Bar Chairmans report 2010
As with other recent posts Si Maple has now added the report for the Bar and Catering side of the club. The final facilities report will follow shortly.
Bar & Catering report 2010
I would like to start by thanking our Stewards, Mike, Martyn and Nick, as well as Debs in the office and our local labour for the jobs they do. Without their sterling efforts, the club would not be the friendly, social and enjoyable place it is. Typically reports end by thanking people, but I wanted to start with it to clearly highlight how the success of the club is down to those that tirelessly keep it open for us to enjoy.
I have worked closely with the team over the past year, trying to bridge gaps between the bar and the committee, and the bar and the office. This has often proved challenging, but it’s an important goal to achieve to help sustain the future running of the club. I hope the club will heed advice and suggestions to find a more permanent solution to assist with the overall running of the club.
Although I have a number of years experience working in bar and catering roles, I always took advice from those who really knew best; the staff. I would like to see the stewards have more input in the direction of the club. I would like to see them step up into a position to play a more active role in bar committee meetings to the extent that most of the agenda is drawn up by the stewards, and voted on by the bar committee. The stewards have a large role to play in the future of the bar and the club and I hope they will step up to the ongoing challenge to lead from the front.
On first glance it looks like the bar has made a similar loss to the previous year, having only improving the deficit by £3000 to £37,202, however there are important things to consider when looking at these numbers. For instance, the club was closed for almost 2 weeks in January due to the adverse weather conditions we experienced. Also due to a medical leave of absence from a steward, some months had excessively large labour costs to cover overtime payments.
We have tried to limit the overtime over the year by changing the rota and also favour local labour to steward overtime to limit our outgoings. To compare apples with apples, I removed the anomalies for weather and absence, and our effective deficit for the financial year would be approx. £32,000. The increased trade the club has received, year on year, has massively helped to achieve this effective reduction in deficit.
This past year, we have achieved as much behind the scenes as we have in front. Visible changes have been the new online lunch order system, our new menus, content as well as the look and feel, the types of beers we sell have changed, the specials board is now a blackboard, the Christmas lunch was opened out to for team/family bookings as well as our dedicated Christmas function lunch.
Behind the scenes we’ve changed the Rota, the preference for local staff over stewards for overtime, the stock taking, the usage of the till for credit cards to allow functions to be tracked by the tills, our booking form process between the office and the bar, till data reviews leading to changes in the beers/menus etc… the list goes on…
Most changes have been very successful. Others have triggered response, such as moving the specials items from the board to the menu. Given comments and responses from our members, this will be looked at during the next bar meeting.
The club needs to change in order to react to the changes in culture at
With regret, I will be standing down from the committee this year. With increasing time pressures from both work and life, combined with decreasing energy to battle making the club better, I have decided to direct my time elsewhere. I would like to specifically thank Andy, Ruth and Alison for their help and assistance throughout the year, and wish the club and committee success in the future.
Simon Maple,
Bar and Catering Chairman, June 2010
