That’s right, Christmas may be more than three months away but no doubt you’ve been planning for it for quite some time (since January even?), and now the real work has to begin.
The start of autumn is certainly the time (if they haven’t already) when customers will be looking to book their festive meals so you must get your Christmas menus ready and published on your website without delay.
Amber Staynings, founder of hospitality consultants Bums on Seats, which advises many pub groups on ways to increase revenue, says: “The question we get asked most often is ‘what can we do in September to boost our festive bookings?’ and ‘have we left it too late?’ Although we’re seeing Christmas bookings coming in earlier every year – and hopefully by now most operators have their Christmas menu and party offerings across all channels both digitally and physically – we still see a huge uplift in festive enquiries just after the August bank holiday passes.
“Our top tip on what to do now is to get key-date strategic: ensure you offer the peak and most requested dates to your top tier customers – in other words the loyal returning guests, high spending corporates and key customers you want to give some VIP treatment to should be offered the ‘hot dates’ first. Don’t let the key peak dates go too easily: any discounts or early bird bookers should be guided towards the ‘off peak’ sessions.”
Certainly, publishing your festive offerings early so you can get bookings in the diary well before Christmas will help you plan ahead and take advantage of early ordering discounts from suppliers.
For example, Booker has launched a Christmas pre-order scheme with 85 exclusive starters, mains, desserts, cheeses and accompaniments available to order before 30 October for guaranteed delivery.
Capture that demand
Gareth James, operations director at St Austell Brewery, is an advocate for being prepared early for Christmas enquiries.
“We’ve found our guests begin making Christmas enquiries as early as June or July: having festive menus, booking information and opening hours ready to go allows you to capture that demand,” he says.
“Don’t wait until October: being organised early can significantly impact your bookings and guest engagement and we’ve found being prepared early has boosted bookings year after year.”
Christmas Day bookings have already been coming in at Fuller’s pubs around the country too, with marketing having begun in earnest over the summer.
Fuller’s head of operations Jane Bravey says: “We start taking pre-bookings just after Christmas Day for the following year and getting the pre-booked business sorted makes it so much easier to forecast just how many you are likely to be catering for.
“At Fuller’s, we’ve had our Christmas roadshow, menus and drinks packages agreed. The sales team has already been focused on driving that pre-booked business and we are well and truly geared up to deliver an event that even the most critical Santa would be proud of.”
The right side of the law
If you’re hosting parties or holding special events during the Christmas and New Year period, now’s the time to make sure your licence has the right times and provisions to keep you covered.
Keystone Law licensing partner Sarah Taylor says: “During the festive season, demand for late-night celebrations, work parties and special events tends to skyrocket.
“It is crucial for pub owners to review their premises licence well in advance to determine if their planned activities fall within the approved hours and whether there are any conditions on the premises licence which may prevent you from operating in the way you want to during the festive period.”
If your licence doesn’t cover the hours or activities planned, you can apply for a Temporary Event Notice (TEN) or a variation of your current premises licence.
TENs allow businesses to conduct licensable activities outside their standard terms for a limited duration.
You need to submit TENs early to comply with the regulations – ideally at least 10 working days before the event – and thus avoid the likelihood of fines, imprisonment or a review of your licence.
Taylor cautions: “TENs have limitations both in terms of how many a person may submit, premises-specific limits and capacity limits. It’s therefore prudent to check well in advance of the festive season to see whether TENs will be sufficient to allow you to operate your premises in the manner you may wish to.”
You may find that your premises licence includes ‘non-standard timings’ or ‘seasonal variations’, granting permission for extended hours on specific days.
However, these provisions are not automatic and must be applied for either when the licence is granted or through a variation process, while some non-standard timings also have notification requirements to the authorities within a certain timeframe.
Taylor adds: “By checking and understanding your licence terms, you can take advantage of any permissible extensions or decide whether you may need to apply for a TEN or a variation of your licence.”
James Mobbs, a hospitality marketeer and founder of Revs Ops Hospitality, recommends using the summer period until the end of September to reach out to previous corporate bookers and “big enquiries from previous years that didn’t book” and send them menus, details and early booking incentives.
“I would advise that everything should be loaded up to your website with dedicated Christmas pages – you might not make them front and centre on your homepage but you want people (and Google) to be able to find them.
“Ensure your teams have everything they need to be ready and equipped for any enquiries,” says Mobbs.
Then from October onwards Mobbs says you need to keep pushing on and making “Christmas front and centre of most of your messages”.
“Everything from digital assets across your website, social and email campaigns to in-venue point of sale, A-boards and community drops.
“Of course, you need to make sure you exclude people who have already made a booking but when you consider that, on average, 40% of all bookings are made within two weeks of the booking date, which increases to 85% for parties between two and eight people, you really do have to keep reminding people about why Christmas at your pub is better than anywhere else.”
