Browns Restaurants

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Browns Restaurants is a British chain of restaurants, mostly located in the south of England.

Browns was the first hospitality venture established by millionaire Jeremy Mogford, who in 1973 invested £10,000 (of which £2,500 was borrowed from his father) in the first Browns Restaurant and Bar in Brighton, East Sussex. He established a chain of seven restaurants, mostly in university towns such as Bristol or Cambridge, with an annual turnover of £15 million. In 1996, Mogford sold the Browns chain to Bass Brewery for £35 million.^[1]

Mogford was regarded as one of the industry's best and most enlightened employers, which was reflected in a low staff turnover rate, and saw Mogford and his restaurants used as a case study in a hospitality and entrepreneurship text book illustrating commitment to employees.^[2] In addition, Browns was profiled in a widely-used capacity management study by Deterministics Inc. for Cornell University's Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly journal.^[3]

The chain now consists of fourteen restuarants – in Bath, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Edinburgh, Leeds, Oxford and Windsor, and six restaurants in London.

Brown's Restaurant in Bristol is a listed building that has previously been the City Museum and Library and also the University Refectory and Dining Room.

[edit] References

^ The changing face of Oxford, This is Oxfordshire, 14 December 1999.
^ Morrison, Alison J.; Mike Rimington, Claire Williams (1999). Entrepreneurship in the Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure Industries. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann, 16. ISBN 0750640979.
^ Sill, Brian; Robert Decker: Applying Capacity-management Science: The Case of Browns Restaurants, Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, Vol. 40, No. 3, 22-30 (1999), Cornell University.