Stories
‘During Chinese New Year [in January] I started hearing what was happening in Wuhan,’ says Camden Hauge, the American restaurateur known for her growing food and drink empire in Shanghai.
By early February Hauge’s four locations – Egg, Bitter, Bird and Kin – were closed for dine-in service, and by 1st March they reopened. Just one catch: they were split between Jing’an and Xuhui, with each having its own reopening guidelines. ‘For the next 15 days we had a series of restrictions in Xuhui, just at Bitter and Bird, bizarrely,’ she says. ‘Each street has its own little hierarchy of control.’ Hauge’s team were also required to take their guests’ temperatures and phone numbers, and submit staff temperatures via QR code. And then, mid-pandemic, came a fifth spot: Lucky Mart. ‘In January I had a conversation with a bartender friend about [opening] a highball bar,’ she says. ‘And so from us talking seriously about the concept to opening was a six-week process.’
Lucky Mart was a relatively small investment and Camden Hauge was prepared to write it off as a loss if it didn’t end up working. ‘I like to go with the naiveté approach – make mistakes first and beg for forgiveness later,’ she laughs. She reckons the location will work based on these lessons learned during the crisis:
‘Make sure you’re delivery-friendly and also sell merchandise beyond F&B. You need to sell things far outside just your brick and mortar space. So for Lucky Mart, we built up the brand and created things like t-shirts and hats. Our highball drinks can also go in takeaway cups, plus we sell konbini, which is basically Japanese convenience store food. It’s all super delivery-friendly. You don’t need to be on site, in the shop, for us to sell you things.’
01.
Brand hype
‘Be brand-centric so that you always have something to talk about with people. You need a way to connect with customers that’s beyond just your food and drink offerings.’
02.
Get merch
‘Make sure you’re delivery-friendly and also sell merchandise beyond F&B. You need to sell things far outside just your brick and mortar space. So for Lucky Mart, we built up the brand and created things like t-shirts and hats. Our highball drinks can also go in takeaway cups, plus we sell konbini, which is basically Japanese convenience store food. It’s all super delivery-friendly. You don’t need to be on site, in the shop, for us to sell you things.’
03.
Keep it small
‘Be very space-efficient. Lucky Mart was such a small investment in terms of the space itself – it’s 35 square meters, so really tiny. Our capex is low and we have few staff.’
04.
Good people
‘Since Lucky opened I’m stretched too thin. My managers are phenomenal – I couldn’t do it without them. I thought about this a lot during Covid-19. As your people get more talented, how do you continue to make that affordable in small, independent places? I want to keep talent, but then they reach a certain point where you can’t really challenge them or pay them more. And so over the past couple of months I thought about creating a hospitality group as an umbrella company. I’m calling it “Happy Place Hospitality”. It’s kind of a nerdy name, but it comes from the Danny Meyer enlightened hospitality philosophy of a happy team, happy customers and happy space. There’s definitely an emotional stakeholder element of being a customer of a restaurant.’
