You live it, you breathe it, you hold it, nurture it, watch it grow, every day you hope and wish and trust that in every way it achieves everything that you had planned for it at the beginning. It’s not life and it’s not death but in the words of Liverpool’s legendary Manager Bill Shankly “It’s more important than that”

We have learned through trying to create something really special that actually it’s not always about the money you make, it’s about how you manage the cost. There has been sweat and tears and loads of laughter, as of yet there fortunately is no blood!

We have loved every minute and we wouldn’t swap it for the world. Everything about the Studio is a reflection of everything that has been put into it by all of the team that work and have worked here. It’s like a really good movie that you watch over and over again knowing that every time you will see an added detail that you missed the last time or the last 10 times before that.

When we started the business in 2006 we were told that statistically 70% of new businesses in the UK fail to see their 5th Birthday. Now whether that fact is true or not or whether it is better or worse than that doesn’t really matter. We believed it. We said there and then that if we made it to our 5th Birthday we would have a massive party to celebrate.

On 13th October 2011 we made it to our 5th Birthday and on the 21st October we had a massive party to celebrate!

In many ways we have not been very good at celebrating success. When we opened the first floor extension in 2008 we decided that albeit huge step forward for us that we would have a soft opening. We were typically British about it and did not want to bring bad luck on ourselves if the whole plan didn’t work out quite the way we had hoped. It did. In 2010 we opened Manchester and despite many meetings and discussions about how we would celebrate the opening of our fantastic new venue which has been critically acclaimed we decided that again we would celebrate in a quiet way, just between ourselves and a few bottles of Moet. So as you can imagine when it came to fulfilling our 5 year promise to ourselves it really was time to let our hair down.

So 180 guests joined us on a Friday night for a Charlie and the Chocolate Factory themed knees up in Birmingham. The Studio has never looked more vibrant. We had Cocktail Bars, Chocolate Fountains, Mountains of cup cakes, Pork roasting on the roof garden and enough chocolate and sweets to carry master Bucket off on a gondaler to the stars. With the help of some fantastic live music we partied until the early hours. There was definitely some murder on the dance floor. It was one hell of a bash. Please check out the gallery to see some of the events of the night.

We would like to thank all the people who attended and those that supported us for the evening. It was tremendous and a great way of thanking everyone for those 5 years of support and the team for just being part of something so amazing. We will do it again!! Here is to the next 5 years.
Really well done everyone!

Who’s there?

You ever hear the joke about the broken pencil?

You ever hear the joke about the broken pencil who?

Nevermind, it’s pointless.

Fear not! Even the sad, broken pencils don’t miss out at thestudio Manchester!..we have recently completed our first ‘pencil donation’ to St Patrick’s Primary School in Collyhurst so all the pencils which are unsuitable for our purposes can go on to have happy fulfilling lives being chewed and shoved up the noses of small five year old children. As you can imagine this has almost fulfilled our brownie point quota for the year so we can enjoy the warm fuzzy feeling inside…which is probably a good thing in this autumnal weather we seem to be having up here!

replacement fryer after studio 'fire day'

It is fair to say that there are two calls that I truly fear. One is to say that someone at Studio has been hurt or taken ill and the other is that there is a fire, and yes before anyone comments I do fear these even more than the calls from H M Revenue and Customs or the bank!  Fortunately the first of these calls has not happened in the first 5 years of our business, we did have an incident of an exploding fryer once which was very serious and we were extremely lucky that no one was seriously injured. That near miss resulted in a new fryer and it was that new piece of kit that led to the second of my most feared calls occurring on 29^th September. This is the story of Fire Day.

Stories like this tend to start with the line; it was a day like any other …. So, in time honoured tradition, it was a day like any other, however, on this day Emma and I were on our way to Bristol for a meeting with Visit Bristol with a view to looking at some possible expansion sites. The call came at about 11am, in fact I should say the calls as within seconds of each other Lawrence rang me and Julian rang Emma, the message from both was the same, albeit in slightly different versions of English.

“There is a fire, full evacuation, everybody’s out, there is smoke billowing from the roof, we think everyone’s OK…….”

