Smile, I'm a customer!

Morning, how are you? Not so bad, You? Not good actually. We had a fire inspection this morning and we have got to put in a sprinkler system and fire alarm and it looks like it will cost about £40k. Then we had a visit from the EHO and she wants all new chopping boards, the kitchen painted right through and stainless steel cladding on the walls. VAT is due Friday and Rosie has resigned so I've got no-one to work in the kitchen at lunchtimes. To cap it all, the Cellarbuoy on my best-selling lager broke. I was just going to… that's funny, that bloke's walked out.

We know how tough things are at the moment and there are challenges aplenty to overcome, but we have to remember that we are on stage and the theatre goers want a performance. They don't want Les Miserables, they want Mamma Mia! That's why they have come to the pub, and it is what will keep them coming back.

A recent survey found that people are increasingly viewing the pub not as an everyday drinking experience, but as a less regular event experience. Like it or not, we are the event. That includes staff with their own problems putting them behind them when they come to work. Chefs, waiters, bar people all have to be managed into submission, made to realise that when the curtain goes up, they have to perform.

How on earth do we do it? Communicating with each other. 'How do you communicate?' is a recruitment question I have taken to using and it often gets a blank response. Text? E-mails? Mailshots? Day diary?

Yes, yes, fine, but the answer I like is "talking to each other".

Talk to your staff informally and at reviews to explain the importance of "the customer experience" and what it means in practice — a welcome, a smile, bringing them a drink or offering another, clean glasses, sparkly brass, fresh-smelling loos, sounding like nothing is too much trouble.

Sometimes you may also have to listen to their problems, but don't be tempted to list yours. That isn't what they have come for. One USP of the pub is the personal as opposed to the impersonal.

However well Amazon.com works and helps us get what we want, it doesn't smile, laugh and bring the warmth of human experience that we can. It's what we are good at, or should be.

Gerry Price is the licensee of Inn@West End, Woking, Surrey​