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Get to Grips With Your Daily Labour Spend

by | Jul 15, 2022 | Blogs, Hospitality

Following significant challenges over the last two years, hospitality is endeavouring to bounce back as restriction-free trading sees a new dawn for consumer demand. However, significant challenges are well documented, such as rising inflation, perilous utility costs and staff shortages, are already stuttering growth, as operators continue to navigate uncertain times.

According to a recent UKH, BBPA and BII member survey (May ’22), energy and the price of goods are first among the cost issues for members impacting margins. Furthermore 1 in 3 members are struggling to meet overheads or debts. Trade campaigning to reform business rates, training investment, access to people and a cut in VAT are being lobbied via targeted campaigns from our three main trade bodies.

The third factor negatively impacting margins is labour costs, an area which always has been and likely to remain operators’ highest variable cost. Indeed, people costs look to steadily increase due to legislation (National Minimum Wage/ Living Wage/ rising NI). However, labour is controlled differently across the industry – partly because hospitality is so diverse but also because knowledge, systems, training and management styles all vary across larger companies, multiple and single operators. This leaves an inconsistent approach and smaller multiple operators; leased, tenanted and single site operators seem to be missing out – generally the operators with the highest cost burden in relation to revenue.

Larger operators (bigger pub companies, well-known pub and restaurant brands) have managed their labour costs, historically by week and over recent years, daily, as part of their KPI’s. How much labour is invested each week is another conversation, with some operators keeping investment tight, others choosing to spend more, investing in service for more sales. Interestingly there’s evidence of increased labour investment (when operators have enough people in the first place) during this period of lower footfall for many but there’s a spend per head and premiumisation opportunity.

 S4labour enables single site operators, as well as larger multiples, to view their labour and revenue spend in-week via a till link, hence full visibility of labour costs – by day and by hour. Visibility of labour may prompt shift changes, moving hours to suit weather patterns, unexpected events or enables daily reaction to review sites (Google/ Trip Advisor etc) about service. The ability to move team hours around the rota, to suit trade fluctuations ensures ‘Slack’ hours (too many people) are re-scheduled to ensure minimal ‘Stress’ (not enough people) during service. Forecast till revenue helps guide the future, while reporting an accurate labour performance in the past – from previous days till data, previous weeks and against last year for a like-for-like view.

Bigger operators are using versions of this technology via their head office teams – now it’s time for multiples, leased, tenanted and Free Houses to have access to a labour tool which suits smaller businesses. A digital rota saves time – time which can then be used to manage people around service peaks and troughs, for more sales. Teams also like to view their shifts via a modern, simple app – with additional functionality to swap shifts if needed – it’s a modern, professional way of working with your teams and ready for all the new people that will hopefully be attracted to our industry.

S4labour are launching a campaign for operators to ‘Get to Grips with your daily labour spend’ – the 3rd highest but controllable cost. Operators currently spend time and investment controlling food and drink margin, food GP, drink yield and wastage – the industry is historically tuned to those areas. Spending a few minutes monitoring labour hours versus revenue and allocating accordingly is a much bigger prize. It’s also a data driven approach using site specific till data, while being really simple to implement and making a huge difference.

‘Smart tech’ should solve real problems, save time, or improve productivity – S4labour does all three:

  • Enabling daily visibility of labour – a large number of smaller operators generally manage a weekly rota and manage costs retrospectively, there’s now a solution for in-week labour cost visibility
  • Saves time via a digital rota,
  • Increases productivity via allocating hours to maximise service peaks and troughs, to maximise sales,
  • Forecasting becomes more accurate as more of the right people are in the right place for the right amount of time – all guided by operators’ own till data.

S4labour help sustainable businesses ensure longevity in these turbulent times – there’s no reason why smaller players shouldn’t be embracing the opportunity to ‘Get to Grips with your daily labour spend’ – to be on at least the same playing field as the bigger players.

