Innovation high on the menu as Salvo’s stays ahead of the game

The owners of Salvo’s in Headingley, Leeds, have created a new pop-up restaurant concept and are targeting the corporate events market to grow the company.

They also plan to create an online deli shop in the next 12 months.

The 38-year-old family business, which comprises Salvo’s restaurant and Salumeria, a nearby sister café and Italian deli, is owned by John and Gip Dammone, sons of the late founder Salvatore Dammone.

Over the years the restaurant has attracted a number of famous faces including Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant, singer-songwriter Corinne Bailey Rae and actor James Nesbitt.

The pop-up restaurants, under the name Strano, Italian for strange, started as a social media experiment last September but proved so popular they are now a regular affair.

Events, which take place at secret locations in Leeds, have so far included a meal and club night, called Beatfood, when the restaurant took over the top floor of Munro House in the centre of Leeds for 150 people.

“It was a bit like a 21st Century dinner dance,” John Dammone said. “It appealed to people who had grown up with the Back-to-Basics club music but they had reached an age where they wanted a bit more comfort than to be stood up raving until 6am.”

Meanwhile, the company has refurbished space above the restaurant to attract corporate meetings and private dining events.

“Gone are the days when we used to get boozy corporate lunches into the restaurant,” Mr Dammone said. “We really have to go out and fight for the business now.”

Mr Dammone plans to launch the online deli shop by the end of 2014.

The company already imports food from Italy for the restaurant and sells some of the products in the deli but it aims to expand the retail side with an online division. “We want to create a place where people can buy quality produce that is hard to source,” he said.

Mr Dammone said it was vital the restaurant remained vibrant and modern to avoid being another casualty in the Leeds dining scene. Recent failures include Anthony’s and La Grillade in the city centre.

“The failure rate in restaurants is astronomical. We’ve reinvented ourselves, because we have to,” he said.

“One of the dangers when you have been running a business for a long time is that it grows old with you instead of being fit for the current market.”

The 85-seat restaurant has been extended twice and usually undergoes a refurbishment every seven years.

Mr Dammone has purposely avoided competing at the value end of the market and opening up the business to voucher websites like Groupon because he said it would compromise on the restaurant’s quality. “Some people want to pay £5 for a two-course meal but to do that we would have to give them inferior quality food,” he said.

He added: “We want to serve customers a free range chicken from North Yorkshire, not a protein sponge. I couldn’t sleep at night.”

Salvo’s employs 50 staff and has a £2m turnover, which Mr Dammone hopes to increase by 25 per cent to £2.5m in the next two years.

The company is profitable.

“We have always done quite well during recessions. There is quite often a flight to quality because there’s not as much money to go around,” he said.

The Dammone brothers took over the restaurant from the mid-80s when their father took a back seat. Gip’s 17-year-old son, Salvo, has also started working at the restaurant in his spare time.

“Fine dining in the traditional concept is dead but that doesn’t mean to say there isn’t a market for great quality food,” said Mr Dammone.

“Every Friday we have a pallet leaving the Milan market with Italian vegetables. We don’t do that because it’s cheaper, we do it because once you’ve tasted an Italian tomato that’s grown in the sun, there is no comparison to a tomato that’s grown in a greenhouse.”

The restaurant’s mozzarella is made on the Thursday morning and arrives at the restaurant on Monday morning.

[email protected]