Leading lights from within the industry offer
their perspective on what it takes to shine
Peter Linacre Massive Pub Company
You need a very clear vision about what your pub stands for. What is it and what should it be?
You need to make this vision clear to your staff and your customers. If you don't, people will be confused and this will affect your business. Does everything at every site reflect that vision?
The philosophy you have for your business must be replenished and revamped every single day so it remains fresh. If you follow this advice you will succeed.
Justin Adams Greene King
The one tip I would give above anything else is that you must get the right team of people in place. Assuming you have your offer
right and know the customers you should be targeting, getting the right people in the right positions must be done before you do anything else.
If the team is functioning, everything else, including sales, will follow. If the wrong people are doing the wrong jobs, they will not engage with the company or its brands and customers will not either. Everyone will be very dissatisfied.
Ralph Findlay Marston's
Pubs are not restaurants, but in the minds of many customers the choice about where to spend one's time and money can easily include both.
The pub sector should receive huge credit for this, as 10 years ago the two were poles apart. Pubs have closed the gap - through investment, more interesting menus, more focus on value, a broader definition of their target market to include families, females and so on.
I don't see pubs actually becoming restaurants in the near future because I think elements of the traditional pub experience will continue to have a huge, much broader appeal that restaurants can't replicate. Pubs will continue to have a greater emphasis on drinks and sociability, and that means different skills.
What we can do is look to key elements of the restaurant offer to transfer into pubs, and in my view where we have most to learn is in service standards. In many restaurants, service is elevated to a skill level that is too often not experienced in pubs. If pubs can get that right, many have more to offer than competing restaurants.
Giles Thorley Punch
We've got to make sure the pub is more inclusive - ie, it meets the needs and expectations of a much wider range of customers. It is unlikely that many pubs will be able to rely on one group of customers and, therefore, they have to accommodate a much wider range of tastes and cater for the highest common denominator, not the lowest.
Where a pub succeeds in this, it is a gem, and it is these pubs that the rest of the world sees as the quintessential product that they are so keen to emulate.
Incidentally, I have travelled a lot and not found the same thing anywhere else.
Tim Martin JD Wetherspoon
There is no such thing as an easy buck in this business. You have to stick at it over a number of years to see a real return.
When the going gets tough I go for a long walk followed by a couple of pints of Abbott to find a solution.
It is hard to generalise but some people who enter this business get disappointed if the returns do not come as quickly as they hoped. But this is a very competitive business and to do well you must work hard and be very passionate about it.
Hamish Stoddart Peach Pub company
You have to work with people you trust. I have had business failures and successes and the ones that work are the ones where the team trusts each other. This is arguably more important than skill or ability.
Businesses are built by teams of people who trust each other, and by that I mean all the stakeholders. There has to be an understanding that we must all make money, but you must trust each other to make the right decisions for the good of everyone.
If there is no trust you cannot move quickly as a business and deals will not be done.