by Abby Henson | Dec 22, 2025 | Blogs
The Habits Gap: What Managers Are Really Doing
Every day, operators balance unpredictable guest volumes, fluctuating sales, and the challenge of keeping teams motivated and efficient. For ops teams, the difference between venues that thrive and those that struggle often comes down to one thing: the habits managers practice on the ground.
Excellence is built shift by shift, habit by habit. When we surveyed hospitality professionals to uncover what managers are really doing, the results revealed a striking gap between what senior teams assume is happening and what’s actually taking place. That gap is where profit leaks, service falters, and opportunities are lost.
What You Think Is Happening vs. What’s Actually Happening
Many ops leaders assume their managers are forecasting sales, planning labour to match demand, and reviewing performance daily. But the data tells a different story:
- Only 46% of managers forecast sales on a day-by-day basis
- 38% of managers don’t deploy their teams to maximise sales
- 41% of managers don’t stagger start and finish times or deduct time for breaks
- 26% don’t formalise their shift allocation when writing their rota
- 15% of managers don’t use quiet periods productively
- 54% do not review sales forecasts and labour schedules daily
- 15% of managers don’t accurately track their hours for payroll
Assuming your managers are doing the right things can be costly. Every missed forecast, every misaligned shift, every unreviewed rota contributes to profit leakage. The gap between the rota and reality is where money is lost — and where service suffers.
“You can’t manage what you can’t see.” As an ops team, you need tools and processes that give you real-time visibility into what’s happening on the floor. That means:
- Seeing how labour is deployed hour-by-hour
- Understanding how sales forecasts align with staffing
- Identifying where shifts are overstaffed or underutilised
What Ops Managers Can Do Next
Ask yourself: “Do I know what habits my managers are practicing every day?”
The truth is, excellence isn’t built on assumptions – it’s built on habits. That’s why we’ve developed our Operational Excellence Programme: a structured way to benchmark your venues, embed best practices, and turn good intentions into daily behaviours. By engaging with the programme, you’ll be able to:
by Abby Henson | Dec 18, 2025 | Blogs
Service and Culture: Lessons from Hamish
In the hospitality industry, great food and drink is essential – but it’s not enough. What truly sets businesses apart is exceptional service delivered consistently. In a recent episode of our podcast, RAW, we spoke with Hamish Stoddart, co-founder of Peach Pubs, about how his team created a culture of world-class service that set them apart. Here’s what we learned.
Peach Pubs began in 2002 with a simple vision: to create gastro pubs that combined fantastic food with outstanding service. Starting with a single tenancy – the Rose & Crown – the founders wanted to build a scalable business that felt personal and welcoming.
Hamish admits he wasn’t a typical industry insider. “I pulled my first pint at 38,” he says. But his passion for service and culture drove the business forward. From day one, Peach focused on shared ownership, giving general managers equity and encouraging every team member to feel like they owned the pub. This sense of pride became the foundation for exceptional guest experiences.
Many businesses talk about values, but few make them stick. Peach Pubs embedded its purpose—“Making Life Peachy”—into every aspect of operations. For 15 years, the team lived by a set of values that weren’t just words on a wall. They were front-of-mind every day. Hamish explains: “We taught ourselves to create a structure around the values so people could remember and live them. We even worked with a world-class memory champion to help staff recall them.”
This commitment meant that even short-term team members could recite the values and share stories about how they applied them. The result? Guests walked into a Peach pub and felt instantly welcomed—because the team knew why they were there and what they stood for.
Practical Strategies for Hospitality Leaders
Building a culture of great service doesn’t happen overnight. Here are Hamish’s top tips:
- Define Your Purpose and Values Clearly – make sure everyone knows why they’re in the building. A strong purpose creates alignment and motivation.
- Invest in Training and Reinforcement – don’t just announce values – embed them. Use creative techniques to make them memorable and actionable.
- Create Joy Internally – hospitality is about passing joy to guests. That only happens when your team feels valued and enjoys their work.
- Commit Time and Resources – culture requires meetings, training, and leadership involvement. It’s an investment that pays off in loyalty and reputation.
While service is fundamental, Hamish reminds us that success in hospitality requires more than smiles and great food. Finance, operations, and leadership all play a role. “You spin a lot of plates in this game,” he says. But if you get culture right in the first few years, it becomes easier to maintain – and harder for competitors to replicate.
At its heart, hospitality is about creating moments of joy. “You pass joy on,” Hamish says, “but only if you’re enjoying yourself and know why you’re there.” When every team member shares that sense of purpose, guests feel it – and that’s what keeps them coming back.