I am not known for particularly gentle driving and certainly what followed was not gentle driving, we were about an hour away. It’s difficult to recall and describe the way the brain should work in these circumstances but I can tell you that mine just froze and I am sure Emma’s was the same, we did not speak all the way into Birmingham City Centre, but even before we had arrived Lawrence and John had been on the phone to say that the immediate danger was over and that everyone was re-entering the building after a full inspection by the Fire Brigade.

The full details of what actually occurred on the day are now of course stuff of Studio legend, but I can recall it as follows; at about 10.45 Zong was using the deep fat fryer to par cook some jacket wedges for that days lunch service, for whatever reason the thermostat on the fryer had stopped working and as Zongs back was turned the fryer over heated and the cooking oil ignited. Fortunately the team are all trained in basic fire fighting and Zong and Mark grabbed the Fire blanket located just feet away and smothered the fire, 2 seconds later to their horror the fire blanket dissolved in front of them and the flames literally hit the roof, Anna standing on the far side of the kitchen took less than a second to hit the emergency button and put the building and whole of Caxton Gate into full evacuation. 3 minutes later and all those hours of Fire and Evacuation training had come to fruition and the building was empty. Fortunately though Mark and Zong now accompanied by Lawrence decided to try one last thing and used the dry powder extinguisher, bending down low and attempting to hit the fire at the correct angle they managed to get the fire out. The Fire Brigade arrived moments later to a kitchen full of smoke but no fire. The team had done an excellent job on all fronts and most amazingly not only were all the customers back in the building within the hour but lunch went out pretty much on time, there were no wedges! By the time Emma and I arrived it was simply a case of hugging those who needed to be hugged and thanking everyone else. It was a close thing.

Four months later at our annual company away day the Catering Team did a full re-enactment of Fire Day in slow motion without the editing bleeps, it was extremely funny although I can tell you that between the directors there were a few knowing looks recalling what might have been and how close we had come to a real disaster. By the way as an aside i have just been into the kitchen to see how the guys are doing with lunch service, they are cooking Jacket Wedges in their gleaming new fryer…

Two weeks ago I was kindly invited by Midlands Excellence to give a short presentation on our principles of customer service and in particular our mission statement of customer first. It was a great opportunity for me to take stock of some of the things that we have done to deliver our simple message.

There is nothing more focusing I find than when situations beyond your control put the very core beliefs at test. Such a day happened for us very soon after we had started the Studio business and of all the memorable days we have had it is in many ways the one that shines the brightest. It showed to all of us how naturally we were prepared to put our customers first and the thing that stands out the most is that all the decisions on that day were made by the team and not the directors.

16^th April 2007 will forever be known as Blackout day; And the story goes something like this…

April can be a difficult month in Studio world, depending largely on when Easter falls and when the schools take their breaks. Every penny counts and we are always under pressure to maximise our revenue.  On this particular April morning Emma and I were in the process of catching the normal 8.05 train from Ashchurch and chatting about the day ahead, when we received a call from Birmingham. The power was off and the alarms were going. The reality was that everything was off; The whole of the centre of Birmingham was in the middle of a blackout and the prospects for the day ahead were not looking good. We were only 6 months into the Studio adventure and none of our contingencies had been put to the test. There was little Emma and I could do but contact the key team and see who could get in first and come up with suitable plans for the day. We were expecting around 60 customers to arrive before 9!

Health and Safety implications meant that no business could allow people on site while the power was off, so our options were limited. The team sprang into action and without wasting anytime Dawn had got herself into the city centre and was ringing other venues to see how far the blackout problem had spread. Other venues were just taking the view that it was “act of God” and as such they would just leave their customers to stand outside their venue until the problem resolved itself. For the Studio team that was not going to be an option. Customers use us to host important meetings and training and as far as we are concerned those events had to be hosted and they were not going to happen on the street corners of Birmingham.

By the time Emma and I arrived at Cannon Street the plan was already in full swing. The team were there in full high vis. jackets and Dawn had a list of all the events and where they were being relocated to. She had managed to outsource every event we had, most of them to the new conference facility at the Radisson; which had only opened a couple of weeks before, had very few customers and was just on the edge of the Blackout zone. For us and the rest of the team it was simply a case of collecting up the customers and walking them in human buses to the Radisson who were ready and waiting to meet and greet.

I have to say that our route took us past a couple of our competitors who had their own customers waiting outside and had clearly done very little to relocate them.

