You have to hand it to Richard Caring.
Not everyone was convinced when he took one of the most illustrious names in British hospitality, The Ivy, and stamped it on a spin-out “market grill” in Covent Garden.
That was less than a decade ago, remember, and now there are nearly 50 establishments bearing the Ivy name from Brighton to Glasgow, and from Dublin to Norwich.
It was not supposed to be that way. The conventional wisdom was that it is impossible to bottle the stardust that made the “Ivy Classic” mothership in Theatreland such a success for a century and sprinkle it on towns and cities all over the UK.
Well, it turns out that you could.
Today’s stellar results from the holding company that owns the Ivy Collection and the fast growing Ivy Asia brand are all the more remarkable given the well-documented litany of challenges facing the hospitality sector in the months since the pandemic ended.
Strikes, staff shortages, rampant food and energy inflation, the cost-of-living crisis have all conspired to make life hell for restaurateurs.
Yet the Ivys, with their artfully curated brand of affordable decadence and comforting menu of “greatest hits” dishes, have clearly been packing them in.
I recently lunched at Ivy Asia St Paul’s, a cavernous space once occupied by Jamie Oliver’s ill-fated Barbecoa.
The green agate-floored dining room was filled with customers who were apparently spending heavily.
Yet the increasing ubiquity of the Ivy brand does not appear to have damaged the lustre of the original where sales and profits were also strong.
Caring’s genius is persuading us that by entering an Ivy in Manchester or Marlow you are still getting to inhale the same air as those A-listers sitting down in West Street. It is quite the achievement.
