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"How are cost pressures leading you to innovate within your business?"

1

Clever with Recruitment

Joe Buckley MBII
The Tollemache Arms, Harrington
We are trialing a new recruitment programme, called Candid Hospitality, from the makers of Toggle and Airship. They’ve devised a system which uses psychometric tests to match you with a potential employee. We have done a psychometric test for Candid, so we can match our business to potential recruits. It’s based upon their personality, etc, being aligned to our needs. It’s a bit like Tinder, the dating app – not that I have been on Tinder! And it recommends applicants based upon how much we align. Many big brands have signed up to it and we’re trialing it on a single, rural site, to see how it works for a more remote business like ours. We are currently investing heavily in people , as we want to over-staff so we can grow our business. We firmly believe that great staff will allow us to take more money, as they will offer better quality service and improve spend-per-head, by recommending better quality wines and so on. This all helps us retain our customers too, because if our guests get to know and like our team, that creates loyalty. Gone are the days of just having the right number of people – we want quality team members wo are aligned with our vision and will help us succeed. I think it’s really cool that recruitment is changing, Most of us pub landlords are sifting through indeed daily, endlessly, finding people who aren’t right for us, whereas we hope this will cut out that first interview, because you already know that personality-wise they are a fit to you and your business.

2

It's all about the customer experience

Steve Banks MBII
The Woodman, Ruislip
I spent 30 years working across various areas within the John Lewis Partnership. This has given me a broad vision of what I can do to deliver that special John Lewis experience to customers in our pub. The John Lewis experience is about: value – having the product that customers feel are good value for money; quality – premium products; expertise – understanding your business and catering for your customers; the overall offer, down to presentation and cleanliness. It’s about making sure that everything from your glasses to the outside areas sparkle. It’s about ensuring that the customer experience is second to none, everything. Another thing we do at the pub is to make sure people know what’s going on. Whether it’s a price rise or a new product, we let our customers know about it before it happens. We also make sure that our productions are always well displayed, in a way that will draw people’s attention. There is no point in having glasses on the back bar – we’re not selling glasses, we are selling products, so everything on the back bar must be for sale. And if something isn’t selling, we move it on. We’re never going to be a Never Knowingly Undersold pub, but we try to be, and to be perfectly honest, if somebody is not happy about a price and they tell us, we will always have a look at it and see if it’s something we can move on or move out. I’ve always said, if John Lewis was running pubs, The Woodman is what it would look like.

3

Energy Saving Measures

Miranda Richardson FBII
Not Just A Pub Company
Running a Grade II listed pub presents unique challenges, particularly when it comes to energy efficiency. To combat rising costs, we’ve taken a proactive approach. One key step has been insulting the upstairs windows to eliminate draughts – no small feat in an older building where traditional energy-saving measures aren’t always possible. In the colder months, we maximise the use of our log burner before turning on the heating, making the most of a natural heat source to keep warm for as long as possible. We’ve also introduced energy-saving technology across our refrigeration units. These devices monitor usage and automatically cut power when the fridges haven’t been opened for a while, preserving the cold air inside. If a door is opened, the system instantly reactivates. Overnight, when fridges are rarely accessed, this makes a significant difference to our energy consumption. Another big change has been to switching all out light bulbs to LED versions with a lifetime guarantee. Not only do they last significantly longer than traditional bulbs, reducing replacement costs, but they also consume far less energy – helping us cut electricity usage without compromising on lighting quality.

4

Technology to enhance service

Ted Docherty
The Crown, Playhatch
We continue to be innovative in the business by always looking and finding ways to be more productive. We try to use technology whenever possible, such as order and pay apps, but we still have some work to do, as we’re not there yet. We have been trying an ordering app that goes straight from the tables to the kitchen and we use a labour rota system too. These are incredibly challenging times and it gets harder to find new ways to save money, when we’ve already been doing that for the last five years. And we know that we have to be careful not to reduce our labour to the point where customer service is affected. Minimum wage is creeping up, but I don’t think that is a bad thing, as it will mean people (our customers) will have more money in their pockets , which they will hopefully spend with us. I am also anti-ageism, so if a 19-year-old can do the job as well as , or better, than a 24-year-old, then why should they be penalised with lower pay?

