Lifestyle Report: The Working Week

The licensee's typical working week is long - and divided up among a wide variety of different roles.

In a study of licensees' lifestyles you would expect to read something about how they spend their spare time. And later on, you will. But with 59 per cent saying they work seven days a week, it seems licensees don't have a lot of spare time. The average working week among our sample is 6.3 days. Given that the hours are longer in the licensed trade, it's fair to say that publicans work twice as hard for their money as most other people.

You can forget about Europe's 48-hour week — most licensees have clocked that up by Wednesday night, with three 12-hour shifts still to go.

Such a long working week is bound to create stress but, as we will see, most say they enjoy their job.

This part of the report gives us the chance to look at how a typical licensee's working week is divided up between working behind the bar, chatting to customers, cellar work, admin and staffing matters such as training and recruitment.

According to the survey, sponsored by Coors, more than three out of five (61 per cent) spend at least two days a week behind the bar, and 58 per cent say they spend a similar amount of time talking to customers.

It's an essential part of the job - customers like to see the publican or the licensee couple. It's so often their physical presence, their leadership and their interaction with staff and customers that creates the personality of the pub.

But there's a more obvious reason why licensees spend so much time working behind the bar - there's a lot of work to do, and if publicans didn't do it themselves, they'd have to pay someone else.

This is the time when customers can see what a licensee does and it is what forms the public's perception of people in the business. But working behind the bar is far from the full picture.

So how do licensees spend the rest of their working week?

The hard graft of cellar work takes up half a day or more for 61 per cent of licensees. Almost one in five (18 per cent) spend two or more days on this.

For many pubs in today's culinary world, the kitchen is as much the engine room as the cellar and many licensees double up as chefs. One in five (19 per cent) spend two days or more in the kitchen, with 32 per cent spending at least half a day slaving over a hot stove.

However, slightly more than a quarter spend no time in the kitchen, possibly because they don't have one, possibly because they leave that side of the business to someone else.

It's not all glamour, however. Almost eight out of 10 licensees spend a couple of hours or more each week cleaning. For almost half (49 per cent), keeping the place ship-shape takes up half a day or more of the working week, with almost one in five (18 per cent), conscientiously devoting two or more days to cleaning. Only 13 per cent leave it all to the staff.

Roughly half (49 per cent) spend a day or more on admin, taking care of orders and doing the books.

Much less time is spent on business planning, but it's encouraging that 40 per cent take the opportunity to step back from the daily grind to spend a half a day or more inventing and implementing ideas designed to increase trade — an essential factor in today's licensed trade.

Dealing with suppliers takes up half a day or more for 45 per cent of publicans in our survey. Almost one in five (18 per cent) spend a day or longer on this.

Handling deliveries may be a more efficient process than it once was, and most 65 per cent spend no more than a couple of hours on this. But 11 per cent still spend two days or more receiving deliveries, no doubt from a variety of food, drink and other suppliers.

It suggests there is a great demand out there for a consolidated delivery that combines the bulk of a pub's needs - as long as it does not have negative cost implications of course.

The least amount of time is spent training and recruiting staff. Only 38 per cent of licensees devote more than a couple of hours a week to hiring and developing people.

A committed nine per cent say their staff get half a day's training a week or more, but 15 per cent said they spent no time training staff in an average week.

Of these, many will doubtless get involved in training from time to time, but not sufficiently to record it as a significant part of their week's activity.

Recruitment takes up the least time of all. Getting on for half (45 per cent) said this takes up none of their typical working week. Less than a third (29 per cent) said they spent less than an hour while only seven per cent ticked the box marked "couple of hours".

Somehow, three per cent of licensees manage to spend two or more days a week recruiting. They may be better off focusing their time on holding onto the staff they've got.

If you're wondering who works the hardest, the figures for tenants, lessees and freetraders work out roughly the same - although tenants tend to spend more time cooking and cleaning.