Where Wetherspoon wins
For 15 years or more, running pubs and now writing about pubs, I've studied the JD Wetherspoon results.
The idea has always been to gain some insight on the company's retail innovations and priorities. When I ran pubs I hoped (no doubt forlornly) that I could gather some of its magic dust. I believe it is only what every pub retailer, no matter how small or large, should be doing. After all, founder Tim Martin started with a single pub and the company's current size is the result of year after year of retail success.
Here are the 10 things I picked up at the Wetherspoon results meeting last Friday, some of which are applicable to every pub in the land.
1. Lager is the company's most profitable single category. It's refreshing its lager offer by replacing Coors with Carlsberg. It's also sourced a new Chinese beer, Lucky.
2. Cask ale is doing well: Wetherspoon knows cask ale is a key point of difference and that its customers like to try new products. It stocked over 600 guest ales during the year and sold 3.3 million pints in its 20-day beer festival.
3. Offering good quality, affordable meals is a vital lever. It admitted one key in offering new menu items is that they can be served in large numbers within 10 minutes. (There's a tasty-looking steak
and kidney pie to be launched shortly).
It has outlets that now sell more than £30,000 of food a week.
4. It sets great store by incentivising all its staff. It paid £20.5m in employee bonuses and free shares last year. Pub managers are staying in situ for longer than ever — an average of more than eight years each. Some 90% of the bonus payments were made to people below board level.
5. Other new products: Wetherspoon has moved to introduce a record number of new and interesting products across the range this month — there's 13 in total. They include alcoholic ginger beer and a new cider, Marcle Hill.
6. The recession has been a time of opportunity on the property front. There have been good value deals to be done and it's reduced its opening costs by 39% compared to a year ago.
7. Bonuses are linked to mystery visits by internal and external checkers. Current results are the highest yet achieved.
8. Training: Wetherspoon is the first pub retailer to have been awarded a Learning & Skills Council funding contract by the Government.
9. Developing the day-parts: From a very slow start on the breakfast and coffee
front, Wetherspoon is now selling 715,000 of these a week.
10. The smoking ban was not the end of the world. Sales per pub are now slightly ahead on where they were before the ban, a two-year post-ban recovery period that other parts of the world have noticed.
