Sam speaks with Operations Manager of REN Group, Erik Jönsson.

Erik Jönsson is the operations manager for, and partner in, the REN group, the guys behind BAR, Lucky Bird, Taket, Fyr, M.A.D., Tårnet Kulturhuset and Amazonia, really solid concepts in the Oslo scene that have been around for a good number of years.

When the first BAR opened in Byggdøy Alle it was a first of its kind.  I remember thinking to myself, ‘food and cocktails upstairs, nightclub downstairs...GENIUS’. 

The owners had formerly run one of Oslo’s most exclusive and successful nightclubs, Stravinsky, and brought  that attitude of party to their new venue but managed to infuse it with a dining setting.  Again, this kind of concept was quite new to Oslo.  It had an edge.  You knew if you were going to BAR to eat, you’d end up on the dance floor buying shots for strangers 5 minutes before closing.

The success of the first venue led to a second down on the water, BAR Tjuvholmen, and that’s where Erik enters the picture. Having completed Hotel Management school and coming off a challenging management placement at the One and Only group in Dubai, Erik jumped in as restaurant manager and bluntly, was a massive success. This venue was the absolute hottest joint in town. Long summer nights, Djs, every table with an ice bucket and a bottle, a really electric vibe. 

“I was in Oslo with no job and a friend spoke to some of his contacts and arranged an interview with the guys from BAR that were about to open Tjuvholmen. I was lucky enough to get the job as restaurant manager and the place was a big success. 

Following this success, the guys asked me to be a bigger part of the company and offered me the operations manager position and the possibility to own a stake.  I took a year off, completed my studies, came back and bought in. 

My main job is to provide my managers with the holy trident of operations; knowledge, tools, and time. Without these, things get very hard very quickly and things come grinding to a halt or quality begins to suffer.”

REN Group is interesting in that they’re not scared to try different concepts but there is a consistency across their brands and a really strong focus on good food, good drinks and good atmosphere. So what is the process behind developing a good concept?

“Every concept has its own path but it goes something like this; we get approached by landlords who offer us venues, or we become aware of a really interesting site, and then we start formulating a plan. For us, location is really important.  The worse the location, the more complicated it is to create a destination concept, and that is more difficult than creating a great, solid concept in an A+ location.  And so the location helps define the concept in many ways. But we often sit down and have ‘Pasta’ meetings, where we throw a whole lot of ideas at the wall and see what sticks.”

“Take M.A.D for example. We had a broad idea of what direction we wanted to take, but when we came up with Modern.American.Dining as a name, it really focussed our attention and set some boundaries.”

“Of course we look at what’s happening around the world when it comes to food and trends and concepts and think about what will work in Norway, and is there a venue out there that will fit.”

The guys have also had some venues that didn’t work out as well as others, so what have been the take aways from those?

“Well that’s a million dollar question. I would say that one thing that has defined the success of all our venues is the backing of the locals and at the same time, some of our venues that didn’t work as well, didn’t quite fit the location or market we were trying to enter.”

“Knowing your neighbourhood is key, knowing your market is key. But in our business it can pay off trying to anticipate what’s coming next, but there is risk attached.  One of our most successful concepts in Oslo, really didn’t take in the way we’d hoped outside Oslo. People didn’t get what we were trying to do, they didn’t appreciate the concept, and ultimately we had to tweak to suit the market which is a hard decision to make when you have built a concept that works. But the customer ultimately decides what you are. We learned a lot from this and, although that venue is closed now, we take all that learning forward.”

This is some solid advice for anyone thinking to start their own venue or build their own concept. Think long and hard about whether or not what you want to do will work where you want to do it. Is the market ready? Do you have support? Will they give you a shot? Will they give you another chance if opening night is not perfect?

“The golden rule of restaurants is that’s it’s really easy to fail with a restaurant concept, but it’s really difficult to succeed”. So success is rarely a coincidence, neither is failure.”

So these guys are obviously savvy operators. What prompted them to switch from their former supplier and start working with us?"

“It’s been a natural progression for us as we are constantly trying to build and improve. We’ve  spoken with a lot of bar suppliers who really trivialise the bar. What we hear a lot from kitchen suppliers is: ‘we’ll do the kitchen and throw in a bar for cheap.  It makes you wonder what their margins are on the kitchens if they can give a bar away for free. The bar is a really valuable revenue driving tool across all our concepts and it deserves attention and investment.”

“Our concepts are high volume and If we can make a drink 1 or 2 seconds faster, over all of our venues, over a year, that adds up to a lot of money. Also, that you guys are from the industry is a huge plus and, yeah your product is the best that I have seen on the market so far.”

“Let’s just drop the mic there.”