Few business predictions are accurate. If it were that easy, we’d all be millionaires

I KNOW you’re two days into the New Year, but writing this column a few days ago encouraged me to look back over the year just gone. It reminded me that, no matter your forecast, no matter what you think the following month might bring, there’s no doubt about it, in the restaurant business, you’ll be wrong. After 20 years as a restaurateur, the one thing I know I can get right is being wrong.

There are the predictable occasions that bring an expected level of business but the vagaries of the weather, the economy and goodness know what else affects the general mood and therefore the number of people who want to eat out.

Starting at the beginning of the year, along with most right-thinking people, I would always expect January to be the quietest month of the year. It’s dark and cold, we’ve all just over-spent and over-indulged during the festive season so there’ll be few people going out to eat. But checking back at January 2015’s figures, January was a belter, being busier than two other months during the year; not only in numbers of customers but in the the amount they spent too.

February was a little more predictable with an upsurge of business due to Valentine’s Day. Normally, if the 14th falls during the week, we can expect the romantic dinners to stretch over a couple of weekends. However, it fell on a Saturday in 2015 and so had a slightly lesser effect on the month than normal, with everybody stuffing their bookings into the three days of the weekend – even if the 13th was a Friday.

The spring months bounced up though as we got into the year and then we moved into June when the exhibition of Magna Carta and the Changing Face of Revolt started it’s run on the Palace Green. It’s impossible to predict what effect such an exhibition will have, but it’s presence during June until the end of August was a tremendous boost to the local economy; attracting visitors from far and wide to Durham; putting the North-East on the map.

And on top of Magna Carta, we had the week of student graduation at the end of June and the beginning of July; a week that is as good as three normal ones to a restaurant such as ours and one of the most enjoyable too. I’m not sure what the visitors numbers for the City would have been like without Magna Carta but, along with graduation, our summer was one to remember.

The months of September and October, as soon as the children go back to school, are typically when the more mature have their holidays and we notice a slight change in the demographic of our diners, although the weather wasn’t always a help. However, that’s more than made up for by the run up, and then the actual four days of, the fabulous Durham Lumiere, where hundreds of thousands of people flock into the city to see one of the greatest spectacles in the North-East. Fingers crossed that it returns in 2017 because it’s one of the greatest boosts to our part of the world; culturally, economically and aspirationally.

And then it’s December with its round of parties up until the end of the month; peaking just before Christmas itself.

Looking back over the year, there’s no doubt that our local businesses need the additional boost that things such as Magna Carta, Lumiere and Christmas bring. While the latter returns every year and is an essential part of the business plan of any restaurant, pub or shop in the City, the extras such as exhibitions and other attractions are essential to keep things vibrant in the face of competition from online and out of town shopping. Magna Carta, the 2014 exhibition of the Lindisfarne Gospels, the twice-yearly Lumiere, along with other such attractions, all go to show how important is the role of well-established institutions such as the university, cathedral and local authority in Durham and the rest of the county.

It’s interesting how much such external factors affect the smaller local businesses. And it demonstrates why it’s so difficult to predict from one year to another. It’s the nature of all business forecasts: few predictions are accurate. If it were that easy, we’d all be millionaires!

But no matter what this new year brings, I hope it’s a happy one for everyone.