I think this message rings hollow for a lot of hospitality operators. Over the last few years, we have seen our cost base increase massively, and for many people, waking up in the new year has meant worrying about their businesses.
Let’s not forget there are a significant number who live above the shop, so they’re worrying about their homes as well. Judging by my own business, the Christmas numbers were steady, not exciting. The good days were really good, but the off days were noticeably quieter.
And now, we’re all worrying what this month and the rest of the year will look like. Will everyone be saving money and dieting? We can’t do a lot about changing consumer habits, but what we can do is adjust our businesses to make them better and more suitable for the future market. So, what are we doing?
I’m writing this article sitting in my own village pub at 10.30am, with ten people in for coffee and breakfast. Growing breakfast and coffee trade has been a slow process – it isn’t easy to get people to realise we’re open at 10am every day. But now, it’s a profitable session for us, and it’s all growth from here. We’re even offering 50% off breakfast in January to keep driving awareness that we’re open!
The next thing we’re working on this year is corporate events. We’re developing our own collateral, and one of our team will focus on getting more corporate bookings. We’ll invest in someone going out to businesses to drum up trade. We’ve also bought our own darts board and now we have weekly darts – a new venture for us that’s proving popular with locals. And finally, something a bit more left field: we’re going to try selling local, high-quality meat to our customers. We have two local farmers keen to sell us their meat directly, which will hopefully give us another source of income.
The point is, the village pub needs to keep diversifying. As the government pushes up our break-even point by unreasonable amounts, we have to find ways to grow sales just to keep our heads above water. There are plenty of things we can do to expand our business, and that’s now essential for survival.
Of course, we also need to get better at everything we do – from maxing out Sunday lunch to delivering friendly, memorable service, and food and drink that works for our market. In our business, we’ll still be trying to raise quality and slightly decrease portion sizes for the next menu, as well as putting real effort into our barbecue offer.
But we also need to look at our cost lines and manage them even better. As I sit here now, we have chefs delivering food to tables because that menu allows us to run with only one front-of-house. We’re also focusing on shifting prep away from the morning – a constant battle! Labour is my specialist subject, and you might think after 12 years of running the same pub we’d have it nailed.
Sadly, no – we keep improving and need to keep finding every little item to make us more efficient. We’re also going to review all our cost lines and tighten up everything we do. Gardening, music, quiz costs and cleaning materials are all lined up for a good hard stare.
So, lots of work ahead to make the most of our business. It’s all hard work, but hopefully, it will yield more than just standing still from a profit perspective. We feel positive, but we’ll need to be ruthless and focused at every level of the business. We’ve written our objectives – now we need to deliver them!
I hope this article gives you something to focus on, and more hope and determination to tackle what needs to be done in your business. It’s certainly helped me just writing it.
Alastair Scott is chief executive of S4labour and owner of Malvern Inns