While many pubs are booking up for Christmas Day already, some publicans have decided not to open on the big day at all.
We want a happy team
One such pub is the Milbury near Alresford in Hampshire, which won’t be open on 24, 25 or 26 December this year.
Owners Clive and Tanith Cummings say it’s not worthwhile opening on Christmas Day because they would have to pay their staff substantially more in overtime, which would have to be passed on to customers, who would then “feel like you’re ripping them off”.
Tanith says: “Our costs are going up all the time and it’s just not financially worth it for us. Why put your staff through all that effort to not actually make any money?
“We want a happy team, so being able to say to our staff on 23 December ‘bye guys, see you on the 27th – enjoy your three days off’ is really important. To us, Christmas is family time.”
However, the Milbury will open on Christmas Day from midday until 2pm purely for the locals to have drinks in the bar, served by Clive, Tanith and their two sons.
“We serve for a couple of hours and then we sit down for our family lunch. The customers are all gone by 2pm anyway because they’ve all got their own Christmas dinners to go to,” adds Clive.
Five-strong Peak District pub group Longbow Venues also now shuts its pubs on Christmas Day following some unpleasant behaviour towards staff in previous years.
Owner Rob Hattersley decided he didn’t want to put staff through that experience again, so the pubs haven’t opened on Christmas Day since 2022.
“The trouble is when people are paying a premium for Christmas Day – because we’re paying our staff double time and getting in premium ingredients – they’re almost expecting the world. People also seem to feel they can behave a certain way because they’re paying that sort of money, so we had some customers that were quite rude and upset the staff two years running,” explains Hattersley.
“I appreciate Christmas Day is a great revenue earner for the business but we don’t want to put that over the welfare of our employees, so now our 291 staff all have Christmas Day off to spend with their families. I get so many messages from senior managers saying ‘thank you so much for letting us have Christmas’.”
For those pubs that are open on Christmas Day, meeting customer expectations is always a challenge but one that they feel they need to rise to.
Young’s head of sales Jennie Powell says: “Our pubs are at the heart of local communities with Christmas Day being one of our biggest days of the year for our guests to come together to celebrate and connect.
“Our tip for Christmas Day success is simple: focus on quality over quantity. By keeping our pubs at just the right capacity, we ensure exceptional food, service and festive cheer.”
Christmas Day is always a trading day at Fuller’s too, with some of its pubs even welcoming walk-ins.
Head of operations at Fuller’s, Jane Bravey, says: “Many of our pubs have always opened on Christmas Day, but a number of more local sites used to open just for a lunchtime drink. Times have changed and now it’s an opportunity to deliver a really special experience, which is why so many more pubs are open for food.
“In some of our central London sites, we open for more general food too because there are always some tourists around who are looking for fish and chips rather than turkey, and who don’t understand the need to pre-book.”
St Austell Brewery’s 45 managed sites and many of its 120-plus tenanted pubs will also open on Christmas Day either to serve food and drink, or just drinks.
“We open on Christmas Day because our pubs are true community hubs and, for many of our guests, a festive drink at their local is a cherished tradition,” says operations director Gareth James.
“It’s one of the most meaningful days of the year for our communities and we’re proud to be part of their celebrations.”
Community cheer
Christmas is the time for giving and many pubs are planning to give to their communities through various initiatives this festive season.
JKS Pubs is continuing its tradition of welcoming the Chelsea Pensioners into the Cadogan Arms for an evening of carols this December.
Last year, the group also invited locals into The Hound in Chiswick for three free evenings of festive entertainment from the West London Sinfonia and West London Chamber Choir, while the I Dodici choir performed for customers at The George in Fitzrovia, and similar events are planned for this Christmas.
In January this year, JKS partnered with the Kensington + Chelsea Foundation and Age UK Kensington & Chelsea to host a special lunch for 25 vulnerable people from the Chelsea community, which will be repeated again this January.
JKS Pubs managing director Dominic Jacob says: “Loneliness can hit the hardest in winter, even more so in January once the festivities and family visits wind down; as public houses, we’re proud to create reasons to connect and give people spaces and opportunities to come together with others.”
Young’s is also helping to tackle loneliness this winter: at the Alexandra in Wimbledon, for the 10th year in a row, general managers Mick and Sarah Dore will welcome anyone who might otherwise be on their own into the pub for a complimentary turkey dinner on Christmas Day.
And in the south-west, St Austell Brewery is running its Community Spirit initiative again this year, whereby its managed pubs will encourage nominations for a local hero who goes above and beyond for their community.
The winners will enjoy a complimentary three-course festive meal for four during December, along with a £50 gift card.
Operations director Gareth James says: “It’s a way of giving back to those who truly embody the spirit of our communities.”
