No buzz for the Blairs from easy life

Blair, however, had no intention of settling into an easy life, and immediately launched plans to rebuild the operation as a string of new-style leisure establishments. Starting from its base at Elliots Bar & Restaurant in Prestwick, Buzzworks has resurged in the past six years with the addition of five further outlets to take its annual turnover to some £9m. Despite the crunch, Buzzworks' managing director says his business continues to trade profitably.

"There has been no significant decline across our estate in terms of sales, and there has been no decline in margins, which is a real trick," Blair says.

He was therefore frustrated earlier this year when the opportunity arose to buy Nardini's at Regattas, a 140-seat bar and restaurant located at Largs marina.

Though Buzzworks was trading strongly as the downturn dropped a further gear in the final quarter of last year, the company could not convince its main bankers at the stricken Royal Bank of Scotland to part with cash after the owners of Nardini's put the eatery into administration in November.

Blair said his company eventually secured funding for two-thirds of the purchase price from Clydesdale Bank, though the entire affair was "an immense struggle" that took more than four months to complete.

Summarising these events, Blair remains calm amid the mid-morning brunch crowd that has steadily trickled into Elliots this midweek day, but there is an edge to his voice.

"If we want to do something that we believe is good for the business, we will get it done," Blair says. "There are times when I will not take no' for an answer."

After more than three decades working in the trade, the 51-year-old has certainly seen nearly everything the industry can throw up. This, combined with his self-described drive to take on life's challenges, appears to lie at the heart of the family company.

Blair discovered his flair for business as a teenager growing up in East Kilbride. He set up various enterprises, ranging from paper runs and lawn cutting to selling biscuits. "I had been reasonably entrepreneurial during my teens," he says. "I knew I liked selling things, and I knew I liked people."

This carried into his collegiate years when he studied hotel management at Strathclyde University. During this period, Blair started running his own discos at the university, and also sold children's clothes at a stall in Glasgow's Barras market.

In 1978 Blair's parents sold their home and relocated to Ayrshire, where they bought The Tower Inn in Kilwinning. Though father Stanley was a builder by trade, his eldest son says it was always his dad's ambition to own his own pub.

Blair decided to join his father and mother Esther in the new business, and left university six months before completing his degree. The newly married 21-year-old threw himself into operating the community bar, which was nestled between a chip shop and a brickies.

"Within a year we had quadrupled the turnover," Blair says. "It was very successful, but hard work. If I thought I got an education at university, then I really got an education in life while I was there."

The business began gradually expanding about five years later, and though the Kilwinning property was eventually sold, Buzzworks had a handful of eclectic but prosperous venues in its portfolio by 1989. The company then made what Blair describes as the "absolutely disastrous" step of buying a nightclub in Ayr.

"It was different from our other places, and I didn't follow my ethos of giving people what they want - I gave them what I thought they wanted." Within a year, this bad investment - combined with the deepening recession of 1990 - had pushed the business to the brink of administration. To avoid this, the family were forced to sell all except one of their establishments.

They suffered personally as well. Blair and his wife, Janice, had to downsize into a smaller home with their four children as soaring interest rates took their toll on both business and personal finances.

"We learned a lot of really strong lessons from that," Blair says. "In business, it costs you to learn things, and that cost us. It is not up, up, all the time."

The Buzzworks clan regrouped and focused upon their sole remaining venue, the Claremont Hotel in Kilwinning, and by 1995 they had started expanding again. Blair was firmly at the helm by this point - his father had died a number of years earlier, and his mother retired - but younger siblings Alison and Kenneth were now part of the management team.

When the offer came to sell to London & Edinburgh Inns, Buzzworks could have disposed of all eight of the properties it owned at the start of 2003. However, Blair and his team opted to use the £2.5m they reaped from the £5m deal to build a new chain of venues based on what they had developed at Elliots in Prestwick.

"As our confidence was growing, we knew that bigger places worked," Blair says. "We also knew we wanted to enter the market for a new, contemporary type of venue.

"We ended up back to having just one place, but we knew then that we had hit a seam in the market."

With the influence on continental-style luxury, Buzzworks started rebuilding yet again. With the benefit of hindsight and experience, Blair and his family stuck to their vision, which includes regular refurbishment of their venues and a heavy investment in staff training.

Though trading has been tough in recent months, Blair believes this continued commitment to capital investment is one of the key elements in Buzzworks' success. The company was also ahead of the curve when it came to spotting the current downturn, constructing a series of campaigns based on value offerings that have kept customers coming through the doors.

"Everybody goes to TK Maxx to buy clothes, but everybody wants to buy nice brands," Blair explains.

"It's the same for us. If you are going to bring people out in the middle of the week for a drink and a bite to eat, it has got to be luxurious and aspirational."

An avid runner and regular visitor to the gym and golf course, Blair is equally ambitious to exercise the further potential for Buzzworks. The company is currently considering a number of possible development plans, not all of which involve the steady site-by-site acquisition strategy that Buzzworks has used in the past.

"The industry, in my opinion, is in free-fall at the moment," he says. "There is a real shake-out going on.

"But it is also a period of unrivalled opportunity - as long as you can get money off the bank."