Help Our Hospitality: ‘The town is on the up and hospitality is an important part of that’

For this week’s Help Our Hospitality coverage, the co-owner of two Northampton restaurants – soon to be three – spoke to us about his journey in the industry.

James Ingram co-owns The Smoke Pit and Hops and Chops with his brother Matt, and the pair also have plans to open a new chicken restaurant in the former Buddies USA site in Dychurch Lane.

The Smoke Pit, a barbecue meat restaurant in The Ridings, was their first and was opened in January 2015.

Three years later, in March 2018, they broadened their horizons and opened Hops and Chops – a modern meat chophouse in Kent Road.

The brothers recently shared they still plan to open Mission Chicken in the heart of Northampton town centre, but James says they want to make sure they get it right and will not be rushing the opening.

As someone who has been in the hospitality industry for around 30 years, since he first started clearing glasses in pubs, James is the ideal person to shed light on what the town is experiencing.

When asked how his two existing businesses are doing at the moment, James said: “The number of customers isn’t what it used to be, but things are not as bad as they could be.

“Though we have seen a dip in sales over the past six months, things are picking up and the talk that we have dodged a recession is helping.

“This, along with the talk of wage rises, plays on people’s minds and makes them feel better about spending money on meals out.”

James believes it is a culmination of everything that is affecting the hospitality industry – from the cost of living crisis reducing the number of customers, increases in food prices and fuel, and the overheads each business faces.

“The cost of certain food items is astronomical,” he said. “Hopefully if things are being predicted correctly, they should start to come down soon.

“I’ve always been a glass half full type of person. If you look for problems, you find them.”

From the perspective of a business owner, James often finds it frustrating when customers begrudge paying certain prices – when they do not realise or forget how much businesses have to pay in VAT.

James said: “You buy something for £10 and we instantly have to give away £2 of that.

“It’s one of those things, especially when on some products we earn as little as 45 pence in profit to keep the prices as low as we can for customers.”

The business owner says to make money, you have to invest in a business – and that is not just money but time, effort and dedication to what you do.

James feels lucky to have “great teams who are keen to do great things”, as that is the exact reason he and Matt set up the two restaurants in the first place.

“We opened The Smoke Pit because we wanted to do something for ourselves,” said James. “We’d both worked hard elsewhere for little reward.

“Our ethos was all about opening a hospitality venue for people who love hospitality and want to enjoy where they work.

“Our restaurants are the types of places we would have liked to have worked.”

Having been in the hospitality industry for almost three decades, we asked James what changes he had seen in that time.

He says there has been the shift from fine dining to casual, hearty family meals, which is what they offer in their restaurants.

James also said: “Everything is led by the public. A lot of people like to think they are pioneering hospitality leaders, but really they are just giving the public what they want and ask for.”

Another noticeable difference since the end of the pandemic is that more people walk into restaurants as a spur of the moment decision, rather than booking in advance.

Though weekends remain popular for bookings, walk-ins on weekdays have shot up from 10 percent to 30 percent.

Speaking of the pandemic, James said his proudest moment since setting up the restaurants has been the way they turned both The Smoke Pit and Hops and Chops into takeaways overnight in the first lockdown.

“As our big player competitors were shut, it was all hands on deck to keep the businesses going,” he said. “Our front of house team delivered the food and we couldn’t have survived without them – as well as our chefs.”

As the restaurants now continue to go strong, the pair’s focus has turned to what new things they can introduce – and that recently included a seven-course cheese taster menu at Hops and Chops, which will return every six weeks.

Their focus also remains on getting Mission Chicken off the ground in the town centre, which James believes is “on the up”.

He said: “The town has got a lot of work to do, but that can only happen if people put the work in.

“With the market changing and the growth of the university, that is not only going to help the hospitality industry but the whole town.

“The town is on the up and hospitality is an important part of that.”

James believes there is “the scope to reinvent the town centre” and “there is no reason why that cannot happen”.

To sum up what James wanted to get across, he referenced a quote from American celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain.

Anthony said: “Eat at a local restaurant tonight. Have a cold pint at four o’clock in a mostly empty bar. Go somewhere you’ve never been.

“Be open to a world where you may not understand or agree with the person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways.

“Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride.”