Earning a crust

Related tags Staff Steak and kidney pie

Carl Smith tells Ewan Turney how building a great team has helped him and wife Pauline increase trade at two Young's pubs in Mayfair, London How I...

Carl Smith tells Ewan Turney how building a great team has helped him and wife Pauline increase trade at two Young's pubs in Mayfair, London

How I got here

We took on the Guinea 19 years ago and the Windmill 12 years ago. The Guinea had a wonderful reputation going back years, but it had lost its direction a little and standards had dropped. We had to build it back up again and that's one of the reasons we started entering the national steak and kidney pie competition - and won it three times. We are in the semi-final again this year.

My team

Staff are the apex of the organisation. I think this business is all about people and building teams. Unless you want to be a slave to your pub, you have to build teams. I have people that have been here for donkey's years - our assistant manager, sommelier, and kitchen porter have all been here for 18 years.

You have to have consistency in staff. You can't have constant turnover in staff as it's a nightmare, so recruitment and retention are absolutely key. You have to put yourself in their position and treat them as your own

son or daughter. There is no point screwing everyone down and giving them a miserable life because they just won't stay. Training is also a big part of it. If you train them, they enjoy the job and will stay. I hate unplanned staff turnover.

My staff incentives

I would not look to pay a person the least we can. I consider where they live, how much it costs them, how much it costs to get here and factor in that presumably they want to go on holiday at some point. If you pay the minimum wage then the effort you get back is the minimum.

The majority of our staff, especially in the Guinea, are on some sort of bonus or commission - the restaurant staff get the service charge, the chefs are on GP percentage-based bonuses and bar staff get rewards dependent on appraisals. We try to incentivise everyone - if a bonus is good enough for us, why isn't it good enough for them?

My staff meetings

We have weekly staff meetings - every Wednesday here and Thursday at the Windmill. We set an agenda; for example, we have just revised our mission statement at both places after a meeting. We involve staff in everything, even the business plan, which took five weeks to write. We spent two weeks talking about sales, one week about GP, one week about waste control and one week controlling costs and everyone is involved. It's our business plan. It gives them ownership and some great ideas come out of it.

How I keep staff happy

We want the Guinea to be sacred ground where people are not miserable. I say if you have a problem let's go and have a coffee across the road and sort it out - let's not do

it here because I want this to be a happy

place for staff, customers and suppliers.

If a guy is coming in to fix the drains let's make sure we offer him a coffee or a chilled Coke on a hot day. It doesn't cost a lot and it means people are looking forward to coming here.

It is not just customers we want to give satisfaction to, but people, and that includes staff and suppliers.

My food tips

1. Simple: The key is to give something to people they can describe to their friends. Do what you do right and be known for it. Don't try and be something to everybody with a big menu. Good food can be a gammon you boil yourself, home-made chips and two free-range eggs, not a faux Italian creation stacked up and drizzling. I see menus that you would expect to see on Kensington High Street or in the Mediterranean in a bloody country pub. Even if you don't a have a kitchen, you could have a bread maker on the bar and you could have fresh bread and sell it with cheese and home-made pickle.

2. Dictate: You can't be beholden to a chef. You have to dictate the food policy. The chef will take you down the wrong road 99 times out of 100. It is not their business to understand the market; it is not their business to talk to your bank manager. They will want to cook what they want to cook, which is not necessarily what the punter wants.

3. Time: If you go somewhere at lunchtime on a break, you don't want to wait half an hour for the food, yet it happens all the time. You are better off doing a few things really well that you can deliver quickly.

My marketing strategy

Part of our mission statement at the Windmill is to give customers the best pie they have ever had in their lives. It is the Pie Institute of Excellence (PIE). It is a simple message. I have registered a website called PIE, which I haven't developed yet, but the idea is for it to become a fountain of pie knowledge.

My customer journey

The customer journey doesn't start when you are in the pub. If we are going out, it starts, say, when I have decided to take us to a certain pub. The responsibility is mine and I want to be embraced and looked after straight away. I don't want to wonder what the procedure is here. I don't want to have to worry if they will come back to get us drinks.

At the Windmill, if staff see people wandering round they are encouraged to get out from behind the bar and ask them if they are OK and sit them down. We have big tables and if there are two people on one table, others won't sit there, so you have to push them to, otherwise they will walk out - people are strange like that. We try to embrace people and tell them what's what, so they know what to do. It makes their experience an enjoyable one.

My Pub - GUinea

Tenure: Young's managed

Turnover: £2.3m net

GP food: 59.3%

GP drink: 75%

Avg spend per head: £60

Staff: 25

Wages: £10,000 a week

Awards: National steak and kidney pie winner 1991, '94, '97

Young's Best Food Performance 2007

My Pub - Windmill

Tenure: Young's managed