Navigating the choppy waters of food hygiene and cleanliness comes easy to some, while for others it can be a minefield. For Seamus Leahy, director of pub group Old English Inns and Taverns, it’s a process that’s been perfected across his collection of four food-driven pubs and over his 25-year career in hospitality.
At his Ye Golden Lion venue in Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, for instance, he has maintained a five-star rating for some time, which he puts down to a tight cleaning schedule and regimented staff training.
“Training is a big part of our hygiene systems,” he says. “If someone starts working for us and if they are involved in the cleaning, I get Booker’s Clean Pro manual out and we use that as part of their training.”
Leahy is so strict on hygiene training because his five-star rating is fundamental to his operation. He believes fewer customers would come to the Golden Lion if he had a lower rating. According to Leahy, a lower rating would have a negative impact on the 500 covers served at the site each week, making up 50% of total sales.
Reliable range of cleaning products
Keeping up appearances demands a reliable range of cleaning products, he maintains.
Until recently, Leahy had used branded products, which he admits did the job, but were expensive and created additional paperwork for him as “we had to write out the COSHH (control of substances hazardous to health information in our cleaning manuals for every product we bought”.
To save on costs, the pub boss then looked to budget products, but laments that, although they saved him on money, they cost his business in time as they didn’t do the job properly. However, he was then introduced to Clean Pro.
“Booker’s Clean Pro range does the job as well as branded, if not better, but we save on cost because we buy them in neat and dilute them to use on-site. All of the COSHH information is written in the manual that Booker gives you, as well as instructions on how and where to use the products.
‘Save around £15,000’
“I honestly think, when comparing Booker’s Clean Pro range with branded, I save around £15,000 a year on cleaning products across my whole pub group.
“It’s also because the instructions for use are really clear and simple so it cuts down on staff overusing the products.”
Making cleaning easy, along with filling out the paperwork to back up the process, is a big part of why the Golden Lion has a five-star hygiene rating, he adds. To offer extra confidence to publicans, the hygiene manual has been developed in partnership with the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health.
But, when faced with his worst scenario – a one-star hygiene rating – what does Leahy really think would happen to his business? “Well, you are encouraged to display the sticker in the window (customers can also find hygiene ratings online) and I imagine, if we only had one star, it wouldn’t instil people with confidence in what we do and they probably would choose to eat somewhere else.”
The key to a five-star rating, Leahy firmly believes, is “all about cleaning records in the front and back of house and good-quality products,” he says. “If the pub looks clean, the kitchen looks clean and you can prove how often you clean it all, then what could go wrong?”