By 10am we had moved every customer and every event we were supposed to host that day went ahead successfully. The team even returned to the outsourced venues in the afternoon to collect groups and ensure they got back to their cars or the station. For the record the power returned at about 1pm

When I tell this story peoples first reaction is always to ask about the cost to us and whether our insurance covered it. Well naturally the outsourced venues charged us for the windfall and as it happens the insurance cover didn’t help. But for us none of that matters. The team did exactly what we would hope and always trust they will, they took control and made decisions using only the mission statement of the Studio, Customer First. It’s easy to talk the language and many people do but we will always be proud of our team and of the 16^th April 2007. The day we truly walked the walk

NBT

It is true to say that the one event at studio that you can guarantee getting the whole team along to is our quarterly menu tastings. Every 3 months Zong and the kitchen team will host a tasting of dishes for us to decide and comment on for the upcoming seasonal menu change. As a team we all have very strong opinions about the food we serve to our customers. We recognise that for many it is the highlight of their visit to the studio and one of the memories that they will take away with them. For that reason we do put a lot of effort into getting it right. We can be quite fussy but the boys deal with the comments very well. Fresh homemade dishes are fundamental to what we all believe in and trust me the passion for this runs deep. The chefs have a challenge but they rise to the occasion in looking for ways to keep the menus original while keeping the known favourites making regular appearances.

To give you an example of this, last week in Manchester John Peplow “Pep” was making bread in flower pots which he had bought from his local garden centre and sealed to make sure they were oven proof. The resulting mini loaves were delicious and it really added to the presentation for the customers.

I took the liberty of asking both the team and some of our customers to let me have their favourite studio dishes. Here is the top ten, in no particular order.

1) Salmon Yakitori Skewers
2) Orange and Butterscotch Cheesecake
3) Saffron Paella with Pangasius and King Prawn
4) Steak and Ale Pie
5) Green Spring Thai Curry
6) Roasted Peppers stuffed with 5 Bean Moussaka
7) Gloucester Old Spot and Apple Cassoulet
Goats Cheese and Beetroot Salad
9) The Studio Club Sandwich
10) The Studio Fish Finger Sandwich

We also got a lot of votes for Parsnip Crisps which we used as a garnish on all our dishes in the old Talk Bar Restaurant.

We are going to in future invite any friends and customers to join us for our menu tastings. We will tweet this on the day of the tastings as the business dictates that sometimes these dates change last minute and we wouldn’t want anyone to make a wasted trip. But if you are passing or local please do pop in and help us decide on our next menus. We will be looking at the summer menu very soon so follow us and watch out for the tweets.

NBT

If you are using a twitter hashtag for an event at thestudio be sure to let us know @studiovenues, we love to get involved with your live tweeting and it also allows us to see realtime feedback.

Uploading photos from your event at thestudio to flicker? Be sure to tag them with ‘studiovenues’.

We can also if required setup a screen during your event that streams your event tweets or any photos uploaded.

Here are the first.    

D DAY
Friday 13th of October 2006 will remain as the single most important day in our history. The lead up had started some 18 months earlier and the final deal done with Orange in a Costa Coffee in Paddington Station (I kid you not) Only the stuff of films and legends, but it’s part of our history. Friday the 13th (Yes indeed!!) started with a text to everyone we knew who had supported us through the process, friends, colleagues, family. Two simple words DESTINY DAY.

But even as we walked into the Orange Studio for the last time, my phone rang and the agenda was set for what was going to be a far from straight forward day. The call was from our solicitors, Orange had entered some last minute changes to the lease, we did not agree with the changes made as some of them involved a reasonable amount of money that we simply didn’t have. We had no choice than to try and play it cool and play it hard. For the next 4 hours the deal was off. We knew that if we pulled out Orange would have no choice but to carry on the business as it was and in turn they had cancelled all of their existing contracts. It was an extremely nervy time but I expect not unusual in these kinds of deals. They made demands and we made counter demands. I even contacted Orange personnel to let them know that I would be returning to work as an Orange employee on Monday 16th October.

