Mission:
to boldly grow Wetherspoon's mission is to grow its sales and, in a steady manner, its business and not as some believe tocharge as little as possible. Mike Bennett talks to JDW's managing director John Hutson In America they call it "the third place." It's that haven you escape to when you're not at home or work, the concept having been ruthlessly exploited by the Starbucks coffee house giant across the Atlantic. John Hutson, married to an American, knows all about that kind of thing. And as managing director of JD Wetherspoon, he's been "out-coffee-ing" all those fancy specialist coffee chains for the past couple of years. Not surprising, really, because he charges half their price for a cup sometimes even less. But there's an issue here, it seems. "In American grocery retailing, they're all about managing deflation," he says. "There is a danger that we could become sucked into a deflationary spiral here, too." But isn't Wetherspoon the discounter and deal-cutter par excellence the main culprit? "We charge what we think we can sensibly charge," says Hutson. "We'd like to charge more. "The way you prevent it becoming deflationary is to improve quality. For example, you offer better-quality rump steaks but at the same price." He adds: "Some people seem to think we're on some kind of mission to charge as little as possible. But our mission is to grow our sales and grow our business. Sales are yes our holy grail. Get that right and everything else follows." Maybe Wetherspoon is becoming that "third place" for British consumers? Says Hutson: "Certainly when I was at university and nobody had any money, we used to get a load of food from Tesco's and take it back to the house I was sharing with other students. Now I should think we'd all go round to the nearest Wetherspoon it wouldn't be much more expensive." Perhaps it's the fact that Hutson grew up on a Sheffield council estate that makes him instinctively thrifty. More likely, he's just good at understanding what people will and won't pay. He arrived as an area manager 12 years ago from Allied, and opened the company's 21st pub the Elbow Room at Crouch End, north London. He rose swiftly through the ranks to ops manager and general manager until, with the departure of predecessor Mark McQuater, he was promoted to managing director five years ago. "They call me managing director, but really I'm team leader," he quips. "There are no specialists here. And if you are a specialist when you arrive, you'd better disguise it." But where McQuater, a banker by training, seemed rarely in tune with the Wetherspoon approach, Hutson has the culture running through him like a stick of rock. (McQuater, to be fair, has made a very decent fist of Barracuda since his departure, and Hutson rates his business highly.) Hutson, now 36, is protective about Wetherspoon, but certainly not paranoid. He needs no prompting as to the stinging criticism it's taken over the years much of it surely down to sheer envy. He can point to the factthat Wetherspoon has grown itsprofits-per-pub every year since its flotation, nowadays turning over an average of £24,000 a week, like-for-like annual sales increases bubbling along nicelyat 5 to 6%. "Most of what people say about us doesn't hurt. Even when they used to talk about us being a McPub [like McDonald's; coldly efficient but somehow phoney] or our managers being Wethergoons' [ie, no character], it never bothered me." Some of those old perceptions still apply but they're dealt with. "Say a local paper reviews our latest pub in its area, and describes it as an airy barn' or like an aircraft hangar'. We don't ignore it. "Perhaps the lighting is wrong, or we could break up the ceiling a bit. Whatever it is, we'll respond and we'll act on it, because there's probably some kernel of a point in there. "But if anything does grate, it is what some people still say about our food that it's sub-standard and all microwaved. Nonsense. Almost all of our food is cooked from fresh, and Egon Ronay, who we appointed as our food advisor four years ago, inspects our pubs four times a year. If even a coffee bean is the wrong type, he'll know. He's absolutely ruthless." Life for Hutson at Wetherspoon is busy, bordering on the frantic. He deals with half the new licences, and visits every single pub within a quarter-mile of the site. "You're never twiddling your thumbs wondering what you're going to be doing today," he states understandably. What makes him most proud is his company's attitude to its staff "it's like, if someone's worth 60 grand, pay the bugger 60 grand!" Hutson is big on employee satisfaction, but not in any patronising kind of way. It happens to be good business. "We pay people decently and the only way to provide a career path is not just to talk the talk but actually to do it," he says. "I believe we have the lowest turnover of staff in the industry, and a third of all our area managers used to run one of our pubs. "In other companies, they might come in as graduates or they could have been working for B&Q last week. That's stupid." There's an admirable continuity among Wetherspoon personnel, and that extends to head office. Hutson is joined by at least two other senior directors in the "10-years-or-more club." But operationally, Wetherspoon is subtly shifting focus. Coffee on the menu... kids allowed in... earlier openings with breakfast as from last month. What's next? "I'd like to think that fundamentally we won't change much. We only introduced children's menus in April, and they still account for only 1 to 5% of meals served, so maybe we can do more of that. It might be that breakfasts will eventually account for 20% of our food sales, who knows. "But, really, we have no intellectual vision of where we should be in three year's time. It will depend entirely on what our managers and our customers tell us.
