Very few take the time to ring us to say that they have a positive working relationship with their pubco and respect their business development manager.
But the latest Tenant Track survey from him! reveals that the majority of pub tenants are getting on just fine with their pubcos — many would recommend them to another prospective tenant, and nearly half would take on another pub with the company if the right opportunity and conditions arose.
As with all research data, the devil is in the detail. The aggregated results hide a wide disparity in tenant satisfaction levels with different pubcos. Inevitably, some perform much better than others. However, it is not for us to name names (in case you were wondering).
The 13 pub companies that participated in Tenant Track this year (up from five in 2011) have done so to measure, benchmark
and improve their performance. It would be unfair for anyone to beat them up with their own results.
Their very involvement suggests this is an issue that matters to them and that they intend to work hard to better their performance so that next year’s results show marked progress.
One area in which pubco bosses will hope to see an improvement in 2013’s survey — one year on from the launch of the new Industry Framework Code — will be tenants’ perceptions of the clarity and fairness of their contracts and pubcos’ codes of conduct.
They will also, no doubt, want to make noticeable strides to improve the support they offer to their tenants — especially in those areas in which tenants are specifically asking for more help: food, coffee, promotions and running costs.
The pubco/tenant relationship need not be a zero-sum game, whereby every pound earned by one party is begrudged by the other.
Having happy, profitable tenants achieving revenue and profit growth is good news for any pubco operating a true partnership.
Having tenants actively recommending their pubco to others is surely the best endorsement of all. The recruitment and retention of switched-on tenants should be treated as a war for talent, and getting it right will provide a pubco with a massive competitive advantage.
Those pubcos that measure such things (either via their own tenant satisfaction surveys or third-party programmes) are on the right track. But, as a wise farmer once said: “You don’t grow a pig by measuring it.” Only those that benchmark their performance against their competitors — and then take actions to improve their results — will win.