Shareen Campbell and Phil Saunter, owners of Los Gatos and Bistro Les Chats in Wood Street, talk about life in the restaurant business Feeling a lot, like Christmas!

For most people Christmas is a time for eating and drinking and having fun with the family. Some people love the preparations and planning, especially the big Christmas lunch, and for others it’s their worst nightmare, anticipated with dread and loathing.

For most of us in the restaurant business, December brings the busiest and most challenging time of year. The pattern of business is very different to the rest of the year with lots of advance bookings for large parties. In some ways this makes things easier, as you know a lot of what’s coming a few days in advance.

Some of the kitchen preparation is more structured with advance bookings with pre-orders accounting for a good half of the restaurant’s capacity. But there is still the other half to think about so in other ways it’s like running two restaurants in parallel with twice the work!

Besides the additional workload in the kitchen the administrative side of coordinating the parties with their deposits and pre-orders and, as the day approaches, the daily changes of numbers and menu choices, is very time consuming. Large hotels and restaurants employ whole teams of receptionists and events coordinators to receive and coordinate these things, but here, it’s just us!

We even thought about asking the Big Issue seller in off the street to answer the phone, which rings constantly. We’re lucky, we know, we’re busy and we aren’t complaining. In this business, it’s often said you need to have 3 months takings in December, because otherwise you’re not going to be able to survive in January and February.

Thanks to our fantastic staff we have been lucky enough to get a couple of hours off some evenings this month. When we look into Los Gatos and Bistro les Chats from the outside and see a bar and tables full of happy faces through the steamy windows we are able to steal a secret moment of pride. We’re reminded of our opening piece for this column about how it’s “like having a party every night” and know that all the effort is worthwhile.

Thanks to you all, and Merry Christmas!

Los Gatos can be contacted in 01793 488450 or go to www.losgatos.co.uk.

Bistro Les Chats can be contacted on 01793 527082 or go to www.leschats.co.uk