Training: Training is the key

Barracuda ensures that its staff make a good impression at every new pub.

A new pub needs to hit the ground running. Those early days when customers first call to check you out are crucial.

Will you turn their curiosity into loyalty? Will they tell their friends to go along or stay away? Get it wrong in the first week and it's a mistake from which you might never recover.

Getting the design and the offer right are probably the easy parts - if you've done your research. It's the people who work there and the advanced training they have been given that makes all the difference.

Fast-growing managed pub chain Barracuda is getting plenty of practice at opening new pubs. One of the latest is the Town Hall in Staines, Middlesex, a striking and spacious Smith & Jones concept housed - where else - in the town's former town hall.

Two weeks before it opened its doors on June 8 its 40 staff gathered in the dust and clutter of the half-built venue to begin their training. The man responsible for getting them ready for the big night is Jim Wright. Over a 10-day programme, two sessions a day, he makes sure they are confident enough to face the customers with a smile by training them in all they need to know about running a pub legally, safely and efficiently.

Jim managed pubs himself for 18 years before Barracuda bought the pub he was running, the Fairfield in Stockton on Tees, in 2000, and saw his potential. He now does all the development training for the company, travelling wherever there is a new opening.

He has already advised the Town Hall's manager Deborah Harper on choosing her team and checked that the pub has the right products and equipment. Then comes the people part.

"It's my job to put the standards in," says Jim. "Smith & Jones is a quality-led brand and you've got to get it right."

His course includes an induction to Barracuda, team-building and information on health and safety, food hygiene, licensing, drug awareness and security as well as customer service.

Recruits are also given a thorough knowledge of the products by tasting and describing all the drinks and food they will be preparing and serving.

Most importantly it is all done with a sense of fun to fit the Smith & Jones goal of throwing "a party every night of the week".

"Three years ago we just used to sit the recruits down and go through 40 different slides," says Jim. "Now it's more interactive. There are still some slides but rather than me telling them, it's about them finding out for themselves.

"We play games, help them to get to know each other. On every module there's a quiz with prizes. It's fun. I'm a 50-year-old child, really.

"On the first night, for instance, we get them to produce a show based on what they have learned about Barracuda. They also build their own back-bar displays. It helps them to take ownership of the business and that's critical. It's their pub as much as anyone's. It's all active learning, not like going to lectures. We just want everybody to have fun. If they can come to work and be happy, that's infectious. They'll pass it on to the customers."

Pictured: Jim Wright brings cuts of meat to life for the Town Hall trainees during his development training programme.​

Deborah knows how to spot good staff​

The Town Hall's manager, Deborah Harper, pictured centre, not only moved all the way from her former pub in Poole, Dorset, to take over the new operation - she brought six key members of her team with her. That certainly helped ease a mammoth recruitment challenge in Staines, but she still had to find40 people who would get the Town Hall off to a successful start.

There was no shortage of applicants. Ads in the Jobcentre and in local papers brought no fewer than 300 calls. Deborah's experience meant she could tell from that phone call whether they would be worth interviewing. "I was looking for people who could talk, who were bubbly and not shy. You can train anybody in anything - but not to smile," she says.

That whittled it down to 120, only 10 of whom had any previous experience in pubs. All were interviewed and at three people every 20 minutes, between 10am and 5pm each day, that took a whole week.

The final selection process took Deborah four hours. "It was very difficult. Most of them were lovely people," she says. But she needed staff who would specifically suit the kind of pub the Town Hall would be and the kind of customers they would be serving.

"It's an adult market. You need to be friendly but professional. It's not a full-on young person's venue. You have to know when to leave them alone." The 40 successful applicants, a giddy mix of nationalities, from Poles to Chinese, are already being watched closely to identify management potential. In the hothouse of just one new opening, the future of the pub industry was being born.