Pressure mounts in town pubs

Busy pubs, struggling to keep up. Rosie Davenport rounds up the results from this month's mystery visits to measure the customer experience in urban outlets

A crowded bar with a sea of faces is hardly a conducive environment for staff to show off their customer-service skills. Country and community pubs might have more time to chat with drinkers, hopefully upselling their orders and tidying the back-bar area between orders, but in high-volume outlets it's frequently all hands to the pumps.

That probably explains why our latest round of mystery visits, this month covering towncentre pubs, produced the fewest number of five-star ratings since we started our Quality Tracker initiative two months ago - nil in fact.

The 12 randomly-selected outlets were graded for customer service and the standard of pub overall against a 35-point checklist.

But the results are much more varied,

compared to those gathered for community businesses in July. Even this month's top

performer - the Artichoke in Bristol - only

received four stars from our researcher, in contrast to four pubs that each achieved five stars last month.

Many of the researchers mentioned that the pubs were extremely busy, which is to be expected for the time we visited - a Friday lunchtime. But what sets these town-centre pubs apart is their customer service, with none of the pubs we visited managing to score 100% against this measure - and frequently much lower.

Worryingly, it's not just the time-consuming things like pouring a drink correctly that were overlooked - simple things like saying "hello" to customers when they arrived were forgotten. First impressions count and the memory of the poor service they received at the start is usually what sticks in the mind.

Winner of the month: the ARTICHOKE, Bristol

Pubs with large outdoor spaces have been hit by the recent bad weather, and the Artichoke is no exception. The city-centre freehouse, a frequent winner of Bristol in Bloom for its attractive floral displays, relies on the summer months to pull in its regular clientele of daytime shoppers and after-work drinkers.

"Business on the whole has been OK, but it's just a great shame that we've got such a wonderful outdoor area that isn't being utilised," says licensee Patrick Gomm. "It isn't the smoking ban that has been the problem, it's simply that we haven't had enough sun."

Gomm puts in "considerable effort" to make the pub attractive, from the green sofa-settles inside, to the hanging wall-baskets of flowers that adorn the seated patio outside. "Flowers are only a small expense but they make a big difference - apart from looking nice they show you care about the place," he says.

Such care has built up over the 20 years Gomm has been running the Artichoke, having been part of a group that took over what was a neglected retail unit in the mid 1980s. "We were one of the earliest examples of converting an unlicensed premises into a bar - at the time it was unique. We took the

Artichoke name from a very old famous Bristol pub, which had been demolished a few years before," he adds.

Gomm remains a hands-on licensee, but most of his key staff have worked at the pub for a lengthy period of time and know what

is expected of them. Gomm says that,

whenever possible, he passes on his years

of experience to his staff. "My main

philosophy - and it's a fairly simple one - is to treat customers exactly how you would expect to be treated yourself if you were in the pub," he says.

The Artichoke only serves food at

lunchtimes, but with a dry-to-wet split of 30:70 it remains an important part of the pub's overall offering. Gomm is not a great fan of table check-backs, instead preferring to rely on quality from the outset. "The food doesn't go out in the first place if it isn't OK - any competent restaurateur or person serving food should know the food is good before it leaves the kitchen."

The same simplistic approach applies to wet sales: Foster's is the top-selling lager and there is just a single ale on offer, Courage Best. "We've stuck with the one ale because it's an exceptionally good seller," says Gomm. "Rather than stretch yourself too far, I believe it's better to do one thing and one thing well - that way a good reputation sticks."

Fact file - Patrick gomm

Age: 53

Background: Patrick has been licensee of the Artichoke since it opened 20 years ago

Who he admires: Courageous sportsmen.

"I had a £25 each way bet on Padraig

Harrington to win the Open the other

week, so he's quite high in my estimation

at the moment."

Top tip: "It's not the easiest industry to get into, but it can be rewarding. You need to be aware of what you are letting yourself in for."

Training approach

l Licensee knowledge is passed down

where possible

l All staff understand what is expected of them at all times

l Staff learn to treat customers how they would expect to be treated themselves

l Doing the simple things well is

emphasised - it can make a big difference.