A NEW restaurant has opened in Balham, south London, after being shrouded in
grey hoardings for several weeks.
Nothing particularly unusual about that perhaps - except that this restaurant
is called Raviolo and it sells little else but ravioli. There are no fewer
than nine types of ravioli on the menu, including smoked chicken and walnut,
aubergine and courgette, and crab.
Welcome to the world of niche marketing, where a business’s range of products
is limited to only a few select items - or even one.
Thomas Proxa, managing director and part-owner of Raviolo, says he came up
with the idea for a ravioli restaurant because he loves eating filled pasta
himself.
“Someone can come here three nights a week and be able to pick and choose and
have a different ravioli with a different sauce,” he said.
Proxa is not alone in his belief that finding a niche is the way forward in
business these days.
At the Hummus Bros restaurant in Soho, central London, every dish on the menu
consists of hummus and pitta bread, each topped with different fillings. And
the Ooze Risotto bar in London’s West End claims to be Britain’s first
risotto restaurant, offering 13 different flavours, including sea-bass
risotto, meatball risotto and even an all-day breakfast risotto.
Going niche is not only confined to restaurants - Stern Studios is a
London-based estate agent that sells only studio and one-bedroom flats.
So is going niche a sure-fire route to success? Or are there times when a
niche can be too niche?
Daniel Ronen, managing director of the business con-sultancy DOS (UK), has
some answers.
He said: “Is niche the way to go? Yes. Are there limits? Yes.
“Finding a niche means your business can focus its product or service in a way
that really suits the customer and fits their need or their want. And so the
more niche you are able to be, the better you are able to satisfy that need
or want. So from that perspective niche is fantastic.”
But he added: “However, it is possible for niche to be too niche. When you
focus and refine your product or service to such a point that the market is
not big enough to sustain your business and there are not enough people out
there to buy your product or service - that is when you know you have gone
too far.”
In the City of London, Fazila Collins and Georgina Lang have got ultra-niche
down to a fine art. They are about to open the sixth branch of their food
shop, Fuzzy’s Grub, which specialises in selling Sunday roast lunch with all
the trimmings - in a sandwich. Customers choose from roast lamb, beef, or
pork, and can then put roast potatoes, vegetables, Yorkshire pudding,
stuffing and even gravy in their bread bap.
Collins said: “Lunchtime trade is such a competitive market we knew we had to
do something to stand out. You have to be different because there is so much
choice out there. And we both liked Sunday roast.”
Collins, who with Lang named the shop after their nicknames Fuzzy and Grub,
said there were several big advantages to creating a niche market: “Fuzzy’s
Grub is popular because it is so different. We have never done any marketing
- it has all been word of mouth.
We have become a destination place as well and, although our shops are off the
main thoroughfares, people will seek us out.”
Kim Fletcher, business adviser at Business Link in Kent, said the secret to
creating a successful niche market was to be constantly alert to new
developments.
“When you are working in a niche, the most important thing is to know what
your customers are thinking, and what is influencing their thinking,” he
said.
“You have got to keep on top of things, otherwise you might find that your
widget is last year’s widget.”
Ronen thinks the trend towards creating evermore niche markets will continue.
“People don’t want generic solutions any longer,” he said.
“They don’t want to have to mould themselves to what is available, they want
to buy something that fits them.”
