Pub Mentors: The Elephant makes its mark

14-Feb-2012 - Last updated on 14-Feb-2012 at 09:59 GMT

Related tags Pub Coca-cola

External signage: has really worked and had a massive impact on trade

On a return visit to the Elephant in Bristol, trade consultant Alastair Scott, who runs Catton Hospitality, discovers that licensees Ben Bartrip and Sarah Eskins have been hard at it implementing many of his suggestions.

This mentor scheme has been rightly judged by everyone to be a massive success and, for the Elephant, the figures have been stunning. The initial 40% sales growth has been maintained and over the 12 weeks to Christmas the figure was 36%.

While the figures are good, it is perhaps worth looking at the achievements on a more base level.

Total income year-on-year is up by 43.5% while food sales have risen by almost 87%. The Elephant has been transformed, from making a loss into a healthy profit
Key changes

The following points are the most relevant:

The pub has moved from being marginal to making a significant profit, enough for the lessees to live on and re-invest in the future of their business.

Ben and Sarah are now incredibly positive about the future of their pub.

Their aim of getting to a second site now seems achievable more quickly.

They have learned some great new skills.

The inescapable fact is that mentoring works, and is a very quick and cost-effective method of catapulting your business forward.
The achievements

As a mentor, one of the toughest challenges is to find the most important elements of the business that are missing, and not just hand over all your ideas, but the ones that will make the biggest difference.

On the other hand, you should also tell them as much as you can to get your knowledge across. So there are loads of things that we have done, but only some make this article.

Below is a list of what we think are the most important achievements.
External signalling

This undoubtedly has had the most effect, and it has even surprised me with how much extra business it generated. We have put big blackboards on the outside of the pub, highlighting the menu during the day and the cocktail list during the night.

We have laid out external tables when the weather permits. We are also looking at lighting and exploring the possibility of external wording painted onto the building.
Ticket times

I have explained the importance of ticket times in previous articles and Ben and Sarah have really focused on the 10-minute ticket time. They have been very successful at this and it has made a huge difference to the business.

Rostering and staff costs

The Elephant has saved a sensational 7% on its labour ratio over the past 12 weeks. The pub is using the S4 rostering tool, and it even features in its latest video.

This amounts to a significant saving of around £25,000 a year. This, I am sure, is a saving many pubs will really need in what could be a difficult year.

They now really understand how to schedule far more effectively, including the value of driving sales through effective rostering of “right people, right place, right time”.

For most pubs, labour is the biggest cost, the biggest sales opportunity and the biggest waste, so it needs some real management focus.

Menu development

With Coca-Cola Enterprises’ support we have improved the menus: one for lunch, one for the early evening (food-led), one for late evening (cocktail-led), and one for Sunday.

These are all consistent but with small variations. The menu now communicates the business far more effectively, as well as high-
lighting quality and the function room upstairs.

As a result, the pub not only met some pretty ambitious targets for December but also has a very good level of bookings in the traditionally quiet month of January.
Next steps

The great thing about success is that you have so much more energy (and cash) to implement the next steps, and so we have got a fair number of next steps.
Capacity management

Once you are full, the best way to in-crease sales is to boost capacity. Ben and Sarah are now purchasing high tables for some of the less well-used zones and moving things around. This should increase the number of covers downstairs by about 16.
Comfort factor

One of the items they couldn’t stretch to when they bought the pub was covers on the chairs and benches. They are now going to do this, which will hopefully make the building more appealing and also increase the length of stays.
Roof terrace

Ben and Sarah have always had one eye on converting their flat roof into a roof terrace. This will clearly add significant appeal to the building during the warmer months and should significantly increase turn-over. They are now actively working on plans to achieve this.
Business marketing

The Elephant is one of the first pubs to use a new newsletter process that has been developed for the pub market, called Catton Communication (CC).

Not only will CC send out the pub newsletter and manage the database for the pub, it will also help grow the customer base and sales.

With more than 30 million email addresses it is able to accurately target people by postcode, demographic and between corporate customers and consumers.

In the long term

The future is very exciting for Ben and Sarah. They have a profitable first pub that is growing, and they are learning the key skills to be successful in this industry.

They want to grow their business to be successful multi-site operators and now need to establish the skills to effectively do so.

This is perhaps the hardest transition for any pub operator, and requires completely different approaches to ensure success.

These are the areas I will be working on with them over the coming year. Probably the single-most difficult skill is one of influencing.

For most people running their own pub their presence and personality ensures that the staff work hard and standards are high. But as soon as you become a multiple operator this all changes. You have to find mechanisms to ensure all these things without being there.

The two biggest mistakes are in trying to manage in the same way, or just working twice as hard. Neither of these approaches work, but it is what most people do when they make the transition, so this will be an interesting and exciting journey.

Ben and Sarah have the aptitude, intelligence, and openness to do this very well. I am also encouraging them to go for some awards this year.

Doing well in awards will help any future licensee recognise that they are talented and worth consideration, and will make it easier for them to get their next pub.

So what has the mentor scheme achieved for Ben and Sarah? Profits, enthusiasm and an exciting future in the industry.

Perhaps the more sobering thought is what might have happened if they hadn’t been on the programme. But they had the bravery to apply, the application to make changes happen, and the courage to try new things. It is the combination of these things that has made them so successful.