Moving on up…

Boojum’s newest restaurant in the centre of Belfast is the highpoint in the Maxwell brothers’ hospitality careers. But David Maxwell tells LCN that it’s only the start of something much bigger…

Belfast brothers David and Andrew Maxwell, who acquired Mexican burrito bar chain, Boojum, just over a year ago, have now opened their largest restaurant to date at Great Victoria Street in the city, with plans for at least one more new outlet before the end of 2016,

The new 3,500 sq ft, 95-seater outlet also marks a re-energised approach by the popular fast-casual brand to servicing the thriving delivery and corporate catering market within Belfast.

For David Maxwell, who spoke to LCN this month, the new opening represents the next step on a 20-year career path that’s taken him to Arizona and back.

His career in hospitality began when he was just 14-years-old, collecting glasses in an east Belfast bar. Eventually, David worked his way up through bar management whilst studying at university in Glasgow, before deciding at the age of 21, that he would like to travel.

He and some friends launched into a tour of the east coast of America, “working our way from bar to bar and beach to beach”, recalls David. Inevitably, however, the group eventually ran out of money and began to cast around for ways to boost their dwindling funds.

Through an Irish contact in Arizona, the men secured construction work in the state and while they were there, it emerged that their fellow-countryman and employer was keen to invest in a new Irish pub in the region.

“He had a few quid and a few guys who were interested in the proposal and over the next 18 months, we came up with a plan for me to return as the operations manager in the business with an equity share,” recalls David, who eventually moved to the States to open the first of the pubs at Chandler in Arizona in 2003.

By 2008, there were four pubs in the group and David was living in the States full-time to manage the business.

Four years later, David – who had married in 2007 –decided that the time was right to return to Northern Ireland and start a family after 10 years in the states. His brother, Andrew, who is a well-known figure in Ulster rugby circles, had joined him in America in 2008 and he stayed on there until 2014 to continue managing the Irish bars.

Now, both brothers are involved in the family business at home – each looks after specific areas of interest but all the important strategic decisions are taken together.

The first business that David got involved with on his return was a day nursery on the Malone Road, Little Hands, Little Feet, which he still owns today:

“But the plans had always been to get back to my roots in hospitality,” he explains. “Andrew and I were interested in launching our own fast-casual concept and as part of our research, we heard of an opportunity in the city and were excited when we found out that it was Boojum. We were big fans of the concept and held the brand in high regard.”

After raising additional investment through private equity finance, the brothers acquired Boojum in July last year – at that time, the company had five outlets in all, two in Belfast, two in Dublin and another in Galway. They have since added an additional restaurant to the portfolio in Belfast and Dublin and now employ around 260 people.

“The business is currently performing beyond our expectations, we didn’t think that we’d get it to this level within this time when we acquired it,” reports David. “That’s down to hard work by us and by our strong management team who have bought into our vision for the company. Everyone is very excited by the opportunity that’s in front of us, they’ve come together well and that’s made the last 12 months much easier.”

David says that feedback on the new restaurant at Great Victoria Street is “very positive”. Staff at the venue were greeted by a queue of more than 300 customers when they opened the doors for the first time in July and David says that office workers and tourists in particular have embraced the new business.

That buy-in is essential right from the start, he says:

“It’s like opening any other food and beverage operation, you need to deliver sales and control margins and costs. If you can do that and most importantly, people leave with a smile on their face, you should do well…In our business, we aim to be super-efficient. We probably put more people through at lunchtime than any other business in Belfast and to do that, we have to think very systematically. We have to think about even very small marginal gains. How do we speed up the order process? How do we make it simple for customers to order? How do we design the EPOS to make entering sales quicker? These kinds of thing are critical.”

Corporate catering is something that the brand has always offered, but with the opening of the Great Victoria Street branch – the largest in the chain – David and Andrew want to re-vitalise that element of the business aswell:

“We just want to put some more structure around it,” says David. “We are getting around four or five requests a week for this, people already know that we do this and we want to build on that. Between seven locations, we have a significant trade in corporate catering and it’s worth nurturing. There’s strong demand there and we now have the capacity and the capability to do it.

A separate service line will be used in the Great Victoria Street outlet to service corporate catering business.

Going forward, David says that he will keep the focus on controlling costs and ensuring customer service standards:

“You can invest as much as you like in fit-out but people won’t visit a restaurant that looks good unless the food tastes good and you have the best customer service,” he adds.

The priorities now are to take the new Great Victoria Street outlet to the level which the brothers believe it can reach:

“We’ll open one or maybe two more sites by the end of the year and perhaps, three or four over the next six months,” says David. “We’re also launching a new Boojum app that will be loyalty-based and will give customers the ability to order directly from the restaurant.”

In the longer term, the aim is to create a successful island-wide Irish brand before taking the Boojum brand further afield, probably into GB:

“The brand has travelled to Dublin and Galway and we want to expand more into Ireland and potentially, into the UK,” confirms David, who says that franchising will not be an option. “We can’t put a number on how many outlets that we might end up with in three or four years’ time, but it will be multiples of where we are today.”