Alistair Darby: BDMs and improving pub business

How much money are you making out of this pub?" It's a question I ask of our retailers as often as I can when I am out visiting their pubs. Sadly the question is often received with suspicion: "Why do you want to know? It's none of your business." My immediate response is always: "I don't come to work for nothing, why should you?"

The salaries of every person at Marston's Pub Company are paid thanks to the efforts of our tenants and lessees. We should never forget this. It is our job to make sure that we do everything in our power to enable them to be successful.

There has been no end of news recently about pub companies, the BEC enquiry, Fair Pint, and the 'tie'. The anti-pubco campaigners say that rents are too high and beer prices too expensive. I think they are all missing the point. What really matters to any businessman, whether a publican or a greengrocer, is bottom-line profit. At the heart of the campaigners' calls is the issue of profit. If they were making decent returns out of their businesses, rents and beer ties would not be up for debate.

Our job at Marston's is to address this fundamental issue. Running a business can be a lonely calling. Decent commercial advice can be very hard to come by. That's where our business development managers (BDMs) come into their own. Many things are expected of BDMs, but the most important thing which they can do is help to improve a publican's business.

I expect a BDM to understand whether his landlords are making a decent bottom-line profit or not. Our BDMs are able to conduct in-depth profit and loss reviews with them so that they can advise how sales or margins or costs can be improved. Tenants and lessees should demand this support from their BDMs. The most successful relationships will develop from openness and trust, which are born from an understanding that BDMs really do care about their customers' bottom line profits.

One of my BDMs visited a pub last week where the landlord was making a loss of £25k and wanted a rent concession. After a full and frank two-hour meeting during which my BDM and the publican examined the business in detail, £50k of margin and cost

improvements had been identified. After this, they didn't need to discuss rent.

Come on. Let's get stuck into the real issues: let's talk business!