale fun pub, giving him the confidence to take on Bar O back in Soho, which was transformed from a Soho tavern into a chic bar with Harold Tillman, the owner of Jaegar. “We rebranded it, restyled it and sales went to £2.4m.”

Following that experience he reverted to working alone on a series of venues including the aforementioned Freedoom (purchased from Marc Almond in 1996, turned into huge profit and today owned by Ken Todd), Mondo and Riki Tik’s. At the end of his tenure there was generally a willing purchaser, usually an emerging plc such as Regent Inns or Urbium (Novus Leisure).
“I have always been fortunate in managing to sell at the right time. I have been very fortunate,” he acknowledges.

By the turn of the millennium Robert Newmark had proved his ability renovate, operate, invigorate and then vacate venues. But there was a nagging frustration. He looked at operators around him and many had managed to brand build and establish a leisure portfolio. Although he was making money it was just through doing deals - not building chains in the way that people like Roger Myers were. “Though the concepts were highly rewarding I felt it was not the best use of my expertise.”

He also sensed there was little loyalty within the faddish, fast-moving turnover of wet-led establishments. “You can get a gin & tonic anywhere but not good food. Bars all the time come in and out of vogue. I wouldn’t do anything today that doesn’t have a good food base.”

Beach Blanket Babylon - a which name had travelled across from San Francisco in 1990 - gave him the chance to change all that. It has had several owner/drivers and yet remains a classic, pulling in a well-heeled crowd of socialites who would be seen the following night at Ivy or Nobu. Unbelievably camp, it’s the kind of baroque place you might expect to find Rufus Wainwright dining when he’s in town.

A major factor in its success has been the influence of operations manager, Graham Rebak. “I got to know Graham at the time it was being acquired and he introduced a lot of interesting ideas. He’s formed a grasp of modern marketing, and understands the concept of chain roll out and branding.
“Graham also brought an air of riskiness to BBB in the areas I wouldn’t have done. He introduced costume jewellry cabinets and it’s things like that which women fall in love with. But it’s all about teamwork - it’s just like making a movie.”

By now Robert’s two sons had grown up and while Rex Newmark and his former girlfriend Sophie Wright - both award-winning chefs from the Westminster College of Food & Wine - head up the kitchen, Robert’s older son Brett runs another family business, the growing $ Grills & Martinis in EC1 which attracts a city crowd.

“Dollar is bling and it’s fun and very Las Vegas. I was looking at the Warhol dollar sign - so I thought it was more interesting to have a sign that is a name so you are immediately in American mode. So then you are forced into conceptualising around it.”

Both BBB and the “Dollar” concept offer enormous potential roll-out, and Robert Newmark, presently bidding for a clutch of seven properties, will wrap them into the seven-strong Dollar portfolio if he is successful (possibly selling the two out-of-town sites in the process).

“As for Beach Blanket, I have two properties in Miami and I have a strong intention to take Beach Blanket overseas. The culture of London is absolutely unique - so I don’t want to go north and have to modify the concept. Why go out of your way to educate people - I’d rather take it to somewhere such as Europe or America where they already understand the benefits.”

And so he refocuses on Shoreditch - and the confidence that the Soho House Group’s arrival has given him.

In fact he is impressed by the whole notion of brand stretching. “Clothing with Lacoste or the Buddha Bar people, Carluccio with his bolt-on shop - this is what creates a talking point. It raises it to another level.”

He will spend £2m on the Shoreditch conversion with architect Jonathan Clarke (who was also the architect for Smith’s of Smithfield) - but the visible signs will be minimalistic. “If you over-design in Shoreditch it would backfire. It would be really sad to take a warehouse, with its original features and bastardise it; you need to work within your space.”

In that sense it will have few similarities to Notting Hill and as far as the cookie-cutter, brand rollout ideal goes, Robert believes “we are 20 years on from that - there’s no interest in recreating [an idea]. A lot of brands that have been rolled out identically simply haven’t worked. It’s a myth that they all have to look the same.

“I feel that what a lot of people fail to understand is that this sector is a fast moving target, and those people at the top of their mini empire need to keep a finger on the button all the times.”
He’ll never make the mistake of complacency, he promises. “My mobile phone is on 25 hours a day, and will be for the foreseeable future; not until I’ve £200m cash in the bank, will I be tempted to turn it off now and again.”

As he reviews his career Robert Newmark says he has few regrets - but the daftest thing he did was to issue a drinking challenge to Julian Lennon - resulting in both men downing 21 x B52’s. “It was a competition to see who could throw themselves down a flight of stairs in the most convincing fashion. London had never seen anything like it.”

Words: Jerry Gilbert

From: September 2007

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