May Experiences High Growth Rates for Hospitality

by | Jun 8, 2022 | Blogs, Sales Figures

Hospitality sales during May increased by 10% on 2021 levels.

Wet-led sales were up 16.5%, while dry-led sales were still up but by a smaller 4.5%.

Sites in London experienced high growth as sales improved by 30%; non-London based sites also saw a rise of 7% on May 2021 levels. London’s increase may be a result of restrictions in 2021 causing dampened sales, given there was limited outside space in London for hospitality sites.

It is important to note sales in May 2021 were during Covid-19. S4labour have ensured the data includes sites who could operate outdoors as well as indoors during May 2021.

Richard Hartley, Chief Innovation Officer at S4labour, said: “This last month has seen the struggles of staff shortages, inflation and energy costs continue to bring challenges for the sector. Although the increase for London is positive, the figures show just how much Covid-19 affected the Capital from a sales perspective.”

The Power of Integrated Hospitality Tech

by | Jun 8, 2022 | Blogs, Hospitality

The world of hospitality tech is vast. There is a seemingly never-ending list of technologies that can fit into our businesses to help do things “better” than before. Over the last 10 years we have been spoilt for choice. There are solutions out there for recruitment, rotas, communications and team engagement. Not to mention solutions for payroll, produce orders, tracking financials, marketing and customer engagement. Our tills have all become more automated, more accurate, and more compliant. You want a robot serving your guests, juggling dishes whilst telling jokes? Not a problem. We even have excellent data guys like Tenzo and Tahola that pull all the data we have stacked into our businesses into one place, giving clarity and visibility of all the benefits gained from this technical revolution.

Is all of this technology a good thing? Is it good for the customer and, critically, is it good for our businesses? Clearly every business is different. Even though I don’t see my local traditional Italian rolling out waiter bots or my independent watering hole taking on a business analytics suite just yet, there is a different mixture of hospitality tech that is the right fit for most of us. This will depend on the scale, style and priorities of the business. However, most businesses have come to understand that doing nothing will likely result in being less efficient, less productive and being left behind our competitors.

When looking at what tech is right for your business, one of the key places to start is by considering what your priorities are. Maybe it’s labour cost saving, growing sales, marketing, or a smooth EPoS system. As technology has become better and more critical to our industry, so has its consolidation. There have been some excellent innovations in hospitality that tackle the unique challenges we face. Yes, there’s still a significant amount of innovation and solutions being developed. We’ve also seen some giants of the technology service sector who can offer most operators pretty much everything – all under one roof as a multi-purpose tech supplier. You can now get your schedules, payroll, tills, F&B platform, analytics and more from just one supplier. This sounds like a positive thing for the industry: everything you need in one place and on one bill. Big tech has recently been on the acquisition trail, snapping up some of the best and brightest prospects in the hospitality tech world. In the last year, we have seen hospitality’s leading providers in training, compliance and ordering brought under the same roof as event booking and labour planning platforms in one big tech.

The question to consider is: can innovation, value for money, customer service or user flexibility ever be improved by the consolidation of tech? Unlikely. Innovation happens when specialists in their field are given the freedom to continually perfect the areas that they excel in. Customers benefit most when they can form close relationships with their suppliers, acting as the external voice that feeds into the product development.

The consolidated approach works well for those who want the mediocracy of everything. The under one roof offering tends to give operators one outstanding product, but a disappointing “everything else”. An operator can get one incredible piece of kit, but they’ll miss out on the best of everything else. Take Yapster for example: it’s brilliant and integrated with everything. If you want the best for team comms and leadership, go speak to Yapster. Yapster is an independent business with the best-in-class tech. Even though you could get a product from a consolidator, who can put team comms and EPos on the same invoice, there’s a sacrifice. You’ll likely end up with a weaker team comms platform in your business and a mediocre EPoS.

