Upcycling of Restaurants in a Throw Away Society
Jonathan Glover, the founder of Flat Iron Restaurants, is about to embark on his 6th restaurant opening in 12 months, with every site, he has recycled the fixtures, fittings, licenses and staff, which is good for the environment and good for the customer’s wallets.
When it comes to ‘throw away societies’ Hong Kong must be one of the world’s biggest culprits, with hundreds of thousands of tonnes of building waste going onto landfills every month, but does that need to be the case? According to Jonathan Glover it does not. His concept of upcycling existing restaurants seems to be returning dividends, and the savings made on expensive fit outs are being shared with the customers which seems to suit them just fine!
Let’s do the math on fitting out a new restaurant in Hong Kong Vs Upcycling one.
First of all, the previous tenant needs to bare-shell the restaurant at the end of their lease, which usually entails literally ripping perfectly good pieces of equipment, pipes, cables, aircons, ducting, floors, windows etc. throwing it into skips and off to the landfill it goes, for 1500SF site that will cost around HK$500K and around 6 skips and up to 20 tonnes of waste.
In comes another set of contractors and replaces it all with new and another 20 tonnes of building material. The average cost to refit the same space will be around HK$4 million. If we divide that total over 3 years (average lease term in HK) it works out to be HK$ 125,000 per month, now if a restaurant serves on average 100 customers per day, or 3000 per month, then it works out that a new restaurant needs to charge HK$42 per plate served to recover the fit-out cost alone. Glover says that “by saving that money on the renovation we are able to share it with our costumers which they truly appreciate in this economic environment.”
What else can you upcycle in a restaurant?
“Wherever possible we try to take on the employees of the previous business and absorb them into ours, there is a shortage of well-trained people in Hong Kong, and it makes absolute sense for us to retain them with the restaurant fixtures and fittings” says Glover, The cost of training and staff retention is growing rapidly as companies are still fighting for staff after covid.
And then there is the time saved…
A new restaurant fit out and new set of operating licenses can take anything from 3– 6 months (in some cases even longer, much longer) “by upcycling existing restaurants and their licenses means we can turn around a project in just a few days, and in this town, time is most definitely money” says Glover.
They will take possession of their latest site in Wan Chai on the 26th of November, immediately adding signage overnight, staff will then add a new coat of paint, replace the artwork and upgrade part of the kitchen, but apart from that, everything will remain the same, and unless there are any setbacks they plan to be open no later than 1st December. “Meantime the staff we have inherited go into training in our other restaurants for a few weeks and get to know the new menu, POS system and company culture through an intensive training program” says Glover. By saving the afore mentioned time, Flat Iron can knock off another HK$20 per steak.
“Flat Iron is not a fine dining concept, the people that are coming to our restaurants are doing so to enjoy a really good steak at an unbelievably affordable price. Our environments are comfortably but by no means fancy, we can offer the best value steak in town because we are able to upcycle the restaurant in the first instance and because we buy our raw ingredient in bulk and direct from the farms” says Glover. Perhaps this is a sign of the times in Hong Kong with a huge recent reduction in Fine Dining Restaurants and many going out of business.
The concept is attractive to hotel operators too, Flat Iron has taken over a restaurant in The Ovolo Hotel in Wong Chuk Hang, Dash Living in Sheung Wan and will soon be undertaking a long term pop up at the Kowloon Shangri-la and their ocean facing Tapas Restaurant.
Glover suggest that “hotels take a long time to pivot from the old fashioned and expensive fine dining restaurants they tend to operate, but they are attracted to the customer base that we are drawing, i.e. young local professionals that want to enjoy a nice meal with friends but don’t have the spending power or taste for the old school outlets that hotels generally offer”
By late November 2024, Flat Iron Restaurants will operate 6 sites in Hong Kong, Including 1 Flat Iron Burger in Soho. The standard lunch steak is HK$158 and at dinner HK$208, both offers come with fries, salad and a steak butter included. All 6 restaurants were opened in 20024 and each one has been upcycled from an existing restaurant concept where licenses, equipment and staff have been transferred and re-hired.
What does the future bring? Glover states that “we will continue to look at opportunities and if our restaurants continue to do the good business that we have enjoyed so far then I don’t see why we wouldn’t look at other projects, the Greater Bay area would also be something we could consider if we could partner with the right people there”
To answer the question posed in the title of this article, ‘does upcycling restaurants make any difference?” well in the grand scheme of things perhaps not that much, but it’s a start and a change in mind set might follow. It does however seem like a decent business model in the uncertain economic environment that is Hong Kong.
Website https://www.flatironhk.com/
Make a Reservation: https://www.flatironhk.com/make-a-reservation
Contact the founder: jonathan@steak-king.com
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Sarah Rodrigues
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