5

Events that provide good returns

Tom McNeeney
The Oxford, Rochdale
One of our big trends at the moment is that people like ‘an event’. So we like to tailor our events around the things that will make us, as operators, more money. For instance we don’t do beer festivals, for example, because we wouldn’t make anywhere near as much money on a beer festival as we do on our cheese and wine festival, where we are able to keep 100% of the sales of the wine and food. This also means our events are slightly off kilter, compared to what others are doing. And not having a gin or beer festival, where we’d have to pay a brewer quite a lot, means we can focus on things that make more cash. our wine sales are up 11% since we started our cheese and wine festival.

6

Keeping food GP up

Bex Wilkins
The Wildmoor Oak, Bromsgrove
For us, it is really about looking at our food GP and making sure we have portion control and doing as much as we can to maintain our margins. We’re a fresh food business, so we’re making sure we are buying and using products correctly, minimising waste and ensuring that our food GP is as strong as it can be. A couple of percentage points lost can have a big impact on the business, because we are 65% food-led. It’s about really looking at where we are missing that number and what we can do to make it a little bit better.

7

Incentivising Staff To Save

Victoria Mavin
Bellringer, Eaton Park
One of the things we are hot on at the moment in both of our pubs, which are ‘out of the 1970s’ when sustainability didn’t exist, is working hard and training the staff to help make savings. We have installed LED lighting, but we also make sure the staff are switching lights off. It’s the silly little things that we find make the biggest differences. For instance, when nobody is in the room where we’ve got lots of fruit machines, we’ll switch them off. We ask staff questions, such as ‘what have you done today to save on costs?’ We have a whole list of things that they can do to help make savings and, in return, we will give away little presents as incentives, as it encourages them to do their bit. When our cleaner left, we asked ourselves ‘do we need a cleaner?’ – when not having one saves us £600 a month. So, we have incorporated the cleaning into what our staff are doing. We have got weekly, as well as daily, task sheets and each person has to initial a task when it has been completed.

8

Focus on driving business efficiencies

Tanya Wicks
Barons Pub Company
We’ve looked at the different roles within the business and made changes, including taking away supervisor roles and having trainee Assistant Managers instead. We’re also using tech to support more training on-site, and we’re creating some flexible Head Office roles that will allow people to work in our pubs two days a week. We’re also driving GPs by giving bonuses quarterly, further incentivising our General Managers, Head Chefs and Sous Chefs. And we’ve looked at alternative suppliers for the first time. In January and February, myself and Clive [the Founder and Managing Director] visited every level of the business to talk about productivity. We discovered that productivity meant different things to people, eg, some bar staff saw it as cleaning during downtimes, rather than focusing on our 14-steps of service, which includes upselling and engaging with customers.

9

Restructuring and price rises

James Bainbridge FBII
The Tilbury, Datchworth
Cost pressures have been a huge part of all of our decision making over the past couple of years, and will continue to be with the extra pressure April will bring. We have restructured our management team removing one fulltime manager by spreading another across two sites. We are not targeting team members to work less to avoid NI, because we would rather have fewer people who work more and are better at what they do. Working in hospitality can pay very well and even more so with the rise in the minimum wage, with a high level of gratuities. We are using this as a positive to attract better people, so that we employ fewer people but who are more efficient. We will also be passing costs onto our guests. We need to charge more as an industry: the minimum wage has gone up about 100% in the last 10 years and our prices have gone up almost 30%. We believe in offering quality and charging more for it, as even going out for a substandard meal is now expensive. We find our guests are willing to pay that bit more to receive a much greater experience.

10

Food is the biggest draw, so it's about creating great options

Michael Pearson FBII
We’re adapting our pub business to cope with cost constraints by doubling down on providing outstanding customer service and food quality. If customers do choose to go out, they will be expecting the very best value for money experience. We have seen alcohol consumption falling and our business model has shifted from a 60:40 wet to food split to a 50:50 wet to food split. Food is the biggest draw and this is where we are placing our emphasis. Whilst a two course meal for two with arrival drinks and a bottle of wine is often well north of £100, we have introduced plenty of alternative options like our new Plat du Jour for just £15. An example of this would be a Chimichurri Spatchcock Chicken with Chips and Salad. Cost on the plate £2.50, selling price £15 inc VAT, Gross Profit 80%. It flies out of the door and customers are visiting on a more regular basis, in the knowledge they can eat out without breaking the bank – and have cash left over for a few drinks. We are carrying out work to our outdoor garden area and have removed two herb beds to be replaced with a covered outdoor BBQ, street food kitchen and dispense bar. Through the spring and summer months ahead, we aim to be the place to go regularly for great plates of food at an affordable price.

This interview can be found in the Spring 2025 edition

Read the full issue

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