Crocodiles or cornflakes? What a restaurant can tell you about your risk appetite

Written by Lisa Stanley Mann on 24th Jul 2017

How do you get young, food-loving urban professionals into investing?

Investec has an idea – open a pop-up restaurant where the food reflects your risk appetite.

Diners at the Investaurant, a pop up restaurant in Farringdon, London, launched by Investec Wealth & Investment as part of its new Click & Invest platform, will pay £38 per head to enjoy a two-course meal with the dishes served based on a set of answers to a risk survey completed prior to their meal.

Investaurant is the UK’s first restaurant to serve meals based on diners’ appetite for risk.

To better understand the barriers that stop people investing, Click & Invest also researched attitudes to risk. The research shows how few people understand the investment opportunities available to them and that a staggering 75 per cent wouldn’t consider investing, even if they received a sudden windfall of £10,000.

Reasons for this include the chance of losing money and a lack of understanding, because of too much jargon.

The research also reveals Brits would rather jump out of a plane or change careers than commit to a long-term financial investment. 1 in 5 (19 per cent) would be prepared to move all of their current savings from one bank to another before they would consider a long-term financial investment, in spite of record-low interest rates.

Ahead of attending the Investaurant, open for the final day tomorrow, diners are invited to complete a survey that assesses their appetite for risk in everyday situations, which then determines the meal they will eat. The creative menu caters for five types of investors with different levels of risk appetite, ranging from low to high risk. This broadly mirrors the five investment strategies offered by Click & Invest.

For the more risk-adverse diners, lunch consists of burgers and chips. Those who are adventurous, will be served up crocodile and crispy crickets. Those who fall in between the two extremes, can enjoy dishes including squid ink cod, rabbit, and wild nettles.

It’s a bit of a gimmick, but a novel approach to getting people over their investment fears. And given the steady increase of investment platform launches, surely it’s only a matter of time before more providers begin to add ESG or SRI concerns onto their menus. Check out our free guide which examines impact options on different investment platforms. 

Jane Warren, CEO of Click & Invest, which offers an actively managed online investment service for those with £10,000 or more to invest, said: “Risk is something that people encounter in their everyday lives in one guise or another and with Click & Investaurant we have been able to create an innovative concept for people to explore their appetite for risk while tasting some delicious dishes. We want Click & Invest to be accessible to all, from novice investors who are looking to learn about investing through to experienced investors.

To see whether your risk appetite is more crocodile than cornflakes, check it out tomorrow: book using this link.

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