What Type Of Food Should You Offer?
Mark S. Elliott has spent 25 years working in various management roles within the tenanted and leased divisions of the UK's largest breweries and pub companies. His extensive knowledge and day-to-day involvement with pubs and publicans make him well qualified to know what is required to run a successful pub. He shares his knowledge and many 'insider tips' with you in this book. Mark is based in Cockermouth, Cumbria.
WHAT TYPE OF FOOD SHOULD YOU OFFER?
You should offer the type of food that will meet the needs of your customers and potential customers. To ascertain this, it is useful to step into the shoes of your target customers, think about their lifestyle and visualise:
- When may they want to eat?
- — Traditional meal times or at other times of the day?
- Who will they be with?
- — Partners, family, friends, colleagues or alone?
- How much time do they have?
- — No limits or a quick lunch break?
- What are their eating occasions?
- — Special event, big night out, sociable get-together, meeting or a quiet visit?
- What is their budget?
- — High spending, medium spending, low spending?
- What are their tastes and preferences?
- — Traditional, ethnic, vegetarian, low fat, children’s?
Answering these questions for each of your target customer-types helps you put together a menu which focuses on satisfying their needs, instead of writing a menu on a whim and hoping for the best.
Limiting factors
Unfortunately, you may not fully exploit the local demand for food because your ‘offer’ may be limited by your lack of expertise, availability of experienced staff, kitchen facilities, and equipment or limited capital. If this is the case and you wish to improve your food offer, you will need to overcome your limiting factors. For example:
Limiting factors |
Possible solution |
Lack of expertise: |
Obtain additional training and experience. |
Lack of experienced staff: |
Train existing staff. |
Poor kitchen facilities: |
Develop new kitchen. |
Limited equipment: |
Purchase, lease or rent new equipment. |
Limited capital: |
Business loan. |
You will need to weigh the cost of each solution against the benefit of improved food sales, being careful to make an objective, well-considered assessment. For large-scale investment or additional borrowing, you should seek professional advice from your accountant before going ahead. (Use three scenarios – optimistic, realistic and pessimistic to forecast your anticipated food sales and consider the implications of each.)
