Hawksmoor’s Will Beckett is ready to take on the American steakhouses

Ali Lyon sits down with Hawksmoor boss Will Beckett to discuss the restaurant’s plans to win over the land of steakhouses

Will Beckett is a self-professed ‘beef bore’.

Granted, as the co-founder of Hawksmoor, one of the most successful and – if the panoply of awards it has picked up are anything to go by – best steak restaurant chains in the world, it would be concerning if he wasn’t.

But during an hour-long interview with City A.M. he apologises no fewer than four times for slipping passionately into the more arcane elements of his job, be that grading of beef, sourcing happy, tasty cows, and serving the meat of those cows at such a volume to generate £100m in annual sales.

That he remains so passionate about the granular elements of his restaurants is probably just as well, given the new chapter on which his firm is embarking.

In July, it was revealed that the firm had appointed the investment bank Stephens to run a sales process that could value it as highly as £100m.

And with the process of finding a suitor under way but”not at fruition yet”, the restaurateur has his sights set on a market that knows a thing or two about what separates an average steak from a great one.

“Our focus is America,” he tells City A.M. while forking onto his plate a slice of award-winning fillet steak. “That’s not to say it’s exclusively where we’ll open. We’ve always thought that if something brilliant comes up in the UK, then of course we’ll do it… but the US is where the majority of our attention is.”

Hawksmoor’s bid to win over the land of steakhouses, beyond its two well-established spots in Chicago and New York, marks the next phase for the restaurant, which has always looked to balance its desire to achieve steady growth while maintaining its reputation. Luminaries of the gastronomic circuit have been consistently impressed (Giles Coren described the food he ate at its Seven Dials restaurant as “great, great steak. The best you’ll find anywhere”.) Yet in the nearly two decades since Hawksmoor cut the ribbon on its first restaurant in East London, only once has it opened more than one site in the space of a year.

That balance of steady but restrained growth has allowed it to cultivate a quasi-religious following; one that – if the comments section of one news report on the potential sale is anything to go by – remains sceptical of the business’ next chapter.

One wrote: “Great restaurant! Really hope the new owners don’t compromise on quality”, while another, more cynical reader wrote: “Completely sick of private equity-owned restaurants in London”.

Private equity pickles

But Beckett maintains that while expansion is firmly on the cards – the business would like to double the rate of new openings from “between one and two restaurants a year, to between two and three”. Prudence and cultural fit remains the order of the day.

“We get a sense from some of the people we talk to that they would just like to make money with us, investing, and they could help us do it, which is fine,” he says. “And we talk to others who are like, ‘we want to build this with you, it’s exciting and we’d be proud to own it… that latter camp is who we’re after… and ideally they’d have experience building a restaurant business in the US.”

Beckett’s caution is probably sensible. While he maintains that Graphite Capital, the private equity firm whose 51 per cent stake is the part of the business that is up for sale, have been “great partners”, the industry’s track record in the restaurant sector has been – to put it mildly – chequered.

Just this spring, one of the US’s most recognisable restaurant chains, Red Lobster, filed for bankruptcy, with many commentators identifying its involvement with private equity as the reason.

And closer to home, Jeremy King, the force behind London fine dining institutions like The Wolseley and Le Caprice – and, incidentally, Beckett’s professional idol – has bemoaned private equity’s presence in the food scene, saying its desire for quick profit was “difficult to reconcile” with a restaurant business run for the long term.

Not losing its marbles

Beckett will also need to be discerning on a second front if he wants to retain the restaurant’s standards on his transatlantic escapade.

The US’s agriculture industry is an altogether different beast from the comparatively quaint, small-hold beef farming found in the UK. And given the restaurant’s policy of sourcing their ingredients locally to each of its 13 restaurants, the two sites he already has in the US – in New York and Chicago – exclusively use suppliers nearby.

This means importing grass-fed UK meat that Hawksmoor uses for its ten UK restaurants is off the cards. But will he and his future paymasters continue to avoid the temptation of serving steaks rammed full of steroids and antibiotics?

“A bajillion per cent yes,” he says. “If you look at some aspects of the US supply chain, it’s not how I think great beef is produced. But we go and try and find people doing it the way we think it should be done.

“We’ve got some really passionate farmers out there doing things the right way.”

The reason for such obduracy is not just, Beckett says, so that his customers can feel warm and fuzzy about the fact the cow whose rear end is now on their plate led a happy life.

It is just as much an attempt to please the pallet as one to appease the conscience. “The beef industry can be very focused on, ‘How quickly can we get them really big?’ But flavours take time to develop.” And so unstinting is Beckett in his focus on agricultural standards that the restaurateur has decided Hawksmoor’s judgement supersedes that of America’s predominant agricultural standards body.

“We aren’t that interested in the USDA system [which grades cuts of beef between Select, Choice and – at the upper end of the spectrum – Prime]. Some of our beef is prime, some of it is not prime. The way it works is: an inspector will look at a side of beef for an average of – say – six seconds, and decide what grade to give it based on marbling.

“And you can get marbling from feeding them cornflakes. In fact, that’s what many farms will feed them, from troughs and they can’t even fall over because they’re too tightly packed.”

On realising he has slipped into enthusiastically reeling off the intricacies of a federal department’s grading system, he makes another one of his ‘beef bore’ apologies.

But this vim for the finer details of his restaurants’ machinations is nothing to be ashamed of. On the contrary, it will be crucial if Hawksmoor wants to maintain the fine balance between providing a great experience and growing sufficiently. His sector has plenty of cautionary tales to show him and his colleagues what not to do.

Will Beckett’s Hawksmoor Favourites

• Favourite dish: It changes! But as of right now, it’s probably Rump steak with gentleman’s relish on the lunch menu.
• Favourite drink: Sour Cherry Negroni (or Steakhouse Martini)
• Favourite dish that’s no longer on the menu: Kimchi burger (from Seven Dials c.2010)
• Favourite restaurant that isn’t Hawksmoor: Bouchon Racine
• Hawksmoor hack: “Eggs and Steakon” – Bring home any steak you couldn’t finish, cut it very thin, fry it in butter, and serve with scrambled eggs – my kids’ favourite breakfast!