S4labour is 100% focused on being the best people system in the market. There is no other leadership, development or account management team more ingrained and experienced in hospitality productivity than S4labour. Over half of the winners at this years Publican Awards use S4labour, showing just how the best in the industry, who value the productivity of their teams above other tech, use S4labour. S4labour is also integrated with everything else in the category of market leading products. You can have the best people system, integrated with the best till systems, integrated with the best ATS, forward pay, training platform, marketing, comms, tipping etc and seamlessly link it all with S4labour.

By taking a sidestep around the “under one roof” consolidations, you will find a sea of the best of the best and you won’t need to compromise on any part of your technological priorities. The wonderful thing about everything that doesn’t sit with the consolidators, is just how well it all works together and how good we have all become at making the customer experience seamless and integrated with each other. Hedging your tech suppliers really is the only way to ensure you get an uncompromised solution.

April Sales Experience Growth Compared with Pre COVID-19 Levels

by | May 30, 2022 | Blogs, Sales Figures

Data from S4labour shows that hospitality sales during April increased by 3.7% on 2019 levels (pre-Covid-19).

Dry-led sales experienced the most growth with a 7% rise on 2019 levels; wet-led sales still grew but by a smaller 1%.

Sites outside of London were up 3.7% in sales last month, whilst London sites’ sales increased by a similar 3.5%.

Richard Hartley, S4labour’s Chief Innovation Officer, said: “The overall increase in April’s sales will have been a small positive for some food focused businesses. However, the ongoing difficulties surrounding recruitment is proving to be extremely challenging for the sector, and potentially stinting sales growth for some businesses.”

Top 4 Payroll Jobs to be Done By FY23

by | Mar 10, 2022 | Blogs, Hospitality

FYE is a brutal time of year for payrollers. It is the most common time in any business cycle for head office payroll employees to hand in their notice, you can check out the jobs sites now and see just how many Payroll Exec vacancies have just been published in the last few days. It’s true that hospitality payroll can be hard enough to tackle at any point in the year, flexible hours, enrolments, holiday etc, etc, etc can make it painful enough, let alone the additional burden that the upcoming deadlines of a year-end brings. If you are meant to be preparing your year-end payroll responsibilities right now, and found this blog while procrastinating, well, we sympathise and offer you hope and a little steer on some key things to get right.

How not to stress over your FPS

 Sending a final Full Payment Submission (FPS) can be a huge job, but it is critical to identify and rectify any potential errors before submission. While this must be done before or on your employees’ payday, getting organised early can avoid the agony of retrospective adjustments.

Doing this manually on spreadsheets by hand will inevitably be time consuming and inaccurate, however a good payroll system should handle and automate all of this for you. When you run the final period of a tax year in S4labour, the ‘Final submission for year will automatically put’ indicator on the FPS for you – if no employees are being paid, this will go on the EPS.

Get in to TAX CODE mode

For each employee working for you either old or new, on the 6th of April you will need to have a payroll record and the correct tax code to use in the new tax year. You should check the P9X document published by HMRC that explains what tax codes employers must change to on 6 April. Here is the all important link to the HMRC website where you can view the P9X document – https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/p9x-tax-codes

This document is not for the faint hearted, but the good news is that your payroll software should keep you and your employees up to date automatically. S4labour has a direct link to HMRC, and their tax updates are received via electronic updates to make the process seamless.

Always P60 before you Party

At the end of each final year and no later than the 5th  of April, all employees must be given a P60 that summarises their total pay and deductions for the year. It’s good to get organised with your year end jobs, but processing P60’s shouldn’t be done before the final payslip has been issued.

The P60 is auto generated when the final payroll of the tax year is completed and accessible to employees via their S4labour employee portal on final pay day for the tax year.

Its Getting Late to do an Update

Each year, businesses must get updated and aligned with the latest rates and thresholds for Income Tax, National Insurance, Student Loan Repayments and National Minimum Wage. There is a great deal of information on this on the HMRC website. However, for those who don’t have time to keep track of the annual changes (or factor in more than 7 hours of sleep at night), your payroll should do all of this hard work for you.

HMRC updates are automatically done through S4labour each year, so you do not have to worry.