Profile: A helping hand

Related tags Pubs Robinsons Chef

It would be oversimplifying matters to suggest that tenanted pub operators have traditionally left the food side of the business alone, but the view...

It would be oversimplifying matters to suggest that tenanted pub operators have traditionally left the food side of the business alone, but the view that the menu was mainly a matter for the licensee was certainly a widespread one.

Tenants paid rent and bought beer. If they knocked out a few lunchtime sandwiches and the occasional pie and chips, as far as the pub's owners were concerned - especially if the environmental health officer started to take an interest - it was down to the bloke behind the bar, not 'head office'.

Times have changed. Paul Robinson, one of the current generation of the family which has owned and run Stockport-based brewer Frederic Robinson since 1838, has catering development for the business as his brief.

The Robinsons estate of more than 400 pubs, covering an area from the Lake District to Staffordshire and from North Wales to the Peak District, is moving with the times.

"Our future development is going to be all about destination food businesses," says Paul. "That's where our focus for acquisition is."

Having exited managed pubs altogether, converting its last managed outlets to tenancies last year, there remained the issue of what support could be offered to the estate's wet-led businesses.

The imminent arrival of a large JD Wetherspoon outlet in Stockport town centre also concentrated the mind - Paul is far from naïve about the implications for Robinson's traditional dominance of the town, recognising that when Wetherspoon arrives, other pubs tend to close.

The family brewer is not taking the challenge lightly, and part of its programme of support for tenants saw the appointment three months ago of Chris Whittleworth as development chef for the Robinsons estate. Chris has 15 years' experience as a chef, with the last five spent as head chef at the Mulberry, a flagship food pub in the Robinsons managed estate until its conversion to tenancy.

Chris's brief is to work with all pubs in the estate. For the estimated 80 to 100 houses which have historically done very little or no food, that means looking at solutions which can help them to add menus.

For others, even those with well-established food offers, there are gains to be made by using the buying power of 400 pubs to negotiate better terms with suppliers.

Given that the pubs have no obligation to sell food at all, nor to work with Robinsons on food, an important early win for Chris has been to establish his own credibility and overcome the traditional reluctance of some tenants to share too much information about their operation.

Chris believes he is well on the way with this process. Pricing was not the only issue some pubs faced. In some cases, Chris found that licensees were being deliberately misled by suppliers.

"In Wales, there were butchers supplying our pubs with what they said was Welsh Black Beef, but it wasn't," he explains. Being able to uncover such cases has clearly helped Chris to establish his credentials with Robinsons tenants.

"Pubs are very loyal to local suppliers, especially in areas such as Wales, and that's fine. But tenants are busy and don't have the chance to compare the deals on offer," Chris adds.

In some cases there were already supply terms in place, negotiated centrally by Robinsons, which were not being passed on. "Some suppliers clearly didn't see it as their job to tell tenants there was a discount in place," Chris points out.

Other pubs were simply not taking advantage of their buying power. "My advice would be to work with a catering butcher," says Chris. "A local butcher is fine if the terms are right, but we had some pubs placing big orders weekly who were paying the same price as retail customers walking in off the street. "It's often the same with fresh produce."

Some suppliers have bitten the bullet and agreed to renegotiate terms, others have lost pubs' business by refusing to budge.

As well as Chris's own catering butcher contacts, Robinsons has forged close links with meat marketing body EBLEX, giving its pubs' access to butchers providing meat to established quality standards.

Catering equipment is also a major expense for pubs. Chris quotes the case of a tenant who had been given a 'good' deal on a new oven by a supplier on condition she didn't tell anyone else what she'd paid. Once Chris persuaded her to part with the information, he was able to establish very quickly that she'd been charged well over the going rate.

Paul is also being bullish with equipment suppliers. "We met all the big players at the main trade shows, and in the current market they're more open to negotiation than perhaps they were a year or so ago," he says.

Robinsons is now insisting on a two-year warranty, rather than the standard one-year deal.

One early beneficiary of Robinsons' new hands-on approach to food has been the Royal Scot at Marple Bridge, just outside Stockport. Tenants Karl and Helen Guare have been at the pub for five years, having previously been tenants at two Robinsons pubs in Angelsey.

The Royal Scot re-opened in May after a major refurbishment. Karl, an Australian with a background as an army chef, is now single-handedly serving up a traditional British carvery to customers.

"It was Helen's idea, she was really convinced a carvery would work here," say Karl. "I'd never run one before, but we went for it."

Chris happily admits to having been a little dubious about the idea that a carvery menu was the right way forward for a small pub which had never offered food before, but worked with Karl and Helen to source both the kitchen equipment and a compact front-of-house unit, as well as food suppliers.

Chris was also on hand when the pub opened, putting in shifts in the kitchen and front-of house to help Karl get the process right.

The new menu has been a success so far, with both full meal and carvery sandwiches served six days a week. Established regulars rub shoulders with new customers, beer sales are up, and food is now about 12 per cent of turnover.

Chris also proved invaluable on a Friday early in July when the new carvery unit stopped working. "We phoned the supplier and were told they'd have an engineer with us on the following Monday - no use to us at all," explains Karl. "But Chris called them and someone was here within the hour."

With 60 carvery meals served on that Friday night and the weekend's food trade rescued, the value to tenants of Robinson's new approach seems clear.

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