But by 3pm the deal was done and at 5pm the lease changed hands and the Studio Venue Company came into existence. Emma, Lawrence and I just shook hands in a very numb and polite way, but the real emotions were extraordinary. We were frustrated and angry at the last minute negotiations whilst being ecstatic that we had pulled it off, mix this with sheer terror and relief and you just about have it all. Everything came into focus when we pulled the team together and told them that we were in business. We saw huge smiles, felt genuinely huge hugs and even a few tears. It kind of made us realise that we weren’t the only ones that had been tense that day. For a while the future didn’t seem very bright and the way that day was going it may well have remained Orange. By 5.30 everyone had a glass of champagne, and so it had begun…
FLOOD DAY (One)
Yes there have in fact been 2 flood days in our history, but quite different. In August 2007 it rained and it rained and it rained. Emma and I unusually decided to drive in one Friday. I’m still not sure why as we had been travelling by train for the previous 6 months. We also decided to take my Land Rover Discovery, a car with 150K miles on the clock and a very dodgy turbo. It was raining!

By 5pm it had rained continuously all day and there was word at the Studio that trains were beginning to be disrupted by flood waters on the route to Bristol. We decided to make a move for home. What followed was quite simply the most remarkable journey that I have ever driven. We had to make several decisions about the route home as reports on the radio were already saying that the M5 near where we were heading was already closed. Little did we know that every route decision we took over the next couple of hours would take us, like the perfect storm, right to the epicentre of the problem. In hindsight there was at that stage nothing we could do. The end result was inevitable and the die had been cast long before we left The Studio. From 7pm onwards we were pretty much permanently driving through flooded roads. Abandon cars littered every highway and the lanes we attempted grew smaller and smaller. The Land Rover however kept marching on and despite at times having water coming over the bonnet she never missed a beat. By 9pm we knew that chances of us getting home were pretty much over and as the light began to fade we became keener on finding somewhere suitable to stop and wait. We had by this stage made it to Evesham via Redditch and our last option was to try and go across country to Worcester. At about 10pm the game was over. A bridge on this narrow road had been washed away and a number of vehicles were blocking the road. Fortunately it was right next to a pub with a large car park which was now full of cars. We stopped behind a large petrol lorry and for the first time since 5pm got out of the car and surveyed the missing bridge. There were rumours that cars had been washed away with it and the realisation that actually we had been and were in quite a serious and dangerous position began to dawn. We headed for the pub.

Inside was a scene of typical Britishness, people sat wall to wall on the floor, Blitz spirit in fall gusto. A conservatory had been turned into a family room and was full of parents and kids trying to get settled. Miraculously for us there was a settee on one side of the bar that was completely empty. May be it was a timing thing, but we took up the opportunity of a comfy seat and spent our last pennies on 2 halves of lager and 4 packets of crisps. The pub refused to take credit cards! The pub had stopped doing food and was fast running out of stocks of everything. As terribly British as they come we got our laptops out, sent off a few emails, finished the weeks figures and set about writing company health and safety policies.

Bizarrely at 1am the pub announced that anyone who hadn’t paid to stay would have to return to their cars. I have to say the scene of parents carrying sleeping children out into the pouring rain as the pub became increasingly forceful was one I will never forget. But being British no one complained and just accepted it. Even more bizarrely the landlady approached us and asked us if we would like a pot of tea “It’s just the kids I want out” she said, you can stay a while longer! She appeared quite pleased with herself and the tea was on the house! We accepted the tea but at 2am were also asked to return to our car. Talk about missed opportunity for the pub that night to be the hero’s of the hour. As we left the owner was on the phone shouting at her baker because he had suggested her morning delivery may be delayed. I wonder if they even realised what was going on in the world outside.

One of the questions Emma and I are most often asked is whether we have ever slept together, the answer of course is yes, once and this was that night, it is of course far from the romantic story people may wish for and the truth is Emma didn’t sleep but strangely me, a man who famously never sleeps, did manage to drift off for an hour in the Land Rover and allegedly snored over the noise of the generator from the lorry in front!

