The old dog’s new trick

The old dog’s new trick

Ken Sharp’s plans for Bangor’s Boat House restaurant, which he acquired in the autumn of last year, involve a much closer working relationship with near-neighbour, The Salty Dog, which he also owns. Ken has been speaking to LCN…

Ken Sharp will be well-known to many in the hospitality trade as the familiar owner of The Salty Dog hotel and bistro in Bangor.

Now, however, he’s taken on a little more of the responsibility for fine dining in the town after acquiring The Boat House restaurant from its former owner, Joery Castel, who opened the three-AA-rosette venue with his brother, Jasper, in 2008.

Speaking to LCN just after Christmas, Ken said that he’d enjoyed a close business relationship with Joery and Jasper over the years, so when it came to putting the restaurant on the market in the autumn of last year, he was one of the first people that the brothers approached.

“They finished up on October 31 and we went in the next day,” he said. “For the first week, we stayed closed and got our heads around how everything worked.”

Originally from Scotland, Ken’s family were committed sailing enthusiasts and he became familiar with life in Northern Ireland – and particularly the North Down region – during numerous boat trips across the Irish Sea. During that time, he says, he made a lot of good friends in the Bangor area.

Ken undertook his hospitality training at the Scottish Hotel School before embarking on a varied career that saw him work and travel extensively with the royal family’s catering staff. He also worked for Mandarin Oriental in the Far East and a series of high profile hotels in the UK before launching his own hotel and restaurant consultancy practice in 2006.

He was persuaded to take on the under-performing Salty Dog on in 2011 and subsequently spent around £100,000 to refurbish the accommodation element of the offering:

“When I took it on, it was basically a hotel that wasn’t doing very well” he told LCN. “There was a bar and restaurant there as well but I knew that what the previous owners had missed was a focus on the rooms and that was my background. We got the rooms refurbished straight away and started to generate some cash from that.”

Ken says that business at The Salty Dog has been steady for him throughout and very strong lately. He’s adopted a deliberate focus on an audience in the upper-middle demographic by concentrating on local produce, craft beers and ales and a solid, family-friendly offering. Dog-lovers are encouraged too – the venue is one of the few in NI where guests can eat dinner in the bar accompanied by their canines.

“I felt that our whole offering was fresh and quite unique and it has always worked for us,” remarks Ken. “That said, The Salty Dog faces a lot more competition in the local marketplace now with the likes of The Wheathill and The Corin opening up. Competition like that isn’t good in the short term, but in the long term, it will improve the offering in Bangor and that’s what you want. The problem with the town is that there’s not enough business for everyone at the moment. A stronger offering will bring more business generally for the town.”

2
The Salty Dog, Bangor

Ken sees his acquisition of the Boat House as a major step-up in the development of his business and going forward, he says that both venues will be working very closely together. The Boat House, he says, will function almost as an annex to The Salty Dog. The restaurant is closed Monday and Tuesday and open for food in the evenings for the rest of the week and at weekends. At other times, it will function as a private meeting and function room for The Salty Dog.

Tim Brunton, who has worked with Ken at The Salty Dog for more than four years, is now executive chef and he will be looking after the kitchens at The Boat House as well. Jonathan Quinn, the long-serving manager at the restaurant, will continue in that role.

The restaurant itself – which became the first venue ever to feature in the Sunday Times Top 100 Restaurants list in 2015 – is located in what was once the harbourmaster’s office before becoming home to Bangor’s lifeboat. Before Joery and Jasper took it on in 2008, it had been run as a restaurant by Stephen Jeffers.

It’s a small affair and Ken says that that there isn’t much that needs done in terms of refurbishment. He does have some plans for the spring involving re-decoration and some re-jigging of the bar area though, and in the summer, he hopes to do some more extensive exterior work on the venue’s terrace area.

“It’s really a continuation of that fine dining tradition that we’re focused on,” he explains. “There’s certainly a market for this in Bangor, we did a lot of it at The Salty Dog but to be honest, it was a bit of a challenge for us alongside the normal bistro and bar service that we did. Everything we serve is freshly prepared and the fine dining element really upped the workload for everyone.”

Going forward, Ken shares the concerns of many in the trade over the availability of skilled staff.

“The biggest issue that the industry faces at the moment is staff,” he says. “I hear that from everyone.”

Ken has his own plans to further develop the high level of service already in place at The Boat House, including food preparation at customers’ tables, and he says well-trained, knowledgeable staff will be essential.

Marketing is another of his priorities for 2017:

“We’re already well-known in the Bangor area, but the real job is to get known as a destination venue outside the town,” he adds. “If we all work together in Bangor and bring in 100 additional people, six of them will end up at The Salty Dog and two at The Boat House. The rest will go to other places and that’s fine. But we need to work together to bring those people in.”

He concedes that both The Salty Dog and The Boat House are constrained for space and says he is currently planning to improve his accommodation offering:

“Northern Ireland is short of hotels, but it’s still the only place in the UK where you have to be licensed in order to call yourself a hotel and that isn’t conducive to innovation.  We’re continually investing in our accommodation offering and we need to be able to draw attention to that so we can drive our room rates to the appropriate level,” says Ken.

He’s also not ruling out further expansion:

“If the right seaside property came up, The Salty Dog brand could be extended,” he confirms. “I keep my eyes open for the right kind of venue where I think there’s a market for the standards and services that we offer. That’s what happened with The Boat House. It came up and I took it on. It was a good proposition, reinforced by the figures and I would do it again if something else as suitable was to come up.”

Our picture at the top of the story shows Ken Sharp (left) with executive chef, Tim Brunton and restaurant manager, Jonathan Quinn celebrating outside The Boat House.

 

3
A busy evening in The Salty Dog.