Staffing

Refresh your pub staff with some legal training

Refresh your pub staff with some legal training

By Michael Kheng

Hopefully summer will arrive one day and with it more customers to our bars. Like us, some pubs will be looking at taking on extra staff over the summer period and training up the newly recruited members.

Top Tips: Raising funds for your pub business

Top Tips: Raising funds for your pub business

By Phil Mellows

Looking to grow your pub empire? Think there’s a shortage of money around? Well, think again. There are plenty of potential investors out there — it’s just that the organisations who have got it, are afraid to use it.

Davison: Spend an hour a day thinking how to improve your pub

Davison: Spend an hour a day thinking how to improve your pub

By Phil Davison

As anyone who has read my columns will know, I strongly believe that proper marketing and customer relationship management are the keys to success, and the only measurable ways of ensuring it continues for your business.

Price:

Running pubs teaches you a thing or two

By Gerry Price

I have been in this pub for over 12 years and I was at my last one for just over 11. Although this might suggest that I have staying power, it would also suggest that I must have made a few decisions along the way, not all of which would have been good...

What’s the next step beyond gastropubs?

What’s the next step beyond gastropubs?

By Jesse Dunford Wood

Over a dinner I cooked last week, a friend of mine was telling me about his newly-launched local pub. “You know, they have duck on the menu, real proper gastropub it is,” he said. The word makes me cringe somewhat, but it did make me think.

Take precautions to avoid noise nuisance complaints

Take precautions to avoid noise nuisance complaints

There are operators who have experienced uncomfortable discussions with environmental health officers about a neighbour’s complaint of noise nuisance and even been threatened with an abatement notice.

Health & safety in pubs: Top Tips

Health & safety in pubs: Top Tips

An unclean venue is undoubtedly a turn-off for consumers and operators can no longer conceal below-par conditions since the introduction of the food hygiene rating scheme (FHRS).

Top tips on increasing your pub profits with desserts

Top tips on increasing your pub profits with desserts

By Fiona McLelland

It can often be the first thing diners drop in hard times, but there are ways to put the last course at the forefront of people’s thinking. Fiona McLelland finds out how  to increase profit through desserts

Top 10 tips: Getting your drinks offer right for the summer

Top 10 tips: Getting your drinks offer right for the summer

Weather conditions on these shores are erratic at the best of times, but this year it’s more unpredictable than ever. March, which was officially the third warmest on record, was quickly replaced by April’s seemingly endless showers. One can only guess...

Top tips for saving energy in your pub

Top tips for saving energy in your pub

Conserving energy in your pub could also help cut costs. Angela Needle, head of energy consultancy at British Gas Business, shares her top tips

BII members call for smoking signage to be axed

BII members call for smoking signage to be axed

By Michelle Perrett

BII (British Institute of Innkeeping) members have voted overwhelmingly in favour of removing ‘smoke-free’ signage from their pub premises, in a survey carried out as part of the Government’s Red Tape Challenge.

Top 10 ways to increase bar snack sales at your pub

Top 10 ways to increase bar snack sales at your pub

By Sheila McWattie

With the decline of three-course dinners and the rise of the all-day grazer, the humble bar snack has emerged victorious. Sheila McWattie looks at 10 ways to increase your snack sales

Marketing tips: The rules of attraction

Marketing tips: The rules of attraction

By Alastair Scott

I watched Billy Elliot last week — I know I’m a bit behind, but I always wait until the DVD is £4 in the supermarket. When I watched it I realised how much life has changed in a generation.

Tips on how to surrender a lease

Tips on how to surrender a lease

There are no established written rules for surrendering a lease. Surveyor Simon Clarke gives advice and answers some vital questions

The Big Interview: Tim Woodrow

The Big Interview: Tim Woodrow

By Phil Mellows

It’s a toss-up as to who’s going to miss who the most when Tim Woodrow retires from Palmers later this year. With 45 years in the industry behind him, and the past quarter-century and more with the Dorset firm, Woodrow is going to have to play an awful...

Lamb’s pubco-tenant vision

Lamb’s pubco-tenant vision

By Michelle Perrett

In an exclusive interview with Michelle Perrett, the Minister for Employment Relations, Consumer & Postal Affairs, Norman Lamb, explains his approach to the pubco-tenant issue and his opposition to an independent panel to monitor the self-regulation...

