2006-08-05 - Business In Vancouver
By: John Pifer

“Cultivating Cactus” – Profile: Richard Jaffray

Cactus Club Café founder is bent on moving his chain of casual dining restaurants to the head of the class in Western Canada

PROFILE: Richard Jaffray (Business in Vancouver)
Cultivating Cactus… Cactus Club Café founder is bent on moving his chain of casual dining restaurants to the head of the class in Western Canada
Mission: To be the number-one casual dining restaurant in Western Canada
Assets: A surviving graduate from a full curriculum of business lessons learned during more than 20 years in the food services trade
Yield: A thriving 16-store restaurant chain that’s on pace to expand to 25 by 2008

Catching a wave in the pounding surf is one of the loves of Richard Jaffray’s life.
Catching the wave of casual fine dining and creating a profitable empire from it is another.
Relaxing in a plush booth at the newest Lower Mainland Cactus Club Cafe in Park Royal, a stylish, spacious venue that can handle up to 275 diners, president/owner Jaffray reflects on the lessons learned through 20 years in the intensely competitive industry.
“Initially, we had big plans for growth – possibly even 200 restaurants – but as the business has grown, I’ve learned that it’s not the quantity that counts, it’s the quality.”
Jaffray said he still has ambitious goals.
His business plan calls for expanding his stable of 16 Cactus Clubs to 25 by 2008. Leasing arrangements are already completed for three new Cactus Club Cafes in B.C., which are scheduled to open soon.
His target for $100 million in annual sales by 2008 with at least a 10 per cent profit is a far cry from the $50,000 that the initial Cactus Club in North Vancouver generated.
Although there was a disastrous and expensive lesson learned in Edmonton nearly 10 years ago, wherein two new restaurants both failed, the Cactus Club brand has, for the most part, moved from success to success.
Jaffray said that, among other lessons, the Edmonton adventure underscored the need to perform proper due diligence when determining restaurant location.
And despite the bruises absorbed in that first failed eastern expansion, he doesn’t rule out another foray into the Alberta capital.
“One of the things that many restaurateurs do when they start is to underestimate the tools they’re going to require to do the business they have to do to earn a profit.
“They undersize a kitchen or crimp on the number of tills or computers and don’t take a look-ahead approach.
“I’m always looking at what we do to see how I can make it more efficient.
“Ultimately, the consumers want to get the best value, and they’re looking at the quality of service as a big part of that.”
Still only 41 years old, Jaffray began as a server at Earls more than 20 years ago, and opened his first restaurant – Café Cucamonga’s – when he was 21, in North Vancouver.
With business partner Scott Morrison, Jaffray then developed the Cactus Club concept, which began in 1988 and continued through the next 15 years, before Morrison left to build up the Brown’s franchise.
Morrison, who was bought out when the partnership dissolved about three years ago, with 12 outlets operating, told BIV he was not prepared to talk about his role or his relationship with Jaffray, “as I do not consider that it would be appropriate.”
Not as reticent to speak of Jaffray’s success is one of B.C.’s best-known restaurateurs, Stan Fuller, president and CEO of Earls Restaurants.
Fuller has known Jaffray for 25 years, “from back when he was just a pup.”
He described his competitor as “intelligent, solid as a rock, and very focused on his vision for the future.”
Fuller said the Edmonton experiment was a disaster at the time, “and Richard could easily have just given up.”
“Instead, he proved to be a reliable captain of the ship, and he steered it back into calm waters, and on to greater success.”
As for dealing with staff and colleagues, Fuller said Jaffray “thoroughly understands how to motivate and to encourage people to focus on a desired outcome.
“He is firm and fair.”
In July 2005, Jaffray took the Cactus Clubs into a new level of fine food and sophistication by appointing West Coast chef Julian Bond as the company’s executive chef.
Bond, who opened Oritalia in 2000, and then oversaw the chefs’ program for the Dubrulle International Culinary Institute, was given a mandate to “freshen” up the Cactus Club menus.
Operating from a training kitchen at its Ash Street headquarters, Bond and his team of chefs and sous chefs gradually eased the menu away from standard pub fare into a range of new, exotic and healthier dishes.
While diners may still enjoy a bountiful meal of burger and fries, they also can choose a Hawaiian fresh fruit and raw tuna poke and assorted seasonal salads and seafood specialties.
Said Jaffray: “There has been this great rush to the middle ground for restaurants seeking customers.
“Look at what chef Rob Feenie did in opening Feenie’s as a funky bistro option to his very high-end, award-winning Lumière.
“A number of us – Earls, Milestone’s and Cactus Club – have raised the bar from the other side, and the result is better dining options for the general public. Julian gives us that added expertise and a different perspective.”
Bond, who has been involved with the organization for 13 months, echoes that assessment.
“I am given all the freedom in the world to fine-tune the menus and to ensure that the move to fresher, more diverse options for the diner is seamless. Richard has been enormously supportive.”
The new dishes, once given the green light at the flagship Club, are then incorporated into all of the Cactus Club restaurants – four in Vancouver, two in Burnaby, two in Calgary and one each in West Vancouver, North Vancouver, Coquitlam, Delta, Richmond, Victoria, Nanaimo and Kelowna.
“Our overall objective is to be the number-one casual dining restaurant in Western Canada, and ultimately, the best in that category in all of North America,” said Jaffray.
He welcomes competitiveness of the business because it forces all the key players strive to hold their market share.
In the new Park Royal Village expansion, for example, besides Cactus Club, there is a new Keg, a new Earls and a new Milestone’s Café.
“This is a business that the vast number of people in it lose money, with perhaps one in four making it after four years.
We want to stay in that 25 per cent success bracket.”
Jaffray also likes to give some of that back to the community, with Cactus Restaurants Ltd. supporting more than 200 different organizations, including the Make-a-Wish Foundation, BC Cancer Society, Lions Gate Hospital, Centre for Integrated Healing, and YVR Golf for Kids, which supports Canuck Place and the BC Special Olympics.