INTERVIEW
Above: The restyled restaurant has a 1950s-inspired feel
Right: The refurbished spa offers a champagne manicure bar
it in small groups; they have tier systems with different price points offering different levels of education. These are some of the things we’re trying out, to address the needs of members who would like to have private training in some capacity, but who might not previously have been able to afford it. “That pretty much took us up to the
early part of last year, but it’s settling down now and we’re starting to see the fruits of our labour.”
Spa & restaurant Penny continues: “At that point we turned our attention to the other big secondary businesses in the club, namely the spa and the restaurant. “Sparcstudio were brought in to
oversee the refurbishment of the spa, which was rebranded from Reebok Spa to Re:SPA. It still offers everything it had before – standard spa treatments as well as complementary services such as physiotherapy, podiatry, osteopathy, hypnotherapy – but we introduced a lot of new elements too. “There’s now an express treatment
room, champagne manicure bar, large make-up area, new relaxation lounge, spray tanning section and a much larger retail area stocking Murad, Aromatherapy Associates and Guinot. We also fully refitted the other seven treatment rooms. That work was completed last October, although developments are still ongoing – creating a new spa website that links with the club’s website, for example. “It’s an urban spa so people don’t
generally stay all day, although we’re addressing day spa, particularly at weekends. It’s open to non-members as well as members – 35–40 per cent of our Re:SPA business is from non- members – with members receiving a 5 per cent discount.”
34 Next up came the restaurant, which
officially opened in May of this year, this time designed by B3 of Shoreditch, London. “We used to have what I’d describe as a gym canteen that did a reasonable lunch service. It was doing pretty well, but it needed a refurbishment anyway and the location over Canada Square Green was an ideal opportunity to do something special. Our investors recognised that. “Now we have a fully operational,
Monday to Saturday, West End- style restaurant and cocktail bar. It’s been a total transformation. It has a 1950s-inspired, Madmen-style Shoreditch House vibe. It’s very relaxed and informal but lovely.” A specialist general manager has been
recruited to run the restaurant, which now operates under a distinct brand – The Pearson Room. As with the spa manager, this GM reports directly into Penny and his team. Each of the three brands – Reebok
Sports Club, Re:SPA and The Pearson Room – will, as Penny explains, be
“connected but separate”, with distinct identities and separate but interlinked websites. “This will help us draw in the non-member customer,” he adds. This is particularly the case with the
Read Health Club Management online at
healthclubmanagement.co.uk/digital
restaurant, which sits below the club with a separate entrance and really, to all intents and purposes, represents a new, high quality, standalone restaurant targeting the 105,000 people working in Canary Wharf. But it’s important not to lose sight
of the members, says Penny: “We’re trying to create a separate restaurant/ cocktail brand within Canary Wharf, but at the same time maintain an association with our members. It’s their bar and restaurant as well, and we need to keep them engaged with it, so we have lots of great discounts flowing through the business. For the restaurant, we launched with a 30 per cent discount for our Reebok Club members. That will probably go down to 5 per cent in the future, in line with the discount in the spa, but we’ll run a few reports and see.” Neither the spa nor the restaurant
function as separate profit centres, instead contributing to overall club revenue: around 10–15 per cent of overall profit is expected to come from the restaurant, and around 10 per cent is expected to come from the spa within the next 12 months, once it’s operating at the expected 70–90 per cent capacity. Both figures mark a doubling or even tripling of previous contribution levels.
August 2013 © Cybertrek 2013
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