Track and feed: Planning for the Olympics

Track and feed: Planning for the Olympics

By Lesley Foottit

Britain has long had a poor reputation for its food, drink and hospitality in the wider world, but the tie-up between British Food Fortnight (BFF) and the Olympics this summer (27 July to 12 August) gives us the opportunity to prove them all wrong.

Six steps to becoming a multiple pub operator

Six steps to becoming a multiple pub operator

By Phil Mellows

So you think you’ll make a good multiple operator? As Scottish & Newcastle Pub Company narrows down the common factors behind what works in its estate, Phil Mellows asks questions about acquiring that difficult second pub

Minor miracles

Minor miracles

By Jessica Harvey

Children are given special attention at the Bolingbroke in south-west London. Mark Reynolds, who co-owns Renaissance Pubs with his friends Tom Peake and Nick Fox, tells Jessica Harvey about how to get families through the door.

PPL chief defends plans to raise fees

PPL chief defends plans to raise fees

By Gurjit Degun

Anyone who demands money from you is never going to be popular. In a struggling economy it’s even worse — utility cost increases are never ending, rents are harder to negotiate and business rates have a habit of rising just when you think you are up to...

Precision marketing

Precision marketing

By Alastair Scott

To avoid wasting time and money, and upsetting customers, your promotions need thorough planning, says Alastair Scott.

Clear cut advantage

Clear cut advantage

Unless you are a student and beans-on-toast represents the sum total of your culinary abilities, nobody would choose to have the same meal every night. But that does not stop pub chefs putting the same dishes on their menus up and down the country

Don’t leave your front line exposed

Don’t leave your front line exposed

By Michael Kheng

It is interesting that the Security Industry Authority (SIA) is visiting licensees and authorities warning of the possibility of a shortage of door supervisors during the 2012 Olympics. As reported in last week’s PMA, G4S looks set to recruit around 10,000...

Pub Mentors: Softs put fizz into business

Pub Mentors: Softs put fizz into business

Executing ‘brilliant basics’ on soft drinks and using targeted promotional activity to drive new footfall were the two key areas that lessees Duncan and Natalie Entwistle and I talked about on my first visit to their pub, the Greets Inn in Warnham, West...

Pub Mentors: Making Greet strides

Pub Mentors: Making Greet strides

By Phil Davison

As my three-month mentoring programme with the Greets Inn comes to an end, it is wonderful to reflect on how far Duncan and Natalie have come in such a short space of time. I believe we have achieved all we set out in our action plan — and more.

Tom Palmer: Another victory down to character

Tom Palmer: Another victory down to character

We certainly won’t have been handed too many laurel wreaths to us for our performance in Rome on Saturday but we eventually prevailed against a stubborn Italian side who, it must be remembered, defeated World Cup finalists France in last year’s RBS 6...

Pub Mentors: The Elephant makes its mark

Pub Mentors: The Elephant makes its mark

By Phil Davison

On a return visit to the Elephant in Bristol, trade consultant Alastair Scott, who runs Catton Hospitality, discovers that licensees Ben Bartrip and Sarah Eskins have been hard at it implementing many of his suggestions.

The Big Interview: Marco Pierre White

The Big Interview: Marco Pierre White

By Matt Moggridge

Marco Pierre White tells Matt Moggridge about the role of aspirations and frozen peas in successful food-pub development.

What’s hot in gastro land?

What’s hot in gastro land?

By Lesley Foottit

Lesley Foottit explores the emerging trends in gastropubs and pinpoints what we can expect in 2012.

Tom Palmer: 'Character and team spirit see us through'

Tom Palmer: 'Character and team spirit see us through'

By Tom Palmer

With so many new faces in the England squad for the 2012 Six Nations campaign ( making the average age of the players 25 ) plus a new coaching team in place led by Stuart Lancaster it was no surprise to us all that the approach to preparation for the...

Pub Mentors: Soft sell pays dividends

Pub Mentors: Soft sell pays dividends

Martin Sampson, out of home shopper marketing controller at Coca-Cola Enterprises, keeps tabs on his protégés’ progress at the College Arms. Stratford.

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