By 5am it was getting light and we decided to turn the car around, let’s face it we couldn’t go forward and heading back to Evesham where we felt we could at least get some breakfast and review our options seemed like a good idea, the pub was clearly out of food!. Within those few hours of darkness the waters had subsided enough for us to plough on all the way back to Ashchurch station and by 6.30am on that Saturday morning Emma was home. The journey for me would continue for another 6 hours before I would finally make it home to Ledbury via Worcester, Kidderminster and Bromyard with Carol continually on the phone listening to the news and directing me as to which roads to take. I arrived home at 12.30pm needless to say the Landy got a bit of a kiss and a pat. We must have passed 1000 ruined cars that night, but the Landy “made it through the rain”

We truly value the feedback we receive at the studio it helps us achieve our mission statement of customer first. We love it if you can talk to one of the team on the day, it can be frustrating if it’s after the event and we could have done something to improve the service at the time, we get really upset if we feel a customer has left us unhappy!

Instant feedback and communication is now changing massively with the use of twitter, it gives us fast, fun and honest interaction in real time from delegates and organisers that we wouldn’t necessarly have dialogue with. It creates a more initmate relationship with our customers, and it’s also great when we see those customers recommend us to others.

But … What we love most about using twitter is seeing the pictures our customers take of the studio….

Fancy a cuppa?

 

Normally when not in use we link up our two sites in Birmingham and Manchester with a video link in the breakout areas – this has on a few occasions provided some great comedy gold moments. Mentioning no names, one company in Manchester decided they wanted to play Wii Tennis rather than talk to anyone in Birmingham – which of course is fine but they failed to disconnect the video call. This meant that everyone in our relax area in Birmingham had a face on close up private viewing of two of our delegates in Manchester running around like Boris Becker and John McEnroe - completely oblivious they had a captive audience in a room 100 miles away.

We also had one occasion where the same company were in Birmingham and Manchester and two delegates recognised each other and decided they would meet up. The Birmingham side asked the Manchester side where they were to which they replied they were on the third floor – the Birmingham side then proceeded to go to the third floor to find them. Having no success the Manchester delegates responded they would come and find them on the second floor. It wasn’t until a few laps around both venues that they realised they were in separate cities!

We’re sure there have been many more.

The biggest thing we gained from the day though was a comment by one of the speakers, it went something like this “those businesses that see themselves in the future and are planning for that future will be in that future”. Times, as we all know are tough, and a lot of wallowing and hardship have been expressed, but for us that simple comment signified the end of the dark days of recession, it’s an attitude thing. We have after all been through the cold winter months, it has rained and it has snowed and we have hunkered down. Today though sees us with the attitude that it’s all still going on out there and we are still here and planning for that future. It’s still bright!

As a bloke I am used to counting things in 10’s. The top ten cars of all time, my best 10 days out, who was the best 10 Birmingham City players of all time (that may be a five list to be fair!) My eldest son Aidan is currently travelling and in New Zealand on what is the mandatory “Gap” year and even he emailed me recently and said “hey Dad what about some top 10s to keep me going” Top ten’s are great albeit a bit blokey because they make us utilise all our senses and memories and the wide spectrum of our brain. I’m waffling, really just to bring the word 10 to the fore. Yesterday you see was the 10^th anniversary of the day I first walked into Studio and started an amazing journey. 10 years, Crickey!! That’s 37% of my working life. It’s been a symbiotic relationship, we needed each other then, we still do!

Meanwhile business is booming, studiomanchester is having its busiest week ever as we speak and in total this is the busiest week Studio Venue Company has ever had. The team are buzzing. Emma and I have even returned to travelling in together a few times a week so that we can exchange information and keep on top of things. Getting time to share thoughts as a management team can be so important if we are to keep focused. She is on one of her monthly motivational days at the Enterprise High City Growth Programme today with “the board we can’t afford” so the journey home will be an information download, I hope she has laid off the coffee!

thestudio welcomes Kinga, our new receptionist

As for other stuff, it’s a big welcome to Kinga our new receptionist who joined us on Monday. She will be a great addition to the family and she talks three languages fluently, this will be huge for us as most of us struggle with the one language and in Becky’s case we haven’t yet managed to find a translator…yam yam yam. Happy Birthday to Hannah, we miss the Duckers. Welcome again to all the new users of thestudio this week, it’s great to see the place packed out day after day. We love you all.

Ok it’s time to crack on with the rest of the day. We hope to see you all soon, remember to keep twittering and any feedback is always greatly received, oh and one last thing; I’ve just looked out of the window and the suns shining!