More on Service and Culture
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by Alastair Scott | Dec 15, 2025 | Thought Leadership
What do we call all the tasks that we have to do as a business that are outside of service? Non-service tasks? Fixed tasks? At S4labour, we call them admin (management tasks) and prep (getting ready, either front of house or back of house). But what are these tasks, when should we do them and how much time do they take? Let’s take each in turn.
There are a few examples I can use here to highlight the challenge of even defining the tasks. Do we treat cutlery polishing as prep (for the next day), or is it a task to be done during service? What about stacking glass or the dishwasher? Some days, you are better to run short and do these tasks after service, but on other days, they might need to be in-service tasks – either because you need the teapots or because there isn’t the space to stack the dirties.
So, we will all have different versions of what we might call prep tasks, some of which will be service tasks and included within the deployment graphs, and some of which aren’t.
I think kitchen prep will have a more uniform definition – that is anything that needs to be done to be ready for service. But even then, the devil is in the detail. Let’s take our traditional Sunday roast. Most of the work – cooking the potatoes or making the gravy – is a prep task, but we might classify it as a service task. Once the potatoes are in the tray, the workload for service is low as they just need to go in the oven and get shaken occasionally to brown evenly all over. The skill is in putting the potatoes in the oven at the right time to come out and get used fast enough not to go soft. And the gravy is hopefully just bubbling on the hob, low enough so it doesn’t catch on the bottom, but ready to be ladled onto the plate or into the jug.
So much of a Sunday lunch moves from substantially service to substantially prep – I don’t know anyone who doesn’t do their Yorkshires ahead of service. Even most of a burger might be prep – with the tomato, lettuce, cheese and gherkin all ready to go, and with only assembly and grilling required during service.
Once the tasks are defined, when should we do them? We have developed a successful methodology of slack tasks and fixed tasks, trying to split each into a task that can be done when we are quiet, rather than someone being given specific hours to cover it. Once we understand how team capability is measured, we also understand that there is in-built slack.
I asked one of our consultants what proportion of tasks should be slack, and his answer was all of them! I like the intent, but I still think line cleaning, pre-opening and a few others are fixed tasks, even if we can move some of them to the middle of the day or the middle of service.
Once you have decided what the tasks are, and whether they are fixed or slack, you need to decide how long they take. If you sell 1,000 burgers a day, it is probably worth measuring how long it takes to get the tomato from the packet to the service line. I once did some work for an airport where laying the bacon on the trays to get cooked was a four-hour job every day. And, if we go back to front of house, how long it takes to do recruitment every week is a difficult call but still needs an estimate.
But the most important and difficult decision is deciding when to do them. Are they a slack task, to be done when there is a quiet time during service, or a fixed task, as a designated activity with a time set against it? It is easier for the team to create fixed tasks (please come in early to look at all the emails), than create a slack task (please go on the bar in the afternoon and do your emails at the same time).
And this is the challenge that we can’t ignore; fixed tasks are damaging our industry. We are at the point now where because the cost of labour is so high that we can’t ignore all these small, difficult but important changes that together make a massive difference to our businesses. So, take the first step.
Alastair Scott is chief executive of S4labour and owner of Malvern Inns
by Abby Henson | Dec 4, 2025 | Sales Figures
The latest figures from S4labour reveal a steady performance for UK hospitality in November 2025, with overall like-for-like sales up 0.9% year-on-year.
London continued to lead the way, posting a 6.7% uplift compared to November 2024, while non-London regions saw a decline of 1.2%, underlining tougher trading conditions outside the capital.
Wet-led venues delivered the strongest growth, with sales up 1.4% year-on-year. Dry-led sites also saw a modest increase of 0.6%, reflecting more cautious consumer spending on food.
Richard Hartley, Chief Growth Officer at S4labour, commented:
“After a buoyant month in October (+5.4%), November is much more modest with the majority of businesses in decline. Following the recent budget announcement this level of sales is a concern for many operators.”
by Abby Henson | Dec 2, 2025 | Blogs
Operational excellence isn’t just a buzzword—it’s the backbone of successful hospitality businesses. From managing peak-season chaos to driving sales and creating memorable guest experiences, strong operational habits make the difference. Based on insights from our recent webinar, here are 12 habits that will help you boost efficiency, improve team morale, and grow revenue.
1. Communicate Clearly and Often
Use workforce tools and daily briefs to keep your team aligned. Clear communication reduces mistakes and empowers staff to deliver great service.
