Eat to the shopping beat

The natural synergy between a coffee house and a bookshop, already hugely popular in the United States and a growing trend here, has been given a chic twist, for example in Europe's largest book store, Waterstone's in Piccadilly. Perched on the fifth floor with sweeping views of the London skyline, 5th View serves premium cocktails and a contemporary menu of savoury tarts or platters to share.

More importantly, the bar provides an opportunity to peruse your potential purchases over a drink. There's even a large authors' table offering a selection of books of the week to browse through.

Further down Piccadilly, Fortnum & Mason's new 1707 wine bar opened at the end of 2006 on the completion of the first stage of its £24 million makeover, planned to commemorate the store's tercentenary this year.

Situated on the new lower-ground floor next to the Food Hall, 1707 allows you to order a bottle of almost any of the more than 1,000 wines stocked in the adjacent wine department for the retail price plus £10 corkage.

It also offers an extensive selection of wines by the glass and a menu, by new development chef Shaun Hill, which focuses on foods from the Food Hall to encourage experimentation and adventure.

Simon Burdess is a trading director at Fortnum & Mason's overseeing the food and restaurant side of the business. He joined Fortnum's from Marks & Spencer 18 months ago and has supervised the opening of 1707 as well as the store's current refurbishment of its existing restaurants and the introduction of a new ice cream parlour.

The next phase of the renovations will see The Patio restaurant on the mezzanine floor overlooking Fortnum & Mason's Food Hall close in April and reopen in August as The Gallery, while St James's Restaurant on the Fourth Floor will lose its murals on the walls depicting the imaginary travels of Messrs Fortnum and Mason in a refurbishment masterminded by David Collins, the man behind the design of the Wolseley.

"Our restaurants have traditionally attracted Anglophiles - customers looking for a typical British experience," says Burdess. "But what we've found is that we already attract a young and new kind of clientele with our wine bar.

"After the refurbishment we will expand our number of covers to 650, making us one of the bigger restaurant operations in London, and The Fountain restaurant will stay open much later, to 11pm or midnight, rather than closing after serving a pre-theatre menu.

"We know that 25 per cent of customers at Fortnum and Mason's end up eating at one of our restaurants and these plans will increase further our appeal as a destination restaurant in central London, offering the range of an all-day British brasserie."

Burdess and this team are now keen to recruit additional high-calibre staff to man this larger operation. He adds: "We want the best people in the industry and, because of the scale of our plans, we can offer a proper career progression.

Someone could join us as a waiter at the Fountain, progress to be an assistant manager at The Gallery, become a restaurant manager and then ultimately join the management team." The advantages of working for an instore restaurant include much less antisocial shift patterns than is common in a traditional restaurant, where you may not leave the premises until 2am.

"We're successful at attracting good catering and waiting staff because we offer a better quality of life and worklife balance," confirms Teixeira. "We're not necessarily looking for staff with in-store restaurant experience but catering experience is an obvious advantage.

"I'm looking for a particular kind of personality who we can train to represent the brand. An aspiration for me would be to have staff who are as informed about John Lewis's products as their shop floor colleagues and can advise customers accordingly."