We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Eric Seger a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Eric, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Talk to us about building your team? What was it like? What were some of the key challenges and what was your process like?

When we first started it was hard for us to calculate exactly what we needed in terms of staff but we had good help from some friends from the industry that helped us out the first period to cover shifts where ever it was needed. We are two persons that both run the business and works in operation, and did so from the beginning. We started with two employees and that is still the size of our core team, but during summer time every year the team extends with another 4 persons because we have a big outdoor patio with twice the amount of seats compared to inside, that we need to take care of.
Recruiting the first staff members was nervously, because we were not sure if we could give them the agreed amount of working hours and also, them together with us was going to give this restaurant the face and the personality. It ended up being a very good crew, which have now switched but we are still very happy with our crew today and also very grateful for everyone that´s been working with us during these 3 years, some a bit longer and many for just some shifts or a summer.

If doing it again, the thing we would do different is probably to recruit another chef but one less waiter because we found that we want to aim higher in the kitchen than we first thought.

We found most of our staff through friends or contacts in the industry, I found that to be the most reliable way.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

So we are a couple who runs Nektar that both been in the hospitality business for our whole working life. Since meeting each other we been talking a lot of how we would do it if running a restaurant. For example every time we been out eating we been commenting to each other that “this is a great way of serving this” or “I would like to have those cutleries” or we would do this or that different, but we never really discussed when or where to open a business until the chance was provided to us. I was working in a great bakery in town called Lillebrors bageri during the years of covid-19 and Embla was working in a small restaurant called speceriet on the other side of town. The bakery industry was actually thriving during the restrictions of the pandemic, because it seemed like everyone working from home wanted more fika this time, maybe to comfort themselves in a depressing time. Anyway, we produced more than what the venue was made for and luckily the owner found a new, bigger venue just next door and at that point we started to discuss how it would be to run a restaurant in the bakery´s old venue.

Half a year later we opened the doors to Nektar mat & vin, after some intense months of renovating, painting, getting the rights and permits and all of that. And most important, figuring out what kind of restaurant we wanted to be and what product we wanted to deliver to our guests. It was clear for us from the beginning that this was an opportunity to make the choices that we never could as employees and for me one of the biggest ones was to take more choices based on environmental sustainability rather than bigger margins. We decided to try to work with a few local, organic and small producers as and buy from them rather than a distributer, so the money ends up in the right hands. In return we have gotten the absolute best quality of vegetables, different meats, eggs and fowls available which makes it so much easier and more fun to cook. I believe the personal link to the ones providing us also brings an extra dimension of proudness when we serve our plates.

During the first year I think we struggled a bit to find our identity when it comes to cooking, I was a bit uncertain and listened to everyones input and wanted something for everyone but at the same time I tried to figure out what I wanted. Today I think we can say we found our identity in the rustic southern European style of cooking with one foot in the traditional french kitchen and the other one in something a bit more modern and experimental, but everything made with mostly local ingredients. We serve wines from Europe chosen from the same kind of premisses as our food ingredients basically, from small farmers that work organic or biodynamic, making wine without additives.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

I think I talk for a lot of business owners that runs their business out of passion when I say the social media and marketing part of it isn´t the most fun. The only thing I ever felt posting a picture on our Instagram account was performance anxiety, it was never good enough. But a year ago we hired a professional to take pictures, make videos and and post frequently and that is one of the best things we have done, not only because we grow little by little, but also because we can spend time doing other tasks that feels more important and brings more joy.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

Of course, som reviews in newspapers or posts on social media gained us a lot of costumers but most important i think is that we try to make sure that everyone that walks out the door do so with a smile. I think slow and steady wins the race here, we were never a big hype or something like that but new costumers keeps coming and I think most of them, because they know someone that dined with us and had a good experience.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.nektarstockholm.com/
• Instagram: nektar.sthlm

Image Credits

photos taken by: Frida Hellström