Jim Armitage: TRG’s stale offerings can be spiced up with kitchen-sink job

The menu change at Frankie & Benny’s and Garfunkel’s goes on apace. The struggling owner of these decidedly average eateries, The Restaurant Group, now has a new chief executive, finance director and chairman.

About time, too. Its kitchens have developed a name for profit warnings rather than profiteroles lately.

And that’s despite more people than ever opting for family restaurants over cooking at home. Research shows sales across the pubs and restaurants industry growing just shy of 2% on a year ago, with stronger growth in TRG’s market of “casual dining”.

Furthermore, according to researchers Coffer Peach, corporate chains are doing better than independents. So what’s gone wrong? Anyone who visits such joints regularly knows you get a better-priced family meal from my kids’ favourites, Nando’s (or, if they’re feeling healthy, Leon) than you can from Frankie & Benny’s.

TRG’s venues feel like they’re run by accountants with an eye on the profit margin rather than zingy foodies with a flair for delighting the customer. One has in mind the sprawling Whitbread chains of the nineties and noughties, chilled by the cold hand of head office.

What’s more, there are too many of them, perhaps 15% too many, meaning in some places they’re competing with each other.

Having said all that, I wouldn’t say it’s terminal. Private-equity groups, who’ve made good money turning around restaurant chains, don’t think so either. They’ve been sniffing around TRG for months.

This business can be fixed, but it will take time, particularly as incoming head chef Andy McCue is new to the industry.

I expect he’ll do a kitchen-sink job when he gets in after September, laying out cold, hard truths, which could hit the share price hard.

Veteran analyst Mark Brumby at Langton Capital points out that the last boardroom clearout of this order was at Mitchells & Butlers nine years ago. Since then M&B shares have gone from nearly 800p to below 260p today. Let’s hope TRG’s service doesn’t prove so bad.

Why on earth does John Lewis boss Andy Street want to give up a proper job to become Mayor of Birmingham?

Good on him for being altruistic. But surely he can achieve more, faster, for a greater number of people through business than he ever will as the figurehead for yet another tier of regional government. Businesspeople who go into public office find it frustrating, slow-moving and powerless.

Street should stick to a role that’s really useful: serving customers, creating jobs and promoting John Lewis’s partnership model for capitalism.