2. Plan Labour Strategically
Avoid the “throw everyone on the rota” trap. Overstaffing eats into profit, while understaffing hurts service. Balance is key.
3. Make Work Enjoyable
Happy teams create happy guests. Small gestures—meals, treats, recognition—go a long way in building morale.
4. Manage Admin Proactively
Stay on top of pre-orders and upsells. Spread admin tasks throughout the week to avoid bottlenecks and missed opportunities.
5. Say “Yes” to Sales Opportunities
Every phone call or walk-in is potential revenue. Train your team to maximise covers and upsell where possible.
6. Plan Shifts in Advance
Allocate roles when writing rotas. Put your best people in the right positions to optimise service and sales.
7. Elevate Guest Experience
First impressions matter—smiles, greetings, and personal touches create loyalty and repeat business.
8. Collect Feedback and Act on It
Encourage reviews and use insights to improve. Feedback also fuels marketing and bounce-back campaigns.
9. Prepare Your Bounce-Back Strategy
Plan January offers during December. Use creative tactics like mystery discounts or loyalty envelopes to drive post-holiday traffic.
10. Incentivise Upselling
Upselling boosts revenue, tips, and guest experience. Make it fun with team challenges and rewards.
11. Control Wastage
Monitor stock levels and portion sizes. Overordering and careless habits can erode margins quickly.
12. Start Where You Plan to Finish
Plan January rotas early and communicate holiday policies upfront. This ensures smooth operations and avoids surprises.
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by Alastair Scott | Nov 14, 2025 | Thought Leadership
Sometimes we pin business performance all on the manager. Of course, the manager is the leader of their business unit – they set the tone, hire the people, and drive the business forward. They decide on all the activities of the business and make the difference. True? Not completely, in my view.
The problem with this argument is that if a manager works five days a week, they might only run five shifts. But in most businesses, there are 14 shifts across the week, so a manager could only be running a third of them. The other two-thirds are run by assistant managers and team leaders – people who are just as critical to the day-to-day running of the operation and in the service levels, the team engagement, and the efficiency of the business.
The more admin-heavy a business is, the more the proportion of the business a manager sees reduces. The more the business uses fixed tasks rather than slack tasks, the more this reduces. So increasingly, the face of the business, and the shift leadership, is down to team leaders and assistants – the management team, rather than the manager. These are the people who interact with guests, make decisions in real time, and shape the experience on the ground.
Of course, the manager appoints these people and drives them to perform just as well when they’re not there. But therein lies the challenge. It’s one thing to lead when you’re present – it’s another to lead through others when you’re not.
I was in my own business last Sunday when the manager was about to leave at the end of a busy day for him. His challenge, as he left, was to motivate and energise a tired team to keep up service levels through the Sunday evening, get all the slack tasks done, get the team out efficiently at the end of the night, and leave the business set for success the next day. That’s a tall order, especially when energy is low and the finish line is in sight.
We all know how often this fails to happen. Sunday has traditionally been the graveyard shift of the industry. If we did trade visits, we should really do them on a Sunday night – that would tell us what our businesses are really like. It’s easy to look polished on a Friday night when everyone’s switched on. Sunday night is where the cracks show.
My point is that every shift leader is a vital part of the guest experience. We should think less about the manager and more about the management team – including every person in the business who leads a shift and is the leader in their business at that time. In our sites, that’s about eight different people: several who open the business, several who close, and the key team of senior managers in the middle who run the bulk of the busy shifts. Each of them plays a distinct role in shaping the guest experience and the operational success of the business.
But to create great performance as a business, each of those people must care as much about the customer as the next manager. They must know how to do slack tasks while delivering to the guest. They must be really efficient and have great restaurant eyes. I think that’s a pretty hard task to do.
When did you last train your team to do this? When did you last observe the “walking and chewing gum” challenge of opening and serving or, even harder, closing and serving?
I’ve recently been frustrated with how our teams leave the business, and I’ve asked a manager to do the close with the team to make sure we do this really well. The underlying message being that we both agree it hasn’t been done as well as we’d hoped. Some people are brilliant when they’re being managed, but less good when they’re trying to motivate themselves. I think too often we let these people open and close. Of course, some are brilliant in those circumstances. But do we think about this as we decide who should open or close?
My thesis here is that we should talk less about manager performance and more about management performance – bringing up the weakest area of the business and making it better.
And maybe I need to go and see my own sites more on a Sunday evening, just as I’m winding down. Are you going to be comfortable or correct, as a previous boss of mine used to say.
